Skedar Ruins Agent 13:01 by Brose
- Achieved: 4 April 2021
- Posted: 4 April 2021 at 11:43 pm EDT
- System: NTSC
- Points when achieved: 0
- Rank: N/A - Brose has improved this time
Player's comments:
First completion. I actually tried to do a casual playthrough of Perfect Dark last summer, but it ended in frustration when I couldn’t figure out how to kill the boss on this level. I wanted to beat this with no spoilers, but I wasted so much time on this. I eventually had to look it up and get it over with.
Look, I’m fine with the fact that your ultimate goal is not to shoot the boss, but the idol behind him. That’s cool. But a couple things. First, are you really serious that you’re supposed to shoot the parts which are NOT flashing? This game came out in 2000. Decades had already trained me and every other gamer to ALWAYS shoot the flashing parts in boss fights. You never shoot the NON-flashy parts. It would be like having a Zelda boss with a giant eyeball and being like, “Yeah, we designed this boss so you don’t shoot the eye. In fact, you can shoot pretty much anything except the eye. The eye is invulnerable.” That would be such an intolerably cruel trick. Giant eyeballs are always meant to be attacked in video games, and FLASHY THINGS ARE ALWAYS MEANT TO BE ATTACKED. Flashy signals vulnerable, not invulnerable.
Also, speaking of Zelda, at least when Zelda ventures into the area of cryptic bullshit that is hard to figure out, at least they give you some kind of clues like an old man saying “Digdogger hates certain kinds of sound,” or something, anything that they can say, “Hey, it’s a tough puzzle to figure out, but we did leave clues for you to find if you looked hard enough.” That’s what good games do. Puzzles that you can figure out with your intelligence. Instead of dumb, cryptic, trial-and-error bullshit. The need for endless trial-and-error can make a game hard, but it’s the lowest form of video game challenge, and it’s the signature of bad games.
Where was the clue? Was there some old wise man in a room that I failed to find? He would have said, “Listen to me, grasshopper, shoot the non-flashy parts of your enemy’s statue.” Or was there some cut scene dialogue that I failed to listen to? Or could it just be bad level design?
And this isn’t to say there aren’t Goldeneye levels where the challenge to a casual player comes in the form of: “Wait, what the fuck? Where do I go? What do I do? What is my objective? I can’t even tell what part of the level I’m at right now.” Statue, Streets, Egypt, they were all kinda like that. Which is why they are the WORST LEVELS IN THE GAME for a casual player. From our casual days, we fondly remember Facility, Bunker 2, Aztec. Nobody liked Statue on a casual basis. Speedrunning is basically the only thing that saves levels like that and gives them any redeeming value. From a casual perspective, they are dumb, cryptic, trial-and-error bullshit.
When Rare decided to make a “spiritual sequel” to Goldeneye, they should have had less bullshit. Not make a game that’s ENTIRELY BASED AROUND ONLY THE BULLSHIT ELEMENTS, the cryptic “where do I go, what even is this, what am I supposed to be doing” elements. I don’t care if you have better graphics and voice acting and secondary weapon functions. People make such a big fucking deal about “Wow, Rare really wanted to make an all new better game with secondary weapon functions.” Listen: FUCK. YOUR. SECONDARY. WEAPON. FUNCTIONS. I’d rather have a game with one simple pistol and DECENT LEVEL DESIGN, okay? Hey, people like Super Mario Bros. for NES, and that doesn’t have any secondary weapon functions. The controller barely even has any fucking BUTTONS on it. But it’s fun and it’s not a bunch of cryptic bullshit.
Shoot the NOT flashing parts? Fuck this level, fuck this game, and fuck you. Goldeneye is better.
Brose's time history for Skedar Ruins Agent
| Date Achieved | Time | Video | System |
|---|---|---|---|
| 21 August 2021 | 2:12 | None | NTSC |
| 16 August 2021 | 2:34 | None | NTSC |
| 24 May 2021 | 3:54 | None | NTSC |
| 3 May 2021 | 9:54 | None | NTSC |
| 4 April 2021 | 13:01 | Video | NTSC |
See also: