I know the thread is old, but i thought i'd add my point of view to it rather than creating a new one .
I gave up Gish in the lava level . It's way too hard for me because of the random deaths Weeble described so well . But don't get me wrong, i've played games at least 2 hours a day for the last 15 years so i'm not a casual gamer and challenge doesn't fright me . The last time i gave up on a game was on Tomb Raider 3, which is an historical example of something developpers should avoid at all cost : heighten the difficulty of their game because they fear the player could find it too short .
To me it's not bad if you can get to the end of a platform game quite easily, as long as you want to replay it to get what you may have missed and what can reward you with secret levels, bonus games, gameplay modes ... Yoshi's island is a good example of well-thought replayability through bonuses to unlock . I finished it at 100% at least two times, believe me you have to spend a few hours ! The game shows a clear track of what the player did and what he missed . Once you've finished a sub-level, it becomes possible to replay it whenever you want to, so if you missed something in the last sub-level of a level, you don't have to get through all the first sub-levels of this levels again just to get the little thing you missed . Also, there are a few checkpoints to avoid redoing the same part of the level over and over .
Actually, Gish could easily be the second platform game on my list if there were less frustration . It's very fun to play with Gish, and the fact that the controls cuts out so much from what we know is clearly the strong point of the game since it's very well implemented . What is not fun is to redo dozens of times the same level without progressing at all . I really hope there will soon be a sequel to Gish and also that the difficulty level will be tuned better !
litst
I gave up Gish in the lava level . It's way too hard for me because of the random deaths Weeble described so well . But don't get me wrong, i've played games at least 2 hours a day for the last 15 years so i'm not a casual gamer and challenge doesn't fright me . The last time i gave up on a game was on Tomb Raider 3, which is an historical example of something developpers should avoid at all cost : heighten the difficulty of their game because they fear the player could find it too short .
To me it's not bad if you can get to the end of a platform game quite easily, as long as you want to replay it to get what you may have missed and what can reward you with secret levels, bonus games, gameplay modes ... Yoshi's island is a good example of well-thought replayability through bonuses to unlock . I finished it at 100% at least two times, believe me you have to spend a few hours ! The game shows a clear track of what the player did and what he missed . Once you've finished a sub-level, it becomes possible to replay it whenever you want to, so if you missed something in the last sub-level of a level, you don't have to get through all the first sub-levels of this levels again just to get the little thing you missed . Also, there are a few checkpoints to avoid redoing the same part of the level over and over .
Actually, Gish could easily be the second platform game on my list if there were less frustration . It's very fun to play with Gish, and the fact that the controls cuts out so much from what we know is clearly the strong point of the game since it's very well implemented . What is not fun is to redo dozens of times the same level without progressing at all . I really hope there will soon be a sequel to Gish and also that the difficulty level will be tuned better !
litst