While I have certainly been devoting a lot of time to Persona 4 lately (more than 70 hours so far), I have also been spending quite a bit of time playing The World Ends With You, Square-Enix's unusual RPG for the Nintendo DS. The game is a masterpiece. I am almost staggered by how well it blends creativity, style, ambition, excellent gameplay, and a great story. Honestly, I can't believe me it took me this long to give the game a try. Still, if I am going to actually critique the game, rather than just praise it shamelessly, I may as well start by talking about its distinctive combat system.
The most important thing to say about WEWY's battle system is that action occurs on both screens of the DS simultaneously. The main character, Neku, fights on the bottom screen using touch controls, and his partner fights on the top screen using button controls. The two characters remain separate on their different screen for the entire battle, even though they are fighting the same enemies. What is more, the battle occurs in real time for both screens, so enemies can attack both of the characters you are controlling at once and you must fight back with both characters at the same time. Needless to say, actually fighting effectively with both characters at once is very difficult. Actually, I find it totally impossible, and usually end up doing badly whenever I try. The great triumph of this battle system, though, is that you don't really need to do the impossible in order to do well and have fun.
The battle system's greatest strength lies in the "light puck", a ball of glowing light that wanders up and down between the two screens during a battle. While a character has the light puck, that character's attacks are strengthened, and when they hit with a "combo finisher" the light puck moves on to the other character. By keeping the light puck moving between characters with a constant string of successful combo finishers, the light puck's power increases, further magnifying its benefits for whoever is carrying it. Because of this system, the player gains more benefit for simply paying attention to whoever has the light puck than trying to pay attention to both screen at all times. The light puck's glowing beacon turns the game's chaotic battles into something ordered and coherent, and sets a fun, fast-paced rhythm to the battle system that adds a lot to the game.
As a side-note, I should also mention that the game offers a few options regarding automating the character on the top screen, if you really don't want to manage the battle, but I don't use that system so I can't really comment. It is a nice touch, though.
Controlling the main hero on the bottom screen is probably the other great highlight of this game's battle system. Other than a single button used to toggle some of your options, the lower screen is entirely controlled via touch controls, and is probably one of the most intuitive and widely varied versions of such a control scheme that I have ever experienced. You can use a wide variety of simple motions such as touching, slashing, pressing, scratching, and dragging in order to execute a wide variety of commands determined by your equipped "Psych Pins", and the vast majority of these controls are amazingly responsive and reliable. As a whole, the main hero is highly customizable, easy to control, and can easily take part in mobile, fast paced combat against the enemies of the bottom screen with only a relatively small learning curve. Most importantly, the kinds of decisions you need to make while controlling the main hero are fairly simple and quick (mostly involving what pin to attack with or where to move), so it is fairly easy to just pick an attack, execute it quickly, and pass the light puck on to the hero's partner.
Unfortunately, the controls for each of the hero's three different partners are not as easy and fun as the bottom screen touch controls. You control the top screen character with either the four directional buttons or the four face buttons, with different combinations of button presses corresponding to different defensive moves and attacks. This is not bad in theory, but as a whole I find these controls to be terribly clunky and difficult to use. The biggest problem is that you can't see your attack options until you start attacking since they are random, but if you actually pause longer than a second the attack is canceled automatically, and any enemy attack will also cancel your attack, forcing you to start over. What is more, the top screen characters can't move, so they have to rely on precise timing of defensive moves in order to dodge any attacks, and you can't use most of these defensive moves while attacking (and can't defend yourself if you are looking at the other screen). Finally, these clunky battle controls are combined with small minigames unique to each character, so that you have to choose your attacks carefully if you want to complete the minigames and acquire "fusion stars" needed to active the game's powerful fusion attacks. As such, they require you to slow down and think about your moves which would mess up some of the rhythm of the battle system even without the difficult controls. All told, trying to actually earn a fusion star or two with this control scheme is a lot like trying to wrestle a slimy eel, so I mostly end up just button mashing when the light puck drifts to the top screen.
Mercifully, the top screen controls are amazingly well suited to button mashing. The randomness of the top screen controls sabotages any attempt to precisely control the upper character, but it also means that you always have a chance of earning fusion stars even if you just point the character towards an enemy and hit the same button over and over. What is more, the characters in this game can take a surprising amount of punishment, so being unable to dodge attacks is not a severe problem. As long as you don't actually try to do anything too complicated or precise, the upper screen controls actually work quite well. It is certainly a major flaw of the game that it is easier to just ignore a fairly major element of the combat system, though. The game would probably have been better off if the upper screen side of the battle was more focused on actually fighting, rather than running a minigame in order to earn fusion stars.
Still, even with that flaw the game's battle system is a lot of fun. The fact that is works so well even though it is a remarkable departure from anything seen before is very impressive. With a bit more fine tuning, it could have been perfect.
Showing posts with label Controls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Controls. Show all posts
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Armored Core For Answer: Learning the Game
One of the new games I got as a Christmas present to accompany my brother and I's new Xbox 360 was Armored Core For Answer, a mech action game. This is the first game in that series that I have ever owned, and only the second I have ever played for more than a moment (the previous one being Armored Core 2 Another Age). I was a bit nervous about the game, really, since I disliked the controls and clunkiness of Armored Core 2, but after getting used to For Answer, I am really beginning to like it. However, my original concerns were not completely without merit, since it has taken me several hours with the game to even begin to feel like I have a grasp on it, and there are still things that occasionally crop up and give me difficulties. This game has an awful learning curve.
Controlling your NEXT (the powerful humanoid war machines in the game) can be an incredibly daunting task at first. I suppose someone more familiar with FPS games would be a bit more comfortable with the movement/aiming/turning controls, but added on top of that is the unusual combination of the jump/flight button and the boost button, so that the same button can either make you move over the ground more quickly than usual or make you fly into the air, which takes some practice to master. The real trick, though, is adapting to managing the slow turn speed, the lack of a reliable lock-on function, the easily misled camera, and the differing walking, boosting, flying, and quick boosting speeds in order to use a relatively clunky machine to fight incredibly high speed battles. Enemy NEXT units are important foes, and they can move incredibly fast. Unless you can move just a fast and still retain a high degree of control, the game can be brutally difficult and frustrating. This difficulty made earlier Armored Core games fairly unapproachable for me, and it took me hours to really get the hang of this one, even though I think it is a bit easier to manage the NEXTs of For Answer than the Armored Cores of older games.
The reason that the game controls have such a high learning curve is because the game designers probably wanted to give the player a number of tactical options and wanted to make the experience seem a bit more realistic, but this method does have downsides. I mean, having a difference between a NEXT's walking speed and ground-boosting speed creates an important choice for the sake of walking in order to resupply energy more quickly or boosting in order to move more quickly and avoid shots, but since walking is suicidally slow, you pretty much need to be at least boosting at all times in order to get anywhere and avoid fire. This means that, in anything other than the limited "simple" control set-up, you pretty much need to be holding down the boost button at all times, which seems a bit redundant, creates the annoying dual role of the boost/flight button, and gets in the way of using my index finger to switch my active left weapon. The need to switch between arm weapons and shoulder weapons, and the associated time delay, seems to be another oddity of the game controls. Other features, like the ability to disengage lock-on by depressing the left control stick or the ability to purge weapons by hitting three buttons at the same time, just seem more like traps designed to occasionally interfere with the player than useful control options. Trying to add more features and controls than the console's controller can actually easily support is never a good idea.
