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When I played Spec Ops: The Line, I made an immediate connection that I've seen other people make as well. War movies for a long time were gung-ho, Americans are awesome, kill the Nazis it's fun, for a very long time. Then Hollywood grew up a little and started questioning the necessity of war, and we got movies like Apocalypse Now. Spec Ops is the videogame Apocalypse Now. I just wish it had sold better so other developers could see that "fun" wasn't necessary to make a good game.
The one thing videogame makers have to be aware of is that a game is a lot longer than a movie, so the emotionally taxing nature of it has to take that into account and give the player breaks to recouperate. That being said, there are plenty of emotionally taxing novels that people can only handle a few chapters at a time, so it's perfectly doable to make art that forces the consumer to walk away and come back again.
(How many US soldiers have you killed today?)"
No. As you even admitted, some underwater sections are good and necessary. Why should we get rid of an entire mechanic because some developers don't do it right? Using that logic, we'll have to get rid of EVERY mechanic, setting, story, and character archetype.
I had a lot of fun with EVO, where you start as a fish and "evolve", eventually, into a mammal. A lot of that game would have been lost if you started as a reptile.
While the Water Temple in Ocarina of Time was painful, that was more because of the temple layout than the fact that it was underwater. And the water sections of Majora's Mask were amazing; I spent hours just swimming around with the Zora mask on because it was so much fun.
And once you get into open-world games (Fallout 3/New Vegas, Elder Scrolls, GTA, Assassin's Creed II), you really need to at the very least allow the player to enter the water (unless you're in a desert), because it's way more frustrating if you just die instantly in a puddle (Assassin's Creed, looking at you) or have your progress totally blocked by a tiny stream (basically every RPG that isn't from Bethesda)."
Of every franchise that has survived since the NES, Zelda is the least stagnant. With every release, Nintendo seems committed to not just giving us new dungeons and tools, but entirely new mechanics. Windwaker, in particular, was barely even a Zelda game when it came to art and gameplay.
Your problem isn't that Zelda isn't evolving. Zelda evolves more than any other long-running franchise. Your problem is your specific issues, one of which (crafting your own sword) was already addressed in one of the games (Ocarina of Time)."
If you have to stick an objective compass up to get me to my next goal, you've designed your levels wrong."
Further, you're only comparing videogames to paintings, completely discounting books, movies, television, radio serials, music, sculpture, dance, and many other artistic disciplines. Diehard theater proponents, for example, will argue that only by having actual, live people in front of you, unhindered even by a screen, can truly powerful emotions be evoked.
Beyond that, the evocation of emotions is a personal thing. I know people who just can't bring themselves to care about anything that's animated, computer or otherwise. I know other people who believe that only anime tells truly breathtaking stories. Personally? Nothing can match the depth of a good novel.
And what kind of a silly, chest-thumping, dick measuring argument is this, anyway? "My artistic medium of choice is better than your artistic medium of choice!" Who cares? Consume the media you like."
What."
I remember playing Mario Wii with my wife and family, and I was the only one who was any good at it. At some point, we realized that you could "bubble" on command, so only one person (me) had to actually get through tricky areas, and everyone else could follow along while bubbled with no risk to themselves, but if I died, they could unbubble and we wouldn't lose the level.
So, basically, it was me, and then the sidekick squad."
Plenty of good points were made by Jason and Kenneth (above) explaining the flaws of this article, so I won't repeat them. I will say, however, that asynchronous gameplay seems to be the direction Nintendo and Microsoft are going (which will force Sony to go that way as well). And, with multiplayer becoming more and more of a focus and requirement for games, I fail to see how more multiplayer options would be rejected by developers or consumers.
Considering that the Wii U has sold over a million units already, while it's trailing the original Wii's numbers, that was expected and it's still firmly in the "success" category for Nintendo. Microsoft and Sony will take note, and I expect Smart Glass and whatever Sony's doing will boast similar numbers."