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Posts Tagged ‘Comparison’

10 Greatest Video Game Designers Part 2

Saturday, November 29th, 2008

These are the ten heroes of video game design. They have been responsible for games that have forever changed the medium and consequently the video game industry as a whole is indebted to them. Also included in this list is a career highlight list for each designer, a bit about how they personally influenced me as a designer and some fun trivia about them. This is part 2 of this list.

To go to Part 1 of this list click here.

5. Sid Meier
Sid Meier picture
The owner of my favorite game design quote:

“Gameplay is defined as a series of interesting choices.”

Every time a new Civilization comes out it ends up ruining any productivity of mine for months on end. They are so good and addictive I actually try to stay away from them because I know I will get nothing done as soon as I start playing them.

Also do you remember those keyboard key guides that you had to lay over on top of your keyboard that to came with F-15 and F-19? Those were complicated games.

Career Highlights
1. F-15 Strike Eagle
2. F-19 Stealth Fighter
3. Railroad Tycoon
4. Sid Meier’s Pirates!
5. Civilization

4. Warren Spector
Warren Spector picture

“Hell no we didn’t achieve what we were striving for on Deus Ex. What you do is you aim for the moon so you end up hitting Hawaii or something. If you aim for Hawaii you end up in Keokuk, Iowa or something, you know?” – Warren Spector

Warren Spector’s rules of game design in his postmortem of Deus Ex laid down the starting bumpers for me as a game designer.

a. Always show the goal. Players should see their next goal (or encounter an intriguing mystery) before they can achieve (or explain) it.

b. Problems not puzzles. It’s an obstacle course, not a jigsaw puzzle. Game situations should make logical sense and solutions should never depend on reading the designer’s mind. And there should always be more than one way to get past a game obstacle. Always.

c. No forced failure. Failure isn’t fun. Getting knocked unconscious and waking up in a strange place or finding yourself standing over dead bodies while holding a smoking gun can be cool story elements, but situations the player has no chance to react to are bad. Used sparingly, to drive a story forward, O.K. Don’t overuse!

d. It’s the people, stupid. Role-playing is about interacting with other people in a variety of ways (not just combat… not just conversation…).

e. Players do; NPCs watch. It’s no fun to watch an NPC do something cool. If it’s a cool thing, let the player do it. If it’s a boring or mundane thing, don’t even let the player think about it — let an NPC do it.

f. Have you patted your player on the back today? Constant rewards will drive players onward. Make sure you reward players regularly. And make sure the rewards get more impressive as the game goes on.

g. Players get smarter so games get harder. Make sure game difficulty escalates as players become more accustomed to your interface and more familiar with your world. Make sure you reward the player by making him or her more powerful as the game goes on.

h. Think 3D. A 3D map cannot be laid out on graph paper. It has to take into account things over the player’s head and under the player’s feet. If there’s no need to look up and down — constantly — make a 2D game!

i. Are You Connected? Maps in a 3D game world must feature massive interconnectivity. Tunnels that go direct from Point A to Point B are bad; loops (horizontal and vertical) and areas with multiple entrance and exit points are good.

Career Highlights
1. Wing Commander
2. Ultima Underworld I and II
3. Thief: The Dark Project
4. System Shock
5. Deus Ex

3. Peter Molyneux
Peter Molyneux picture
This man made me feel like a god. Peter Molyneux is the father of the god game. To his credit are some of my favorite games of all time. Populous was the quintessential god game, Syndicate was way ahead of its time (see my write up of Syndicate here), and Dungeon Keeper turned video game conventions upside-down by casting the player in the role of the villain.

Beyond being one of the greatest designers in history, he has what few designers have, an uncanny ability to sell. In fact he is so notorious with his tall tales; few take his proclamations without a grain of salt nowadays. Despite being skeptical whenever the man opens his mouth, I end up buying whatever the man is shilling because he has an infectious enthusiasm and a way about his personality and demeanor that convinces you that each and every game of his is going to revolutionize the world. With well-over two decades in this industry, Molyneux still remains relentlessly relevant. This is amazing in and of itself. This is a video of him selling you on the dog in Fable 2.

After watching that how can you not like the guy?

