This should be called "The best videogame review ever".

Srsly.

Good video and makes some worthy points of arugments

Thats so well done that I really think game developers will take notice

Hear Hear! I've dabbled with hard core gaming for years, and once I stop playing for any amount of time (like when I have a new born) I can't get back into the franchises/genres that I like. The game industries recent solution to this has been shorter and/or easier games, but I've found those unsatisfying. I don't want to grind in a MMORPG, I want fast paced, skill based game play that doesn't provide so much negative feedback.

I haven't played the new Prince of Persia, and probably never will because of the price tag and the short game play, but I did play Braid, and it was an amazing experience. The puzzles were incredibly tough, but the in-exhaustible time reversal kept the focus on ONE obstacle at a time. Oh, and unlike Yahtzee I LOVED the story(s).

Games like Burn Out are also on the right track (no pun intended), minimizing the set backs and making failure, and therefore risk taking, fun.

I tried the latest Tomb Raider demo. I love the franchise, but after missing that jump from the sliding ramp for the 4th time, I decided it wasn't worth the effort to climb that rock face again (despite the much improved models and animation).

Sold! PS3 is my first console.
I was more impressed by Flow than GTA IV.

really well done.

Very, very interesting.

The guy has a horrible speaking voice but makes the most compelling and articulate argument for the Blue Ocean Strategy that I have ever seen.

I absolutely agree with this, and was completely surprised that Prince of Persia didn't get additional cred for this while I was playing it. I guess this got obfuscated under the simplified controls and excessive gameplay hints that were offered and was just taken as another dumbing down feature which it is not.

He neglects to mention pressure though, the problem is besides a few sections when you needed to chain actions together it felt like there was none there. You could always be pulled back to where you were a few seconds ago so you didn't really care about aiming the jump wrong or not paying attention for a second, which really does to some extent ruin the immersion and sense of accomplishment when you realise you've completed much of the game absent-minded. So if anything I reckon it can't be this forgiving for your average accustomed gamer because it does take some of the fun and feeling of fullfilment out of the experience.

Always thought Diablo 2 was oddly successful as it. Sure when you died you had to trudge back a fair distance to find your body, but claiming it back was like a seperate mini-game in itself, so it wasn't purely punitive, but partly fun and rewarding.

great review. however, i disagree with a couple of points (and the John Carmack slam at the end, wtf!), specifically the minute about 50% market share for video games being bad.

Great idea. Though it is absolutely a "dumbing down", it could just as validly be called an "entry point". And that would be a marketable term.

*Ahem -

This should be called "The best videogame review ever".

Srsly.

I disagree with a bunch of the stuff he brings up. So new prince of persia is a very forgiving game, lots of games are pretty forgiving, you fall off a platform you get to try to jump on the platforms again. the GTA series is obnoxious when it comes to retrying failed missions especially if they are located across the map. But there are alot of games out there that are very accessible, little big planet for example simple platforming and you can pick how challenging the platforming level will be. I would say the most alienating thing about videogames is the perception of people who play video games and the wii has done a good job, but the arguement that its the difficulty of games that is keeping videogames out on the doorstep is too shallow. Videogame difficulty initially stems from the arcades where the games where built to be hard so you would die and had to spend more money on them, then the home console games where ports of the arcade games or used the model of those games.

I think it falls to the social function, the people who dont play videogames I am speculating here but in my experience they tend to be more extroverted and the single player aspect of many videogames is what is unappealing. Then if they do try with other friends it has nothing to do with the game being hard but just other people being much better at it. Guitar hero is really fun if you play with people who are at the same level as you, a group of people all playing it for the first time its a great thing, but if you sit down and the other people just kick your ass or vice versa it is boring. This applies to other things as well if you are good at a sport its alright to play with people who are new to it but its not that enjoyable and you wont continue to play nearly as much as you would with people who give you a challenge.

So I submit that it is the us the gamers and our social actions picking on noobs that is keeping videogames from catching on, the difficulty of the game itself doesn't matter, look at a 2 player game of street fighter. one player loses now seconds after KO they are back up for another round and get to play again, but if the person playing not only keeps beating them but likes to gloat and lord it over them then odds are they will stop playing.

I believe it falls on the douchebag gamers who harass and yell at noobs to chill out and not the difficulty of single player games.

I think this 'never die' thing should just be the new "easy" option for most games. If you're not there for the challenge, just to enjoy the story and feel like you're a part of it, you pick "easy." You don't die, and you get to experience the game without wasting precious time. People who enjoyed the game enough and want to try it with some challenge, or the 'hardcore,' can step it up to "normal." Then of course you unlock "hard" and the game can be as cheap as it wants.

