General / Off-Topic Pac-Man was too much of a grind fest!

Nagual

Nagual
You know, I was thinking ( a rare thing ) about the various comments on the forums about grinding. This got me pondering the modern gamers attitude vs games of old.

Pac-Man! What a crap game!

First of all it forces you to grind away eating white pills. Not only that but there are a bunch of ghosts that constantly try to interdict you. So grind you way to being able to eat a magic pill that lets you kill ghosts and then they just run away, they don't even try to fight. How unbalanced is that? The worst thing is, the next level is pretty much the same as the one before and the expect kids to stand in line to pour money into this? pffft.
 

Lianachan

Lianachan
Nagual said:
You know, I was thinking ( a rare thing ) about the various comments on the forums about grinding. This got me pondering the modern gamers attitude vs games of old.

Pac-Man! What a crap game!

First of all it forces you to grind away eating white pills. Not only that but there are a bunch of ghosts that constantly try to interdict you. So grind you way to being able to eat a magic pill that lets you kill ghosts and then they just run away, they don't even try to fight. How unbalanced is that? The worst thing is, the next level is pretty much the same as the one before and the expect kids to stand in line to pour money into this? pffft.
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Nothing to do with gamers attitude, or old games v new games or anything like that. You still get games where there's no progression, start at the beginning every time, which are are designed specifically in that way. Pac man is not designed for the same kind of experience or long term investment of time as games like Elite.
 

starman

starman
These games were designed with the 'Coin drop' principle. Read http://www.gamespot.com/articles/qanda-david-braben-from-elite-to-today/1100-6162140/

Space Invaders was genius. Aliens that get progressively faster as you kills them. Why? By design? No because due to the slow processor speed many aliens on screen moved slower but as you killed them they moved faster because there were less until the final ones zips along!

Ultimately its the high score table , bragging writes, and posting a 'rude' word in the initials section that cant be removed due to high score.

What ultimately killed the arcade was consoles that allowed endless continue so the game design didnt stand up. The rogue 'ironman' modes are a reaction to this.

[video]http://kotaku.com/if-you-die-in-this-game-you-can-never-play-again-ever-1690928265[/video]
 
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Surfinjo

Surfinjo
I noticed, back in the early 80s, when these games on coin machines especially, were very popular, that most players had very competitive personalities.

There are all very boring but the goal of being first and putting their names on the screen was sufficient incentive, even for otherwise, often intelligent people.
 

Patrick_68000

Patrick_68000
Surfinjo said:
I noticed, back in the early 80s, when these games on coin machines especially, were very popular, that most players had very competitive personalities.

There are all very boring but the goal of being first and putting their names on the screen was sufficient incentive, even for otherwise, often intelligent people.
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Yes, it was the main objective, to be placed in the ten top of the list
 
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