The Double Whammy

This morning I simultaneously encountered two of my pet peeves when it comes to video game design. When these two particular annoyances arrive together, it's almost enough to make me give up on the game.

In this case, it was Aliens vs Predator, playing through the Predator campaign. The first irritation was that there were infinite Aliens being sent at me. I really hate when that happens, because it takes me right out of the game (where are they all coming from?) and inevitably runs me out of ammo and/or patience. I'd actually seen this same issue earlier in AvP (playing as a Marine) and wasn't impressed to run into it again. More frustrating, however, was that this time it was combined with an unclear objective. Specifically, I was supposed to douse some flames in order to be able to get out of the area that I was trapped in, and I was being told to "destroy the pipes" to do so. Unfortunately, the room was filled with pipes of various sizes and configurations, and so I had no idea which ones to take out, or how. I was smashing and shooting everything that looked remotely like a pipe, but getting nowhere. If there hadn't been an endless stream of xenomorphs attacking me, I might not have resented the "puzzle of the pipes" at all; but without a moment's peace to look around or experiment, it was just impossible to make any progress.

After dying about a dozen times, I finally consulted a game walkthrough site. It wasn't actually much help, though, as it simply said to destroy the "red/orange pipes" over the fire. I couldn't see any that were that colour, and was about to throw in the towel when I happened to press the Predator's "focus" button and spotted an icon in that area of the room (among the many icons that show up when you press that button). Up to that point, I'd assumed the marker was there to tell me that was the way out (as that's what it usually means in this game) but as it turns out, it was also marking the location of the pipe. Once I gleaned that bit of info, it was fairly straightforward to shoot at that spot and then stay alive long enough for the burst conduit to put out the flames so I could make my getaway.

So I guess my complaint is this: if you're going to provide infinite enemies, then make the objective brutally clear to the player so that he doesn't die a thousand times while he tries to figure out what to do next. Or, if you want to make it hard, then provide a set number of enemies for the player to deal with first, and then let him work out the puzzle in peace and quiet once he gets through the combat. But don't combine the two; that's just not fun!