Career Highlights
1. Populous
2. Syndicate
3. Magic Carpet
4. Dungeon Keeper
5. Fable

2. Will Wright
Will Wright picture
In many ways Will Wright is the antithesis of Miyamoto, you can easily imagine Will Wright growing up, staying in doors playing board games, analyzing their systems, and building model airplanes, cars and boats. Where the two are the same are their creative drives to make games that give the user new experiences. Will Wright sums up his own methodology for making games better than I could have:

“Well, one thing I’ve always really enjoyed is making things. Out of whatever. It started with modeling as a kid, building models… I think when I started doing games I really wanted to carry that to the next step, to the player, so that you give the player a tool so that they can create things. And then you give them some context for that creation.”

Will Wright’s speeches are always entertaining as well as inspiring. It’s incredible how his research and thought process for his games come about. As I could not embed the first video, you will have to click on the link in order to watch:
GDC 2008 – An Evening with Will Wright

This is a second shorter video of another speach he made at TED.
Will Wright: Toys That Make Worlds

Some additional reading:
Will Wright fan site

The history and hobby tabs were fascinating reads for those with the time and inclination.

Fun Fact from the “Game Master” article in the New Yorker: “Wright was a former Robot Wars champion in the Berkeley-based robotics workshop, the Stupid Fun Club. One of Wright’s bots, designed with the help of Wright’s daughter Cassidy, “Kitty Puff Puff”, fought against its opponents by sticking a roll of gauze onto its armature and circling around them, encapsulating them and denying them movement. The technique, “cocooning”, was eventually banned.”

Career Highlights
1. SimCity
2. Sims
3. Spore

1. Shigeru Miyamoto
Shigeru Miyamoto picture

“I think I can make an entirely new game experience, and if I can’t do it, some other game designer will.”

If you read the Will Wright entry, I tipped my hand on the #1 game designer, not that there could be any other choice.

If there is a face of gaming, it would be Shigeru Miyamoto. I would describe him as the Stan Lee of video games. After Atari’s collapse, everybody thought games were a fad that would go the way of the hula-hoop, but Nintendo made sure video games would have a bright future. Shigeru Miyamoto was at the forefront of the revival.

As much as anybody, Miyamoto’s creations influenced my childhood. I remember working my ass off doing chores and begging to get an NES so I could play Super Mario Bros. It took two successive Christmases of doing chores everyday and eating my vegetables before my parents finally got the system for me. That Christmas morning is my happiest childhood memory.

As you can probably tell, Miyamoto’s childhood story is a lot more interesting than mine. His upbringing is worth mentioning because it was so influential in his video game creations.

According to Miyamotoshrine.com

“Shigeru Miyamoto was born and raised in a rural community near his current home of Kyoto, Japan. Miyamoto was humbled by the natural world surrounding him. Add to that the lack of a television set growing up, and you have a boy whose sense of adventure and imagination was limited only to what his own mind could produce.

Miyamoto would often explore his natural surroundings in Sonebe to bide the time. Rice fields, canyons, grassy hills, waterways. the ideal setting for such an adventurous young man. Then one fateful day, Miyamoto made a discovery that would later resonate in his future endeavors, as would many things from his childhood. Shigeru had discovered a hole in the ground. Not just any hole, but a large hole. Upon closer inspection it was obvious that this hole was actually something more. It was in fact, the opening to a cave.

Young Miyamoto returned several times before building up enough courage to enter. Armed with only a lantern, he ventured deep inside until he came to another hole that led to another section of the cave. This was breathtaking for such a young man. Unforgettable even. And Miyamoto certainly never forgot.”

This sense of wonderment and exploration of a magical world translates so well in his games. Knowing his past it is easy to see where Legend of Zelda sprang out of Miyamoto’s childhood experiences.

I will never forget his GDC 2007 speech that I attended that implored aspiring game developers to occasionally put down their video games and to go outside to learn more about and explore the world around them. It was such a breath of fresh air to listen to him.

Career Highlights
1. Donkey Kong
2. Super Mario Brothers
3. Legend of Zelda
4. Nintendogs
5. Wii Fit

Go to Part 1 of this list.

Tags: 10 Greatest Video Game Designers, blog, Comparison, game design, Game designer career highlights, limitless units, limitlessunits, limitlessunits.com, Peter Molyneux, riposte101, Shigeru Miyamoto, Sid Meier, ten best game designers, tony huynh, top game designers, video game design, video game education, Warren Spector, Will Wright
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10 Greatest Video Game Designers Part 1

Thursday, November 27th, 2008

10. Tim Schaffer
Schaffer picture
The consummate storyteller. Tim Schaffer’s talk titled: Adventures in Character Design detailed his method of research in creating characters was a big inspiration to me.

