Another one bites the dust...

Some of you might have read a week or so ago about Guillermo del Toro's game Insane being cancelled after all players got was a teaser shown at the Spike TV Video Game Awards, this reminded me of another cancelled game by an acclaimed film director Steven Spielberg titled LMNO.  What is the connection with film directors attempting to create a story driven video game and ultimately the games never seeing the light of day?  To be fair Spielberg did have his hands in another game that did release and is a nice little surprise for anyone who owns a Nintendo Wii, Bloom Blox give it a shot but one will see there is no story being told but merely a mix of Tetris, Duck Hunt, and a version of Jenga in which the players goal is to knock the tower down, fun but not the story driven games both of these directors would have hoped to be their debut into the gaming median.



Above is a target video of what Spielberg was hoping to achieve with LMNO, the player is in control of a character who is transporting an escaped alien in search of a way to take them home (ET with more action) but the main fault this video demonstrates is Spielberg wanting too much control over the player perspective. Assuming this game was meant to be in the first person as the video shows what actions would the player carry out?  The player looks at a flower, pushes a button to interact with it pushing it towards their alien companion and then the simple punch in the face of an enemy.  What?  That's it?  The player pushes two buttons, everything else in this is Spielberg wanting too much control, controls where the player is looking, now will the player will out the window to see that government shady van coming?  Possibly, with the ride visual and audio ques it can be done but watching their companion flipping and going along the lights of this diner is ultimately unrealistic unless Spielberg controls where they are looking.




Go ahead and check out this trailer for the upcoming moving The Prototype which inspired today's post, it revolves around the design of a robotic droid by the military that malfunctions and ultimately escapes its holding facility, just like the designers in this film they are learning like Spielberg and del Toro that you can not create what you don't understand.  Designing games is about giving up an amount of control, you can craft a beautiful story but in comparison to writing a film every action sequence must translate to a player with a controller in their hand, a designer simply gives them puzzle pieces to interact with the world in hopefully the way the designer intended and if not hopefully in a way that the player enjoys.  Check out Bloom Blox while you are it as well and see Spielberg cater his ideas to pure fun instead of attempting to direct the actions of the player to tell a crafted story.

Sleeping Dogs: Same old, same old.

Alright well this is now a day late, that will give you an idea how much deep I have gone into Sleeping Dogs and all I can say is that the combat is satisfying, now deep would be a stretch.  If it wasn't for the games long play time (which believe me I am not complaining) the combat would be praised much more but right now it boils down to being a little repetitive yet still a lot of fun.  The combat suffers from the familiar problem of lets have the player be surrounded by enemies but lets only have one enemy other than the one the player is engaging attack.  I understand they do this to avoid frustration and a crazy high difficulty level but if you give the player the ability to counter with such devastatingly brutal attacks such as breaking an enemies leg then why not send multiple attacking enemies at the player?  Oh I know why, because the attack combo "leg break" doesn't actually break the enemies let, it does proved an awesome looking attack and animation with a satisfying crunch sound but ultimately it only leaves the enemy dazed for a few moments.  This ultimately is where Sleeping Dogs brutal and awesome looking combat fails in delivering the martial arts combat scene in films.

The main mechanic of Sleeping Dogs is its fighting system, rightfully so it is the most fun and one can definitely see the effort put into it but I have to ask what is wrong with leaving enemies incapacitated instead of having to knock them out or kill them?  What if the leg break combo actually broke an enemies leg and it was left to the pleasures discretion on whether or not they wanted to walk over and finish off that enemy?  Better yet why not get rid of the whole losing points for property destruction as an undercover cop when instead the player could lose points for going that extra mile and beating thugs to death every two seconds.  That is a funny thing I noticed, when you are not on a case file mission you have free rain to do whatever it is you want, I ran around trying to see how many citizens I could jump kick in the face, player choice I get it but last time I checked undercover cops don't do this.  Or maybe just maybe all the crimes of people getting jump kicked in the face is really being committed by undercover cops trying to take down the triads and we just don't know it, somehow I doubt it.  I have enjoyed my time with Sleeping Dogs but players looking for a realistic martial arts or just combat system in general should pass this one up, now if you are looking for just some fun running through and destroying gangsters in Hon Kong then by all means give it a shot.  All in all I much rather have a combat system in which I demobilized several enemies via broken limbs because it is all I can do to defend myself rather than beating up a two out of a time while the other six watch on in amazement.   

