As many of you surely know, David Jaffe is the creator of Twisted Metal and God of War. He is in the business for many years and has quite some reputation. A game creator like him surely knows something about level design, right? Turns out he is too dumb to play Metroid Dread.

He complains about a ceiling that you have to shoot in order to progress, and he couldn't figure that one out by himself, even though there are many clues but he chose to ignore all of them. He then concludes that this game is terrible.

Okay, he didn't see it. It happens. He should have been a man and just admitted it, but instead he keeps pushing this narrative even after thousands of commentators already pointed out his flawed logic. No, Mr. Jaffe decided to embarass himself even further and insisted on the bad level design.

And at this point it gets really pathetic, because he tried to make a point but fell flat on the face, when what he actually did was showing how very well designed the game really is and how stupid he behaves.

Now I don't just create this thread simply because I want to diss David Jaffe, but instead I want to have a discussion about hand holding in video games. For those of you who already played Metroid Dread, how hard was it to figure out this puzzle? Is it even a puzzle at all? Do you want games to have more or less hand holding? Do you want games to guide you very tightly so you never face any challenge or do you enjoy games that respect your intelligence and ability to solve problems on your own?

lol... Internet forumers being mad at the David Jaffe being critical of a game.. Because it is Nintendo. Now that's the funny part.

@Drakrami There is a big difference between criticism and valid criticism. Watch the videos and tell me with a straight face that Jaffe has a point.

He criticised games like Metroid, Returnal and Kena for being too hard. I found Returnal to be more difficult than the other two.

He used to be a good developer many years ago, but for the last 5 years or more, he changed a lot, and not for the good.

Even if you haven't played a Metroidvania before, there's an enemy stuck on there, and the best way to kill it is to shoot it diagonally. Thus you'll end up hitting the wall and breaking it anyway. If you have played a Metroidvania before, you just shoot every wall just in case a secret pops out.

Sure we could have, but this room he rambles about is a prime example of how to not hold the players hand and still maintain great level design. This example is therefore very relevant to the topic.

Yes, the expert tricks that you can do with the shinespark are never explained. Jaffe however struggles at the very beginning of the game and ignores the many clues that the game indeed gave him.

I would actually love to expand this discussion not to just this example, though. What are your favorite games with and without hand holding? Do you like games that explicitly tell you exactly what to do next, or would you rather find out yourself?

It's weird as he champions indie games and for Metroidvanias and other old skool games this is a standard thing. Sonic used to have breakable walls and invisible walls to travel through as did Super Mario where you could mess about and go out of the screen.

I think he missed the hints, threw a fit, and chose to double down on it not realising the clues he had missed and as he had gone too far, he stuck with it

The second video is absolutely hilarious. Also pathetic... 

David Jaffe has never known the first thing about good game design. He's always been a moron.

Not sure why I should care what David thinks. He is entitled to his opinion, but that doesn't change mine.