Here are some of the notes I took while listening to the podcast so you don’t have to:

Characters should be wish fulfillment. This doesn’t mean they can’t be goofy, or nerdy, or losers. There are lots of ways to make characters that are fun to play. Guybrush might not be a badass, but he always has a comeback.

Create supporting NPCs as you would the ideal road trip buddies. Making them annoying, offputting, needlessly stupid or generally hateful and then sticking the player with them through the whole game is just sadistic.

Write the player character as you would a character in a movie, a character that a good actor would jump at playing.

Backstory. Making up pasts for every single one of your characters, big ones or not, makes it insanely easy to imbue them with neat little traits by pulling from the past you’ve created.

Steal stuff, but steal it right. Steal stuff from life, especially. From your own life, from your friends’, from crazy things hobos tell you on the street. And steal stuff from other fiction, but don’t steal the surface junk. Steal what makes good things good. So if you’re stealing from GTA, stealing the hookers and mobsters and violence is missing the point. Steal the fun, the open-ended gameplay, the facetious attitudes.

Career Highlights
1. The Secret of Monkey Island
2. Day of the Tentacle
3. Grim Fandango
4. Psychonauts

9. Ken Levine
Levine picture

Ken Levine speaks to the nerd in all of us.
Ken Levine: PAX 08 Keynote Part 1

Ken Levine: PAX 08 Keynote Part 2

Ken Levine: PAX 08 Keynote Part 3

Here is a really good write up of Levine’s 2008 GDC talk.
Empowering Players to Care About Your Stupid Story

What we realized at some point doing the narrator is not a cutscene, it’s not live digital characters, it’s not lip-synching… it’s the world. What is the thing we render best in video games? The world, all the benefits of graphics… this incredibly detailed world. What is your player honestly engaged in most of the time? Think about most games — the warehouses, the sewers, the office buildings… think about the missed opportunities there, in the primary experience, to give the player narrative.

Career Highlights
1. Thief: The Dark Project
2. System Shock 2
3. BioShock

8. Yu Suzuki
Suzuki picture
Suzuki was the Miyamoto of Sega. The first fighting game in 3D was no clumsy effort like you would expect from developers trying to cope with an extra dimension, it was polished, complex and beautiful. Yu Suzuki is the man to thank for the Virtual Fighter series.

The man had the clout and vision to really swing for the fences. Shenmue cost an astounding 70 million USD to make and is the second most expensive game ever created (only recently surpassed by GTAIV’s 100 million USD). Shenmue was a martial-art action RPG game that Suzuki dubbed “FREE” (Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment). It featured “Free Questing” the ability to explore the city of Yokosuka speaking with the populace to obtain clues and further the narrative or the player can simply roam around the city and not advance the narrative and engage in a number of mini-game-like activities. These included Space Harrier, Hang On, darts and snooker. You could also complete a number of side quests and take on jobs to earn money. The game also featured a fully-fleshed out “Free Battle” system. This was a game similar to the side-scrolling Golden Axe only with the complex move set brought over from Virtual Fighter. Not only that the player could learn additional new moves as the game progressed.

Shenmue was the most visually stunning game at its time of release and featured a full day/night cycle with dynamically changing weather. The Passport feature took advantage of the Dreamcast’s internet connection and allowed players to upload their high scores in the variety of mini-games to online leaderboards.

Plus, goddamn I loved my Dreamcast.

Career Highlights
1. Hang On
2. Space Harrier
3. After Burner
4. Virtual Racing
5. Virtual Fighter
6 Shenmue

7. Hironobu Sakaguchi
Sakaguchi picture
Hironobu Sakaguchi saved Square Soft. During 1987 Square Soft was close to bankruptcy. The game was titled “Final” Fantasy because if the title failed it would be the end of Square Soft. Needless to say, Final Fantasy was released and Square is still around.

The first time I played Final Fantasy I thought finally, somebody made the first real D&D game. Final Fantasy VI (III in America) is the only game I can remember that made me really care about 2D sprites.

Hironobu Sakaguchi’s team up with Akira Toriyama led to Chrono Trigger, which remains one of my favorite RPGs of all time.

Career Highlights
1. Final Fantasy – Final Fantasy X-2
2. Final Fantasy Tactics
3. Chrono Trigger

6. Richard “Lord British” Garriot
Garriot picture
Richard Garriot is the creator of the Ultima Series and the founder of Origin Systems. He would have a hand in every Ultima game through Ultima Online, which being one of the first graphical MUDs ushered in the new era of MMORPGs.

