| Khuutra said: But noname For some people, the fun stuff is what's between the hard stuff For many, this is a way to get to do all the fun stuff (running and jumping in levels) without the un-fun stuff (really hard jumps or boss fights) getting in the way. |
Quite true, which is why I included my totally awesome Cooking For Fun analogy a ways back. If you don't start to learn and utilize the basic skills of the early game, you'll almost always find that the ratio of fun-stuff to not-fun-stuff tends to shrink as the game goes on, since it ramps up the difficulty as it gets closer to the end. This is only natural: few activities remain fun if you keep doing them over and over, so developers introduce new elements, ramp up the difficulty of old ones, or both. But if you're having difficulty with the easy stuff, there's no way you're going to be able to do the hard stuff. So what developers need to do is make it so that the not-fun-stuff is taught sufficiently and organically enough that when you get to those parts, it becomes fun-stuff.
Consider Mario 3. It's possible, by using flutes, to skip to the end of the game in under ten minutes. But if you do this on your first time through, you're likely to get slaughtered by Bowser's military, as the platforming and enemy evasion skills World 8 requires are pretty stiff. But if you've been playing through the level-by-level, you're almost certain to be good enough to tackle World 8, since the game does a fantastic job of letting you improve over time, without really noticing that you're getting better.
But this new features is like using flutes to get to World 8, then having infinite P-Wings when you get there. No, it's more like watching the YouTube video of someone using flutes to bet to World 8, and then beating the game himself (awesome video by the by, but only the first time).
I agree that something needs to be done to entice the mothers of this world into picking up Mario, don't get me wrong. I just don't see how having the game play for you is going to be the thing that does that.