Beyond the learning curve of the combat control scheme, there is also a steep learning curve built into the game's NEXT customization system. This system is an incredibly important part of the game, and by its nature is going to have some kind of learning curve, but the game designers really didn't do anything at all to address that issue. Most importantly, my eternal nemesis of poor documentation has risen its head again... The game really doesn't even try to explain what the dozens and dozens of stats given to the weapons and parts in the game are for. Sure, some of them are reasonably obvious, like "Blast Radius" or "Ballistic Defense", but countless others can take a bit of work and effort to figure out. Fortunately, the game designers implemented a color coded part comparison system so you at least know if increasing a number is good or bad, since without that it would have been impossible for me to figure out as much as I have. I still don't have a clue what the "Parallel Processing" stat does, though. Still, even though I am beginning to understand what each of the individual stats means, I don't really get how they all add together to affect gameplay.
For example, look at the Stabilizer customization option. You can add all kinds of stabilizer parts to adjust the stability of your NEXT along with two different axes, which also adds to your Control Calibration stat, but I don't really know how these attributes affect actual battles. It seems like it should be important, given that affixing stabilizers might be even more complicated than assembling the body of a NEXT, but I don't have a clue what having a top-heavy mech or one with a heavier right side than left side even does. Does it affect the NEXT's mobility? Does it throw your aim off? I don't know, and I have even less of an idea what Control Calibration does. The manual seems to imply that you might want to adjust stability to something other than a zero-zero center of balance, but it doesn't say why you might want to, which defeats the entire purpose. I would say that it is nice that they at least gave you the choice to automatically set stabilizers, but that function doesn't ask for input and can't even figure out how to get the NEXT to a zero-zero center of balance, so it seems useless. The whole thing presents itself as being incredibly important, and it can take a lot of time to get a NEXT tuned "right" (which must be redone every time you configure a new set of weapons or parts), but I really don't know why I am doing it, which makes it a chore rather than something interesting. At least it occasionally helps add to the aesthetics of the NEXT...
Finally, even the plot of the game could use a bit more explanation. A glossary or something would be nice, since the game likes throwing out terms like "Lynx", "AMS compatibility", and the like with surprising frequency, but it never really explains them. Even more annoyingly, the only place where game describes some of the important factions that are central to the plot in detail is in a burst of text that appears if a mission takes an unusual amount of time to load, and those fade too quickly to read. I know there is quite a bit of world detail and plot in this game, but the game doesn't do much to really present it to the player properly.
Overall, this game really doesn't do anything to make it approachable to new players, even though there is a very sophisticated and fun game behind the high learning curve. It really is a shame.
Controlling your NEXT (the powerful humanoid war machines in the game) can be an incredibly daunting task at first. I suppose someone more familiar with FPS games would be a bit more comfortable with the movement/aiming/turning controls, but added on top of that is the unusual combination of the jump/flight button and the boost button, so that the same button can either make you move over the ground more quickly than usual or make you fly into the air, which takes some practice to master. The real trick, though, is adapting to managing the slow turn speed, the lack of a reliable lock-on function, the easily misled camera, and the differing walking, boosting, flying, and quick boosting speeds in order to use a relatively clunky machine to fight incredibly high speed battles. Enemy NEXT units are important foes, and they can move incredibly fast. Unless you can move just a fast and still retain a high degree of control, the game can be brutally difficult and frustrating. This difficulty made earlier Armored Core games fairly unapproachable for me, and it took me hours to really get the hang of this one, even though I think it is a bit easier to manage the NEXTs of For Answer than the Armored Cores of older games.
The reason that the game controls have such a high learning curve is because the game designers probably wanted to give the player a number of tactical options and wanted to make the experience seem a bit more realistic, but this method does have downsides. I mean, having a difference between a NEXT's walking speed and ground-boosting speed creates an important choice for the sake of walking in order to resupply energy more quickly or boosting in order to move more quickly and avoid shots, but since walking is suicidally slow, you pretty much need to be at least boosting at all times in order to get anywhere and avoid fire. This means that, in anything other than the limited "simple" control set-up, you pretty much need to be holding down the boost button at all times, which seems a bit redundant, creates the annoying dual role of the boost/flight button, and gets in the way of using my index finger to switch my active left weapon. The need to switch between arm weapons and shoulder weapons, and the associated time delay, seems to be another oddity of the game controls. Other features, like the ability to disengage lock-on by depressing the left control stick or the ability to purge weapons by hitting three buttons at the same time, just seem more like traps designed to occasionally interfere with the player than useful control options. Trying to add more features and controls than the console's controller can actually easily support is never a good idea.
Beyond the learning curve of the combat control scheme, there is also a steep learning curve built into the game's NEXT customization system. This system is an incredibly important part of the game, and by its nature is going to have some kind of learning curve, but the game designers really didn't do anything at all to address that issue. Most importantly, my eternal nemesis of poor documentation has risen its head again... The game really doesn't even try to explain what the dozens and dozens of stats given to the weapons and parts in the game are for. Sure, some of them are reasonably obvious, like "Blast Radius" or "Ballistic Defense", but countless others can take a bit of work and effort to figure out. Fortunately, the game designers implemented a color coded part comparison system so you at least know if increasing a number is good or bad, since without that it would have been impossible for me to figure out as much as I have. I still don't have a clue what the "Parallel Processing" stat does, though. Still, even though I am beginning to understand what each of the individual stats means, I don't really get how they all add together to affect gameplay.
For example, look at the Stabilizer customization option. You can add all kinds of stabilizer parts to adjust the stability of your NEXT along with two different axes, which also adds to your Control Calibration stat, but I don't really know how these attributes affect actual battles. It seems like it should be important, given that affixing stabilizers might be even more complicated than assembling the body of a NEXT, but I don't have a clue what having a top-heavy mech or one with a heavier right side than left side even does. Does it affect the NEXT's mobility? Does it throw your aim off? I don't know, and I have even less of an idea what Control Calibration does. The manual seems to imply that you might want to adjust stability to something other than a zero-zero center of balance, but it doesn't say why you might want to, which defeats the entire purpose. I would say that it is nice that they at least gave you the choice to automatically set stabilizers, but that function doesn't ask for input and can't even figure out how to get the NEXT to a zero-zero center of balance, so it seems useless. The whole thing presents itself as being incredibly important, and it can take a lot of time to get a NEXT tuned "right" (which must be redone every time you configure a new set of weapons or parts), but I really don't know why I am doing it, which makes it a chore rather than something interesting. At least it occasionally helps add to the aesthetics of the NEXT...
Finally, even the plot of the game could use a bit more explanation. A glossary or something would be nice, since the game likes throwing out terms like "Lynx", "AMS compatibility", and the like with surprising frequency, but it never really explains them. Even more annoyingly, the only place where game describes some of the important factions that are central to the plot in detail is in a burst of text that appears if a mission takes an unusual amount of time to load, and those fade too quickly to read. I know there is quite a bit of world detail and plot in this game, but the game doesn't do much to really present it to the player properly.
Overall, this game really doesn't do anything to make it approachable to new players, even though there is a very sophisticated and fun game behind the high learning curve. It really is a shame.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Sin and Punishment
I finally got around to downloading Sin and Punishment onto my Wii's Virtual Console yesterday. I have been curious about this game for a while now, but I don't think I was really prepared for what I was getting into. Certainly, I was not expecting the game to be so short. I downloaded the game yesterday and played through it for an hour or so, and restarted this morning (because I wanted another chance to make sense of the story) only to find that my original stopping point was more than halfway through the game, and I beat the game on my second session of playing it today. Normally I do not really mind short games, but in this case it seemed incredibly unsatisfying.