Ultima 4 was the first game that had a sense of morality. The player had to obtain various virtues in order to beat the game. While the player could commit any evil act they chose to (murder, theft, boasting, etc…) they were punished through a morality system that would prevent the player from obtaining virtues, which were necessary to beating the game. This concept of good versus evil and morality versus immorality was a new concept in gaming that would heavily influence future games.

In Ultima 6, did anybody else collect every cannon in the world and stuff them all into one castle like I did? It is a tragedy that Ultima has faded away. If there is one game series I would like to have a revival it would be Ultima.

At NCSoft, Garriot gave us, City of Heroes, City of Villains before the commercially unsuccessful Tabula Rasa.

This is a video interview where Garriot describes the innovations in his games better than I can.

Career Highlights
1. Ultima 1 – Ultima Online

Click here to see Part 2 of this list.

Tags: 10 Greatest Video Game Designers, blog, Comparison, game design, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Ken Levine, limitless units, limitlessunits, limitlessunits.com, Lord British, Richard Garriot, riposte101, ten best game designers, Tim Schaffer, tony huynh, video game design, video game education, Yu Suzuki
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Best Games of All Time by Genre Part 1

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

These are the video games that have defined their genre. They are the standard by which all other games in their category are judged.

Best Flight Combat Game of All Time
Wing Commander 3 (1994)
Platform: PC
Developer: Origin Systems
Publisher: Origin Systems

Wing Commander 3 Box Art

The popular vote here is of course Tie Fighter. While great, Tie Fighter did not measure up to Wing Commander 3. Keep reading because I am going to convince you why.

Wing Commander 3’s impact on games is still felt very clearly even today. Wing Commander 3 is what I like to call the Star Wars of video games. This goes a lot further than just having Mark Hamill star as the protagonist. Like Star Wars did for movies, Wing Commander 3 literally invented the big-budget blockbluster style of games. Costing a then unheard of 4 million dollars to create and packed into 4 CD-ROMs (when CD-ROMs had just come out), Wing Commander was unabashedly pushing the envelope and spared no expense in doing so. Marketed as the world’s first interactive movie, Wing Commander 3 broke new ground by using an enormous amount of full motion videos to tell a branching story through and included the use of CGI backgrounds and greenscreens. This was technology that was not even broadly in use for films at the time.

Behind the ground-breaking wrapper of Wing Commander 3 there was an amazing core game. Wing Commander 3 brought the Wing Commander series into polygonal 3D for the first time. The game was among the first to use full motion video to not only tell the story, but in-game as well. Right out the gate, Wing Commander 3 blew minds its technology by having your wingman communicate and respond to orders through full video on the bottom of your HUD. During the game the other crewmembers’ disposition towards you and the mission selection were influenced by conversation trees as well as how well you performed on previous missions.

To sum up Wing Commander 3, it married great mission design, the ability to select your fighter, select your armaments, select your wingman, branching missions and a branching storyline told through hours of full motion video into one of the most insanely fun packages ever put onto a disc. This game from top to bottom was every gamer’s wet dream.

Best Turn Based Tactical Game of All Time
X-COM: UFO Defense (1993)
Platform: PC
Developer: Mythos Games
Publisher: Microprose

X-COM Box Art

Incredibly deep, X-COM has still never been matched as a strategy role-playing game. X-COM’s two distinct gameplay phases placed you in charge of Earth’s defense against an alien invasion.

The first phase was the world map. This is where the player first chooses a spot for their base and where the player would manage their funding to recruit, research technology and equip their soldiers. Financial resources came through successfully repelling aliens and earning the approval of a ten-nation league. If the player is not active or effective in combating the alien threat funding would dry up and even result in some of the nations signing treaties with the invaders and completely yanking any financial support for the player.

Each member of your squad could be named, leveled up and equipped like an RPG and this really helped you grow attached to them. Interceptor planes could be placed on patrol to defend the skies and shoot down alien craft. Alien ships could also land and it was up to you to send out small squads of soldiers to kill the aliens at these sites and bring back their artifacts and bodies for the research. Research of these alien artifacts unlocked new equipment and weapons to give you an edge on your next encounter. Once the player landed their squad at the crash or landing sites the game would shift to the second phase.

The second phase consisted of turn-based tactical squad gameplay. This gameplay phase was incredibly well executed and introduced such tactical staples as line-of-sight and opportunity attacks. Even the time of day would be taken into account and affect your soldiers’ vision. One of the greatest moments in gaming history was moving your solider around a corner and having an alien pop into view right in front of you and not having the action points to respond.