Finding Inspiration

One thing that I have noticed when it comes to design and my own design habits is that when learning a new aspect of design or practicing a specific discipline it is easy to burn myself out.  The only way that I have learned to combat this is to have a day of rediscovering what I love about games and why I have chosen a career in this industry, just take a day to play something new, something you love, or just something you were looking forward to but for some reason might have not gotten the chance to play.  Today I will be playing Sleeping Dogs, now I am usually not a fan of open world games, the last one I really played consistently was Dead Island but that  period of enjoyment only lasted a couple of days, there are only so many ways you can kill zombies with a machete.  Sleeping Dogs does look to bring something new to the table, and something that lots of gamers have been asking for, decent martial arts combat.

Martial arts combat in games is something that gamers have been wanting to see done since they first got their hands on Jade Empire for the original aspect or for some since they first played the Kung Fu mod for Max Payne on PC and Sleeping Dogs right now at least looks like it is filling that role.  With the release of The Raid:  Redemption one of if not the best martial arts film to be released in the last decade I have been craving quick brutal combat against multiple enemies that ultimately would just make me feel like a bad ass by the time it is all said and done.  I hope Sleeping Dogs provides what I am looking for, give this gameplay trailer a once over and while you are at it do yourself a favor by checking out this trailer for The Raid:  Redemption.  I will be back later on in the day with my hands on impressions from roaming around the streets of Hon Kong putting a beating on thugs. 

Who wants to go exploring?

If someone were to bust in and ask you that question what would you answer be?  Maybe you would have questions for them, where?  Well if they answered the question of where you wouldn't really be exploring, how about when?  If they were able to answer that question I am sure they would have knocked before busting in, they would probably make an appointment or schedule this adventure.  Where is the fun in that?  The best adventures start with an intriguingly unexplainable event that leads to the discovery of a new space, area, or what most gamers are familiar with a new world.  This kind of exploration is something that for the longest time was only available in role playing games and even then in a limited form of finding new towns and shops full of people to talk, the beautiful vistas players would come across when traveling between in areas but thankfully gaming has come so far that indie developers are taking these basic concepts of discovery and spacial mechanics to new heights.  Leading the charge of evolving discovery is new comer Giant Sparrow and their first title The Unfinished Swan.

With a beginning similar to the classic Alice in Wonderland instead of following a fidgety white rabbit the player is following a mysterious white swan that has up and walked out of painting, what ensues is an adventure of exploration that cannot be found in other game.  The above picture is indicative of The Unfinished Swans are style but what it doesn't portray is that the whole game world is white and appears to be a blank canvas.  There is no combat, no enemies, pure exploration controlled by the player who has one ability, throwing black balls of paint it gives a feeling that is indescribable, not only does this give the feeling of exploration for every area of the game but it gives a feeling of creation.  You are literally painting the world almost as if you are giving this world life, while throwing paint to show your surroundings there is no telling what you will come across.  There is no warning of what lies behind each and every corner in the game, one of the most fascinating things is how the game handles boundaries as a loose guide for the player. 

Giant Sparrow handles guiding the player by not guiding them but giving them a slight nudge in the right direction, the only color the player will see in this world that isn't pure black and white is a yellowish gold color marking the swans foot prints and other objects the team would like to put emphasis on, perhaps a beautiful statue or other carefully created piece in this beautiful painting.  The most important guide to the player is water, when the player first encounters water it is something that is hard for them to understand, all of a sudden the paint ball they tossed does not splatter and show an are it simply land sin the water and floats.  Visually this is incredible for the sense of discover, the use of simple black balls of paint to uncover this world they are in always keeps the player intrigued as each splat shows part of an object before them but as soon as the first ball the player tosses that doesn't burst they are immediately drawn to why this happened.  The beauty of The Unfinished Swan is that the amount of finished work in this painting all depends on the players play style, the player can choose to take their time and paint every aspect of this game world or just enough to advanced through the world and continue exploring in search of this swan.  The question is when The Unfinished Swan released this fall is how much of this beautiful painting will you finish? 

Check out the latest media here.   

