You know, it’s late and I’ve only got 400 words left to go on the longest paper of my life. So I’m going to go there: you could say it’s “hard on casual gamers.”

I apologize for writing this in Frank Lantz’s house. You may delete me.

So, Gears 2 is elaborate but not difficult. Would that be worthy of being called ‘hard casual’?

I’ve been meaning to try out a ‘no cover run’ on the first Gears. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were more careful with the first one.

GunBlade, yeah, that feeling was what led me to call Gears 2 a ‘casual game’. My feeling is really that developers are making easier games because they think it will help them reach a larger audience. I would even go so far as to say that the majority of people who like Gears aren’t really ‘hardcore’ gamers!

So it took me a week to figure out what this post meant to me. Finally it congealed while I was writing one of my term papers. Anyhow, I mocked up a short “manifesto” that these thoughts inspired here: http://chungking.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/our-amps-go-to-eleven/

I can say that Krystian of Game Design Scrapbook and I have been playing through the first Gears on Insane, and it’s basically unplayable without cover–much of the time you find yourself two-shotted just for peaking your head out under fire. I do remember that the game was particularly fun to play inebriated and on lower difficulties, because in that state of lowered tension you are able to navigate the space without taking cover in a way that you usually can’t when sober and afraid of getting head-shotted.

I should back-pedal a little and say that not ‘taking cover’ is almost always more efficient. There are parts of the game where if I was doing a speed run I would probably take cover instead of just standing behind something.

Also,I agree that exploring a game in this manner is important for a real critique. For instance, I’m planning on trying a no cover run with the first game. If I complete it does that prove that the original Gears isn’t as innovative as everyone thought, or that it’s innovative but poorly implemented?

So this would be an example of the search for the “optimal” taking one away from the “fun”. I guess for some people this would confirm that seeking to master a game is orthagonal or oppositional to the best qualities the experience.

Ironically, I think the opposite is true. This shows how seeking mastery can lead to creative, original, improvisational and expressive play. Instead of playing along, and acting “as if” cover mattered because that’s what the script says, you went off book to figure out what was really happening in this system.

I’d like to see this approach more often in game criticism – trying to figure out what it means to play a game well, and seeking out the game’s actual rules instead of just following the designers’ suggestions.