Personally Ninja Gaiden is one of my favorite games evar, and my girlfriend loves to watch me play... but I would never dream of asking her to play it because I like my controllers in one piece. If every time you died, you got all your health back and just had to fight the same room of ninjas over again she might just play it, and after that she might even be confident enough to try "normal." And then she'd probably kick my ass in Soul Calibur even harder than she does now.

I think the reason games have been so damned unforgiving is because the value of a game is largely seen as a function of the amount of time it takes to play. The longer they make the game, even if it's by replaying large parts of it, the more they can justify $50 to $60 games.

Now chill out noobs.

I'm sending this to my buddy over at Ubisoft. We'll see what he says.

This video is a viral marketing piece. Ubisoft PR did not feel they were getting enough credit for their "innovation", and produced this along with several positive articles through other outlets.

Sands of Time's time rewinding mechanic, to name one of several titles that used that approach, allowed the player to have control over where they were placed after making a mistake. It makes no sense why they would call this generation of Prince of Persia's approach to player-failure "innovative" when the game removes control from the player and forces them to lose progress when unable to surmount one of the platforming segments (sending the player back to a previous point that could be seconds away, or minutes).

At what point are we going to stop simplifying games for newer audiences? Dragon's Lair? Hey, remember adventure games???

This is a well argued and coherent piece of critical thinking. He really could be talking about people like my sister who recently bought a PS3. She likes games but mainly watches me play because they're too tough. Apart from blu-ray use she wanted to try some games. We started with the generally well-rated Uncharted and while it is a good game it is bloody difficult on easy. Again it fell to me to complete the game while she chipped in with tips and guidance.

But when we got Prince of Persia she could actually play the damn game and thoroughly enjoyed it. The "you can't die" gaming mechanic is misleading. It's simply a conceit that makes sense within the story - if you die in most games there's no explanation for the resurrection. Here you get reset to your last checkpoint after being rescued.

The game is not frustrating at all and yet still poses a challenge. My sister still had to work out where to go, how many seeds to collect, where to find the next gate etc. These are all things she may not have bothered with if the core gameplay hadn't embraced someone of her skill level i.e far from that of the hardcore gamer and yet she is definitely not going to buy a Wii. Like alot of people she wants the cool graphics and the production design of a good 360/PS3 game but she wants something accessible.

We both agreed the ending was a bit rough and there should have been more puzzles but, for us, Prince of Persia is definitely one of the games of the year.

Interesting, but not insightful IMHO.

I hate it that more and more FPS games have this system where if you get hit all you have to do to get better is not get hit for a few seconds. Where is the challenge or excitement if all you have to do is move out of the way of the action for a bit. (By the way, I think Far Cry 2's health system is the best ever in this respect, combining health bar, a little bit of auto-health-back (one bar), and applying health yourself (so it becomes a matter of personal responsibility rather than finding health packs).

He makes a comparison to older games, but it only makes sense in the way of controls which were indeed much simpler then (buy a Wii...). But the last time I played it Pacman did not let me start again at the position I ate my last pill, and did not give me infinitive retries to get all the pills. I guess the majority of the commenters here would have liked that way though, and now I understand why I was never able to play that game properly: Just did not get offered a way to learn it by those stupid ghosts killing me all the time making me start over....

Little long winded for a brief summation. Agree with what he says. The best gae for non gamers ever was Echo the Dolphin for Dreamcast. They could just swim around and do flips and whatnot. Chicks dug it, guys dug it(but maybe wouldn't admit it), moms dug it. Nuff said.

The new POP is pretty awesome but really is a bit to easy and repetitive.

Nice * Philosophy.

What's all this. The games I play don't require me to go back to the start if I don't "make the shot." Be more selective about what you play and it isn't an issue. The mention about complexity of console controllers is silly, too. Some games are complex and require far more complex input as a result (yes, even some good ones). Further, as PC gaming tends to guide things, and PC gamers have access to a mouse and an entire keyboard for control, of course console controllers have to become more complex. We were all complaining that they couldn't handle complex input! Overall, he's trying to apply blanket notions to all gaming and it just can't be done.

To newcomers: there are a lot of games to choose from to cut your teeth on. Choose properly. Pac Man hasn't disappeared or anything.

I was gunna comnsider this guy a total douche, but then
the resistance 2 joke turned me around.

down vote for being a commercial

This was a great review and a great video, I'm impressed and looking out for more.

