They always just drag the pacing of otherwise great games to a grinding and painful halt. There’s nothing more aggravating to me than when I get done playing a really fun part of a level and then the games like “hey guess what it’s time for you to align some random bullshit so you can progress to the next location! Have fun!”. These puzzles are usually either insultingly easy and therefore pointless or so tedious that cheating with Google is far more satisfying than actually trying to figure it out. I don’t get why so many developers think that the core gameplay isn’t enough and therefore they need to put these God awful puzzles in. The core gameplay is what people buy your games for! There’s no need for these dumb brain games!

There’s only one game I’ve ever played that I think had genuinely satisfying puzzles and that’s Alan Wake 2. I could write a whole essay praising that game. It does so many things right, including the puzzles. For the most part, they were really clever and solving them felt satisfying because the solutions required some actual critical thinking. Plus with the game having a detective aspect to it, the puzzles actually make sense to be there because you need to be figuring out what’s going on in the area as opposed to other games where they are just shoved in for no reason. I even found myself seeking out some of the optional puzzles, because they were just that good!

And that’s my little rant over. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that puzzles really should not be in games unless they’re cleverly designed and have a purpose beyond just artificially and needlessly slowing the pace down. All just my opinion of course. Feel free to share your thoughts too!