What's better: snap-to construction, or fighting a little beastie then meeting the giant adults?
Vote now!
Last time, you decided that by a mere two votes that glowing wings are better than slipstreaming. Two votes! Honestly, I am surprised by the outcome but if that's what our infallible method rules, so be it. This week, I ask you to choose between a thing which helps you create something big, and a thing which gives you consequences after destroying something small. What's better: snap-to construction, or fighting a little beastie then meeting the giant adults?
Snap-to construction
Nothing makes me unhappier in a game with building than realising it requires me to carefully align the placement of everything myself. You put that on me? Me! An actual idiot! Three hours later, I have built the world's worst house, or the world's sloppiest city, the world's ugliest garden, or the world's most unprofitable farm, or the world's most inefficient base, or the world's draftiest shack. No two angles are alike. Things overlap and clip. So much space is wasted. Every route is longer than it needs to be. There are giant holes in this shack and that road does not even connect. Oh, if only it had snap-to alignment!
What a joy to go to plop something down and discover it snaps to a grid nice and cleanly. Click-clack-clock there it is, a beautiful organised city in no time at all. If I'm lucky, it'll let me optionally turn off snapping and place something at a jaunty angle for my own private reasons. If I'm really lucky, it'll then let me snap other objects to that off-grid object. Maybe even a whole beautiful curving road with houses aligning perfectly. Snapping! It makes my life so much easier.
Snap-to alignment is a great one-two punch. It makes your placements more efficient, saving time and money and energy and whatever other resources your game has. It also lets you easily make a good-looking whatever-it-is. And it gives you the perfect cover of telling yourself you're doing it for efficiency when absolutely you know you're doing it for the pretties.
Fighting a little beastie then meeting the giant adults
It's always a bit sad when a game sends me to kick the shins out of 3 little bears, or the tails off 10 little imps. It's not difficult, but it's a bit sad. Then I get complacement, lazy, inattentive as I continue punching them in the snout, and suddenly a bear five times the size comes lumbering out the undergrowth, and it is not at all happy with my fetch quest. Oh I deserve this.
Many fantasy games do this with bears or wolves. Lots of dragon whelps, too. Or maybe you'll even fight adult animals then be introduced to hulking great 'dire' counterparts, in which case yes absolutely I consider them to be babies and adults, even if they might technically be separate species. I'm sure I've seen this with robots too. Most nonhuman life, really. But some games are cruel enough to do this with spiders and no. Bad video game. No.
Some of my favourites are in Dark Souls. Having thoroughly murdered cute little mushroom guys who fall over when they try to attack and die with a sad curlew call, you meet the towering, chunky adults. Sure they're big, but how much worse could they be? Then one winds up for a haymaker that'll send you tumbling. Delightful. That's what I get. Dark Souls also has a single giant rat as a boss, though maybe that's more a mutant than a mature specimen. Dark Souls 3 calls back to this with crabs, letting you beat up on dog-sized crabs in a swamp then—oh god!—a crab the size of a small family house comes thundering between the trees and absolutely crabbers you. That's what I get.
It's a great little chain: confidence, bullying, overconfidence, shock, a comeuppance, fear, respect, remorse, and appreciation of a great little joke from the developers. And it's a chain I will never learn from.
But which is better?
I deserve few things more than my comeuppance, and I know it, and I crave it, so I want to go tiny/towering. Then I remember the shame I feel whenever I build something wildly unaligned, and I do not like that shame. Snap-to construction it is! But what do you think, reader dear?
Pick your winner, vote in the poll below, and make your case in the comments to convince others. We'll reconvene next week to see which thing stands triumphant—and continue the great contest.