Superficially Relevant: Earth Bound
Boots of Moon
Binds When Equipped
Plastic Armor: No Level Requirement
- + 500 Dexterity
- + 425 Agility
- + 100% Confidence
- Equip: Allows User to Leap Tall Buildings in a Single Bound
- Equip: Insta-jump any Gap at a Keystroke
Need I spell it out for you? I cannot jump - there, I typed it in bold. Well sure, I can hit spacebar and jump up and down. What I cannot do successfully is jump across anywhere with an expanse of nothingness. Mind you, it’s not a matter of getting better with practice either. The more I jump and fail, the more anxious I become. Soon my jumping skills are below what they were when I approached my first jump.
Adventure games usually provide ladders and rope bridges. My disability wasn’t apparent until Uru’s infamous rotating platform required multiple jumps hither and yon. While it may be argued that Uru was ill-equipped for action challenges due to inadequate cursor precision and limited points of view, in my case improved controls wouldn’t have made any difference.
Further attempts at jumping in Ico (PS2), Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time (DS) and Dark Messiah: Might and Magic (PC) convinced me. Unless I enjoyed being frustrated, and eventually very angry with myself, it’s better to avoid games with jumping as a central component. Alas, games like Assassin’s Creed, the Prince of Persia games, and even Thief 1,2&3 are beyond my reach.
Personally, I’d like to know why games must include jumping. Are there gamers who actually enjoy perfecting their skills via jump, fail, and reload? With the added annoyance of repeating cutscenes and gameplay prior to the jump? If left up to me, all games would include teleportation stones on both sides of every crevasse and bottomless pit. And while not an automatic death sentence, when my character is expected to leap onto ledges and bounce off walls, please offer a pair of Moon Boots. Trust me, every leaden foot player will be forever grateful that we can play along with the rest of you. kthxby
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Because You Wouldn't Want to be Consumer-Friendly
The Experiment
I hear ya, sister! I have quit many a game due to overabundance of jumping.
I don’t mind jumping as long as it’s properly implemented:
depth perception helps (being able to change the camera angle); barring that my character should either jump automagically or there better be a button for jumping.
I’m pretty much with Toger on this one.
Solving a jumping puzzle can give a certain satisfaction not found elsewhere.
On the Yap side some games that are not suited for jumping puzzles have them and that is frustrating and not fun.
But seeing as how she is a modsmith…
Toger and Yap are wise. I too hate out of place jumping – out of place in genre, I mean. Jumping puzzles in shooters, for example, drive me crazy. I enjoy jumping in the Mirror’s Edges and Princes of Persia of the world, largely because I know what I’m getting into ahead of time… and since the jumping is a core concept, it tends to be better designed.
If non-platform games insist on including jumping, I wish they’d do what Alice did: include a little set of ghostly feet indicating where you’re likely to land.
What’s our position on lever-pulling puzzles?