I suppose a large part of reason I dislike the length of this game is because it really limits what would otherwise be a really interesting story. Sin and Punishment's story is pretty complicated, involving an evil military force, an enigmatic "savior" with twisted schemes, rampaging monsters, a growing romance between the two main characters, and the monstrous power of the "blood of Achi" that links all of these together. However, this entire complex story is thrown at the player in a game that only takes two hours or so to beat, and suffers for it. The game doesn't even really have any kind of proper exposition, and the plot starts with the complete destruction of the rebel group the heroes are part of at the hands of the "Volunteer Army", a force that is hunting down a monster leading another group of monsters (a monster that seems to be a former lover of the Army's leader before she transformed into a dog thing), before the heroes decide to go steal a military transport for some unexplained reason. Also, the entire first stage of the game seems to be a dream sequence. The game progresses at such a rapid pace that the leader of the Army was explaining that he received his power from Achi before I even realized that this "Achi" person was the girl who was following the main characters around the whole time (I was around a third of the way through the game at this point). The ending of the game might be even more truncated than the beginning, since it feels like it suddenly transitions directly from a normal stage (which is pretty much just running through some fields) directly into the epic final battle (against some kind of evil Earth?), leaving a lot of the plot completely unresolved. There is simply too much going on in too short of a game. In addition, the game isn't really helped any by the often-incomprehensible dialog (I think this may just be poor sound quality on the voice-acting) and lack of English subtitles (seriously, every game with voice-acted cut-scenes needs subtitles).
Complaints about the story and length aside, this game is pretty good. It combines a classic rail-shooter with a free-moving character to a surprising degree of success. As the stage scrolls automatically, you can run from side to side or jump while freely targeting anything on the screen. The controls are a bit unintuitive (I had to switch from the default controls to an alternative just to keep myself from jumping when I meant to step right), and far too often the movement of both the character and the targeting cursor seems sluggish, but for the most part it works well, and a lot of my problems probably stem from the fact that the controls were designed with the N64 controller in mind, not the Wii Classic Controller. One thing that is certainly a problem, though, is the lock-on firing mode. In that mode, it can sometimes be pretty hard to actually lock onto a target, and once you do the slightest touch of the control stick will break the lock, pretty much defeating the point of having a lock-on mode (and what is more, some sources say that the lock-on mode does less damage than the free-shooting mode). Also, it would have been nice to have some visual indication of whether or not an enemy is in range of the sword attack.
Still, controls aside, I am amazed at how well the game designers at Treasure were able to use the basic system to provide so many different game experiences. The most common and basic type of area is the classic rail-shooter, where you are either running forward or standing still while there are a lot of enemies to shoot in front of you (in this case, running back and forth is used to dodge attacks and obstacles). In some cases, such as parts of the training mode or the "rescue Achi" boss battle, the game practically becomes a "rail-platformer", in which you have to quickly move to dodge pillars and jump to climb walls and clear chasms. At other times, all of the enemies move into the same 2D plane that the hero is running around in, and the game begins to feel more like a conventional 2D game (other than the cursor and the fact that enemies appear in the background and foreground). I do think that the game is at its best while the player is moving forward automatically as a rail-shooter, rather than as a 2D game, though, and I really question the decision to make the entire last level in the 2D style.
Overall, I would say that Sin and Punishment is a game that needed to have slightly more refined controls and quite a bit more length to help flesh out the story and give more time to expand on the different possibilities the game had to offer. I would have loved to play through a full level as "Monster Saki"...
I suppose a large part of reason I dislike the length of this game is because it really limits what would otherwise be a really interesting story. Sin and Punishment's story is pretty complicated, involving an evil military force, an enigmatic "savior" with twisted schemes, rampaging monsters, a growing romance between the two main characters, and the monstrous power of the "blood of Achi" that links all of these together. However, this entire complex story is thrown at the player in a game that only takes two hours or so to beat, and suffers for it. The game doesn't even really have any kind of proper exposition, and the plot starts with the complete destruction of the rebel group the heroes are part of at the hands of the "Volunteer Army", a force that is hunting down a monster leading another group of monsters (a monster that seems to be a former lover of the Army's leader before she transformed into a dog thing), before the heroes decide to go steal a military transport for some unexplained reason. Also, the entire first stage of the game seems to be a dream sequence. The game progresses at such a rapid pace that the leader of the Army was explaining that he received his power from Achi before I even realized that this "Achi" person was the girl who was following the main characters around the whole time (I was around a third of the way through the game at this point). The ending of the game might be even more truncated than the beginning, since it feels like it suddenly transitions directly from a normal stage (which is pretty much just running through some fields) directly into the epic final battle (against some kind of evil Earth?), leaving a lot of the plot completely unresolved. There is simply too much going on in too short of a game. In addition, the game isn't really helped any by the often-incomprehensible dialog (I think this may just be poor sound quality on the voice-acting) and lack of English subtitles (seriously, every game with voice-acted cut-scenes needs subtitles).
Complaints about the story and length aside, this game is pretty good. It combines a classic rail-shooter with a free-moving character to a surprising degree of success. As the stage scrolls automatically, you can run from side to side or jump while freely targeting anything on the screen. The controls are a bit unintuitive (I had to switch from the default controls to an alternative just to keep myself from jumping when I meant to step right), and far too often the movement of both the character and the targeting cursor seems sluggish, but for the most part it works well, and a lot of my problems probably stem from the fact that the controls were designed with the N64 controller in mind, not the Wii Classic Controller. One thing that is certainly a problem, though, is the lock-on firing mode. In that mode, it can sometimes be pretty hard to actually lock onto a target, and once you do the slightest touch of the control stick will break the lock, pretty much defeating the point of having a lock-on mode (and what is more, some sources say that the lock-on mode does less damage than the free-shooting mode). Also, it would have been nice to have some visual indication of whether or not an enemy is in range of the sword attack.
Still, controls aside, I am amazed at how well the game designers at Treasure were able to use the basic system to provide so many different game experiences. The most common and basic type of area is the classic rail-shooter, where you are either running forward or standing still while there are a lot of enemies to shoot in front of you (in this case, running back and forth is used to dodge attacks and obstacles). In some cases, such as parts of the training mode or the "rescue Achi" boss battle, the game practically becomes a "rail-platformer", in which you have to quickly move to dodge pillars and jump to climb walls and clear chasms. At other times, all of the enemies move into the same 2D plane that the hero is running around in, and the game begins to feel more like a conventional 2D game (other than the cursor and the fact that enemies appear in the background and foreground). I do think that the game is at its best while the player is moving forward automatically as a rail-shooter, rather than as a 2D game, though, and I really question the decision to make the entire last level in the 2D style.
Overall, I would say that Sin and Punishment is a game that needed to have slightly more refined controls and quite a bit more length to help flesh out the story and give more time to expand on the different possibilities the game had to offer. I would have loved to play through a full level as "Monster Saki"...
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Kingdom Hearts II: Game Controls
I have to say that I have ambivalent feelings towards Kingdom Hearts II's control scheme. On one hand, the controls are clean and responsive; I rarely encounter problems making Sora do what I want him to do, even in the midst of fast-paced boss battles. On the other hand, trying to execute any command outside of a limited set of commonly used commands has a tendency to get me killed.
I really like the controls for basic combo attacks and the movement abilities. With just the X, square, and circle buttons (alongside the control stick of course), it is possible to pull off amazing and flashy feats. The game benefits a lot from the context sensitive uses of the square button in particular. It can be used to cancel a ground combo in order to execute special attacks, to perform various special kinds of movement while running and jumping, and to recover from knock-back with a counter-attack (as opposed to a simple recover with the circle button). While it doesn't fall into any kind of clean category, having a specific button to perform so many miscellaneous functions works really well.
I also generally like the use of the triangle button as a dedicated Reaction command button. While I sometimes don't like the particular implementation of Reaction commands in Kingdom Hearts II, I love the concept. As seen in boss battles like Shadow Stalker/Dark Thorn and Luxord, it can add a lot to the game's design space when coming up with imaginative battles and spectacular actions. However, one of its best features is that Reaction commands are used to talk to people and open chests, which eliminates any overlap between those common functions and the game's basic movement/combat controls.