"Perma-death"

I am pretty sure that I am not the only one who dies a little on the inside every time they see any kind of social media update followed by the words "YOLO", the fact that it took a Drake song to make today's youth realize that their life could end at any moment is beyond me but this saying is making its way into video games in an intriguing way.  Thankfully not in the same light, "yolo" defined by Urban Dictionary (I know the most reputable of sources) as "carpe diem for stupid people", pretty good description if you ask me but the appearance this truth of only having one life to live is making in gaming is more of a run and survive from zombies situation.

"Permadeath" short for permanent death is just how it sounds, the player has one life, wish them luck.  This mechanic is not new to games in general, many RPGs and MMOs have featured modes of plays that the basis of play revolves player vs player combat which can result in the loss of a character someone has poured hours upon hours into establishing but what is new is the genres this mechanic is bleeding into.  The mechanic has now moved its way into the FPS genre based on the premise of the possibility of a zombie apocalypse, there have been many zombie games in recent years but none have really given the player a sense of fighting to survive because of allowing the player to continue from a previous save point.  PC players were greeted with this permadeath zombie experience thanks to a mod for ARMA 2 titled Day Z, right now players are playing with one another in a massive world trying to survive by any means necessary.  Players have been robbed by other players in search of "help" or have walked into ambushes set up by other players, this simple mechanic of permadeath has created so many gameplay experience that are not touted features of the mod but instead are gameplay choices made by players affecting other players.  Day Z being a multi player mod has given players freedom to survive as they see fit because of the addition of permadeath, without that mechanic there is no risk, with no risk there is no reward.  There is one up and coming game that takes permadeath in the same situation of a zombie apocalypse but it is crafted around a single player experience. 

ZombiU is as the title implies being released for Nintendo's new console (that's right CNN, it isn't merely a new controller) the Wii U, the game features many mechanics making use of the Wii U's touch controller but what has console gamers excited is it being the first zombie game for a home console to feature the permadeath mechanic.  ZombiU being a single player experience is still a bit of a mystery, developer Ubisoft Montpellier has been rather hush on the story of the single player campaign merely saying that players will see how long they can survive and they have been consistently showing new builds of the same area.  What we do know is that there is some sort of story as in the footage shown the player is communicating with someone, a guide of sorts giving them information on how to approach certain areas, this brings up the question of how much will this "guide" hold the players hand?  The inclusion of permadeath to a single player experience is something that requires delicate balancing, the player must feel the struggle of the situation they are in without getting too frustrated.  The design must focus intensely on the interaction the player has with the enemies and how the enemies react to the player.  Example, do the zombies react to noise?  Sound?  Light?  Movement?  And what is the size of the radius that if those factors take place close to an enemy that they will respond?  These are all questions that can have many answers but I look forward to the games release this fall to see if Ubisoft Montpellier can give players a balanced and fun answer. 

Check out the latest trailer for ZombieU from Gamescom 2012. 

Attention to Detail: It is the little things that count.

"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted."  Albert Einstein.

As a designer this a quote that rings home time and time again, in today's gaming we see a lot of promotion for simply counting things, they say the possibilities are endless or that their are millions of different combinations but when it comes down to it the player is still doing the same action (just millions of times).  I am all about player choice and allowing the player to play as they choose but I would like to see more creativity, not just different tools at the players disposal to kill enemies.

I get it, the Borderlands franchise is a First Person Shooter/Role Playing Game hybrid with tons of customization for the player for both their characters and their weapons but since when did RPGs start giving us item counts?  Which again brings me to another wonderful quote, "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts", attributed to Aristotle.  This is subjective to all games, all depends how big of a hole a missing part leaves. Say weapon customization is completely taken out of the Borderlands franchise and replaced with the player simply finding weapons or gaining weapons through the completion of quests, still a FPS/RPG hybrid? Check.  Then why is the number of weapons combinations touted so highly?  Simple, feature touting, the bigger the number the better it sounds.  Now what happens if we make a bigger hole?  Something that is a direct visual impact. 

The above picture is from the latest (that we know of) build of Halo 4s multi player map Warhouse, what do you notice first?  Yes, I hear you it looks way to pretty to be part of the Halo franchise but more importantly what do you feel when you this picture?  Where does the map take place?  Wherever Warhouse is located it looks baron, possibly abandoned, there is a very eerie feeling to this battleground.  It wasn't always like that though, there was a time when it resembled the bright vibrant Halo that most are familiar with. 

