Is the world out of games?
Recently in World of Warcraft, I managed to complete the quest and get my level 70 druid Sacora to the Ogri’la faction area. (I know; I’m slow. Leave me alone.) One of the daily quests in this area is named “The Relic’s Emanation.” To complete it, you must kill a guard or two, then feed a crystal into a machine and play a mini-game. Once you’ve reached level 7 of the mini-game, you gain the Apexis Emanation and the quest is complete.
The mini-game is Simon.
That’s right; you have four colored tiles that are triggered in sequence and you must repeat back the sequence. They are Red, Blue, Yellow and Green and each one plays a unique musical tone. Simon. The loveable game everyone had in the 80s:
So I put down WOW and pick up a new game I just bought: Bioshock. Working through the tutorial level, I get to the part about hacking turrets, security robots, and cameras. To successfully hack a machine, you must complete a mini-game. Guess which one?
That’s right. The quintessential pipe-clearing game I played in 1990 on my green-screened Gameboy, that’s the mini-game you have to complete. Pipe Dream:
What’s the deal? Has the world run out of games? Or is Blizzard and 2K not very creative? And did they really think that people wouldn’t remember Simon or Pipe Dream?
I can’t comment on Simon in WoW, but I thought the pipe dream clone in BioShock was the perfect choice for a hacking minigame, particularly given the environment. I think it comes down to “why reinvent the wheel?” E.g. If pipe dream fits and is fun, the developers shouldn’t waste time finding something else that may end up sucking.
I loved pipe dream for my pc when I had it, but I like ratchet and clank’s hacking mini-game more.
I played through the BioShock demo on Xbox 360. All the sites were trumpeting it as THE NEW GAME THAT EVERYONE MUST PLAY etc. I found it to be entirely linear and somewhat boring. The pipe dream part was actually one of the better things, IMO.