Puzzle Games – The Unappreciated Genre

Hi everyone, while Kana is stuck overseas I’ve taken up the role as guest writer. I have posted here before under thirtythreeas, but due to extraneous reasons, that account is stuck in a state of limbo and this was the fastest way for me to contribute.

Today I wanted to talk about the puzzle genre of video games. I’m sure that some of you might sigh or laugh at the genre, since typically its associated with blandness, boring gameplay, and not being “hardcore” enough. But, to be frank, these features are all indicative of bad games in general, not necessarily puzzle games. To be fair, it’s far easier to make a puzzle game and most beginner developers simply do not have the tools nor the skills to create an amazing MMOFPSRPGTSTHINGY. So they make a strike at a puzzle game, and fill the genre with bad, uninteresting games because they’re bad, uninteresting developers. But I digress, let’s move on with the subject. I’ll break down each type of puzzle game in my opinion and address its strengths, weaknesses, games that implement it well and games that implement it poorly. By the end of the article, I hope you’ll look at puzzle games in a somewhat different light and see how fascinating it can be to think through a problem as opposed to shooting through one.

“Vacation”

Hey guys, quick update here. I was going to post a nice new Planetside 2 article, when several things went into thew crapper. First, the ‘e’ key on my laptop decided to break. Since ‘e’ is kind of an important vowel, I’m pretty much screwed for writing anything on vacation now. Second, I have no internet, so I can’t post anyways. Writing from a public terminal, and I don’t think they’d like me standing here for 5 hours while I work on a new article. I’m very sorry, I’ll try and update as soon as I can.

-Kana

Updates… from EU!

Hey guys, Kana here. Sorry about the lack of updates, life’s been a little hectic. My step-sister got married and for some reason decided to hold the ceremony on the other side of the planet. So after stressing out about that and then traveling over here, I’m still not done. Reception is being held in Ireland. Kind of overkill, don’t you think?

Anyways, I really wanted to update and let you guys know why I haven’t had a post go out in awhile or where I’ve been. However, I also wanted to ask a question to everyone: What would be more interesting for you to read? I’ve been doing a lot of first-impressions stuff, and that is a lot of fun… but it means I have less time to dig into the nitty-gritty of other games. So I could do something like a first-impressions review on Draven for League of Legends, or I could do a more in-depth look at his mechanics and explain why (I think) he works the way he does and how to exploit his strengths.

And this goes for all games. I can still do story time like with Planetside (and if you haven’t, go look at Planetside 2’s E3 coverage above), and still give the in-depth look. It’s just doing reviews and more advanced coverage will eat a lot of time, and I don’t know if anyone really wants a solid week about one dude or one class in a game. So leave your thoughts and ideas and I’ll see what we can do!

 

Kana, signing out!