Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: If the movie rule is "Show, don't tell," the VG rule is "Do, don't show."

[quote name="Mischief Maker"]A series of contrivances made 4 puzzle platformers fall into my lap last weekend: Mark of the Ninja Volgarr the Viking Trine 2 <A HREF="http://www.negativeworld.org/review/4378/umihara-kawase-shun-second-edition-kanzenban-nintendo-ds-review#.UjeQZz9FnjU">Umihara Kawase DS</A> Mark of the Ninja looks cool and Trine is abso-fucking-lutely gorgeous, but the comparatively homely Volgarr and Umihara are way more fun. Why? Mark of the Ninja and Trine 2 are about telling a story. A shitty videogame-quality story, but a story nonetheless. Volgarr and Umihara on the other hand are built around a handful of mechanics. The story based focus leads to sub-par gameplay in the pretty games: Mark of the Ninja pretty much straightjackets the player to a few clickable areas of interaction while Trine is at the opposite extreme, so loosey goosey with the mechanics that you can muddle your way through most puzzles without coming close to pulling off the maneuvers the designers intended. Volgarr and Umihara are built around first teaching the basic mechanics, then challenging players to explot them in increasingly complex situations. In Mark of the Ninja and Trine 2, the point is to see the end of the story and you can't have the game too challenging or you'll frustrate the player as they rush to see the shitty let down conclusion to the epic. Volgarr and Umihara have no plot, the reward is doing all the challenges successfully. We all know the way this rule applies to action games, but I'll posit that it applies just as well to story-centric games. In Planescape you can die and come back and the story revolves around the insane situations such a power could bring you into, as well as the moral implications of complete immortality. I am getting such deja vu as I type this. I could swear I made this "Do, don't show" argument on Caltrops before, but google is coming up empty.[/quote]