Ah there it is, does that look familiar to you now?  Did you know that was a mech in the center without being able to give it a good once over with some hands on time playing the game?  Probably not, above we have what looks like some sort of dormant tool of war and below we have a bright vibrant functioning command center with a mech that it appears you can jump in and ride right out of the building.  This visual story telling, the atmosphere and the feelings they are trying to impose on the player in a multi player map of all places is what should be touted, what should be talked about and ultimately what should be counted but as Einstein said everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.  

Hey! I just met you! And this is...

     Crazy!  Alright now that the brief sing-a-long is over if any of you readers were among the few patiently or not so patiently awaiting the release of some crucial details about the multi player of Halo 4 you might be feeling a little crazy today, or possibly thinking that maybe the guys and gals over at 343 Industries have gone a little crazy.  It is okay, I am here to explain not only what these new "Specializations" mean but also tomorrow how it is another element to immerse the player in their Spartan.  Be ready for a lot of information, some that might be upsetting but it is okay there is reason to the madness...at least I can see one.

     That right there ladies and gents is the Halo 4 LE coming in at a $100, fancy I know but why should most people care about it? Yes it will have a making of the new Halo web series Forward Unto Dawn, it has avatar props, it has content to extend the fiction of the game, but wait, you gain access to 6 Specializations at launch that regular players with the standard edition will not have access till until time releases.  Locked content on the disc?  Doesn't sound very consumer friendly and neither does a group people having access to this locked content right out of the box or do they?  Theses Specializations are designed to be "end game" content, players are required to reach the max rank (which 343 has been quoted as saying 50, does this mean a 1-50 ranking system like the good old days? No clue.) and then they will be given the chance to choose their desired Specialization which unlocks another ten ranks the player must achieve to receive the armor modification accompanied with the desired Specialization.  Wait, armor modifications?  You heard correctly, Halo 4 does feature unlockable armor modifications (one for each Specialization, a total of 8 has been confirmed as of right now). 

Time for a quick and dirty rundown of all 8 Specializations that we know of and what this possibly means for the future of Halo multi player.

                                   

Wetworks:  Available to all players at launch.

• Less visible to players using the Promethean Vision Armor Ability. 
• Dampens the noise made while sprinting. 
• Allows the player to perform assassinations faster. 

  

Pioneer:  Available to all players at launch. 

• Player gains XP faster. 
• XP boost is only in affect while the modification is equipped, other fail-safes have been put in place to stop exploits. 

Engineer:  LE only at launch. 

• Alerted of Ordinance Drops via their HUD before other players, they will no what weapons and where on the map they are dropping.
• When all the Ordinance Drops are happening at a timed event, not only will you know what weapons are dropping but you will have a waypoint for the closest weapon. 

Tracker: LE only at launch. 

• When the player calls in an Ordinance Drop they have the ability to have a "re-roll" if they don't like the three items that come. One time use per drop.

Rogue: LE only at launch, details on its armor mod are not clear as of yet. 

• The player will not "necessarily" be unzoomed when being shot looking down scope.
• As you are taking fire you reticle will be "more" stable. 
• Also improves hip fire accuracy. 

Stalker: LE only at launch. 

• Places a marker on your screen over the head of the last enemy that killed you. 
• No confirmation on how long the icon stays up. 
• No information on what sort of icon it is, is it a waypoint that gives distance and elevation? We don't know just yet. 

Pathfinder: LE only at launch.

• Reduces cool-down time vehicle weapon overheating.
• Allows you to move faster while walking with a turret. 
• Overall makes-turret use a bit more powerful. 

Operator: LE only at launch. 

• Gives you "a bit" of resistance to EMP pulses against a vehicle you are in. 
• Vehicles shot by plasma pistols will "not necessarily" be stopped in their tracks when using this mod. 
• More assist and points for driving. 
• Cannot be stacked, no whole teams taking this mod and having indestructible vehicles. 

Stay tuned for tomorrows post on a breakdown of what these Specializations mean in the grand scheme of things when it comes to the immersion of you the player in these new spiffy armor customizations and finally a look at how this added immersion is not only making changes in how players will feel more connected to their Spartan but also the sandboxes you will get to play in on November 6th.