I figured this would be notable enough to show here.
DSP showed that no player input is needed to complete Wolverine’s first motorcycle section. Considering he’s the sort of guy this level of difficulty is made for, even he’s baffled that he didn’t need to do anything to clear the section.
The people who say the game is far too easy may have a point.
Of course :)
Games by their very nature are not real and even the ones which don’t directly adapt to your success or failure will certainly make concessions to reality and intentional design decisions which make the game more fun.
Personally I think game design is an intriguing subject and some of the ideas developers come up with are absolute genius, like the doom health bar you mentioned. It ramps up the tension, but yet it’s still finite, and if you play terribly you will die.
That to me is the difference. Tell white lies to the player to boost their fun, yes, but don’t remove all consequence with fake infinite health, a bike that steers itself, and QTEs that auto-succeed no matter what you do.
A game you can only win is a game with no agency, and that’s hardly a game at all.