Would Rare have been better off with Nintendo?

[curl-6]

Mr Puggsly said:

curl-6 said:

My fundamental issue with it was that the overly pedantic physics turned what should have been straightforward tasks into tedious fiddly chores. It simply wasn't fun to spend half an hour building a vehicle only to find that because of one tiny misstep the challenge was unwinnable. The game didn't respect my time.

Maybe you're looking at it the wrong way. The challenges were generally pretty simplisic, the actual game is building the right vehicle for the job. You didn't need to build an exact vehicle either, you just had to come up with something to get the job done.

You're right, sometimes you would have to go back and modify your vehicle because something just wasn't right. But for some people that's actually fun, trial and error is part of many vidja games. There were even levels I would replay simply because I wanted to try completely new designs after acquiring new parts. Which often allowed me to finish levels faster.

Nuts n' Bolts is a brilliant and unique game, shame we haven't seen much else like it.

See, failing and trying again is fine in something like say, Donkey Kong Country when I die, respawn right away, and try again. But spending so long building a vehicle then having to go back and tinker with it for ages just wasn't fun, because it became a matter of putting in half an hour of frustration just to get a couple of minutes or less of actual entertainment. I simply didn't get adequate payoff for the amount of time and effort I had to put in, because even when it worked perfectly, it was like waiting in line for half an hour for a single jellybean. I spent 95% of my time bored and annoyed and only 5% actually enjoying myself.

The building just wasn't compelling, it felt like a chore.