I recently played through Dead Space which failed in this regard on a number of key occasions. I say key occasions because they had a detrimental impact on my opinion of the game. On one occasion I was left repeatedly dieing and on another wondering around aimlessly due to the game not being able to impart crucial infromation about how a situation was supposed to be tackled. The result is that there were a number of occasions where the game was unnecesarilly frustrating, meaning my opinion of the game as a whole was damaged. In this case it left me feeling that the game was just good, falling short of greatness by some small margin because of these failings.

It’s particularly heartbreaking when a game commits this sin as it’s something which could be solved quite easily with an adequate level of playtesting. Often the game designer is in a uniquely poor position to determine if the game is adequately explaining the rules of a situation to the player, as they already know and understand the rules. Adequate playtesting can account for this however. It’s no surprise that the developers which carry out the highest levels of playtesting rarely fail in this regard.