I guess I will be the sole person in this thread to admit that I really enjoy my hand being held while I play a video game.
I used to play a lot of games in high school but didn't find the time for them once I started working and now, after about a 15 year hiatus, got curious and have been playing God of War, Expedition 33, High on Life and enhanced editions of slightly older titles like GTA 5 and BioShock 2. The cinematic experience of God of War, the hints in the environmental lighting about what direction to go in Expedition 33, the popovers in GTA that remind you of what the left joystick does again, the repeated voiceovers that explain what each gun does in High on Life, exact directions to where you need to go in Cyberpunk 2077, never having to bother with save games because most games have copious checkpoints... it's great!
Maybe I'm a klutz, but I remember in the late 90s and early 00s there were plenty of titles where a typical night of gaming would go like this: you have to make sure the intergalactic terrorists don't blow up the power plant, but after half an hour it's clear that you will need to level up to have a chance, another half an hour later you resort to google and figure out that you really shouldn't have skipped that side quest because then you'd have that invisibility upgrade, you finally make your way past the baddies but after a toilet break get confused about what direction you were going in and suddenly find yourself back where you started, you retrace your steps, go on, press the Avoid Reactor Meltdown button but because you've clicked a couple of pixels too far to the left, then a couple of pixels too far to the right, it doesn't do anything, so now you're thinking, maybe I didn't complete all the prereqs so let's wander around some more, but you're getting annoyed so you repeatedly fall off of some walkway into lava... ultimately you make it to the end boss and after the 17th try you realize that their right eye is their weak point, but only for a window of five seconds after it has stopped glowing red. Too bad you didn't stock up on sniper bullets and entered the last room without full health, might have to load an earlier save game to fix that.
I'm sure a lot of people are nostalgic for that special feeling when you've beat a difficult game, but there are a lot of ways in which games used to be difficult that were incidental, through lack of affordances, instead of essential to the gameplay.
I used to play a lot of games in high school but didn't find the time for them once I started working and now, after about a 15 year hiatus, got curious and have been playing God of War, Expedition 33, High on Life and enhanced editions of slightly older titles like GTA 5 and BioShock 2. The cinematic experience of God of War, the hints in the environmental lighting about what direction to go in Expedition 33, the popovers in GTA that remind you of what the left joystick does again, the repeated voiceovers that explain what each gun does in High on Life, exact directions to where you need to go in Cyberpunk 2077, never having to bother with save games because most games have copious checkpoints... it's great!
Maybe I'm a klutz, but I remember in the late 90s and early 00s there were plenty of titles where a typical night of gaming would go like this: you have to make sure the intergalactic terrorists don't blow up the power plant, but after half an hour it's clear that you will need to level up to have a chance, another half an hour later you resort to google and figure out that you really shouldn't have skipped that side quest because then you'd have that invisibility upgrade, you finally make your way past the baddies but after a toilet break get confused about what direction you were going in and suddenly find yourself back where you started, you retrace your steps, go on, press the Avoid Reactor Meltdown button but because you've clicked a couple of pixels too far to the left, then a couple of pixels too far to the right, it doesn't do anything, so now you're thinking, maybe I didn't complete all the prereqs so let's wander around some more, but you're getting annoyed so you repeatedly fall off of some walkway into lava... ultimately you make it to the end boss and after the 17th try you realize that their right eye is their weak point, but only for a window of five seconds after it has stopped glowing red. Too bad you didn't stock up on sniper bullets and entered the last room without full health, might have to load an earlier save game to fix that.
I'm sure a lot of people are nostalgic for that special feeling when you've beat a difficult game, but there are a lot of ways in which games used to be difficult that were incidental, through lack of affordances, instead of essential to the gameplay.