by Molloy » 09 Jul 2009 13:55
There are lots of people playing games who don't actually like games, or at least only have a very passing interest in them. When I was a kid I had friends (usually rich ones who I wanted to swap games with) who would give up on something when there was the slightest hint of difficulty. Their idea of a good time was to get the cheats out of a magazine and blast through to the end in an afternoon with the invincibility on.
Auto-play just seems the same as a cheat code to me. And if the vast majority of the buying public want no challenge, I say give it to them. Then the designers and publisher can rest easy that they won't miss out on all the casual sales, and will therefore be able to spend their time and money on pleasing the rest of us.
New Super Mario Bros. on the DS was ridiculously, horrifically easy and sold very well as a result. That's going to be the model for all games from now on unless some solution is found. I'd rather see all games have cheat codes, extra easy modes, auto-play or something for all those people. Because if most modern games aren't stupidly easy already, they make you trudge through tons of easy stuff before you can play the challenging stuff. Hell, I might get some use out of auto-play for entirely different reasons. Just think of it as a fast forward button for the boring parts.
What I find absurd is that if a game like Cave Story has a hardcore mode that looks quite enjoyable, I'm expected to grind through all the stuff I don't want to play to get to the part I do want to play, or muddle around the internet looking for a savestate to unlock it.