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Old 04-09-2012, 11:56 PM   #1
Oscar
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Join Date: Apr 2011
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Default Good puzzles and bad puzzles

What makes a puzzle good for you? And what makes it bad?

For me, whether a puzzle is good or not depends on whether the game makes me want to solve it. If a story makes me really care about the characters and their predicament, I'll want to see what happens to them, I'll want to help them and will go through trials to make sure that happens. Even if the puzzles are not very well done, I'll overlook that because I want to rescue my lover, or find the secret of the tomb, or solve the murder.

That's what made games like Quest for Glory good for me, even though the puzzles were often too easy and generally not very good. But it also explains why Quest for Glory 3 was the worst of the series (let's just forget Dragon Fire ever happened). That game had very few characters that had any connection with the hero, except towards the end which included the option to have a very cursive "romance". And the 7th Guest was full of bad puzzles, but I endured them because the story was gripping.
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