The problematic elements of Kingdom Hearts II's interface (which it inherited from its predecessor) are all found in the command menu. While the command menu gives gives the player access to numerous commands, such as magic spells, items, limit attacks, and special transformations, the interface is riddled with just as many problems:
1) Since the X button is techincally the button that executes the selected menu command, once the player moves the cursor off the Attack command to select something else, the player can no longer make basic attacks until he selects another command or manually resets it.
2) Selection in the command menu is controlled with the direction pad, which means that the player has to take his thumb off of the left analog stick (which controls player movement) in order to manipulate it.
3) The player has to turn his attention away from the game's action in order to manipulate the menu, without getting the chance to pause the action.
All together, this means that the player is helpless while selecting anything from the command menu. In a game where Sora can go from full health to dead in the blink off an eye against a tough enemy, even the second or two needed to select something in the command menu can mean the difference between victory and defeat. I know that I have certainly died nearly every time I had tried to heal myself from critical using a potion from the command menu. Fortunately, the command menu isn't completely terrible; it is laid out in such a way that extremely common commands such as limit are in very quick to access to locations on the menu. However, it is useless for any command that needs to be executed commonly or in a hurry.
To get around this problem, the player can set four magic spells and/or items to the L1 hot-key menu. By holding down L1 and pressing the face button a spell is assigned to, that spell can be used with the responsiveness that is necessary in Kingdom Hearts. Unfortunately, four is only half of what is needed in the game. It means that the player has to give up on using two or more of his spells at any one time. 90% of the game's interface problems could have been solved by creating a second hot-key list keyed to the L2 button, doubling the players number of usable shortcut commands. Allowing the player to make shortcut commands for Limits, Drives, and Summons would have helped a lot too (while there are ways to make those three kinds of command into Reaction commands, that interferes with the the ability of the player to recognize other Reaction commands).
All told, I would recommend to the developers of the Kingdom Hearts series to rethink the implementation of the command menu for the next game in the series. As is, I have taken serious damage or died way too many times while messing around with that menu for my liking. If the options embedded within the command menu could be accessed with the game's usual speed and precision, Kingdom Hearts II's controls would be perfect.
I really like the controls for basic combo attacks and the movement abilities. With just the X, square, and circle buttons (alongside the control stick of course), it is possible to pull off amazing and flashy feats. The game benefits a lot from the context sensitive uses of the square button in particular. It can be used to cancel a ground combo in order to execute special attacks, to perform various special kinds of movement while running and jumping, and to recover from knock-back with a counter-attack (as opposed to a simple recover with the circle button). While it doesn't fall into any kind of clean category, having a specific button to perform so many miscellaneous functions works really well.
I also generally like the use of the triangle button as a dedicated Reaction command button. While I sometimes don't like the particular implementation of Reaction commands in Kingdom Hearts II, I love the concept. As seen in boss battles like Shadow Stalker/Dark Thorn and Luxord, it can add a lot to the game's design space when coming up with imaginative battles and spectacular actions. However, one of its best features is that Reaction commands are used to talk to people and open chests, which eliminates any overlap between those common functions and the game's basic movement/combat controls.
The problematic elements of Kingdom Hearts II's interface (which it inherited from its predecessor) are all found in the command menu. While the command menu gives gives the player access to numerous commands, such as magic spells, items, limit attacks, and special transformations, the interface is riddled with just as many problems:
1) Since the X button is techincally the button that executes the selected menu command, once the player moves the cursor off the Attack command to select something else, the player can no longer make basic attacks until he selects another command or manually resets it.
2) Selection in the command menu is controlled with the direction pad, which means that the player has to take his thumb off of the left analog stick (which controls player movement) in order to manipulate it.
3) The player has to turn his attention away from the game's action in order to manipulate the menu, without getting the chance to pause the action.
All together, this means that the player is helpless while selecting anything from the command menu. In a game where Sora can go from full health to dead in the blink off an eye against a tough enemy, even the second or two needed to select something in the command menu can mean the difference between victory and defeat. I know that I have certainly died nearly every time I had tried to heal myself from critical using a potion from the command menu. Fortunately, the command menu isn't completely terrible; it is laid out in such a way that extremely common commands such as limit are in very quick to access to locations on the menu. However, it is useless for any command that needs to be executed commonly or in a hurry.
To get around this problem, the player can set four magic spells and/or items to the L1 hot-key menu. By holding down L1 and pressing the face button a spell is assigned to, that spell can be used with the responsiveness that is necessary in Kingdom Hearts. Unfortunately, four is only half of what is needed in the game. It means that the player has to give up on using two or more of his spells at any one time. 90% of the game's interface problems could have been solved by creating a second hot-key list keyed to the L2 button, doubling the players number of usable shortcut commands. Allowing the player to make shortcut commands for Limits, Drives, and Summons would have helped a lot too (while there are ways to make those three kinds of command into Reaction commands, that interferes with the the ability of the player to recognize other Reaction commands).
All told, I would recommend to the developers of the Kingdom Hearts series to rethink the implementation of the command menu for the next game in the series. As is, I have taken serious damage or died way too many times while messing around with that menu for my liking. If the options embedded within the command menu could be accessed with the game's usual speed and precision, Kingdom Hearts II's controls would be perfect.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Zone of the Enders, Combat Controls, and Lock-On
Zone of the Enders for the PS2 and its sequel Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner are probably the two best mecha action games yet made. While this is in part due to the game's cool mechs and world, as well as to the incredible production values Konami put into the two games, the ZOE games earned their reputation thanks to their excellent gameplay. The action in the game is extremely fluid and fast-paced, thanks in large part to an excellent control scheme. It is in the area of game control that ZOE and ZOE2 really shine.
The genius of the Zone of the Enders games comes from the context sensitive input. The lion's share of combat options can be performed with just the Left Analog stick and two buttons. Obviously, the left analog stick moves the main mech, Jehuty, around. The real brilliance lies with the square button, which causes Jehuty to both shoot at the enemy at long range and use melee attacks if close to the enemy. Similarly, the R2 button can either cause Jehuty to dash if Jehuty is moving, or enter Burst Mode if Jehuty is standing still. So, with just two buttons and an analog stick, Jehuty can perform high-speed maneuvers and execute fancy melee combos, a dashing slash, a powerful Burst Slash, rapid-fire basic shots, a homing dash shot attack, and the Burst Shot. This gets a lot of mileage out of just a few controls, freeing up other buttons to be used for different things. Most importantly, fighting quickly becomes very intuitive.
At this point, I will draw some comparisons with a few other action games, mecha and otherwise. Most other action games I have seen tend to designate melee attacks and shooting attacks to separate buttons. For example, Gundam vs. Zeta Gundam, a decent, yet flawed, mecha action game for the PS2, uses the Square button for gun attacks and the triangle button for melee attacks at all times. In Gundam vs. Zeta Gundam, each mech has multiple elaborate multi-hit melee combos that can be pulled off by pressing the Triangle button and pressing the Left Analogue stick in certain directions at the same time. However, there are a couple major flaws with this system. First off, it is possible to execute a melee attack even at long ranges, where the attack can't possibly hit and can potentially leave the player vulnerable for several seconds as the attack animation is carried out. Even more problematic though, is that it is really hard to connect with these attack chains. These melee attacks target the area directly in front of the mech, no matter where the enemy is actually standing (which is pretty common for melee attacks in actions games). Because of this, it is very easy to miss a moving enemy, or only catch the enemy with a glancing blow. Being locked on to an enemy doesn't have any effect on melee targeting.
