One thing stood out in the game , and that’s the fact that everything collides with everything.  Which sounds ridiculous at first (and kind of is), but results in some great situations. You can pick up and throw any object, and sometimes you can just kick and punch them to move them around.  Eventually you also get a kind of super throw to use.  And then you realize that you can throw people as well (including co-op partners).

It has almost a Dead Rising ethic to it, though simplistic.  The idea that everything can be interacted with on some level.  So of course, you start throwing things around and seeing how long you can keep them in the air.  And that’s where things really go nuts.  Because things collide and bounce when they are in the air.  As well as doing damage to enemies that get hit, either by you or flying objects.

This gets especially awesome in co-op, where you throw a guy in the air and then start hitting some objects, and everything is flying through the air and hitting everything else and damaging everything, while your buddy stands on the other side of the screen and hits them back.  Eventually everything lands and the fun comes to an end, but often it’s enough to make you giggle with glee.

The true benefit, of course, is that this is a new kind of gameplay added to an old style game.  Something that couldn’t have been done with original technology back in the 80s.  I think more old style games should be revisited with a pass of what current technology has to offer.

Of course, a lot of people don’t like games that are this short.  In fact, if I’m enjoying a game enough, I’ll often be disappointed if it comes to an end so quickly.  But my own disappointment is tempered by the fact that I enjoy not having to spend a month playing a single game in order to finish it.

However, gaming wasn’t always like this.  A lot of earlier games were built in ways which perpetuated short but repeated play sessions.  Either in the form of being difficult and limiting your ability to play (lives), or simply being so good that you were willing to replay them over and over.  My favorite example is Super Metroid, a game which I can play through, start to finish, in two hours or so.  It can be an entertaining evening to sit down and play a game from start to completion, and Super Metroid has enough room for improvement and optimization that it continues to be satisfying, even after many playthroughs.

Of course, these kinds of games weren’t heavy on narrative, and most games nowadays, short of pure sandbox games, push the narrative as their raison d’être.  However, this often results in a conflict over which is more important.  The sandbox is limited by the narrative, and then your gameplay is dictated by the same narrative.  The end result being that the narrative becomes stretched for the sake of gameplay, and the gameplay is artificially limited in service of the narrative.  Which, at the end of the day, serves neither.

I would like to see a move to shorter, more replayable games.  My ultimate game would be one which is built to be finished in a few hours, but all those development resources that would normally go in to making a game much longer would be used, instead, for branching narrative and random level generation.  You could even skip the branching narrative, and instead, just have the variety of gameplay which would let you experience the narrative with no chains on gameplay, so that each playthrough becomes rewarding simply because it plays out differently.

After all, the biggest thing which ruins playthroughs is being forced to do something that you’ve already done.  Even for a lot of the more open ended or simulation based games, it can be frustrating to have to go through a tutorial again, or deal with a part of the story that restricts your gameplay options.

Of course, the narrative issue is something else.  Not sure, yet, how we’d deal with seeing the same narrative over and over.  Branching seems the logical solution but perhaps we can step back and play with a more dynamic and procedural narrative by eschewing words in favor of more Sims-like communication.  But that will be a different post.

Now that that is out of the way.  After seeing Inception the other day, I could not help but see what a great game it would have made.  In fact, to be entirely truthful, I was jealous.  The setting contains the perfect conceit for a game — that anything is possible.  That the movie industry came up with it before us is more of a sad commentary than anything, especially in a time when hollywood seems only able to remake movies and crib from other mediums.

Ahem.

Now, the first part to Inception as a game would be to accept that the first layer of the movie is actually reality.  You can delve in to dreams, you can take people with you, the technology just works.  There are are dreamers, architects, subjects, etc.  Each would work just as it does in the movie.

The second part would be the setup:  You effectively play an equivalent role to Cobb.  From there, in a type of overworld, you’d find jobs, assemble teams, pick your methods, potentially even have a layer of player setup for how the subject’s dream should play out, and then in you go.  Once there, you can have the dreams play out in many ways, but the core gameplay would swap between action sequences, and more RPG styled dialogue and exploration sequences like Mass Effect.