X-COM is a game with so such depth and when taken as a whole is so much more than a sum of its parts. It is the title that invented the modern turn-based tactical game and has yet to be equaled since.

Best MMO of All Time
World of Warcraft (2004)
Platform: PC, Mac
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

WoW Box Art

When the topic of MMOs comes up, what game immediately pops up?

World of Warcraft was created from the ground up using what Blizzard calls the “donut design.” This is where outside of the donut consists of the casual players while the center is where the hardcore players reside. WoW is a game built for casual players with enough depth to draw in the hardcore players. This philosophy is easier said than done. Through expert design choices and more layers of polish than the MMO space had ever seen before, WoW revolutionized the MMO genre. The more than 10 million active players speaks to the successful execution of Blizzard’s donut design.

As with most MMO’s they continue to evolve and World of Warcraft is no exception. Not content with the donut, Blizzard has created a new category of user, dubbed the casual-hardcore. With the introduction of the arena system and invention of separate branches of gear optimized specifically for Player-Versus-Player (PVP) as well as for Player-Versus-Environment (PVE), Blizzard has separated their users and allowed the creation a new audience entirely in the casual-hardcore player. This is a player who wishes to only play PVP and not be hamstrung by the need for gear obtainable only through PVE raiding. The PVP gear is entirely optimized for PVP while the PVE gear is optimized for PVE. For the PVP specialist (myself counted in their number), who can climb the arena ratings ladder, they have the ability to maintain the best (or near best) PVP gear in the game by only devoting a few hours a week to WoW.

Blizzard has been so successful; many believe (including myself) that it is stifling the entire genre as newer titles in this category continue to fail to break through World of Warcraft’s stranglehold on this market. Can a game be too successful?

Best 2D Fighter of All Time
Guilty Gear XX Accent Core (2007)
Platform: Arcade, PS2, Wii
Developer: Arc System Works
Publisher: Sammy Studios

Guilty Gear AC Box Art

The most balanced 2D fighter in existence. Nearly every character can be played at a tournament level and has a chance of winning.

Let’s run through this game’s new and creative mechanics that developer Arc System Works has introduced. The gameplay is incredibly fast. Most of the characters can, double jump, dash in the air or run along the ground. Low air dash attacking is a common strategy. This makes for lots of action and a frantic pace.

Custom Combos: An endless variety of custom combos can be created by a mechanic called the Roman Cancel, which ends the animation frame of an attack as soon as you press the button, allowing you to chain any move you wish.

A Tension Gauge limits the use of Roman Cancels. This bar fills up as you move towards the enemy, inflict damage or receive damage. A Roman Cancel would take 50% of the Tension bar and an exactly timed False Roman Cancels on specific attacks take 25% of the tension bar.

Fortress Defense: An impenetrable defense that uses up the Tension Gauge to block both high and low attacks and nullifies special move blocking damage.

Burst Gauge: This bar fills up as you receive or inflict damage and serves two uses. If being attacked, it can be used to break out of any combo or it can be used offensively to refill the Tension Gauge.

Guard Gauge: Another common problem with fighting games is the turtle (ultra-defensive) strategy, which leads to boredom and little action. Guilty Gear has largely alleviated this issue and keeps the game’s frantic pace by introducing a penalty for employing this strategy in the form of the Guard Gauge. The Guard Gauge begins a fight half-filled. As the player blocks, the Guard Gauge increases and as you takes damage the gauge empties. If the player neither blocks nor takes damage, the gauge returns to the middle. The emptier the gauge is, the less damage you take. Therefore, if you continue to turtle you will take more damage when you do get hit. Also if the player refuses to attack, they are warned and then hit with a complete reduction of their tension gauge, a 20 percent fill-rate of tension for 10 seconds and suffer an increased likelihood of becoming dizzy when hit.

Since the number of hits received drains your Guard Gauge, attacks had a built in diminishing damage return. So the subsequent hits in a combo do less damage than the previous hit. This forces combo creators to frontload the heaviest damaging attacks at the beginning of the combo string for maximum efficiency.

When you look at all the innovative fighting systems in place coupled with really crazy character design and finely balanced characters, Guilty Gear is the pinnacle of all 2D fighting.

Best Survival Horror of All Time
Silent Hill 2 (2001)
Platform: PS2, Xbox, PC
Developer: Team Silent
Publisher: Konami

Silent Hill 2 Box Art

Despite my review of Dead Space, on the topic of survival horror games, I simply do not feel qualified. It is simply a genre that I do not seek out. While I have played quite a few survival horrors, I have too many holes in my experience and missed too many of the widely lauded titles to feel comfortable giving an answer to this one. If pressed I would give it to Resident Evil 4. However, I will defer to my good friend and survival horror specialist Jared King.

