The Mashening

This is a PC gamer's perspective who has never owned a console.

Well, now that that is out of the way.

Maybe it is just age. Maybe gaming has changed. Maybe PlayStation gamers expect their games to be like this. Maybe I am just configured in a way that prohibits acclimation to it. Who can say.

There is a certain type of combat in certain games that just grates. Feels wrong. It should not be like that. Within the rules of a game it seems contrary to those same rules.

It is also the reason why I never played God of War, Spider-Man, any Assassin's Creed after AC2 which had the quick disarm-and-execute option, and oh so many more games. Simply because the gameplay loop was exhausting.

However, me being me, I did watch the playthroughs and the gameplay baffles me. Why? Why is it like this?

About an hour ago I finished watching the playthrough for Spider-Man 2. Watching that video, one thought kept looping: "The only way I am playing this is with a trainer that gives me the one-hit-kill option."

The same thing happened when watching the God of War (2018) playthrough. When you look at the size of Kratos and the way the game plays, an Argh is inevitable. Even the most basic enemies can take four to six hits to take down. Bosses come with health bars that take vast repetitions to deplete.

It's as if you are watching a blooper reel of Terminator and Schwarzenegger is having a problem breaking eggs unless he takes a hammer to them. What exactly is the point of being so powerful if you are, despite all that power, so ridiculously powerless?

There is so much content related to Halo Combat Evolved and yet in all the years since its release I have yet to come across a single video/post/comment (granted it is not possible for a single human to consume all content even on a single topic on the internet) that mentions the glaring difference between Halo CE and most other games.

There is no boss fight in Halo CE.

There is no great enemy variety. The gameplay loop is rudimentary at best. And it still remains the most enjoyable game in the franchise or even generally.

Now, this is approaching cliche qualification at missile speed. In my gaming experience, Arkham City did it first in 2011. The "shield" enemy that cannot be taken out in regular fashion. You slide under, jump over, do something to stun them, or whatever else. Twelve years later games are still aping it. Zero evolution. Sigh.

Returning to Spider-Man 2.

The shield enemy. Now with Peter and Miles given their age and height and most enemies being at least a foot taller than them, the shield people seem to make sense. But, come on, both have super strength. Shield or no shield, a punch or kick thrown at maximum power must have some effect but zero?

Then there are the boss fights. All bosses come with health bars that have to be depleted three times. Just watching the video was tiring. End, damn you, end. Sure, you could have one bar split into three parts but that does not make it any better. Why do bosses need stages? There are no weak spots or specific target foci. Just hit, hit, hit, hit, hit, hit.

But the piece de resistance, the part that really got inside my head and started performing blindfolded brain surgery was when Harry turned into Venom. That beast must be 5 feet taller than everything around him and 3 feet wider. Guess what the shield enemy does? Absorbs the hit with no more effort than is required to blink. What is going on? It's a basic shield for the love of whatever you please, not a force field. Regular people should have all the resistance of soggy paper to Venom but nooooo, even Venom needs to strike at least three times (oh, forgot to mention, regular hits, no special moves or combos). Why?

Even against regular unarmed human beings, Peter or Miles would be suspended in air and hit someone four, five, six times before the opponent goes down permanently. How many superpower punches are required to take down even an ideally fit but regular human being with no extra powers?

Which (finally) brings us to The Mashening. Games that equate endless button mashing with a sense of accomplishment.

A year ago I was playing Dying Light. Some doors require you to mash X to shove them open and it happened frequently that if I mistimed the mashing my player would just quit and the whole process would start again. In the immortal words of Lord Emsworth, "Eh, what?"

On a side note, Dying Light is the only zombie game I ever played. Not repeating that. Zombies are boring.

There are so many games that follow this pattern. It is a good thing that videos exist where you can see this happening and thereby get guidance in what games to avoid.

The whole mash button to open door, push something, or what have you is puzzling. What purpose does it serve?

Tomb Raider needs a mention here. The game gives you a simple choice: Hold the button or mash it over and over. Why don't more games do this? It is a such a simple thing to do. Of course, TR is not a combat heavy game so there is that.

In any case, the whole God of War/Spider-Man style of combat is just dull, pointless, and has no appeal to me whatsoever.

That, however, is my problem not the game developers'. What I would like to know is where does the mass appeal for this gameplay loop come from. This is what you are doing the entire game. Mashing the same two buttons for a campaign that may last anywhere from 8 to 15 hours topped off by those ghastly boss fights where the bar depletes one hair width at a time (I know, I know, it doesn't, but).

Some games couple this gameplay loop with skill trees. Er, what are those trees for if the mashening does not ease up as the player progresses through whatever tree there might be? How much thought, time, and effort both creative and technical goes into growing these trees? And the end result is nothing more than cosmetic. If the tree actually gives the player more power to make combat easier it would be different. It does not. Combat remains relentlessly mash oriented.

I don't get it. Somebody, maybe Holmes, needs to work this out and get back to me.