I don't see anything innovative about this. The save/load system has been around for YEARS. There are plenty of games that merely require you to quicksave right before a difficult section in the game; if you mess up, load and replay with a deeper understanding of your surroundings. Eventually, yes, it does become about greater punishments for failures. It becomes a game within a game to complete a portion without saving.

The same methods for rewarding obsessive compulsive players who need to do everything "right" assists the noob who needs a little extra practice before advancing. Shit, play a game like Fallout, with the ever-forgiving V.A.T.S. system, then you don't even need to develop the muscle memory usually required.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Reset, Button, most, innovative, videogame, video, game, 2008, Prince, Persia, learn, skill' to 'Reset, Button, most, innovative, 2008, Prince, Persia, learn, skill, shamus young' - edited by looris

sorry ant, had to change some tags, but I really felt the name of the author HAD to be there: I loved this video, and when at the end I read the name of the author, I thought "ok, now I know why this was so brilliant".

go read his blog if you liked this http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/

Like poolcleaner said the quicksave and quickload buttons have been around on many PC games for years. That's why I usually don't like many console games with their often badly placed checkpoints. The quicksave gives the player control over the challenge and difficulty. Personally I use it a lot, but if you like to play large sections of the game over again after you die you can just use it less. FPS shooters don't have to be hard if you use the quicksave. I remember playing Doom when I was a kid and playing it mostly with cheatcodes which are also an option for many games. My dad without any FPS experience started playing the game on the Hurt me Plenty mode and finished it, respect

Poolcleaner I do think you miss the point of VATS in Fallout. Fallout is an RPG based on a turn-based RPG. It's not necessarily about quick reflexes, it's about tactics. Bringing the best equipment into the battle and using it strategically. Going into VATS gives you the pause of a turn based games and lets you think about your actions. Sure it can be quite easy, but there's harder difficulty and mods coming out on the PC.

quicksave is the word.

tetris was a game the most varied people oved, and we all know how level 40 was hardcore. but no addictive stuff will ever come around in those terms again.

with quicksave as a tool of responsibility for the gamer, this prince of persia approach semms really too easy, to the point of interest-lacking (if console games don't come with quicksave, well... that's what I think of consoles... plus the price...)

what wii has been doing in matter of innovation has more to do with the basic concept of the game being a challenge and not so much the output, that widely receives the tag "games for babies". in other words, creating an alternative to the immutable laws irl is much more needed nowadays in games than anything else. which happens to exist in prince of persia...

in realistic games like many fps related to wars irl, although apparently they look like the opposite of this idea, in fact these realistic games as emulations of "distant" realities come to the gamer as an alternative to what his/her reality is, therefore being just another solution to this alternative reality concept. but in this realistic games it's not just about "you fall in the black misteroius pit, you die because it's very deep". that is the real dumbing down of what we all perceive as everyday life. realistic games must be all about circumstances that could happen irl, if the gamer was something else than a urbanized citizen of the democratic-capitalist world.

He's got some interesting points, it's just a shame his voice is insufferable.

The Ubisoft developers themselves were pushing this as one of the selling points of the game, and this video does a much better job of arguing its effectiveness than Ubisoft themselves did.

Reading through the comments, there seem to be a lot of hardcore gamers who seem to be dissing this concept as superfluous, because there are too many "easy" games out there already.

I disagree.

I've been trying for a while to get mintbbb to try some of my console games. She's interested, since she knows they're very pretty looking games, and given the way that I rave about some of them, she knows they're fun too. She's an EQ/WoW vet, so I know she can play complex and difficult games, that's not what's holding her back. It's the controller.

She simply isn't used to making quick, precise movements with her thumbs, especially when the damn controller has some 16 different buttons that you need to accurately locate and press, often with a precise degree of timing.

I've been trying to find her a good onramp for a while, but she mostly just gets frustrated. Katamari Damacy is a good one, but, well, the King of All Cosmos can be a real ass, and there's not a tight enough feedback loop to really help her learn. I tried Overlords, but the game concept was tough for her to grasp, and past the first level it became clear its difficulty was tuned to be a challenge for someone like me, which made it nigh impossible for her.

We have a Wii, but that controller won't teach her how to play a 360 or PS3 game. I admit I haven't plonked her down in front of Zelda or Metroid which have traditional-ish control schemes, but I don't know that it'd get her comfortable enough with the controller to pick up something like Mass Effect or God of War on a more traditional controller.

