Puzzling Problems

Woohoo, first blog post. I’ll try to write this so that it isn’t too embarrassing when I become famous (a process I’m willing to give another three years to develop). I’ve been a loyal reader of JDiH almost since it first began, so I’m really excited about this opportunity.

I recently played through Half-Life 2: Episode One. I was attracted to the oversized DVD case on a shelf in a North Carolina GameStop for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to see if some of those Source mods are all they’re cracked up to be, and I was under the false impression that Episode One was a cheaper way to get the engine (Half-Life 2 is actually now the same price as Episode One). Second, I have a fetish for experiencing stories out-of-sequence. I think it started when I saw Return of the Jedi before A New Hope and solidified when I chose to read The Silver Chair before The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. I bought the game, which is rated M, and I was carded for first time in my life and found that totally hilarious when I was a block away and realized why she had asked me for ID (I had paid in cash, so it wasn’t that other reason).

I probably don’t have to tell our readers that the game is good, albeit short. We’ve all already heard about that. This isn’t a review of the game, but some thoughts about game design in general that were raised for me as I crowbared and gravity gunned my way through enemies and puzzles.

Puzzles. In a way the term seems to me too broad to single-out any particular feature of game design. After all, isn’t gameplay always about figuring out what to do to effect the desired result? Are King Koopa’s patterns of jumping, breathing fire, and tossing hammers not a puzzle? When my little brother goes for ultralisks three Starcraft matches in a row, is he not challenging me to solve the puzzle to stop the pwnage?

On to sharpening the term into something useful. While there is always some element of "figuring out" involved in playing a game, some challenges are set aside as "puzzles," and furthermore, some games are categorized as "puzzle games." Should I really be using so many shudder quotes? Generally, they are a sign of n00bliness, but I think these are warranted. My first thought for a definition of puzzle is that they are the less action-packed challenges. This was my experience with the puzzles in Resident Evil 4, but the definition doesn’t account for fast-paced puzzle games like Tetris. As I try to nail down what we mean by a puzzle in a game, I see endless variety that refuses to stand under one umbrella. Sometimes you know what you want to do but not how, sometimes you know what means are at your disposal but not what you are supposed to do with them. Puzzles can be obvious side shows or fall completely within the mechanics of the rest of the rest of the game. I am tempted to say that puzzles are those a challenges that have one definite solution, a quality that sets them apart from such obstacles as an AI-controlled enemy, which can be beaten in an infinite number of ways. However, great puzzles have multiple solutions and beating many AIs boils down figuring out how they tick a la simple puzzles.

This brings me to another point, which is the realism of Half-Life 2, even running the game at a lower resolution than it can be, I felt like I was there, in those corridors and windowless death traps. It was stunning, which made me all the more agitated when my creative solutions to various puzzles (I can use a word even if I can’t figure out what it means. . . what? stop looking at me like that) didn’t pan out because of cracks in that realism. Not every object was counted as an object by the engine, for instance.

Is Half-life 2 a bold step toward the perfect realistic, absorbing shooter, or does it merely cut a little closer to an unbreakable limit in game design? No matter how many solutions Valve could think of and program into the game, gamers would think of more which wouldn’t work. Is it possible to break that limitation and create a far more open-ended game in the spirit of Half-Life? I hope so, because I would totally play that game.

As for my little tussle with the word "puzzle," if any of my esteemed colleagues or one of our devoted readers could enlighten me as to what sets a puzzle apart from other challenges in games, I would be delighted to hear about it. I have some other thoughts about puzzles I plan to discuss at some point, and frankly, I’d like to know what they are.

Signing off not as creatively as dkaufman,

me