Of course, so far, this is just the movie, translated directly in to the game.  So down to the meat of the idea.  You control the dream.  Specifically, as the player, you are given control over the architect.  So for any mission, you get to choose the set-up.  You pick the location, you pick the story structure to be used, and part of the game would be attempting to properly target a dream with a subject in order to extract the information.  Picking inappropriately would lead to a mission failure, and a scuttled job, forcing you to go back to the drawing board and find a new one.

The only part of the game not directly influenced by the player would be the real world portions — where you find the subject, how you need to do your job in order to sneak in to their dreams.  That part would be straight classical gaming.  But once there, you pick the where and the how, using background information gathered about your subject.

Once in the dream, to take the experience further and deeper than the movie did, you would be given control over the dream, with the restriction that you had to limit your usage of dream powers for fear of waking your subject.  For instance, you could create walls anywhere you wanted, as a defensive measure or otherwise.  Give yourself weapons, make buildings fall on people, etc.  How much damage you did to the dream would be dependent on how believable the change was to the dream, and the feedback would be from the game world itself.  Too many changes and the dream would become unstable, communicating itself directly to the player via the environment.

From there, each dream would be a matter of finding what you were looking for, and given the dynamic choice of environment, setting, and tools, each time you played a mission would result in a different set of completion conditions.  Each dream would be unique.  Also, to stay within the rules given by the movie, you could never know the layout of a dream, as you would pick a setting, but the architect would create the world.  In game terms, each dream’s layout would be procedurally generated.

Now that would be a game I would love to play.

A really great example of this is a small flash game called Small Worlds, which was created by David Shute for Casual Gameplay Competition 6.  I do recommend you go play it now, as I will talk about it in detail.

What is really amazing about this game is how much meaning is packed in to a game which only uses the most basic of game vocabulary.  The only mechanics to the game are movement, jumping, and fog of war.  Which, as far as our game vocabulary is concerned, is as basic as camera is to film.

And yet, this beautiful little game uses them completely out of context from where the mechanics were born, and where they are still mostly used today.  The movement is not about propelling the player to the end, the jumping is not about providing challenge, and the fog of war is not about obscuring an enemy.  Instead, all three combine as tools to let you slowly uncover a story.  A story, I might add, which is conveyed with only a few words, and with extremely rudimentary graphics.

It was also stuffed with meaningful little details.  That the space station you are on has been destroyed.  That the city’s waste flows freely in to the water that rains on them.  The freeze frame of an explosion.  An alien organism that died violently.  Nuclear winter.  An empty command bunker. The fact that the missiles are the only thing in the game that obscures your character.  And then, at the end, with nothing but the word “silence” on the screen, the character apparently ends his existence by launching himself in the sun.

Overall, this game is a masterful example of what can be done when we step out of the common expectations of our vocabulary, and move on to doing something emotionally relevant instead.

Bioshock, for instance, pretty much told you up front “If you play this way you’ll get a reward, and if you don’t, you won’t.” So you weren’t making a choice based on the story or your emotions, you were making it as a calculating gamer deciding which way was better.  Even if you thought you were making it emotionally, you likely weren’t, as you likely expected, even if subconsciously, to be rewarded for “picking right”.  And the game obliged; if you saved all the little sisters, you ultimately got a better reward for it in the end.

And that’s the conundrum facing developers.  How do you make a player choose based on story and emotion instead of that cold calculating center that has been cultivated all these years?  We’ve been so conditioned to believe there is a good and bad ending, and good and bad solution, that it’s hard to imagine a situation where this won’t factor in.  We weigh every split in a path, and each door against the other, worried that we might miss out on some little treat hidden somewhere.

Enter Mass Effect 2.  It is a sequel to a game where you made choices, and it will have a sequel where your choices are realized.  I saw the consequences of my decisions in the first game realized in Mass Effect 2.  And I knew beyond a doubt that my choices in ME2 would be realized in ME3.  But they offered no treats; I knew that whatever I decided would not be reflected in this game, and because of that, it shut down my gamer brain.  I was no longer searching for the best outcome.  I was no longer worried about missing out on something important.

This game made me do what no other game has:  I made decisions based on my feelings.  I was Shepard.  For the first time in 25+ years of playing video games, my decisions were based entirely on the raw emotional impact of the situation.  I couldn’t game the system.  I couldn’t know what would happen based on my decisions, except to evaluate it as a character in that universe.  All I knew was that my decisions will be important, and that, for once, I cared about the outcome, rather than the reward.