On the subject of Survival Horrors, I have to go with Silent Hill 2. Basically, my theory of how good a survival horror is depends on the level of fear or anxiety you have while playing the game. SH2 creates this feeling in several ways.

One, limited save points. Obviously the more you are afraid of dying and going all the way back to a save point, the more anxious or fearful you will feel.

Two, limited visibility. There is a fog in all of the open areas of the game (attributed mostly to the PS2’s limitations), which obfuscates everything. The things that you can seem especially when you travel to the otherworld, are freaky as fuck.

Three: The enemies, especially the invincible Pyramidhead, are difficult and your weapons limited.

Four, for a lot of the game, you must protect your female companion from harm, always difficult.

Five, and most importantly, the game is FUCKING FREAKY. It is psychological horror at it’s best. The endings and meaning of the game have been written on in the form of a psychological analysis. I personally, had several moments when I figured out what was going on and said OMGWTFBBQ!!!!11!!.

Anyhoo, this thing is kinda rambling, so I’ll sum up with this: SH2 is (so far) the pinnacle of the survival horror genre. And until I play Dead Space, it doesn’t seem like anything has come close. Because I know you’re wondering, Resident Evil was a different animal. I don’t know if my soft spot for the original RE has more to do with zombies or because it was a good game that came along at a very impressionable point in my life. However, even despite the advantages RE has, SH2 is STILL a better survival horror game.

Best Mech Game of All Time
MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat (1995)
Platform: PC
Developer: Activision
Publisher: Activision

MechWarrior 2 Box Art

MechWarrior 2 is one of, if not my favorite game of all time and going back to play it today reinforces why. It is a great game that holds up incredibly well. Being of the first CD-ROM games ever made, MechWarrior changed what I thought games were capable of. It featured two full campaigns as either Clan Wolf or Clan Jade Falcon, which followed along faithfully an epic storyline written by Michael A. Stackpole.

The game was deep and complex. The controls promoted fast reflexes and the ability to pay attention to a lot of things happening simultaneously. MechWarrior 2 had dozens of mechs to choose from and they could be completely customized from their armaments, engine, armor and ammo. Location based damage rewarded skill and even influenced the player to allocated weapons and ammo on hard to hit areas on the mech’s chassis to prevent damage to them.

Activision nailed what it is to be a mech pilot. MechWarrior 2 realized what every BattleTech tabletop player ever dreamed piloting a mech could be. The BattleMechs had real weight to them. The audio was perfect. The necessity to juggle different weapons to manage heat was the exact mechanic described in all of the novelizations of the series.

MechWarrior 2 was also one of the first games to ever have a CD audio soundtrack. The soundtrack featured Jeehun Hwang’s electronic music, which is so good I still occasionally listen to it.

There are few things more fun than marching your fully-customized mech around to an amazing soundtrack. I just had this grin from ear to ear plastered across my face the entire time I played this game.

Best FPS of All Time
Halo: Combat Evolved 2001
Platform: Xbox
Developer: Bungie
Publisher: Microsoft

Halo Box Art

If I let my game designer in me write this section, I would have given the honor to the brilliant Half-Life 2. The only problem is that when I analyze this category from a personal-had-fun-playing-the-game standpoint, Halo wins out over Half-Life 2, no contest.

Say what you will about Halo, but when this game came out it changed the FPS genre forever. It popularized the “Halo” control scheme, invented the 2 weapon limit, recharging shield, split screen co-op, vehicles, a dedicated button for grenades, had insanely good multiplayer and was blessed with AI that was smart, but more importantly made the player feel smarter for outwitting them. Halo came along at a time when I had forgotten what the magic of games could do. Halo came together and was just fun. Simple as that. Luke Smith said that Halo was his Mario. That line to me summed up Halo. It is that, when you are kid on Christmas day feeling. The Gregorian chanting when the game boots up still sends chills down my spine. That’s how good this game is.

Without this title it is my belief that the Xbox would not have been able to survive, Xbox Live would never come to be and the Xbox 360 would never have been created. Microsoft would not even be in the console game space anymore. The gaming landscape has been changed forever because of Halo: Combat Evolved.

I hope you enjoyed part 1 of this list.

Click here to see part 2 of this list.

