GoNintendo 'End of Day' thought - Games that baby the player

End of the week, my friends! We're just about to wrap up another one. That means it's time for the weekend! Can't wait to relax, see friends and just take it easy. Hope you have some fun plans ahead of you! See you in a few, short hours.

I've been getting a bit fed up with games lately. There are always some little nit-picky things that I have with gaming in general, but lately there's one element that's really been bugging me. I don't know if I'm just getting very old and grumpy, but I just can't take games that spell everything out for you. This has been a trend for quite some time, but with each year that passes, it seems to get worse.

I'm thinking about this a lot this week due to the release of RARE Replay. Like any good Xbox One-owning Nintendo fan, I had to pick up RARE's collection of classic games. The RARE of today isn't quite what it used to be, but the RARE Replay collection includes some of RARE's best work. Brings me back to the days when I would be uber excited to see just what RARE was cooking up next, and would hardly ever be let down.

Going back and playing those games, I really recognize just how game design has changed. Back in the day, it seemed like games really went out of their way to teach players how to play by trial and error. They also taught people how to play by intuitive level design. A mix of your own exploration and creative design lead to the player finding out how to do things on their own. It really lead to a much more rewarding experience.

I'm not talking about games that tell you what buttons do what. A lot of old games didn't tell you that stuff and that wasn't quite fair! Having a game display what buttons do makes perfect sense to me. It's the other stuff that really irks me. Nowadays a lot of games don't even give you a minute to try and figure things out on your own. You get an objective that is super detailed, a map to follow, an on-screen indicator telling you were to go and even the character you're controlling mumbles about the task at hand. Fumble in a boss fight or on an objective, and the screen will instantly tell you what to hit, where to attack and what you should do.

I've also been watching people that grew up on GameCube/PS2/Xbox games go back and try NES to N64 games. It's like they are absolutely lost without the prods of today's games. Obviously not everyone is like that, but I've been shocked at how often it happens. Not even 5 minutes into certain games and I've seen people completely bewildered. They got super frustrated right off the bat and had no idea what to do. Not only that...they didn't even consider exploring or finding things out of their own! Most of the time they just gave up or said the game sucked.

I guess I just grew up in a different time. Our games might have been a little too obtuse when it came to some elements, but I really do believe that a lot of titles intelligently taught us how to play and problem solve. Games today tell me way too much information and won't even let me break from the intended path without flashing warnings. It takes a lot of the fun and imagination out of the experience. Well...at least it does for me.

Do you feel like this with games today, or am I just being old and grumpy?