The "game" of a video game matters

[yvannairie]

Welp, congratulations to SpikeChunsoft and Team Danganronpa for completely killing my interest in not just DRv3, but this franchise as a whole, with a single gameplay segment.

I'm at the last class trial of V3 and there's a segment that I've timed out on three times on two different difficulties because it's a fast-moving targeting game where you have to hit five different irregularly-sized moving targets with a reticule I can't see half the time, under conditions where missing one means you have to start over, and every time you start over it's about a five second penalty that you have to sit through, that you can't skip past. The whole segment has a generous seven minute time limit, but when the majority of it is spent sitting pressing fast-fowarrd, it doesn't actually make the segment any easier.

I am literally so mad. I have never had a game go from having me so engaged to going "fuck this and fuck you" and not even wanting to play it again. Because of a single segment of gameplay. Literally right at the end.

See, if you've never played a Dangan Ronpa game, usually the "debate" shooter sections can be played as either a reflex/coodination game or an observation one, where you can always wait to pick your opportunity as long as you manage to find the target and hit it within a time limit. If there are barriers, usually they can be blasted out of the way and then get to the actual moving target by using the time-slowing "focus" function. Focus charges when it's not in use, so you have lots of room to play if you happen to not be super good at tight target-tracking tasks like I am.

And most critically -- you only ever have to hit the one target, and potentially whatever barrier is blocking you from hitting it. You never have to do multiple targets in a row, and the "main" fire for the targets is not instantaneous either, so sometimes you can miss because you didn't lead your shot correctly. This can happen in the final segment.

And I wouldn't even be so mad if the targets I destroyed stayed destroyed. Like, if I managed to get three of the five on one go and had to leave one or two for another attempt, I would be fine with that!! That would still be hard for me, because my aiming is shit and I don't have any of the skills that would assist me with a shooting segment like this because, again, they have been observation and logic tasks so far. But this segment doesn't feel like it's testing me on any of that. It's just testing me on my patience, to see if I am worthy of playing the game to the end. The developers want me to do a jig for them to be allowed narrative resolution.

And y'know what? Fuck that. I was plenty good at the game, I was getting plenty of A and B ranks on chapters before this. Telling me at the very end that I need to be able to do something completely different from the thing I've been doing all game long is only insulting the time and effort I've already put into experiencing this story. I'm done. Fuck you. You've successfully made me completely disinterested in seeing how this story ends.

Comments

[sexytronians]

Blimey why would anyone think that’s a good game design option? Like who sat down and decided this would be a good thing and not painfully stressful for players.

Someone like me with hand arthritis would be pretty fucked without an alternative option to that because I cannot hit fast moving targets. Not I need practice but I physically cannot do that.

So yeah that sucks and is bad game design. >:T