I’m sorry Mordin.  I cannot condemn your actions concerning the Genophage, but neither can I assuage your guilt.  Your decision was a hard one, and while I understand it, I cannot condone it.

RIP Legion.  I know we will meet again, but I still wish I’d chosen better.

At first it’s the same old thing, only with a twist:  You only have 60 seconds to play.  A neat little gimmick, and perfect for the kind of on the go game that Blitz really is.  Or alternately as a light time waster on Facebook, for people who want to burn a few minutes here and there without getting drawn in to a half hour long game of Bejeweled Classic.  But lurking beneath that surface are some small but important changes that radically change the way you play the game.

The major change is that you can now swap gems while the gems are still falling/moving.  At first I wasn’t sure this was any different, but then I went and compared and sure enough.  You can’t move a gem until everything has settled in classic modes.  Being able to swap gems while things are moving is absolutely important for the flow required to get a high score in Blitz.

Two other changes have to do with that scoring.  The first is that the game gives you a bonus based on how fast you match gems.  Matching gems without any pauses increases the bonus, and that bonus is added to the points from every match you make.  The second is that by destroying many gems in a single move (specifically twelve), you get a special gem which is a combo multiplier.  Destroy that gem, and every match you make has the points multiplied.  Each successive multiplier increases up to a max of 6x.

But it’s being able to swap gems while other gems are still moving that really seals the deal on this game.  It leads to a fluidity which is unmatched by vanilla Bejeweled, and completely rejuvenates the experience, making it more addicting than ever.  And that’s before we even talk about the fantastic social integration, which plots your weekly top scores against those of your friends, counts how often you get certain tiers of scores, and then finally, ranks you in a list against those same friends.

Ultimately, quite a staggering improvement to an already great formula.  If you haven’t tried it, you probably should.

Enter the Eve-Online Action RTS!  People who don’t like Eve always talk about how much fun it would be if they could actually pilot a ship directly.  Well, if you did that, you’d lose a lot of what makes Eve Eve.  But not if you kept the mechanics, and went the RTS route.  A lot of the fun is the military structure that Eve-Online forms as part of PVP.  But very few people ever get to be fleet commanders, and of those, only a few are good enough to actually win battles.  But if you’ve been a part of one of those fleets, you can probably see where this is going.

If you haven’t been a part of one of those, then there’s a small chance, being a sci-fi game fan, that you played Nexus: The Jupiter Incident.  It’s similar to what I’d see for an Eve-Online Action RTS.  If you haven’t played that… well, you should’ve, but that’s a topic for another time.

So the main idea would be to keep all the mechanics that make Eve what it is, but wrap it in a layer of RTS controls.  For the uninitiated, Eve is all about filling a fleet with ships which fill particular roles.  A simplified list is Electronic Warfare (the act of disrupting the enemy’s ability to attack), Support (remotely repairing shield/hull), Tackling (preventing enemies from warping away), Damage (duh), and Command.  Oddly enough, this last is rarely utilized in Eve Online, in favor of other roles, but it adds bonuses to all other ships.  A lot of ships are built assuming a particular role, but can be set up in different fashions to fill different roles.

Now, beyond specific roles, damage in Eve is set up in a peculiar fashion which doesn’t make sense until you view it in the face of large-scale warfare.  Small ships can’t do significant damage against large ships, and it’s hard for large ships to damage small ships.  This has the effect of requiring a very balanced set of ships for a lot of combat engagements.

So now with the background, how does Eve-Online, the Action RTS, work?

First, you pick and build your command ship.  It doesn’t have to be a Command Ship per se, just any ship you’d like to fly.  Big or small.  Then you’d have a budget for your fleet (or a fleet assigned by a campaign/mission).  You would then arrange your fleet in to particular groups, assign roles, and setup some basic AI controls for them to follow on their own.  Then you’d head out hunting.  Using the standard gate/system setup from Eve-Online, you’d spread out scouts, who could find the enemy fleet, while the enemy fleet tried to get the drop on you as well.  Missions could be set up so that you had to attack bases, defend bases, escort a ship, or simply destroy an enemy fleet.  Any of the standard tropes.

