For several months, one of my coworkers has insisted that I need to play Ratchet and Clank. I put it on my game rental queue and forgot about it until recently. I was able to borrow it from a friend and finally began the famous platformer.

As a fan of the Spyro the Dragon games, I was hoping that Ratchet and Clank would deliver the same solid gameplay. Fortunately, I was right. The game was clever and fun, filled with characters that were quirky without being too annoying. Unlike Spyro, which seemed geared toward a younger audience, Ratchet and Clank was a little more gritty. Enemies exploded and you got to shoot with a gun. It felt more like a PG movie rather than a G movie.

I breezed through the first few levels. There was not quite enough story to compel me to play past two hours at first, but that two hours was a lot of fun. I didn’t seem to have too much trouble with the jumps (a common trouble spot for me) or locating necessary items. Ratchet can glide like Spyro, helping the game to feel familiar simply through its mechanics.

I had a lot of fun playing Ratchet and Clank today. Compared to games like Jak and Daxter, where the voices grew annoying and the game had some ridiculously hard required tasks, this game felt very well-balanced. Diligence in collecting the currency around levels would help you get the best weapons. It felt rewarding in all the right ways.  

I had the pleasure of listening to three producers from Electonic Arts (EA) talk about their daily jobs and careers, as they were guest speakers in one of my classes. Each was at a different level (associate producer, producer, and executive producer) and added their own personal flavor to their presentation. One of the most memorable pieces of advice from that evening was the importance of the first 30 minutes of a game. Basically, if you can’t captivate the player in the first 30 minutes, you lose them.

I was incredibly frustrated to experience this first-hand when I began playing the PSP game Daxter with a friend. We were both horribly bored, waiting for an event to start, and had over an hour to kill. I was excited that we had some form of entertainment in the PSP.

I got to play first. There were limited opening cinematics. After a brief introduction, I was set to go on my way. I had never played a PSP before, so I had to get accustomed to the controls. They were fairly intuitive, but I still found myself running in the wrong direction for five minutes before my friend encouraged me to turn back. Why would I do such a thing? The man who gave me my assignment did not help point me in the right direction. I was supposed to go to a hotel, but I did not know that the building I was in was not the hotel. No one told me this.

Aside from the unclear layout of the level (which seemed to get worse, including a very important elevator in the hotel that was placed in a location far to the left), the movement had additional problems. Daxter himself is quite small, and I found myself feeling limited by his narrow view. He seemed to take up a relatively small amount of screen and I found it hard to control him and get the camera in the right spot. While his body movements were animated gracefully, I grew frustrated because I wanted a character that could manipulate the environment more – like Jak.

When my friend took over, he mentioned how ordinary many of the levels felt. He was exactly right. Excluding an unglorified laundry chute (in which you could collect items as you slid down), the platformer seemed conventional to the point of boredom. After finishing this game, what would I have gained? The plot was weak (if not non-existent) and the gameplay wasn’t very engaging. My friend and I both groaned when, ten minutes into the game, we found out that we had to collect power orbs just like in every other Jak game. Daxter’s in-game explanation of this was “Collect the power orbs. It can’t hurt!” That’s really a way to motivate us.

After playing Daxter for a mere 20 minutes or so, my friend and I grew so frustrated that we turned it off. Between running around trying to figure out where to go next and the cookie-cutter conventionality, it simply was not worth our time, not matter how bored we may have been. I would never even complete the first 30 minutes because the first 20 felt like another tired sequel.  

As an aspiring game designer, I knew that I had to play Zelda sooner or later. Embarrassed not to immediately associate the name “Link” with happy childhood memories unlike many of my peers, I decided I could avoid Nintendo no longer. I had always had a PlayStation and never bothered to play Nintendo games (due to the seemingly limited options available for games on their consoles) and had never been a big fan of Mario. Yet the Zelda series kept coming up in class discussions and casual conversations. As an RPG fan as well, I was long overdue to play Zelda.

Fortunately, my professor brought The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker to class today. I jumped at the opportunity and sat down to play. I was engrossed in the game and found the island strikingly similar to that in the original Kingdom Hearts. I played for a good twenty minutes before noticing that a few people had gathered around to watch. I offered to let them play, but was glad when they declined. I was finally getting the hang of the controls and the style of the game.

When a mystical bird flew in with a girl in its talons, I was quickly reminded an article on Shigeru Miyamoto. It talked about his sense of exploration and fun. The colorful world of Zelda held the distinctive, imaginative style that has defined Miyamoto’s games since the original Mario series. I began to see why such a fan base has grown.

An hour later, class was over. Sadly, I could not save my progress or return to play Zelda later. However, I was excited to play again. I even considered buying a GameCube. I would not mind playing that hour again because it was a lot of fun.

When I returned home, another game in the same genre was waiting in my mailbox: Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. I had an opportunity to play it later in the day. After feeling stressed from the week, I was glad to have a fun game to play (after having rented so many games exclusively for my school project).

This game started out with a lengthy cinematic process. Once into the game, however, it was mainly platformer action. I enjoyed the playful style and friendly characters. One particular task, herding creatures resembling water buffalos into a pen for a farmer, reminded me of a very similar task in the third Spyro game. I player for a couple hours.

However, I ran into much more frustration in Jak and Daxter. I was continually dying, but there wasn’t a limit on the number of lives. Toward the end, I believe I spent about ten minutes trying to beat a boss. I kept dying, but about 80% of the time I died was from carelessness during the simple jumps to get to the boss. I was so angry about losing that I lost my focus. I was so stubborn that I kept at it over and over again, and finally beat the boss. I played a little bit longer after that, and got stuck. I was still upset from beating the boss and quit around 1 a.m. to get some sleep.

After playing both platformers, I began to wonder why one had appealed to me so much more than the other. Both games were made into best-selling series. Both had whimsical creatures and bright, playful levels. The characters and stories were rich. It seemed to come down to the puzzles and difficulties. The Zelda game felt more intellectual and charming, such as when you could discover that you can hide under barrels to avoid getting caught unarmed. The Jak game had more meaningless mini-games, such as catching 200 fish (catch only two of the three types and the speed at which they swim increases) or the animal herding. It reminded me of Kingdom Hearts II and getting frustrated with ridiculous tasks.

While both games may be strong, I believe that they do appeal to different types of players. Zelda requires more of a puzzling mind, where you have to ask yourself how you can use what you know to solve the problem. Jak and Daxter gave less initial guidance but left the world so open that you had to discover things for yourself that had less bearing on mental challenge and left more to chance or physical skill. While both games satisfied my need to run around and collect items, I found that Zelda was more fun, simply because it was crafted like a puzzle; all the pieces were there and you just had to figure out how to use them. I felt like I was respected as a player to solve simple challenges that were attainable with a little thought. With Jak, the action was there, but the cleverness and subtlety was not.

I am not sure whether the fluidity of Zelda was due to the countless iterations and since the beginning of the Zelda series or simply more compatible elements (simple puzzles as opposed to mini-games in the same game type). However, I do think that the Jak games would appeal to players who are less inclined to want to think through a puzzle and simply win by pushing through the incidents of ridiculously menial tasks.