spadgy wrote:
I just can't accept playing a (memoriser) shmup is "not about skill, its just about the time youve practiced that bit."
This passage strikes me as a contradiction. On any dictionary I've found around, skill is defined as something learnt to do something else. So, if you practice something for a given amount of time, you should develop skill, non?
Then again, a general trend of human beings is either to consider something given (not even innate), so that one is supposed to be able to e.g. dodge some pattern as soon as he's born, or some kind of ultra-generic learning process, of course "cultural" (Whatever culture is). Nothing new here, and as an academia wanker I can confirm that the more one knows, the more this attitude becomes virulent (I don't endorse it, but I am an exception).
As per "easy": this is a gradable adjective, so it expresses some degree of a scale, in this case "easiness". It is also a closed scale, so that one could decide a value between 0 and n of easiness and check if the value attributable to a game falls within this scale.
What's easiness, then? Everyone has is ready-made definition, which is of course the best one in the world and possibly based on the whims of the moment.
As far as I am concerned, an easy game is a game whose BASIC mechanics can be learned within an hour, it can be completed without learning beyond the basic mechanics (with, say, 20 hours of practice) and rewards the player with good scoring opportunities even by sticking to the basics (e.g. 30% of the virtual maximum).
So:
1) Immediate basic mechanics;
2) Requires low amount of time to complete;
3) Decent score opportunities;
...All gradable scales as well. Numbers have been made up to make the argument clearer, in case...
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