This vid has me thinking I should give the new Prince of Persia a try for her. I'd crossed it off my list after hearing the reviews, since I don't want to pay $60 for a game I'd finish in an afternoon without breaking a sweat, especially when they didn't rate it as being some sort of must-see story or gameplay experience along the way.

At a minimum, a rental might be in order.

Shamus being the voice of reason yet again. Though I didn't believe my eyes when it said "narrated by", sounded like a 16 year old kid...

Still, he's one of the best writers I've ever seen, very entertaining stuff.

New world order - See how easy it is for people to believe a commercial is real. YOUR IDIOTS FOR UPVOTING!

FFS cut to the chase

Problem with manual quicksaves, is it forces you to divulge unnecessary attention to something outside the gameplay, can truly mess you up if you overwrite what is usually a single savegame with a poorly placed one when you're just about to die and otherwise probably makes the game too easy. I mean does anyone out there, offered with the choice of saving at any time, not do it constantly or am I the only one? If so, it's exactly what this game does, just without the monotonous F6 bashing.

But in my opinion at least, I think it's best if both of those options are restricted. Think I remember Hitman had (or still has, haven't touched the series since the second one) limited savegames per missions. That seems like a reasonable way to offer up some challenge but not force you into endless frustration.

Otherwise, what's wrong with checkpoints really? I mean they're transparent, and besides the odd badly chosen one, seem to do their job just fine.

>> ^cybrbeast:
Poolcleaner I do think you miss the point of VATS in Fallout. Fallout is an RPG based on a turn-based RPG. It's not necessarily about quick reflexes, it's about tactics. Bringing the best equipment into the battle and using it strategically. Going into VATS gives you the pause of a turn based games and lets you think about your actions. Sure it can be quite easy, but there's harder difficulty and mods coming out on the PC.


Naw, I get it. The reason I mention Fallout 3 is because it's an example of one of the MANY games that cater to newbies. (Fallout 3 being an example of a GOOD game that does this.)

Bottom line, I think this video is dead wrong. The people who don't play video games are not looking for an easy game, they just don't want to play video games. (If you think video games are hard now, you're dumb.) I grew up playing hundreds of games that I could never beat, yet I continued to play them because I liked to play. I know A LOT of people who just don't care about games. Do you think they even bothered to wonder if a game was too difficult? No, because they don't care.

Looking at demographics and percentages of people who do anything at all is so gimmicky to me. It's like he's comparing video games to television. It's the silent victim in this horrid review. Why have gamers not exceeded the television audience? It's rather silly to do these comparisons. From the perspective of the aficionado, you could say the same thing about anything, really. Skateboards versus Basketball: Only 20% of people skateboard despite the rise of Tony Hawk as a popular sports figure.

Holy jesus, why is skateboarding less popular than basketball? Why can I walk into any Wal Mart and buy a Spalding basketball, sponsored by the NBA, yet I need to go to a specialty store to get a skateboard that doesn't have trucks made out of fisher Price plastic. Oh, I know! It's because skateboarding is too hard!

Skateboarding is pretty hard, but those who are going to skateboard will skateboard despite the difficulty. So the answer is to dumb down the experience? Put some training wheels on the fucker? As if training wheels on bicycles weren't bad enough. Did I use training wheels? No, I scraped up my fuckin' knees, bleeding upon the cement like Jesus Christ down the streets of Jerusalem.

Television and (perhaps basketball was the improper comparison) baseball are learned behaviors, taught in more households than video games. AND it's accepted by more families -- though video games are slowly making their way, the violence/sex issue has some families in the closet. Many, many, many families grow up around the boob tube. Hell, that's where video games became and remain popular: in front of the television. We see people watch it, we watch it, other people watch us watch it, we play our video games on it. Also, sports and television = match made in heaven. I grew up in a television family; almost everyone in the family watches television, talks about it, breathes it, it permeates all aspects of life. Oh, did you see what's his face on American Idol? Oh, no! I can't believe he was kicked off the island -- he made such good soufflé!

It really isn't surprising at all that video games haven't touched the same demographics as television: Not everyone wants to play a game. Most people just wanna stare at something and not think. And when they are thinking, they're thinking that video games are for nerds that kill their classmates in bouts of gnerd rage. Not that that's true, but I understand the people and that's what they think.

(Also, if you have ever played World of Warcraft, you already know what types of people are drawn into a game when it's dumbed down. Do not want.)

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Reset, Button, most, innovative, 2008, Prince, Persia, learn, skill, shamus young' to 'Reset, Button, 2008, Prince, Persia, learn, skill, shamus young, video game' - edited by chilaxe