What makes melee combat work for ZOE is that lock-on does matter in melee combat (heck, you need to be locked on to an enemy in order to use melee attacks). This is something that can be seen in other really good 3-D action games, such as the Legend of Zelda and Devil May Cry games. In both series, it is possible to lock on to a single opponent. In that mode in both games, the player character is either always facing the opponent, or always re-orients towards that target the moment before launching an attack. That way, there is little chance of accidentally missing the target, even with melee attacks (unless the enemy can dodge quickly of course). Zone of the Enders takes this one step further. Not only does Jehuty always orient towards it's quarry, it will actually move towards its opponent and home in on it with melee attacks, particularly the Melee Dash Attack.
In short, the brilliance of Zone of the Enders comes from building combat around a lock-on system that reads the distance between the player character and its opponent. At that point, the context-sensitive controls kick in. As the player closes in on a target, the system automatically switches over to close-range combat mode and starts to judge the distance between the player and target to determine if the mech will need to close in as part of the attack or not. As a result, the controls are simple, and Jehuty always does exactly what the player intends, instead of stupidly attacking thin air.
Another major innovation of Zone of the Enders is making 3-D space combat more managable by giving the player easy to use altitude controls. Many mecha games, such as the aforementioned Gundam vs. Zeta Gundam overlook that simple detail, resulting in games where the player can get stuck in awkward places as the camera shifts around. While the ability to rise and fall is typically not needed during combat in Zone of the Enders, it does come in handy. Any game with free 3-D movement should give the player all three dimensions of movement controls (a jump button doesn't count if there is no gravity).
The genius of the Zone of the Enders games comes from the context sensitive input. The lion's share of combat options can be performed with just the Left Analog stick and two buttons. Obviously, the left analog stick moves the main mech, Jehuty, around. The real brilliance lies with the square button, which causes Jehuty to both shoot at the enemy at long range and use melee attacks if close to the enemy. Similarly, the R2 button can either cause Jehuty to dash if Jehuty is moving, or enter Burst Mode if Jehuty is standing still. So, with just two buttons and an analog stick, Jehuty can perform high-speed maneuvers and execute fancy melee combos, a dashing slash, a powerful Burst Slash, rapid-fire basic shots, a homing dash shot attack, and the Burst Shot. This gets a lot of mileage out of just a few controls, freeing up other buttons to be used for different things. Most importantly, fighting quickly becomes very intuitive.
At this point, I will draw some comparisons with a few other action games, mecha and otherwise. Most other action games I have seen tend to designate melee attacks and shooting attacks to separate buttons. For example, Gundam vs. Zeta Gundam, a decent, yet flawed, mecha action game for the PS2, uses the Square button for gun attacks and the triangle button for melee attacks at all times. In Gundam vs. Zeta Gundam, each mech has multiple elaborate multi-hit melee combos that can be pulled off by pressing the Triangle button and pressing the Left Analogue stick in certain directions at the same time. However, there are a couple major flaws with this system. First off, it is possible to execute a melee attack even at long ranges, where the attack can't possibly hit and can potentially leave the player vulnerable for several seconds as the attack animation is carried out. Even more problematic though, is that it is really hard to connect with these attack chains. These melee attacks target the area directly in front of the mech, no matter where the enemy is actually standing (which is pretty common for melee attacks in actions games). Because of this, it is very easy to miss a moving enemy, or only catch the enemy with a glancing blow. Being locked on to an enemy doesn't have any effect on melee targeting.
What makes melee combat work for ZOE is that lock-on does matter in melee combat (heck, you need to be locked on to an enemy in order to use melee attacks). This is something that can be seen in other really good 3-D action games, such as the Legend of Zelda and Devil May Cry games. In both series, it is possible to lock on to a single opponent. In that mode in both games, the player character is either always facing the opponent, or always re-orients towards that target the moment before launching an attack. That way, there is little chance of accidentally missing the target, even with melee attacks (unless the enemy can dodge quickly of course). Zone of the Enders takes this one step further. Not only does Jehuty always orient towards it's quarry, it will actually move towards its opponent and home in on it with melee attacks, particularly the Melee Dash Attack.
In short, the brilliance of Zone of the Enders comes from building combat around a lock-on system that reads the distance between the player character and its opponent. At that point, the context-sensitive controls kick in. As the player closes in on a target, the system automatically switches over to close-range combat mode and starts to judge the distance between the player and target to determine if the mech will need to close in as part of the attack or not. As a result, the controls are simple, and Jehuty always does exactly what the player intends, instead of stupidly attacking thin air.
Another major innovation of Zone of the Enders is making 3-D space combat more managable by giving the player easy to use altitude controls. Many mecha games, such as the aforementioned Gundam vs. Zeta Gundam overlook that simple detail, resulting in games where the player can get stuck in awkward places as the camera shifts around. While the ability to rise and fall is typically not needed during combat in Zone of the Enders, it does come in handy. Any game with free 3-D movement should give the player all three dimensions of movement controls (a jump button doesn't count if there is no gravity).
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Rondo of Swords: First Impressions
I am suffering a bit of Persona 3 FES burnout, so I have been playing a few other games lately. One of these is a game I just bought: Rondo of Swords, an unusual tactical RPG for the DS. I have only cleared the tutorials and first mission, so I am not sure how good the game is yet, but there are two things I can say about it: the first chapter and tutorials are hard, and the interface is severely lacking.
It is rather unusual for me to fail the first mission of a strategy game three times before I succeed (and even when I succeeded I lost a character, which may make the next mission even harder while I wait for him to recover). It is even stranger to have had to retry a few of the tutorial missions a few times because I kept failing them. Partly, this is because the game pretty much just throws you into the system head-first without a lot of direct guidance. Even some of the things they explained were a little... vague (how does facing matter, exactly?). Another problem is that the first mission involves a group of enemies far beyond your level chasing you down a street, so if your units get hurt by the weaker enemies along the way they can't take the time to heal (since you can't both move and use an item in the same turn). I think it was a mistake to add that kind of difficult complication into the very first mission, when the player is still trying to figure out the unusual and creative game mechanics.
Even more problematic the very large number of clear flaws in the game interface, ranging from minor annoyances to crippling omissions. Since there are so many, I may as well make a list.
1) It takes too many button presses or stylus taps in order to get anything done. In order to just open a characters status screen, you need to double-tap the character, tap the menu that shows up in order to get a cursor to appear (which is really unnecessary), and then tap (or was it double-tap?) the "info" choice. It is jut as annoying trying to cancel out of a selection, too. Far too often I try to select a character in order to look at their status or make them move, only to find that I accidentally left something selected elsewhere and need to go back and cancel out of that in order to do what I want.
2) The skill menu in the status screen doesn't do enough to separate the different kinds of skills. Passive, active, and support skills are all used in different ways and apply to different situations, but there is no way to quickly look at the skill list and see what is what. Magic skills are differentiated nicely with a different color, but nothing else is given that treatment. This is particularly a problem when examining an enemy's skill list.
3) Information about many skills and accessories is terribly imprecise. A skill may say something like "increases critical hit rate", but will not say how much it does so. This actually came to bite me when I tried using some of my characters' support skills in the first battle. I took a risk in order to benefit from Kay's "restores HP" support skill, but it ended up being a meager 5% heal that hardly helped at all. I would have used a more-powerful healing item instead if I knew that the support skill was so weak (in fact, this confusion eventually made me fail the mission the first time).
4) There is no way to check the attack range of bows and spells, either for the player's units or enemies. You can only see these ranges when actually launching the attack. In the case of multi-target spells and abilities (like the hero's Brave Ray or the line ice spell from the Tutorial), the limited interface actually makes it impossible to know the full range even after you have used it. You can't scroll the screen or look at a wider view while using some of those moves, even though their area of effect extends past the edge of the screen, so it is hard to know if you will hit some enemies or even strike an ally with such a move. This lack of information can be crippling when it comes to figuring out tactics and positioning, so this is a major oversight.
