In my opinion, Demon's Souls is a bad game.

[Reasonable]

Khuutra said:

Reasonable said:

??? Not sure I'm getting your point there, sorry.

I believe DS delivers exactly what the developers intended, and as such is a well made game with respect to itself.  However it's chosen design simply doesn't work for me, personally.  I just can't bother with games that require that level of effort and re-play to complete.  This is mostly a time based decision.  I have a family and kids plus lots of real life activity that limits my gaming time - therefore while I'm happy to invest a fair bit of time into the right game, it won't be one where I replay sections a lot to get a desirable result.  That just doesn't work for me right now.

So I was basically saying you can't call a game 'bad' because it's chosen mechanics or approach don't appeal if they are actually well done and as intended, that just means they don't appeal to you.

An analog would be some friends reaction to watching the film Revolutionary Road.  They said it was bad.  I asked why and they said because it was depressing.  I asked about script, acting, direction, etc. and they said all of that was great.  I then pointed out that clearly the film wasn't bad as everything that you can fairly critique was in fact excellent according to them, the problem was that it told a story they didn't want to experience, namely a very depressing one.  The issue was one of taste, not failure to execute.  I believe the same applies to the OP regarding Demon's Souls.

I'm not making a point, I was asking if you thought it possible to judge a design decision as inherently bad.

It seems you don't, so that is answer enough.

Ah, I see.  Not really, not unless it clearly didn't work as intended.  I mean, I can see that angle, particularly from a commercial angle.   But I'm more of an art over commerce sort of guy.  I think there are design choices that will narrow down your audience, perhaps hugely, but I don't think they should be seen as bad.  Of course, they will by many.

It's clear that LBP would have been better received by a lot of people of your Sackboy wasn't affected by gravity but instead moved and jumped with Mario precision, but I think that is an okay decision design for the game.  Or that DS would probably have more fans if it didn't have such drastic penalties for failure, however I can see the thinking behind it and clearly it found its audience who agree, or KZ2 had CoD style weight and movement vs what is has.

The closest I'm feeling to wondering if a design decision is bad are the controls in Heavy Rain, there I'm really not sure there is a better alternative to achieve the same goals.  With DS, I think the design decision works well for what they seem to want to achieve, a huge penalty for failure and an insistence on practical perfection to win through, but with HR I'm not sure the same design goal of immersion in a character driven narrative couldn't be achieved better without QTE style input.

And with that comment I'm probably opening my own can of worms with the HR fans!