Who Says Linear Games are a Bad Thing?

[Sullla]

elnino334 said:

Does it really make a game less appealing or less worthy of purchase if you follow a predetermined progression or is this just a symptom of a consumer base that places heavy emphasis on expectations? Gamers can be pretty judgmental of products that don't match up to their pre-conceived notions, but I for one do not believe that this mindset leads to fair assessments of game quality. 

If all you do is follow a predetermined path with no choices possible, yes, it really does make a game vastly less appealing. Obviously this is a bigger deal for some genres than others, of course. It's a problem everywhere though. There's simply no excuse for developers to ruthlessly shoulder aside the player at every moment, which I've seen occuring way too often in the past five years or so. I also completely don't accept the argument that non-linearity is a phenomenon of 3D gaming. What about great 2D platformers like Super Mario 3 and Super Mario World, where you had your choice of which levels to play? What about the spectacular 2D RPGs of the SNES? Sorry, not buying it.

This reads more like an apologetic for some of the poorly made games of the past few years. No problem if your game is painfully linear and five hours long - as long as the production values are good and it has multiplayer, it's a 9.0! Reviewers seem to have bought into this philosophy, but for me, that's emphatically not what makes a good game. If there's no room for the player to make real choices, you're not really playing a game at all - just watching an interactive movie.

You can cut-and-paste Bodhesatva's response for a further elaboration of how I feel on this issue.