SHINAN'S PROFILE

This is one of the hardest things to do really. Because it's easy to make it too difficult. Once you've died a couple of times in a situation that had you made would have been awesome. You start to see the metagame behind it all. ("alright I've cleared this corridor, next they'll be running in through this door. If I mine it beforehand it'll give me a couple more seconds")

so actually:
On the other hand, how willing are you to play through a boss fight/dungeon/level in another game that has you dying over and over again until you figure it out?
I don't agree with at all.

Trial and error gameplay is not the same as the "FUCK YEAH I MADE IT"-feeling. One example I tend to bring up a lot in the whole fuck yeah is the Resident Evil games. They have a bunch of quite ridiculous bosses that it's always frightening to meet up with (usually because of 1) a scary cutscene beforehand and 2) some heavy buildup) but in the end it's fairly rarely that you actually die against them. Instead you get thrown around a room and hit with all manner of weird special attacks until you manage to kill it.

I hardly ever feel anything else than "finally that was over. let's get back to the real game now" after something that has taken far too many attempts to accomplish.

You could compare it to movies and books. The sense of thrill and scare even though if you were to look at it from an objective standpoint you know that the main character is going to pull through. In a game the feeling should be similar you know that you're going to pull through and the second the "game over, you died" screen pops up the illusion is completely broken.


All this said. Those "near miss" moments are the best ones. And the problem is to make them near misses for all kinds of players. (That's where difficulty levels come in. Though it's still easy to pick the wrong one by mistake) The illusion of a near miss can easily be done with the Resident Evil method though. Having a huge buildup and lots of explosions in (preferably interactive) cutscenes. Running a character through a linear path during an artillery bombardment that will not actually hurt the player as long as he follows the obvious path. That's thrilling and unless you're a metagamer it will also be exciting.

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I had a friend who would go into a uncontrollable rage every time someone sang the Gummi Bears theme near him.

This was of course great fun in the schoolyard.

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Also, Roald Dahl books,

Damn I almost forgot about those. Those were huge too. But of course not as huge as Astrid Lindgren stuff. (Combined of course with all the TV and movie adaptations of Astrid Lindgren's work!)

Actually disregard all the crap I said in my previous post. Only Lindgren counts from now on until I remember what else counts.

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Sadly, I think Easter Eggs are a dying phenomenon in games...

I think it's more that easter eggs are more obvious nowadays. They're not secrets they're more like "stuff that only a select number of people will get"

Such as an obscure reference in names or spraytags on walls or newspaper headlines or other stuff that are hidden in plain sight so when you understand them (which, in the end, moste people will) you feel a bit more like you're one of the cool guys.

Zee like the letter c? I always pronounce that zee/see.