Tags: Best Games of All Time by Genre, best video games ever, blog, Comparison, favorite games, Guilty Gear XX Accent Core, Halo, limitlessunits, limitlessunits.com, mechwarrior 2, riposte101, Silent Hill 2, tony huynh, top games, video game education, Video Games, Wing Commander 3, World of Warcraft, X-COM
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Dead Space Through the Eyes of a Game Designer

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

Dead Space
Just finished playing through Dead Space and since I always take notes on every game I play through, I thought it would be useful to compile them all together and write a short disposition for Dead Space from a game designer’s perspective. Warning: Some very minor spoilers in this article.

Dead Space is a third-person survival horror game that closely resembles Resident Evil 4 only with better controls (strafing included) and taking place on the set of the movies Event Horizon and Sunshine. Dead Space was developed by EA Redwood Shores, whose previous effort was the licensed title, Godfather.

The Dead Space team runs a real clinic on great design decisions. Dead Space does a number of things to immerse the player in their world and keep them there.

One of the most important decisions made was to never take control away from the player. What this means is that the entire story takes place from the player’s camera. The great thing about this mechanic is that the player’s immersion is never broken by cutscenes. The negative is that story telling is more difficult for the developers as they cannot rely on cutscenes to drive the story forward. The developers at EA had to be extra inventive in the way they told the story of Dead Space and they managed to do a great job with audio and video recordings spread throughout the gameplay spaces as well as using NPCs to drive the exposition.

Another difficulty that the team must have faced was in introducing new enemy types to the player in a fair manner. That is to show what the new enemy type is capable of before letting them loose on the player. The most common practice in games is to introduce new enemy types through a cutscene. There are many advantages to the cutscene approach. The main one being that you can never be sure which direction the player’s camera will be facing during the game, thus they may miss events that happen during gameplay. The disadvantage is that the control is taken away from the player and immersion is broken. Dead Space manages to get around the cutscene crutch in a number of interesting ways. They minimize the likelihood of the player looking in the wrong direction by picking spots like tight corridors to introduce their enemies or by placing the enemies behind glass and showing what the new enemy type is capable of by allowing the player to view the new enemy attack and kill another member of the crew. Another way that the game introduced a new enemy type is through foreshadowing. An example is when the player, passing through a room to complete an objective cannot help but notice the numerous holes punched through the walls. Returning to the room you are attacked by the giant worm that has caused all the damage in the room and it is pulling you towards the large holes. While this is not new to games, as Valve used a similar methodology in their title Half-Life, it is not often done because it is simply not easy to pull off. The developers at EA should be given credit for applying and following this rule, and it is a formula that I would implore other developers to follow.

The second decision made to promote player immersion is that Dead Space has no on-screen HUD. The player’s health is displayed on the character’s spine and gun ammo is read directly from the gun. This system is incredibly well executed and I am sure that going forward, there will be many games that will be copying this mechanic.

There are a few minor issues with not having a HUD that Dead Space did not handle gracefully. One example is since there is no “press A button to open” dialogue on the screen, I did not even know you could open any of the small crates laying on the ground until half-way through chapter 2, when I opened one by accident.

While on the subject of lack of information, the tutorial does not go overboard and lets the players discover a surprising number of the game’s mechanics. The alt-fire mode is not even explained until chapter 2 and the waypoint path is never mentioned and the first time I used it it was during a cinema, which caused it to not function at all.

Dead Space does manage to pull off many aspects of their game very well. Not being able to pause the game to use the inventory or map brought a risk versus reward and a heightened sense of danger anytime the player wants to check the map or use an item from their inventory.

Even the reuse of environment is handled well. Every one of the game’s 12 chapters start the player in a hub area where the player can save, replenish on items from storage and buy upgrades and items at a store. The hub branches off into multiple directions where the player will accomplish each of their objectives for the chapters. This allowed for reuse of the environment as the areas were populated with enemies on the way down to the objective and repopulated on the way back. This repetition is somewhat mitigated by very good scripted events both ways through as well as the player’s desire to reach the hub again to replenish supplies.

The Zero-G environments are impressive visually and offer a lot of unique gameplay from a platforming standpoint.

The dynamic lighting in Dead Space is shown off to great effect through the use of flickering lights, sirens, wires that flail all around spewing electricity and even random objects hinged to the ceiling just swaying back and forth casting shadows. Little tricks like these really help to make the game environments seem less static and more alive.

The audio is one of the highlights of the game. Creepy singing from people driven insane, screaming in the distance, Necromorphs wailing, objects being knocked around and even the occasional music are all dead on and set up the creepy mood.

