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by Jeff Strand September 13, 2002

The Seriously Whacked Point of View "More Stuff On Hints" by Jeff Strand

I'm in the middle of a game right now, and I'm stuck.

I don't mean some sissy little "Oh, dearest me, I've been waving this mouse pointer around for nearly three minutes without the solution presenting itself" stuck, either. I'm talking about the kind of stuck where I wonder if my monitor is too small and the answer is between the pixels. The kind of stuck where I'm convinced that the programmers fell behind schedule and were unable to complete the game, so they slipped an impossible puzzle in there hoping that nobody would ever find out. The kind of stuck where I wish the designer was standing here right now so I could fling a hot beverage at him.

And I'm having a great time.

As far as I'm concerned, when you're playing an adventure game, you should be reduced to directing foul language at inanimate objects. You should be tearing out your hair, bashing your head (gently) against your desk, and omitting the game designer's name from your Christmas card list.

This is not to say that every adventure game should be designed with only the expert player in mind. We need games for beginners, too...but hopefully newcomers to the genre will relish the experience of screaming at the top of their lungs and/or weeping softly when they hit that beginner-level brick wall.

Some time ago, I wrote about my use of walkthroughs. Even though I thought the column functioned primarily as a confession of mental illness and a cry for help, a lot of readers e-mailed me to say how much they were able to relate. The sad truth is that, like many of you, I use hints more often than I care to admit...but in almost every case, I'm immediately disappointed that I did.

Of course, adventure games are supposed to be fun. Unless you're a reviewer or one of the playtesters or have parents with unusual taste in chores, nobody is forcing you to play a computer game. So if you want to play the entire game click-by-click with a walkthrough in hand, then it's your choice, and even though I might be tempted to say something like "Why not just watch a movie instead, you loser?!?" we all have to decide what is fun for ourselves.

For example, I love a hearty, challenging puzzle. I do not love wandering around the game feeling like I've accomplished every single given task, and yet being unable to make the story move forward (which I'll call the Gabriel Knight Syndrome). If I'm not making any progress yet I can't find any problems to solve, then I'm much more likely to cheat (though I'm just as likely to feel guilty about it afterward). Some of you may lunge for a map the instant you're confronted with a maze. Some of you have a limited tolerance for mechanical puzzles. Some of you may have been to too many Alice Cooper concerts in your misspent youth and are unable to cope with audio puzzles. I admit it...if there's a puzzle that involves placing crystals, discs, or runes in specific locations on an altar using only cryptic symbols as clues, I'll play around with it for a few minutes and then I'm off to Mr. Walkthrough. If the puzzle isn't going to be fun for you...cheat! It's your leisure time!

But let's assume that you don't have a moral objection to a particular puzzle and decide to consult a walkthrough. Here are the possible results:

1. You couldn't proceed because there was a bug.

It happens. Also likely, with an older game, is that your machine is too fast for a particular timed puzzle. In this case, you are absolved from all guilt for seeking the hint.

But let's be honest here...how often is it REALLY a bug? You know darn well that there's only a teeny tiny wee little chance that your problems in this game are bug-related, and instead of checking walkthroughs you need to be downloading patches and posting "Yo! Is this a bug?" messages on adventure game bulletin boards.

2. The puzzle could never have been solved without a hint.

There's a puzzle in Torin's Passage where you have to arrange nine tiles in a certain order, made more difficult by the fact that you can flip each tile in four directions. I would never, ever, ever have figured that one out on my own. Not ever. But unless I used the in-game hints or just started methodically placing each tile in every possible position, I simply wasn't getting past that one. I used the in-game hints.

Similarly, it caused me incredible agony to cheat on Circle of Blood, one of my all-time favorite adventure games, but I absolutely could not, after hours of trying, get past that damn goat. The answer is fair enough, I guess, but it requires you to interact with your environment differently than any other puzzle in the game, and I'm pretty sure I never would have come up with that solution.

But those two are the exceptions. Most of the time when I cheat, the answer falls into category 3...

3. You missed something.

Yep, usually my inability to solve an adventure game puzzle is due to my own carelessness. I wasn't paying close enough attention. I'm a doofus.

Often, players gripe about "Pixel Hunt" puzzles. Okay, I'm not going to argue that there aren't some unfair and tedious pixel hunts out there...however, my opinion is that when you're playing an adventure game, you need to be really LOOKING at that screen. Carefully. Study it. Forget what your parents said about damaging your vision and press your face right up there against that monitor. What are all those weird objects on the desk? Why does that leaf have a funky stem? Become one with the graphics.

And, finally, the most frustrating of all...

4. You would have figured it out on your own eventually.

I mean, c'mon, doesn't that just bug the holy heck out of you? You can't figure out a puzzle, you resort to a walkthrough, and the answer is something you should have been able to get without cheating.

Quite often, even if the puzzle is illogical, I'm annoyed because I would've solved it if I'd been a little bit more persistent, and then I would have enjoyed the bonus glory of solving an illogical puzzle. In my last column, I discussed a puzzle in The Longest Journey where you have to (SPOILER WARNING AGAIN) put a can of soda in a paint mixer, take a subway across town, and give it to a cop so that it sprays all over him.

I stand by my opinion that it's a stupid puzzle. At the same time, it's not an unsolvable one. After all, it's an adventure game, and I should darn well have been messing around some more with the paint mixer. In fact, I should have known to put a can of soda in there, having seen the episode of The Simpsons where Bart does the same thing. Completely illogical, yes, but still, I should've been able to solve it on my own...and I wish I had!

Pure trial-and-error is boring, but there's nothing wrong with a game that forces the player to get his or her hands dirty, to try lots of different things, to experiment and find creative, even outlandish solutions to the problems. That's part of the fun!

If you use a walkthrough, you're not missing the plot or the characters or the dialogue...but you're definitely missing part of the experience. Many of my all-time favorite games (Day of the Tentacle, Curse of Monkey Island, Sanitarium, Might & Magic III) are ones that I finished entirely on my own, games that I savored even when they had me clawing at the wallpaper.

That said, I know that I will certainly not be giving up on the art of cheating. But if you use hints as a rule rather than an exception, why not try this: At the moment you feel compelled to reach for the walkthrough, force yourself to keep playing for exactly ten more minutes before you do so. You may be surprised at your ability to figure out the solution...and now much more fun you'll have.

Unless it's a put-the-crystal-in-the-right-slot puzzle. Go ahead and cheat on those.

Jeff Strand is the author of Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary), How to Rescue a Dead Princess, Mandibles, and probably some other weird novels. You can, if so inclined, visit his Seriously Whacked website at http://www.jeffstrand.com.