10 Things I hate about WipEout Pulse

[phl0w]

First of all thanks for not bashing me altogether, after all it was a pretty provocative post.
Second of all

but if all you're saying is that a videogame has to be immensely challenging in order for it to be any good

Nope, didn't say that. If you really must subsume it than I'd say: If the only challenge a "game" provides is to find the time playing it, then it's not a game but just time passing by, as if nothing has happened. But that's rather simplified and may, again, be misunderstood.

I agree that videogames aren't art, and will never be but saying

I'm not sure Beethoven or Van Gogh had the constraints on them that game developers have

is just not true. As a matter of fact most classical pieces were written due to a binding request or the composer was bound by a contract, like Bach in Leipzig who had to come up with a new cantata every Sunday and religious holiday- For 27 years! Same is true for visual arts. It was just the genius of those guys that they managed to create something that would meet requirements of their clients and at the same time create something so outstanding it would later be seen as classical art.
Anyway

I would hate to deliberately make a game elitist and I used to be a 'hardcore' gamer, but you cant have that as an aim, games should be inclusive not exclusive

And yet including the average gamer (an oxymoron in this context, since accessibility doesn't aim for gamers but the non-gaming mass to broaden a game's target audience, therefor that average gamer is pretty much your Joe Public, who didn't care about videogames until a product was "tailored" to suddenly fit) means catering to someone who will play that videogame for a fractional amount of the time someone with dedication does, who, in the process now may find that videogame not worth his time anymore as it was dumped down too much and looks for other activities. Now who's more suitable for a game. One who finds meaning in devoting himself to it, spends tons of time mastering it or one that buys it because he saw an awesome commercial or likes the back of the box, doesn't even complete half of it, and forgets about it after a week because it's still too hard for him to be bothered. You have to consider that videogames, or other activities, for that matter, that require skill of some sort (both intellectual and motor-driven), will always be too hard for many, no matter how easy they might seem for others. How many people don't play Go or Chess, to stress those examples one more time, because it's just too frickin' hard to play properly or against someone good? Would it be fair to tone the games down, so more people will play it? Not to those that spent their lives mastering it and more importantly not fair to the game itself- as an entity! Sure, you could include all kinds of rules or change the game to a degree that everybody is attracted by it, it just wouldn't be that game, i.e. Go / Chess, anymore. Same goes for Wipeout ( and pretty much any other game hard and rewarding enough to attract a dedicated fan base) and what people over the years have come to understand and see the essence of it. Did they misconceive it?
It's clear that from a fiscal point of view it doesn't matter who buys videogames, but who says that the road the industry is headed is the right one and not a dead-end?
Again, please don't see this as an insult or solely related to Wipeout. I very much appreciate your (Mr. Colin Berry's) and your team's work and hold you in the highest esteem to visit these boards, willing to listen AND answer to each and everybody's problems. However, It's a dilemma of identity videogames per se are suffering from. And seeing that WOZ includes many, many reasonable people and a producer who is capable of a view of the industry from a meta-level without feeling personally attacked make these boards a very futile ground for discussions. Granted it's Off-Topic, but still...

Hope I included "the odd line break". The text looks readable in the small reply-box, so I tend to forget to insert breaks every now and then.

EDIT:

You cannot start Pulse and do perfect laps right from the start when you've never played the game before. And same goes for WO, WO3 and 2097. Actually there's no difference in how things get started.

I don't think so: I'm by far not one of the better WOers and I managed to complete every grid on the first try, with the exception of 2 Phantom tournaments. Furthermore, never did I clock so many Perfect Laps right from the start in a Wipeout game than in Pulse. No matter how you look at it, Single Player is too easy for someone familiar with the basic mechanics. I agree that it's not the handling that's the easy part- I actually like it very much in Pulse, but the A.I. and time limits are way too forgiving. Heck, there are tracks in Pure (e.g. Iridia) where I still haven't managed to get TT Golds in all classes.