Wow, that was a beautiful analysis you just did.
I voted for "No, I prefer games without them, with very few exceptions.".
I play FPS games quite often (it all started years ago with DooM... and went downhill from there) so I guess my hand-eye coordination is not too bad... but yes, I'm no FPS champion. Never managed to survive a multiplayer session...
So yeah, I like adventure games beacuse they give me the chance to take it easy for a while, to think about my actions. You know, as opposed to real life where we're supposed to take decisions rapidly without being able to ponder. Moreover, it makes me nervous when I see that I can't get past action sequences without trying them over and over again: it makes me think that if that would happen to me in real life, i wouldn't be able to survive!! Which kind of goes against my conviction that in life you can always
think your way out of any situation... (How naive of me!!)
Also, sometimes I do get them right at the first try... but the mere potentiality that I could've missed it spoils the experience. You see, I like to totally immerge myself into the experience, and feeling that I could've died, or that I could've done something wrong makes me feel uneasy.
I remember reading something like "
You cannot die in this game, so do not feel afraid to try any possibility, no matter how dangerous" in the manual of one of the old LucasArts games (I think it was Monkey 3, or maybe Day of the Tentacle), and I've made my adventure gaming philosophy out of that. I'm playing an adventure game, so I like to be bold and daring.. and I'd like to be rewarded for my boldness...
Not to mention that some games do not autosave before action sequences (Cough-Black-Mirror-cough).... which is just frustrating. There I go, daring to look into the hole in the wall... and I get rewarded by having a spear driven through my head and having to start the whole chapter over... very frustrating.
This said, I realize that every player has her/his own needs, and I understand that game developers have to consdider this when deciding if to incorporate action elements or not. As someone said in a previous post, it's all about implementation, though.
After all, it's not that an action seqence is going to spoil my experience completely
But, on the other side, I'd like the two genres to be kept separated. I'd always like the possibility of being able to choose a game where action sequences only constitute a minor role, or are completely absent.
