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Reader review by Suskie
January 02, 2010 Adventure games suck. Let’s face it. They do. I’m not totally opposed to the idea of an adventure game being good, of course, but the inherent flaw of the genre is that they’re not about gameplay, and that undermines the very purpose of the medium, which is to be interactive entertainment. The few adventure games that have actually held my attention over the years, such as The Longest Journey or Grim Fandango, have done so because of an intriguing story, memorable characters, and clever writing – nothing, you’ll notice, that has anything to do with gameplay. These games have interactive elements, sure, but only as a means to drive the narrative forward, and any designer who treats gameplay as an obligation rather than a top priority has missed the point of gaming entirely.Machinarium, to its credit, is one of the few point-and-click adventures that I’ve ever been compelled to see to the end, though once again it’s for reasons I shouldn’t be concerned with. Namely, the game is breathtakingly gorgeous – if 2D gaming really is a dying art, then I’ll be sad to see it go, because the world of Machinarium is constructed with the sort of loving attention to detail and animated with an eye-catching charm that would be impossible to recreate on any 3D engine. But I’m sick of people giving the free pass to games like this simply because they’re nice to look at, or they tell interesting stories. Machinarium, for all of its successes, fails as a game. Too bad I’m judging it as one.
One of the troubles with adventure games is that they take linearity to the extreme. Most games (real games, that is) introduce a set of mechanics to the player that become the basis for all actions, where the player must figure out how to apply what they’ve learned in order to progress. Machinarium and its brethren follow a different pattern, in which the player is constantly being given new, unfamiliar objects that each only have one specific use. Your task, then, is to figure out just what the designers wanted you to do with each item. The “puzzles” aren’t so much logic-based as they are a test of the players' ability to get into the designers’ mindset. What can you do with a handful of toy gun pellets? Well, theoretically, there are about a million things you can do with them. What did the developers have in mind? I suppose the only way to figure that out is pull up your inventory, drag the pellets across everything you see in the environment, and hope to trigger some sort of event.
Machinarium does earn points for inventory restraint – if you obtain an item, there’s a good chance you’ll be using it on something that’s immediately in front of you, in the room you’re in. It also gets credit for providing stumped players with answers, should they ask. A hint system prompts a thought bubble to appear over your character’s head, indicating what your primary goal is at the moment. There’s a full-blown walkthrough available as well, presented as a comic, and the only price for using it comes in the form of a shooter mini-game you’re forced to play every time you open the book. It’s a big price, though, considering how often you’ll be using it.
I suppose it was nice of Amanita Design to include a walkthrough, but I’m surprised it didn’t strike them as a sure-fire indicator that their game was too hard. Listen to this: Early on in the adventure, Machinarium’s robotic protagonist is imprisoned and must escape. His inmate indicates that he wants a cigarette. I surmised on my own that I needed to rip off a chunk of shaggy overgrowth sticking out of a pipe and wrap it in a piece of toilet paper, but combining the two items in my inventory didn’t work. After examining my options for a few minutes, I opened the walkthrough and discovered that I had to place the plant on a nearby light bulb, thereby drying it, before making the cig.
Oh, okay.
Think about it, though: How does that make sense? I suppose it’s reasonable to expect a plant to be dry before you attempt to smoke it, but plants don’t dry in a matter of seconds. I’ll grant you that Machinarium takes place in some weird alternate reality only inhabited by robots, and that the rules pertaining to that world aren’t necessarily parallel to the rules of ours, but come on. Puzzles are supposed to be logical, and how can something be logical if the fundamental principles we’re familiar with don’t even apply?
I’ll do you one better, though. A bit further down the road, my path was blocked by a bigger robot who asked me some simple questions in which I had to match colored propellers with their spinning equivalents. Simple enough, and I aced a couple of his quizzes. Nothing happened, though. I kept talking to him, and he kept giving me the same quizzes with no reward whatsoever for correct answers. Stumped, I opened the walkthrough, played that fucking mini-game for something like the seventeenth time, and found the solution: In order to get past the guard, I had to respond incorrectly to several of his questions in a row, at which point he would blow a gasket (figuratively, though I suppose literally, too) and the path would be open.
That description may have come off a little dry, so read it again and really think about it. In order to get past the guard, I had to take his quiz and fail.
…What the FUCK?!
What in the HELL kind of logic is that? So I’m presented with a scenario in which I’m given a set of questions, and my only means of progression is to guess incorrectly? In what twisted universe is this EVER a solution I’d come up with on my own? What, so am I supposed to approach puzzles in other games the same way? I just say to myself, “Well, here’s a puzzle I’m supposed to solve, so why don’t I screw it up intentionally”? How does that make sense? EXPLAIN YOURSELF, GAME!
I guess if I’d gotten one of the questions wrong by mistake, I’d have noticed that the guard was getting a little upset, and I’d have used that as a lead. Sorry I’m too smart for you, Machinarium. I eagerly await the next first-person shooter where the only way to win is to throw down your weapon and run into enemy territory unarmed! Or the platformer that can only be beaten by immediately and deliberately leaping into the nearest bottomless pit!
But I’m overreacting. Puzzles like these make up a small portion of Machinarium. The game is generally tolerable and occasionally downright clever. I never once felt guilty for looking up the answers, though, and that’s the game’s problem. Many of the solutions had me thinking, “Well, yeah, I guess that makes sense… but no, I never would have figured that out on my own.” One particular puzzle involving a mechanic bird on a wire has an absolutely ingenious solution… yet at the same time, I could never imagine anyone figuring it out without consulting the guide. And there’s the issue. Designing a game that’s too hard and then throwing in a free walkthrough doesn’t solve your problem. It just means you’re acknowledging the problem and taking the lazy way out.
But, my, the game sure is something to look at. And it’s not just the art itself – the adorable character designs and stunningly detailed cityscape – that catches the eye, but the way it’s animated, the way it all moves. As odd as it feels to say, these robots have life. I was struck by a little moment when the main character discovered a plot to set off a very large bomb, and he reacted by letting off this squeaky little shriek and failing his stubby arms around, banging them against the sides of his metallic body. Or when a street band is playing on-screen, and the protagonist bursts into a modest little dance when you leave the game alone for a few seconds. You can’t help but smile when the game presents you with amusing little details like that. I also admire the talent it takes to tell a complete story without a single line of dialog. It’s a triumph of Amanita’s artists that all of the emotions, however simple, were able to shine through in full clarity.
Is that enough? For some, it is. There are probably people out there who would consider Machinarium fun and intuitive, and I suppose all I can do is agree to disagree. But I’m betting there are also a few people who acknowledge Machinarium’s issues and dismiss them outright, and they’ve got as little grasp on what a good game should consist of as the people who make adventure games in the first place. Throw Machinarium up on a wall in the Guggenheim and then we’ll talk about art; I paid twenty dollars for a game that I didn’t enjoy, and in the end, nothing else matters.
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