It's often said that games have gotten easier. I can even come up with an example because there was an article about the supposed phenomenon in the Guardian's technology supplement today. But I often wonder whether it's not so much that games have gotten easier but rather that modern games have cut out a lot of the needless repetition that used to be a common part of the gaming experience. A lot of people are nostalgic for the old days of gaming and lament the passing of certain gameplay elements. However I can't help thinking that the grave may be the best place for certain aspects of the games of old. Should we be afraid when rotting, shambling gameplay corpses rise up from the graveyard that is the eighties?

On that note, let's talk about Jump!. Jump! is a game on Xbox Live's Indie Games service. It's the first in the Arkedo Series of games created by (you guessed it) Arkedo, a small developer responsible for Nervous Brickdown and Big Bang Mini on the DS. It's a fairly basic retro-style platformer with a very pretty and polished visual style (there's a free trial version on Live if you want to have a look before reading on). And people appear to like it: it has a high rating on the Marketplace, and it's been praised in various corners of the Internet for its looks and for its nostalgia factor. But it has a dark secret, a dark secret which may not actually come to people's attention while they are playing the trial version. Jump!'s dark secret is this: it has no save system, and if you run out of lives then you have to begin again from Level 1. Thing is, people like this as well. It's been praised for being 'old school' and for 'keeping it real'. And this makes me seethe.

Why? Well for one thing I've been gaming since the 16-bit era, have an interest in retro gaming, and yet I can't think of many, if any, games that have absolutely no continue or save system - it's not like battery back-up is some crazy convenience conjured up by the iPod generation. It's irritating having to leave the game on pause for ages while I go and eat, simply because I don't want to have to pointlessly replay a massive chunk of it.

But my main issue with Jump! is this: aesthetics aside, it doesn't actually have that much in common with the retro games that people remember and love. And that means that when it suddenly decides to throw in a pretty punishing mechanic from yesteryear it actually feels out of keeping with the rest of the game: a really unpleasant and arbitrary-feeling suprise.

So what's the difference between Jump! and a real retro game? Let's compare it with classic retro game Manic Miner, a game that must surely have influenced Jump! in some way. I like Manic Miner. I like it a lot. There is no hint of nostalgia in my feelings towards this game: I was not one of the Spectrum generation, in fact I first played the game as an adult. And yet when I hear older gamers say "It was good at the time... but actually it's shit, isn't it?", I think "No, no it isn't" (there's an online version here if you want to make up your own mind). Manic Miner is hard as nails, and with a mere two lives between you and the Game Over screen, you'll be seeing the same levels over and over again. But that doesn't matter - the level design is brilliant, meaning that even the first level, Central Cavern, can still be fun the nth time you play it. Basically, the game is really hard and really fun.

And that's really what separates Manic Miner from Jump!. Jump! is not particularly difficult, and while the levels are decent, they can't withstand repeated plays (partly because of the low difficulty - the early levels are a chore the second time around). It's this that really makes the lack of continues or save system intolerable - Jump! is really a modern game that's meant to be played though once and only once, so the repetition the game forces on you is arbitrary and annoying. I've given up on the game - I'm worried I'll reach a final boss, the difficulty will spike, I'll lose all my lives and I'll either have to start again or be left with absolutely nothing to show for my effort.

I have some other miscellaneous issues with Jump!. After dying you have to wait several seconds to get going again thanks to a pretty-but-annoying respawn animation. And the flamethrowers seem to desire a pixel-perfection that the HD gameplay can't provide. I personally think that the pretty art style and indie credentials of the developers have completely blinded everyone to the fact that Jump! is nothing more than an adequate game that has the potential to be totally ruined by some outragous design decisions. A writer on Kotaku describes Arkedo's press release for Jump! as 'The Funniest Press Release I've Ever Read'. I'm sorry, but that's patronising drivel. No-one but an indie would get such a glowing write-up for submitting a press release that would be lucky to raise a smile. I'd like to see more arty games, I'd like to see more indie games, but that doesn't mean that I'm willing to adjust my standards. I think the treatment that all games and developers receive should be based on merit. I'm not convienced that everyone agrees (this is a theme I'll return to in future posts).

I compare Manic Miner favourably to Jump!, but I have a confession - I never got past the first few levels in Manic Miner. Although learning the levels is enjoyable and satisfying, it becomes increasingly difficult to do because you only get two lives to practice with - after that you have to start from the beginning. This means that it's difficult to get experience on the levels where you need it - and it also means you'll spend most of the time playing levels that you're very familiar with. While the levels can withstand some repetition, there's only so many times you can replay the same level in one sitting. So while Manic Miner is better at handling repetition than Jump!, it still kills the game.

This is why I'm happy to see the back of a lot of old-school game elements - a lot of them don't work now, and only worked in the past because as children we are a lot more tolerant of repetition. There's a difference between a game being difficult and a game forcing the player to repeat stuff over and over again for no real reason. A challenge can really make a game for a lot of people. Repetition ruins a game for all but the masochists.