5) As mentioned above, it is impossible to go to a wide-area view when it is necessary. You can only see a wide area view when you have nothing selected, the one time where it is completely unnecessary. What is more, the wide-area view does not display movement areas or attack ranges, and you can't even scroll it directly (you cancel wide-area view if you try, so you must scroll in normal view until you get where you want to use wide-area view). Wide-area view could have been very useful in examining attack ranges (since many units can move further than the screen displays), but it is pretty much pointless as-is.
6) Unlike pretty much every other good tactical RPG out there, Rondo of Swords doesn't tell me what I am getting into before (or even after) I launch an attack. I don't know important things like hit rate, damage, critical hit rate, counter-attack rate (a really important one in this game!), or anything else. It feels like every attack is a total shot in the dark.
7) In fact, I don't even really know what my characters' own base chances of hitting or launching a critical hit are, or even the relative damage potential of different spells.
Maybe I have been spoiled by the kind of great interfaces seen in other tactical RPGs, like Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, or even Super Robot Wars, but the interface in this game is severely disappointing. Interface should be the last thing I should be criticizing in a game, but here it is extremely glaring. A bad interface leaves a bad first impression, so this hasn't been a great start.
It is rather unusual for me to fail the first mission of a strategy game three times before I succeed (and even when I succeeded I lost a character, which may make the next mission even harder while I wait for him to recover). It is even stranger to have had to retry a few of the tutorial missions a few times because I kept failing them. Partly, this is because the game pretty much just throws you into the system head-first without a lot of direct guidance. Even some of the things they explained were a little... vague (how does facing matter, exactly?). Another problem is that the first mission involves a group of enemies far beyond your level chasing you down a street, so if your units get hurt by the weaker enemies along the way they can't take the time to heal (since you can't both move and use an item in the same turn). I think it was a mistake to add that kind of difficult complication into the very first mission, when the player is still trying to figure out the unusual and creative game mechanics.
Even more problematic the very large number of clear flaws in the game interface, ranging from minor annoyances to crippling omissions. Since there are so many, I may as well make a list.
1) It takes too many button presses or stylus taps in order to get anything done. In order to just open a characters status screen, you need to double-tap the character, tap the menu that shows up in order to get a cursor to appear (which is really unnecessary), and then tap (or was it double-tap?) the "info" choice. It is jut as annoying trying to cancel out of a selection, too. Far too often I try to select a character in order to look at their status or make them move, only to find that I accidentally left something selected elsewhere and need to go back and cancel out of that in order to do what I want.
2) The skill menu in the status screen doesn't do enough to separate the different kinds of skills. Passive, active, and support skills are all used in different ways and apply to different situations, but there is no way to quickly look at the skill list and see what is what. Magic skills are differentiated nicely with a different color, but nothing else is given that treatment. This is particularly a problem when examining an enemy's skill list.
3) Information about many skills and accessories is terribly imprecise. A skill may say something like "increases critical hit rate", but will not say how much it does so. This actually came to bite me when I tried using some of my characters' support skills in the first battle. I took a risk in order to benefit from Kay's "restores HP" support skill, but it ended up being a meager 5% heal that hardly helped at all. I would have used a more-powerful healing item instead if I knew that the support skill was so weak (in fact, this confusion eventually made me fail the mission the first time).
4) There is no way to check the attack range of bows and spells, either for the player's units or enemies. You can only see these ranges when actually launching the attack. In the case of multi-target spells and abilities (like the hero's Brave Ray or the line ice spell from the Tutorial), the limited interface actually makes it impossible to know the full range even after you have used it. You can't scroll the screen or look at a wider view while using some of those moves, even though their area of effect extends past the edge of the screen, so it is hard to know if you will hit some enemies or even strike an ally with such a move. This lack of information can be crippling when it comes to figuring out tactics and positioning, so this is a major oversight.
5) As mentioned above, it is impossible to go to a wide-area view when it is necessary. You can only see a wide area view when you have nothing selected, the one time where it is completely unnecessary. What is more, the wide-area view does not display movement areas or attack ranges, and you can't even scroll it directly (you cancel wide-area view if you try, so you must scroll in normal view until you get where you want to use wide-area view). Wide-area view could have been very useful in examining attack ranges (since many units can move further than the screen displays), but it is pretty much pointless as-is.
6) Unlike pretty much every other good tactical RPG out there, Rondo of Swords doesn't tell me what I am getting into before (or even after) I launch an attack. I don't know important things like hit rate, damage, critical hit rate, counter-attack rate (a really important one in this game!), or anything else. It feels like every attack is a total shot in the dark.
7) In fact, I don't even really know what my characters' own base chances of hitting or launching a critical hit are, or even the relative damage potential of different spells.
Maybe I have been spoiled by the kind of great interfaces seen in other tactical RPGs, like Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, or even Super Robot Wars, but the interface in this game is severely disappointing. Interface should be the last thing I should be criticizing in a game, but here it is extremely glaring. A bad interface leaves a bad first impression, so this hasn't been a great start.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Persona 3 FES: AI-Controlled Allies
Another one of the interesting aspects of Persona 3 is that every character other than the main hero is controlled by the game program rather than the player. You control every action of the hero in battle, but you can only select general tactics for your allies. While this is fairly typical, if not necessary, in action games or action-RPGs, it is a very strange thing to see in a traditional RPG like Persona 3. However, despite being unusual, I consider this to be one of the strengths of the game.
The reason I like having the allies be controlled by the game AI rather then the player is because it greatly reinforces the basic structure of the game that equates the player with the main character as much as possible. An important part of that equivalency, as well as a number of the themes of the game, is the idea that the other characters are separate from the hero and are individuals in their own right. A lot of effort was made trying to make the characters complex and believable, so that they seem more like real people than plot devices or mere team customization choices. If you don't have precise control over their actions in battle, it emphasizes their independence and individuality, which in turn highlights the fact that the hero is not independent and separate from the player. You control every choice made by the hero, but you can't control the choices made by your allies any more in battle that in day to day life. The whole effect adds to the immersive quality of the game.
Another aspect of the inability to precisely control allies is the fact that it makes the difference between the hero's flexibility and his allies' deep specialization less stifling. The other characters are controlled in a different manner, so there is no expectation for them to fight in the same manner as the hero. Instead, because the hero is the most flexible in both combat ability and control options, and the hero is needed to adjust battle tactics and scan the enemy, it simply reinforces the main hero's importance and leadership position within the team.
Another good thing about this particular system is that, unlike many games with AI-controlled allies, the battle AI in Persona 3 is pretty good. The AI isn't good enough to match what a player can do, and as such its strategies are fairly limited, but you can nonetheless expect the AI to perform quite well. You allies will heal each other when they are injured, cure negative conditions if they are given the chance, will attack their enemy's vulnerabilities and go for the "1 More" effect, will finish off enemies that are weak, and will often go for an All-Out Attack even if you have not given them the "Knock Down" command. Your allies will even learn from the enemies displayed strengths and weaknesses and pay attention to information gathered from analysis of the enemy. If an ally uses an Ice attack on the enemy and it fails, no one in the team will use any more Ice attacks against it. Other than their inability to judge opportunity cost (such as Junpei using Re Patra on an ally who stumbled when he would be better off with his own attack), the ally characters can be relied upon to act in a sensible manner, so 80-90% of the time you don't even need to give out tactics commands.
Because the presence of AI-controlled allies helps the themes of the game so much, and because the AI is good enough that they are not a burden (in fact they are capable of pulling the hero out of a tough spot), the decision to use AI control rather than player control benefited the game quite a bit.
