That Loop

I've just finished up the most recent Spider-Man game, and there is a lot to like about it. Yes, I know I'm two years behind but there are only so many hours in the day. Plus, I got it cheap!

After playing it for awhile, there is one thing they do very, very well and that is: webslinging Spider-Man through Manhattan. You can see what I mean, here.

Though a 'fast travel' option opens up during the game, I almost never used it, because getting from point A to B was entertaining. It also meant that some of the ingredients in the game that weren't as good didn't matter, because the thing I spent the most time doing was pretty awesome to do.

It made me think of what the primary loop in Magic is: Draw a card, play a land, play a spell. But then there are loops inside of that: Combat involves a creature, tapping, actions, damage. I've deeply simplified how that works, but it's interesting how much effort goes into making as many steps of the game as possible engaging.

The Transformers primary loop works similarly: Draw a card, play a thing, attack with giant robot. Attacking with the robot is actually key to the entire sequence-and has a loop of its own: tap robot, flip cards, see what the math says.

When these loops work, they really work and give me a reason to keep playing-or to find other people to play with. When they don't work for me, I tend to quit pretty quickly because I have lots of things to do with my time.

Where it gets weird is in the in-between stuff.

I just finished Uncharted: Lost Legacy (you can see the beginning of that here) and for the most part, I had a very good time with it. Like most of the Uncharted games, it plays like a modern day Indiana Jones film, but what that means is a little weird: The loop is: find your way through a deadly maze, pick up treasures along the way, hear witty dialog, gun battle. The extra thing they sprinkled in for Lost Legacy was the opportunity to take photos at certain places. But the primary loop involves finding your way through a maze: the treasures, photos and dialog were piled on top of that.

That's important, because the Uncharted gun battles have always been a little dodgy, lacking precision and with a limited supply of ammo, I was having to pick up a new weapon-one that didn't work the same way-and try an use a new thing. In a battle, this is not the best time to have to learn a new skill.

Worse, the hand-to-hand combat never seemed to line up with my intentions. I could tell what they were going for: dodge your enemy until you see an opening to strike back, but I could never get my dodges down.

So that leaves the maze navigation, dialog moments, photography and treasure collection as the loop and those worked out really well. I kept my eyes out for just those things, because I enjoyed them!

Except when I finished the game, I found out I had missed ten different photography spots and ten different dialog moments. I had no idea why, and nothing in the game had given me a hint that I was blowing past something.

Sure, I could replay it-but then I'd have to endure all the things I didn't like, too. Uncharted games are one-and-done for me. I love them for that! The overall experience is really good. But it isn't rewarding enough for me to go back, and so instead I feel as if they withheld something from me, something I earned by giving them my time and money. One might argue: well, this is like a good movie or a book; re-visiting that experience can be rewarding because you notice things you didn't before.

To which I say: the difference is that everything in a book or movie is there, already. Lost Legacy didn't give me something that I was on the lookout for and didn't tell me where to find it. Every time it does that, it breaks the gameplay loop that I'm there to experience and that isn't a successful thing, in my mind.