You would, for the most part, only control your ship, giving orders to individuals only when necessary.  If you choose to align, everyone aligns.  If you warp, they warp.  When combat starts, it would be structured effectively like actual Eve-Online combat.  You’d assign a primary and secondary target, you’d distribute “points” (what Eve pilots call it when a tackler prevents a ship from warping), focus your EWar on particular enemy targets.  And then just watch the fireworks until it’s done or you run.  There would be room for micro management if you really wanted, but for the actual experience, you should really just give very basic and open orders concerning particular enemy or friendly ships.

Ultimately, it would be the majority of the Eve-Online combat experience, without the overhead of the actual MMO, or the downtime associated with mining, making money, or trade.  You could even have multiplayer with multiple people controlling multiple fleets.  Different sized space areas could result in more or less cat and mouse.  Heck, you could even build co-op in to it, where you command different parts of a fleet.  It would draw a whole new audience to the Eve-Online system.  Hell, if this game were ever made, CCP could actually tie it in to the MMO in some fashion, as they are apparently doing with their tie-in FPS Dust 514.

Above and beyond the basic game, there’s still a lot of room to create a complex and engaging strategy game.  Most of the gameplay from Eve-Online could be brought in.  Scanning, hunting, even salvage and loot.  You could add a layer for AI pilots for particular ships, who gain experience, or who are better at some tasks.  Keeping them alive lets you grow your fleet to be more deadly.  You could even incorporate podding.

All in all, a game I’d love to play.

I was having a conversation about Darksiders with some coworkers over lunch the other day.  I’ve been enjoying the game, it being a seamless blend of Zelda, Metroid Prime, and God of War, despite the obvious cribs from those games.  One person though, having never played a Zelda or Metroid Prime game, wasn’t enjoying it at all.

She wasn’t enjoying it, because she was being exposed to the dungeon gameplay for the first time.  Since the Zelda and Metroid Prime games are based on a lot of backtracking and puzzle solving, I am well versed in the experience, having formed all the patterns necessary to recognize what is often required to solve a given environmental puzzle.

But since she hadn’t formed those patterns, lets break down what she was actually faced with.

1.  The player enters an area, and the path splits in multiple directions.

2.  The player picks a direction arbitrary.

3.  The player eventually comes to a dead end, either blocked by a locked door, or a puzzle which may require something from outside the room to complete.

Now, this is where things break down.  Coming to a dead end is not all that common in modern games.  In general, games are often built to continue funneling the player towards the goal, with as little issue as possible.  Or, in the case of a more open world game, they are often built to let you know exactly where the next step is.  If we’re talking environmental puzzles, most of the modern games like God of War give you everything you need to solve the puzzle in the room itself.

So now the player is stuck backtracking aimlessly, not knowing where to go, and not knowing what is needed to solve a puzzle.

The difference, of course, is that when I get to a place where I can’t progress, and recognize the obstacle, I know implicitly due to previous games, that elsewhere in the dungeon is the upgrade I need to deal with it.

Contrast this with not having that knowledge.  The ice barriers alone would frustrate me.  I would likely spend a chunk of time using all the moves I currently have against it, as the natural thing would be to assume there’s a way to break it in my currently available move set.

Modern games often take steps to make sure you don’t encounter a puzzle before you have the tools to solve it.  This is likely a good step forward for accessibility, but it does tie the hands of developers with respect to how much complexity you can put in to dungeon design.

It raises the question though, if new gamers don’t fare well with old dungeon design, then are most Nintendo gamers who enjoy modern Zelda/Metroid games people who’ve been playing them for 20 years exclusively?

Zen mode allows you to simply play the game, forever, without any chance of losing.  You accrue points.  You can achieve trophies.  But with no risk of failure.  Conventional game design wisdom would argue that a game without an end condition like that wouldn’t be of any lasting value, but I’m quite sure I’ve spent more time playing Zen Chuzzle than I have any other mode.  Part of this is the sheer joy of playing the game.  It looks and sounds great, and it is simply entertaining just to pop chuzzles.

I think what we can take away from this is that with enough polish, you can shrug off a lot of the conventional weight of game design.