The reason I like having the allies be controlled by the game AI rather then the player is because it greatly reinforces the basic structure of the game that equates the player with the main character as much as possible. An important part of that equivalency, as well as a number of the themes of the game, is the idea that the other characters are separate from the hero and are individuals in their own right. A lot of effort was made trying to make the characters complex and believable, so that they seem more like real people than plot devices or mere team customization choices. If you don't have precise control over their actions in battle, it emphasizes their independence and individuality, which in turn highlights the fact that the hero is not independent and separate from the player. You control every choice made by the hero, but you can't control the choices made by your allies any more in battle that in day to day life. The whole effect adds to the immersive quality of the game.
Another aspect of the inability to precisely control allies is the fact that it makes the difference between the hero's flexibility and his allies' deep specialization less stifling. The other characters are controlled in a different manner, so there is no expectation for them to fight in the same manner as the hero. Instead, because the hero is the most flexible in both combat ability and control options, and the hero is needed to adjust battle tactics and scan the enemy, it simply reinforces the main hero's importance and leadership position within the team.
Another good thing about this particular system is that, unlike many games with AI-controlled allies, the battle AI in Persona 3 is pretty good. The AI isn't good enough to match what a player can do, and as such its strategies are fairly limited, but you can nonetheless expect the AI to perform quite well. You allies will heal each other when they are injured, cure negative conditions if they are given the chance, will attack their enemy's vulnerabilities and go for the "1 More" effect, will finish off enemies that are weak, and will often go for an All-Out Attack even if you have not given them the "Knock Down" command. Your allies will even learn from the enemies displayed strengths and weaknesses and pay attention to information gathered from analysis of the enemy. If an ally uses an Ice attack on the enemy and it fails, no one in the team will use any more Ice attacks against it. Other than their inability to judge opportunity cost (such as Junpei using Re Patra on an ally who stumbled when he would be better off with his own attack), the ally characters can be relied upon to act in a sensible manner, so 80-90% of the time you don't even need to give out tactics commands.
Because the presence of AI-controlled allies helps the themes of the game so much, and because the AI is good enough that they are not a burden (in fact they are capable of pulling the hero out of a tough spot), the decision to use AI control rather than player control benefited the game quite a bit.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Fighting Game Controls
The fact that I didn't write anything here yesterday, the day that Super Smash Bros. Brawl was released, is not a coincidence. That game is horribly addicting, just like its predecessor. My brother and I occasionally challenged each other in Super Smash Bros. Melee all the way from its release until a week ago, and we enjoyed every minute of it. It is a game that kept on entertaining even long after we have explored every single-player game mode and fought hundreds and hundreds of matches in its multiplayer mode.
Part of the reason I enjoyed Super Smash Bros. Melee so much over the last six years is because it is a game with incredibly easy controls. Every character has a limited number of normal attacks which are controlled only by combining the A button with directions on the control pad, a list of 4 special moves controlled with the B button, a few throws, dodges, and a single defensive stance that can be used against every kind of attack. It is very easy to learn how to play the game because of the simplicity, and because every character is controlled using the exact same inputs, it is very easy to fully understand multiple characters. No matter how long it has been since I last played the game, I can still remember all of the controls and all of my favorite moves with each of my favorite characters.
As a comparison, I want to mention another fighting game series that I like quite a bit: the Soul Calibur series. I like this series, own both Soul Calibur 2 and 3, and spent quite a bit of time and money playing Soul Calibur in the arcade, but I never played this series anywhere near as much as I played Super Smash Bros. Melee. In part, I think this is because of the difficulty of this series' controls. Every character has a long and elaborate movelist of dozens of completely unique moves, each of which has its own button input (which makes learning new characters the same thing as relearning all of the controls for the game), sometimes involving complex chains of difficult timing and/or tricky sequences like slide input. As such, I can never seem to remember even the basics of a character's moveset for very long. I need to refresh my memory with a half-hour long trip to the training mode practically every time I go to play the single-player mode, I need to occasionally check movelists in the middle of battle, and I can never remember a thing about a character's moveset after putting the game down longer than a few weeks. This makes coming back to the game somewhat intimidating, which has resulted in me not playing Soul Calibur 3 ever since I first stopped shortly after the game was originally released years ago, even though I left it incomplete and like the series quite a bit.
Another game I could compare Melee to is the Tekken series. I rented a Tekken game only once, and pretty much gave up on playing it within a day, after getting stuck, unable to continue, in a few characters' training modes. I think another major fighting game series, the Dead or Alive series, is a lot of fun, but much like with the Soul Calibur games, I can't seem to ever get back to playing Dead or Alive games once I have stopped playing for more than a week.
One series I can keep playing somewhat consistently is the Guilty Gear series, even though its level of general complexity because of various subsystems is fairly high. The game has all kinds of gauges and unusual rules you need to remember (including really unusual things like the Guard Meter, the limitation on combos, and the penalty you receive for not being aggressive enough), but the controls are not terribly complex. Every character has an analogous set of attacks based on the main attacking buttons, so all you need to remember for the various characters are the special moves and their inputs, which mostly are derived from a very limited set of possible inputs and follow certain learnable patterns. While it is not as quick as with Super Smash Bros, I can get back into playing Guilty Gear well within a very short time, so I return to the series fairly often (keeping with it is a different story, since playing it too much gives my thumb blisters).
Overall, I think a good fighting game should emulate the classic series, like the Street Fighter series, and keep things relatively simple to control. There should be as much similarity in control inputs between characters as possible, and these should be kept relatively simple. Requiring many complex button inputs for a character to even be decently viable just results in a game that is only appreciated by a very dedicated fanbase of very limited size, because it excludes too many gamers like me who like the genre, but are not so big of fans that we are willing to dedicate huge amounts of time and effort to play.
Part of the reason I enjoyed Super Smash Bros. Melee so much over the last six years is because it is a game with incredibly easy controls. Every character has a limited number of normal attacks which are controlled only by combining the A button with directions on the control pad, a list of 4 special moves controlled with the B button, a few throws, dodges, and a single defensive stance that can be used against every kind of attack. It is very easy to learn how to play the game because of the simplicity, and because every character is controlled using the exact same inputs, it is very easy to fully understand multiple characters. No matter how long it has been since I last played the game, I can still remember all of the controls and all of my favorite moves with each of my favorite characters.
As a comparison, I want to mention another fighting game series that I like quite a bit: the Soul Calibur series. I like this series, own both Soul Calibur 2 and 3, and spent quite a bit of time and money playing Soul Calibur in the arcade, but I never played this series anywhere near as much as I played Super Smash Bros. Melee. In part, I think this is because of the difficulty of this series' controls. Every character has a long and elaborate movelist of dozens of completely unique moves, each of which has its own button input (which makes learning new characters the same thing as relearning all of the controls for the game), sometimes involving complex chains of difficult timing and/or tricky sequences like slide input. As such, I can never seem to remember even the basics of a character's moveset for very long. I need to refresh my memory with a half-hour long trip to the training mode practically every time I go to play the single-player mode, I need to occasionally check movelists in the middle of battle, and I can never remember a thing about a character's moveset after putting the game down longer than a few weeks. This makes coming back to the game somewhat intimidating, which has resulted in me not playing Soul Calibur 3 ever since I first stopped shortly after the game was originally released years ago, even though I left it incomplete and like the series quite a bit.
Another game I could compare Melee to is the Tekken series. I rented a Tekken game only once, and pretty much gave up on playing it within a day, after getting stuck, unable to continue, in a few characters' training modes. I think another major fighting game series, the Dead or Alive series, is a lot of fun, but much like with the Soul Calibur games, I can't seem to ever get back to playing Dead or Alive games once I have stopped playing for more than a week.
