The Shittiest Game Design

[toblix]

So I'm playing this steaming, festering pile of shit called Crazy Machines II. It's a TIM-clone* with nice graphics and a physics engine. It's really fun and is awesome.

Oh wait, remember the part where I called it shit? That's because of this. The game has a linear progression from puzzle to puzzle, like the TIMs of old. The whole progression is divided into chapters of about ten puzzles, the first being The Village, or whatever, the next some Chinese shit, I dunno, it's not important. Neither is this: one awesome thing about the puzzles is that not only is there a goal (break A using , there is always bonus objectives (before breaking A, break C without touching D). If you manage the bonus objective you get a goal medal (or gear or cog or some fucking thing). Awesome, right? Bonus objectives!

Yes, except no, because the people who made this game are complete idiots, and this is why. To test your puzzle solution you hit the space bar. Everything starts to move and drop and is awesome. The ball, B, moves around and breaks shit and bounces off of shit. Then it breaks A and the game goes AWEOMSE YOU BROKE A HERE IS A SILVER MEDAL CLICK NEXT TO GO TO THE NEXT LEVEL! All right, you think, but I'd rather try again and move the fucking or adjust this spring mirror or whatever over here, because:

1. I'm a completionist who wants a gold rating on all the levels
   
2. I was this close to getting the bonus objective

So you move the mouse cursor over to the button that lets you try the level again, but guess what?

THERE IS NO SUCH BUTTON

Listen to this: To retry the puzzle you have to go back to the main menu and select the puzzle again. And that isn't even the part I was so furious about that I started this post in the first place. This is: When you retry the level you can't get a better rating! To be able to improve your rating you have to reset the chapter, meaning you lose all awards and progress for the chapter.

So, if you're on the last puzzle and fail to complete a bonus objective, but you're too slow to stop the simulation before the main objective is completed you're shit out of luck. So you have to constantly sit like a hawk, prepared to abort the moment things don't go as planned, and if you're too slow and the bowling ball falls into the crate, well, fuck you.

This is beyond anything I've experienced. This is worse than Phantom Hourglass' save system. Worse than Dead Rising's mission structure. God, it's even worse than Steam's policy about lifting bans from victims of having their Steam account hijacked.

*If you don't know what TIM is, go play it so you do because it's truly awesome.

[Ginger]

[Tommy Gun]

This is worse than Phantom Hourglass' save system.

What was the problem with it? I honestly don't know, because I literally never had to load a saved game in PH -- I beat the whole game by closing my DS in between sessions.

Also:

TIM is awesome.

I beat the final boss in Dead Rising when I realized I had zero time left and couldn't win, even though I defeated the boss.

[Tanukitsune]

I never noticed anything wrong with the saving system Zelda Phantom Hourglass...

But the saving system in Dead Rising does bother me but not the mission system... unless you're talking about the side missions the janitor gives you. I'm pretty sure it's nearly impossible to rescue everybody on your first playthrough?

[toblix]

What was the problem with it?

Well, I am of the opinion that any game that doesn't really save your progress, only some undetermined, wishy-washy checkpoint can go to hell.

[toblix]

Exaggerating, obviously.

But seriously, can anyone imagine the rationale behind this? Forcing the player to go through all the previous puzzles doesn't make sense in a game like this! There's no timing or randomness involved, you're just forcing the player to place all the various pieces in the same exact spots again and hit start.