Control Room Puzzle: Difference between revisions

A video game puzzle which presents the player with an array of toggle switches. Usually, only one configuration will let the player proceed past some obstacle or series of obstacles.

 

 

This often becomes annoying for one of these typical reasons:

* It isn't obvious which obstacle(s) might be affected by the switches.

* The only way to test if the obstacle is activated involves [[Guide Dang It|trial and error]], where error means the brutal waste of one of your precious extra lives.

* If the room really was a Control Room you could reasonably assume that the switches and what they would do would be at least labeled and perform some sensible task.

{{examples}}

 

* ''[[Lufia]] 2'' had quite a few of these (though thankfully, the switches directly affected whatever platform you were on, keeping the whole thing nice and self contained), often in two difficulty flavors apiece - "Required", and "Complete". Only a few switches were required to be turned in order to proceed with the dungeon, but most players would still try and complete the puzzle absolutely for the excellent loot.

** Not to mention Elemental Workshop 3, where strategy guides quickest routes involve about 100 or so steps. Screwed up? There's only 5 points to continue from.

* ''[[Resident Evil]]'' games do this quite often.

* ''[[Star Wars]]: Dark Forces'' had one of these in its Coruscant mission. It consisted of a spiral corridor, divided into sections. Each section had a switch, and you had to flip each switch in a specific order as you worked your way through the sections. Flip too many, and everything behind you would seal off, and getting that last door to open was maddening. One might reasonably ask how the stormtroopers manage to successfully use this thing every day. They can't even shoot straight!

* The ''[[Myst]]'' series is practically built on this, although without the possibility of getting killed. And, thankfully, trial and error, or extensive trekking. ''This does '''not''' prevent them from being mind-bogglingly hard''.

* ''[[Pokémon Gold and Silver]]'' has one of these in Goldenrod City.

* ''[[Zork: Grand Inquisitor]]'' had one of those when you were escaping from jail, where you have the ability to open or close any cell block in the prison. As one of the last major puzzles before the end of the game, the solution is quite obtuse, and requires reading a map, watching camera footage , tracing air vents, and realizing {{spoiler|the map is a side view instead of a top-down}}. Any wrong answer leads to death.

* ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'' has this on the Mannan Sith base, and an NPC remarks on what a pain in the ass these puzzles are.

* ''[[Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow]]'' has a Control Room [[Fifteen Puzzle]]: fifteen rooms in a 4X4 grid, each with exits in certain parts, which you had to shuffle around to reach various paths that led out from the puzzle. Luckily, there wasn't just one "correct" solution, and the paths were easy to make with a bit of thought; it also came with a handy [[Puzzle Reset]] button in the control room.

* ''[[Marathon Trilogy|Marathon]]'' had a lot of these, but the one that sticks in everyone's craw is the platform puzzle in ''Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap!''. Several platforms need to be adjusted to the correct height using switches so that you can jump atop them and reach a high alcove, but all of the switches are far away from each other and the platforms, and you [[Rocket Jump|must use grenades]] on each try.

* The Altador Plot in ''[[Neopets]]'' did this near the end. If you failed, Altador would be flooded, and you had to restart.

* Subverted in ''[[Eye of the Beholder]]''- In one of the later floors, there is a room labeled "Combination Lock- Be Quick" with 5 switches and a group of items on the other side of a pit (by this point, the game has already established that pits can be moved or gotten rid of entirely). Each time a switch is hit, the party must move quickly to dodge a fireball that gets launched from the other end of the room. The player obviously thinks that they need to find the right combination to get rid of the pits; the catch, though, is that it's actually impossible to remove the pits, the switches do nothing, and it's just an excuse to frustrate the player.

* ''[[System Shock]]'' has one puzzle with a force-bridge that must be extended section by section, by hitting the right combination of buttons on a control board. This is not very difficult, since there is no penalty for getting the wrong combination, and the player can see the bridge from the board. Throughout ''System Shock'' there are also many doors opened by controlling the flow of power through little stylized circuit boards, where switching each of the elements the power passes through also changes other elements, making it easy to undo your progress. These puzzles range from very easy to quite difficult by the end, but a few single-use "logic probes" that can solve them instantly are scattered throughout the game.

* Appropriately enough, the Shrine of Control in ''[[Ultima VI]]''.

* ''[[Mass Effect]]'' has one where you need to set a bunch of switches to get a door to crush a geth ship's landing claw. This one is relatively sensible as a control panel, the switches are properly labeled and it's really a matter of simple addition to figure which switches to press for the right pressure. There's even a pressure gauge as such a control panel should. Needless to say it isn't much of a challenge as a puzzle.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Stock Video Game Puzzle]]