The scourge of my gaming experience
By Bex Peterson, Editor-in-Chief
The third installment of the fantasy RPG Dragon Age saw a few exciting added mechanics to the game: a top-down combat system, a fast travel option, andâperhaps most excitinglyâthe ability to jump.
The developers also added a whole bunch of collection quests in Dragon Age: Inquisition, to a decidedly lukewarm response. I consider myself a completionist to a fault, so youâd better believe that I will take long breaks from saving all of Thedas to collect every fractured shard and mosaic piece scattered across the map. Itâs a bit annoying, but the annoyance is compounded when some of these collectable items are placed in hard-to-reach areas, forcing me to complete my least favourite of all gaming conventions (aside from the dreaded escort mission): jumping puzzles.
Now, let me start off by saying that I donât hate all jumping puzzles. As was pointed out to me by a friend, there are some clever ones in the Legend of Zelda series, and a few others exist in other games as well. If the âpuzzleâ aspect is having to look at the resources around you and figure out a way to get yourself from Point A to Point B when the answer isnât readily apparent, that makes perfect sense to me as a clever way to get the gamer thinking. The jumping puzzles I loathe are the ones that rely on how many times the gamer is willing to jump from miniscule platform to miniscule platform, with infuriatingly low odds of your character landing on the precise five pixels allotted to keep them from falling to their doom again.
These jumping puzzles arenât necessary mechanics of the game the way the ones in Zelda or many side-scrolling platform games are. It feels like theyâre just slapped in, no matter how janky or unreliable the jumping mechanic in the game is. I love that you can jump in Inquisition, but believe me, itâs not exactly a skill Iâd be willing to stake my Inquisitorâs life on.
I think some game developers get that jumping puzzles are far more frustrating than fun, so they try to make the stakes lowâwhich honestly just pisses me off more. If I see something sparkly at the top of a pile of rubble, tree trunk, cliff face, what have you, Iâm going to want to get my hands on it. The harder you make me work for it, the more Iâm going to think itâs something worth having. If I spend half an hour of my life jumping and falling and jumping and falling and finally clawing my way to the loot only to find that itâs just a few pieces of in-game currency or a completely useless low-level itemâwhich has absolutely happened to me beforeâI will not be pleased. I will, in fact, probably start crying.
As long as characters can jump, Iâm sure there will be jumping puzzles, and Iâm sure there are people who will enjoy them. However, I personally think theyâre a giant, frustrating waste of time, even if I canât bring myself to ignore them because⌠well⌠what if thereâs something really cool in that chest on top of that big pile of precariously-balanced rocks?