The telekinetic powers and puzzles helped break up the pacing and the way it is used reminded me a lot of Star Wars: Force Unleashed. This made me start to wonder how a Jedi would behave in a survival horror style of game. Back on topic.

Last note: Guns whose parts animate all over the place like the Line Cutter are always cool.

Improvements I would have liked to see in the game:
1. As with most middle portions of games, they are usually slow and uneventful. Sadly, Dead Space is no exception to this rule.
2. Playing on a console I was surprised by the absence of aim assist on the turret sections of the game. It was immensely frustrating attempting to aim at precise points on the Xbox Controller without any assistance. You can get away with this on the PC Mouse, but with a console controller this is simply not acceptable.
3. Taking away the player’s ability to run on sticky substances was intriguing, but not explored. I am really surprised EA Redwood Shores did not take advantage of this more. The player’s inability to run could have led to a number of cool scare moments. Just off the top of my head, imagine the fear and anxiety of the invulnerable Necromorph chasing you through a corridor where you cannot run from it, but must slow it down with limb shots to make your getaway. This is a missed opportunity.
4. The red explosive barrels that do not affect the enemies are a “wtf moment.”
5. Why does the game reset my plasma gun alt-fire position to default at the beginning of every level and on reloads? This gets annoying.
6. The way the game spawns enemies behind you or when you turn a corner and the tiny Necromorphs (which are out of your view frustum because they are tiny) immediately latching onto you is pretty cheap. If you are going to do that at least give the player some warning and a chance to react. An example of this warning could be, the player enters in a room and hears a crash through the ceiling behind him and then hears the roar before the Necromorph attacks him.

Despite these relatively minor issues, Dead Space is an achievement and is one of the first fruits of a welcome shift within EA to create more original IPs. This is a game that developers, aspiring developers and gamers should not miss.

For aspiring developers, this article is an example of what a designer is looking at when they play games. To learn more about how to become a game designer please read: Become a Game Designer: Everything You Need to Know Part 1.

Support the site by buying this game from Amazon PC l X360 l PS3

Tags: blog, Comparison, Dead Space, Dead Space Review, Dead Space Through the Eyes of a Game Designer, game design, game mechanics, how to become a video game designer, limitlessunits, limitlessunits.com, PC, PS3, review, riposte101, tony huynh, video game design, video game education, X360, Xbox 360
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Mirror’s Edge Demo Review

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

The Mirror’s Edge Demo is out and available for download for both the PSN and XLA. EA and DICE have done just an amazing job at creating buzz for this game. This is a lesson in how to combine music with onscreen action.

Check out the newly released demo trailer here:

And the announce trailer here:

Having played through the demo a few times already, I found that the controls are very fluid once you get it down. I had to switch out from the default controller settings to an option called, “Shoulder Swap” to really get comfortable. This game reminded me a lot of the Xbox game first person shooter / fighting game Breakdown. Just like in Breakdown the amount of camera bobbing and motion may cause some people to get motion sickness. My girlfriend watched me play and immediately became nauseated. I have found that as long as I am at the controls, motion sickness is not a problem for me.

The demo level was fairly linear, which is not surprising given that it is mostly a tutorial. I hope the rest of the game opens up a bit more though. Despite the linearity you can definitely see the potential of chaining all the moves together. When you do miss a jump the player will die by falling from great heights before hearing a bone crunching death. While you don’t see anything, the audio of the wet snap of bones going off is gruesome.

While the city lacks color and is almost monochromatic, there is a sheen to the city that makes it beautiful in its austerity. All the mirrored surfaces of the city are pretty cool as you are able to see the reflection of your character on these surfaces.

Overall, I would have to say the demo was great. I will be picking this game up on day one.

Here is an MP3 download of a fan-made remix of the main theme. Be sure to buy the official soundtrack, which will be released at the same time as the game.
Alcorus – Shine

The game and soundtrack releases on 11/11.
Amazon is doing a $10 giftcard for the game if you pre-order. Xbox360 l PS3 l PC

Tags: Alcorus, Breakdown, breakdown versus mirror's edge, Comparison, game design, limitlessunits, limitlessunits.com, mirror's edge, mirror's edge announce video, mirror's edge demo, mirror's edge demo review, mirror's edge demo video, mirror's edge game, mirror's edge game deal, mirror's edge music, mirror's edge review, mirror's edge soundtrack, riposte101, tony huynh
Posted in Video Games | 3 Comments »

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