Why can’t I fit this shotgun in my briefcase?!

You might have noticed a trend here at Vigigames if you've been reading us for awhile. We try to highlight the games that create a textual whole rather than attempting to analyze games by pulling apart its component parts.

Yet, of course, the opposite approach to ours runs rampant. Sites like Metacritic, valuable as it is, seem to praise this type of analysis, and sites like IGN or Destructoid or Giant Bomb only play into this with their arbitrary scores and analysis of things like Graphics and Gameplay.

In some ways, I've decided to write this article as a precursor to my Fragile Dreams review, but I feel like it's something that extends to many more games than just that one. Namely, there seems to be a great deal of backlash against game mechanics that actually serve the purpose of the game itself, rather than simply including the easiest to learn and use option divorced from the game itself.

Think about Resident Evil. While there are numerous problems in each entry in the series, those problems are almost always glossed over by the reviewers; no, they continue to complain about the things that actually make the games awesome – their crippling control schemes (at least, up until 3 or 4) and their draconian item inventory menus. That inventory menu, with its finite slots for weapons and items, makes sense in this world. If you were running from zombies, would you carry a hitchhiker's backpack full of useless shit? Of course not. In fact, I kind of wish that the developers would take it one step further, making you consider the weight of each item in your inventory. If their goal is to inspire dread and fear, I can think of nothing worse than having to prioritize inventory items in the middle of a zombie fight (which is, of course, something they do pretty well already).

Is it OK for a game to include elements that aren't easy to master or that maybe ruin the flow of the gameplay? I think so, but only if it was a conscious choice by the developers to make each element a part of the overall design. What I have a problem with is when developers include things like unnecessary HUD elements that take the player out of the world of the game. Things like the directional arrow in Bioshock, while helpful, didn't really make any sense. Same goes for automatically regenerating health, the ability to move your character around like an idiot during what would otherwise be a cutscene, and yes, LOADING SCREENS. Loading screens might be a thing of necessity, but games like Half-Life and Metroid Prime have shown that you can get away with making them as minimal as possible.

I'm at this point in my gaming life where I almost prefer a game that might conventionally be considered "flawed" but has clear design choices that help to make the game's point clear. I'd take a Suda 51 over an Epic Games any day of the week.