<COMMENT>PC Gamer</COMMENT>
<P>That's what I mean by problem-oriented gameplay. Your problem is that you need to kill somebody, but he's protected by approximately 20 well-armed and paranoid guards and sitting in a Las Vegas casino surrounded by civilians. You have a whole arsenal of weapons at your disposal and more tricks up your sleeve than David Copperfield. The game's artificial intelligence is equipped to handle anything you can possibly think to throw at it, and it's now up to you to devise a strategy and combine all these options to take out your target and not get yourself killed in the process. Even if you play the game by the book, laying low and carefully getting close enough to your target that you can safely take him or her out, you still have many many options for how to make the kill. Personally I enjoy creating "accidents" whenever possible - they look particularly good on the post-mission score board.
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<P>I want more games like this. I want more games that don't tell you exactly how to complete your objectives, but just give you a bunch of options and drop you into a complicated situation. In fact I would like to try and take it further. I would like an entire game constructed as one big problem with an overall objective and no predefined path through the game. This game would simply consist of a large world, a micro-cosmos a'la Black Mesa or Citadel Station but structured more like Cyrodiil, filled with interesting situations and complicated, wide-open problems for the player to solve as part of his or her efforts to achieve the final objectives of the game.