Trigger Happy
for which one simply has to find a rusty old key. (Indeed, having traveled far from the austere nearperfection of its original incarnation, Tomb Raider
IIIboasts many instructive examples of design incoherence.) In direct contrast, Quake III incorporates the hilarious but highly coherent idea of “rocketjumping.” You’ve got a rocket-launcher. If you point it at the floor and then fire as you jump, you’ll be catapulted much higher into the air by the recoil of your foolishly potent weapon. Eminently reasonable.
Incoherence of function is more serious. In many games one encounters “single-use” objects, such as a magic book that only works in a particular location or a cigarette lighter that can only be used to illuminate a certain room. Resident Evil typifies this lazy approach to game design, with all manner of special scrolls, gems, books and other things that are used once as puzzle-solving tokens and then forgotten about. Tomb Raider’s rocket-launcher fails on this count too, because its use is artificially restricted in the game. If a game designer chooses to give the player a special object or weapon, it ought to work consistently and reliably through all appropriate circumstances in the game, or the believably unreal illusion is shattered.
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