Us gamers are an opinionated lot, and in all honesty every one of us loves a good moan. As much as we enjoy our favourite passtime, from time to time certain things annoy us enough to incite hatred against that which we claim to enjoy most. I’ve had these annoyances crop up as much as anyone else, and they have inspired me to start this new semi-regular short feature: I H8. To kick things off, I’ll be looking at the gaming staple of puzzles.


I would like to make one thing clear from the start: I’ve got nothing against puzzle games per se. Games who’s sole purpose is the solving of puzzles are absolutely fine by me. They’re not the kind of games I would personally choose to play on a regular basis, but I do recognise their merits. What this piece is aimed at is games from other genres who use puzzles as part of their gameplay mechanics.

 
 
 
 
 
 
You know the sort of thing: flip the switch; move the block; turn the handle or align the tiles in order to solve the puzzle and progress. My main problem with each one of these mechanics is that the puzzles which are set almost exclusively fall into one of two categories: the blatantly obvious or the annoyingly obscure.

The blatantly obvious puzzles are probably the lesser of the two evils due to the fact that the player can simply complete the necessary task and move on. I still dislike them as in my opinion they represent tired and old fashioned game design. We’ve been playing slightly different variations of these same puzzles for years, and they are now getting beyond stale. There’s been such advances in graphics, physics and the like over recent years that we really shouldn’t accept such dated game design any more. The game developers need to get with the times and give us more interesting things to do in these beautiful worlds they are creating for us.

By far the worst type of puzzles though are the annoyingly obscure ones. There’s nothing worse than coming to an area from which you’re sure there must be a way to proceed but are unable to figure out exactly what the game designers want you to do in order to move on. These are the kind of puzzles that take the player so long to solve that by the time you’ve been able to progress to the next area, you’ve almost totally been drawn out of the experience.


Of all the ways to get stuck in a videogame this is probably the most annoying. Difficult boss battles; tricky jumps; waves of enemies; all present opportunities to get stuck in games but what they have above puzzles is that during instances of them you’re actually playing the game. With puzzles you’re sat there scratching your head until you come up with the answer; or until you google it.

 
 
 
 
 
In essence, that’s why I hate puzzles in games. When I’m solving a puzzle, I’m not busy playing the game. In my opinion that’s a waste of my time and effort which could be better spent having a fun gameplay experience. Hey, if I’m playing an action game: I want action, not headscratching!

Maybe some of you enjoy these little diversions from the main game? If you do then I’d love to hear why in the comments below.