One series I can keep playing somewhat consistently is the Guilty Gear series, even though its level of general complexity because of various subsystems is fairly high. The game has all kinds of gauges and unusual rules you need to remember (including really unusual things like the Guard Meter, the limitation on combos, and the penalty you receive for not being aggressive enough), but the controls are not terribly complex. Every character has an analogous set of attacks based on the main attacking buttons, so all you need to remember for the various characters are the special moves and their inputs, which mostly are derived from a very limited set of possible inputs and follow certain learnable patterns. While it is not as quick as with Super Smash Bros, I can get back into playing Guilty Gear well within a very short time, so I return to the series fairly often (keeping with it is a different story, since playing it too much gives my thumb blisters).
Overall, I think a good fighting game should emulate the classic series, like the Street Fighter series, and keep things relatively simple to control. There should be as much similarity in control inputs between characters as possible, and these should be kept relatively simple. Requiring many complex button inputs for a character to even be decently viable just results in a game that is only appreciated by a very dedicated fanbase of very limited size, because it excludes too many gamers like me who like the genre, but are not so big of fans that we are willing to dedicate huge amounts of time and effort to play.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
NeuroSky's New Gadget
Preparing for and attending the 2008 Game Developer Conference appears to have distracted my brother and me from posting here for a week. I guess it is time to get back on the regular posting schedule.
At the GDC, I had the opportunity to try out a gadget created by the NeuroSky company, a head-mounted device designed to read the brainwaves of a person who is playing a videogame, analyze those brainwaves to determine the player's mental state, and relay that information to the game being played. The gadget just needs to be placed on a persons head in order to read brainwaves (nothing difficult or obnoxious for the player) and seems to work quite well. It can't seem to interpret thoughts into direct game commands or anything like that, but it can evaluate the player's mental state and translate that into an effect on the game. The demo at the GDC demonstrated the device's ability to observe the player's attention and meditation levels, and the company representative I spoke to claimed that the system can also observe other things like drowsiness and anxiety levels. This technology is a far cry from the holy grail of being able to play a videogame using nothing but thoughts, but it is still an impressive technology that can be used to make interesting videogames.
However, despite the potential of the system, the demo at the GDC didn't do a very good job of showing how this technology could be used in a game effectively. The demo relied on the gimmick of "moving objects with your mind", even though the technology could not actually translate the desire to move something into actually moving something. Instead, they just had the overall attention levels and meditation levels serve as a "power source" for commands executed through mouse clicks. For me, "using my mind to move and burn objects" was just a process of clicking on an object, and then having my apparently natural high attention level (possible augmented by caffeine from my lunch) trigger the effect with no conscious effort on my part. That was not terribly entertaining. The other activity, lifting things with meditation, was just an exercise in demonstrating that it is not easy to control your mental state on command, and would not make any better a game experience than the other activities. Controlling action with mental state is not a viable way of implementing game controls, because it is far too imprecise and dependent on individual personality, That said, I do still think that this system can be used for games.
Rather than use the implementation seen in the demo, I think it would be much better to use a player's mental state to control the mental state of game characters. This technology can be used to synchronize the way the player reacts to situations in a game and the way the character controlled by the player reacts to those events. If the player pays attention, the character will pay attention. If the player becomes anxious and frightened, the character will become anxious and frightened. There are a number of interesting specific implementations I can imagine for this:
1) Personalizing animations in an MMO. A player can set specific animations to play when his mental state changes. For example, the player might have it so that his character yawns or stretches when the player is drowsy, or jumps up and down when the player is excited. In fact, this cna be extended so that characters can have very different animations based on the mindset of the player, making each character act like the character itself is feeling the emotion and expressing it through natural body language.
2) Implementing some kind of action game mechanic in which the mental state of the player enables different kinds of styles and techniques for the character. If the player is highly focused and paying attention to a single target, then the character can use powerful moves to fight single foes. If the player has achieved some kind of zen-like calm while fighting countless enemies, or perhaps is bored and wants to just get past a part of the game, then the character might reflect that by being able to use moves that defeat large numbers of weak enemies quickly.
3) Altering the atmosphere and mood of a landscape. Make it so the world can reflect the mental state of the person playing the game, If the player is happy, the game world will be bright and colorful. If the player is afraid, the game world will be dark and terrifying. Or perhaps the environment can be made to oppose the mental state of the player, and try to cheer up a depressed player or make a happy player anxious.
There are many possibilities, and I am very curious how this kind of technology will be used by the industry in the future. It might be a while before brainwave-reading technology is packaged in with every game console, but I am sure that some form of this technology will add a lot to videogames in the future.
At the GDC, I had the opportunity to try out a gadget created by the NeuroSky company, a head-mounted device designed to read the brainwaves of a person who is playing a videogame, analyze those brainwaves to determine the player's mental state, and relay that information to the game being played. The gadget just needs to be placed on a persons head in order to read brainwaves (nothing difficult or obnoxious for the player) and seems to work quite well. It can't seem to interpret thoughts into direct game commands or anything like that, but it can evaluate the player's mental state and translate that into an effect on the game. The demo at the GDC demonstrated the device's ability to observe the player's attention and meditation levels, and the company representative I spoke to claimed that the system can also observe other things like drowsiness and anxiety levels. This technology is a far cry from the holy grail of being able to play a videogame using nothing but thoughts, but it is still an impressive technology that can be used to make interesting videogames.
However, despite the potential of the system, the demo at the GDC didn't do a very good job of showing how this technology could be used in a game effectively. The demo relied on the gimmick of "moving objects with your mind", even though the technology could not actually translate the desire to move something into actually moving something. Instead, they just had the overall attention levels and meditation levels serve as a "power source" for commands executed through mouse clicks. For me, "using my mind to move and burn objects" was just a process of clicking on an object, and then having my apparently natural high attention level (possible augmented by caffeine from my lunch) trigger the effect with no conscious effort on my part. That was not terribly entertaining. The other activity, lifting things with meditation, was just an exercise in demonstrating that it is not easy to control your mental state on command, and would not make any better a game experience than the other activities. Controlling action with mental state is not a viable way of implementing game controls, because it is far too imprecise and dependent on individual personality, That said, I do still think that this system can be used for games.
Rather than use the implementation seen in the demo, I think it would be much better to use a player's mental state to control the mental state of game characters. This technology can be used to synchronize the way the player reacts to situations in a game and the way the character controlled by the player reacts to those events. If the player pays attention, the character will pay attention. If the player becomes anxious and frightened, the character will become anxious and frightened. There are a number of interesting specific implementations I can imagine for this:
1) Personalizing animations in an MMO. A player can set specific animations to play when his mental state changes. For example, the player might have it so that his character yawns or stretches when the player is drowsy, or jumps up and down when the player is excited. In fact, this cna be extended so that characters can have very different animations based on the mindset of the player, making each character act like the character itself is feeling the emotion and expressing it through natural body language.
2) Implementing some kind of action game mechanic in which the mental state of the player enables different kinds of styles and techniques for the character. If the player is highly focused and paying attention to a single target, then the character can use powerful moves to fight single foes. If the player has achieved some kind of zen-like calm while fighting countless enemies, or perhaps is bored and wants to just get past a part of the game, then the character might reflect that by being able to use moves that defeat large numbers of weak enemies quickly.
3) Altering the atmosphere and mood of a landscape. Make it so the world can reflect the mental state of the person playing the game, If the player is happy, the game world will be bright and colorful. If the player is afraid, the game world will be dark and terrifying. Or perhaps the environment can be made to oppose the mental state of the player, and try to cheer up a depressed player or make a happy player anxious.
There are many possibilities, and I am very curious how this kind of technology will be used by the industry in the future. It might be a while before brainwave-reading technology is packaged in with every game console, but I am sure that some form of this technology will add a lot to videogames in the future.
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