Lost Planet 2 stage design lessons

One of the games that my brother and I have been playing a lot of over the last few months is Lost Planet 2, the third person shooter made by Capcom. The game's strong emphasis on co-op gameplay makes it a great game for our purposes. However, the game definitely has its mix of great stages and poorly designed stages. After a while, I think I have noticed a few patterns, which could be taken as lessons to be learned for future games.

Ironically enough, mission 1-1 is one of the hardest stages in the entire game, particularly at higher difficulty levels. This is entirely due to the final segment of the stage, where the players have to seize and maintain control over a mine. There are two main causes for this difficulty. The first is because of the open layout of the mine; it consists of a large open central area surrounded by multi-level structures with lots of open doors and windows. Essentially, every enemy in the mine area can easily get opportunities to shoot at the players, meaning that the players have to deal with all of the enemies at once, making it easy to get swarmed or surrounded. Second, the game asks the players to maintain control over four control posts at once for a certain amount of time. Because of the spacing of the control points and constant reinforcement of enemies from multiple entry points, this is very difficult to do with even two people. It feels like this part of the mission more or less requires four players in order to be easily feasible.

This second point is seen again in mission 5-1, where the players are asked to once again maintain control over certain control posts for a certain amount of time; this time it is two control posts located in different rooms separated by several corridors. In our case, my brother and I were each able to guard a room, but it was a very difficult fight for us, since powerful enemies constantly stream in from three entrances into each room. Based on these missions, it feels like missions that require maintaining control over multiple places at once vary in difficulty a lot more significantly based on the number of players than missions that require simply advancing forward. This is probably because these missions force players to split up, which is more punishing for two players than for four. I have no idea if it is even possible for a solo player to tackle these (disregarding AI helpers).

Perhaps a more positive and interesting way the game takes advantage of its co-op focus is in its stages with multiple routes. Most stages in the game are very good at having at least two routes to get from one room to the next. For example, 4-1's first area consists of a multistory building. Many floors in this building have two or even three stairways leading to the next floor. This opens up a lot of room for strategy. The players can all go down the same path and try to combine their firepower, or they can choose to split up, take different routes, and flank the enemy. This multi-route design even lets players split up to clear out enemies and independently secure objectives if they so wish.

On the flip side of the coin is the final section of mission 4-1: a narrow choke-point leading into a large area where there are multiple heavily armed mechs ready to shoot anyone passing through the choke-point. To make matters worse, the only weapons capable of talking out the enemy mechs are on the other side of the choke-point. This kind of design comes up in about three or four places in Lost Planet 2, and it really is inexcusable. In all of these occasions, the only choice is to make a beeline for the usable mechs or good weapons and pray you can find some cover before the enemy fire tears you to shreds. This kind of area layout gives an overwhelming advantage to the enemies, and can quickly become very frustrating to the players.

On a final note, I really liked the co-op cannon segments of the game. In these, all of the players need to to work together to man powerful weapons against giant enemies. While one player is aiming the cannon itself, other players are manning anti-aircraft guns to hold off threats, fighting off enemies who have boarded the player's vehicle, or working to power-up the main gunner's next big shot. These battle can be frantic, complex, exciting, and very epic. Unfortunately, I gather that they aren't very fun when one player is playing solo. That is a real shame. Unless the game designers can write AI that can actually behave the way a player wants them to in such a complex situation, this is going to remain a trade-off when choosing between making a primarily co-op vs single-player experience.

I think there is a lot about Lost Planet 2 that shows that a game built around four player co-op does have significantly different level design considerations than a game built just for single-player. As a big fan of co-op games, I do kind of wish that there were more games like Lost Planet 2 out there.

GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark Multiplayer modes

Back during the era of the Nintendo 64, playing multiplayer matches against my two brothers in GoldenEye 007 was practically part of my daily routine. For some reason or another, the three of us settled on License to Kill mode as pretty much the only multiplayer mode we used regularly, usually using either Pistols or Automatics as our weapon set, though we sometimes used mines, throwing knives, or slappers only. That set-up kept us happy for years. A few years later though, when we rented Perfect Dark, GoldenEye's spiritual sequel, we ended up using a completely different set of options. Instead of playing on one-shot kill modes, we ended up abusing the Simulants to create chaotic army vs. army King of the Hill battles with lots of explosives, sniper rifles, and automatic weapons. Considering how similar GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark play, I have always wondered why our multiplayer matches in the two games were so different. I can't help but feel that there were some factors in the two games that encouraged one set-up over the other.

Certainly one big difference between GoldenEye and Perfect Dark was in what multiplayer options they offered and how those options were organized. Starting a multiplayer match in Goldeneye was a pretty straightforward affair: the players first select a game mode from a short list (such as Normal or License to Kill), then select a pre-built set of weapons from a similarly sized list, select an arena, select game length, set handicaps, and finally let each player choose their characters. All told, the process was very simple and straightforward, but allowed for only a limited number of possible game combinations. In comparison, Perfect Dark had several menus worth of options, including AI controlled bots (called Simulants), customizable weapon lists, and customizable characters. So Perfect Dark allowed for a much wider array of game options, but those choosing from those options involved digging through multiple menus and was thus much more time consuming. Looking back at it, One-Shot Kills was an accessible option in Perfect Dark. In fact, Pistol One Hit Kills was a prebuilt game type. However, it wasn't possible to load up a Pistol One Hit Kills game and then change the weapons to automatics without opening up all of the option menus, making the changes to available weapons, and saving a new Automatics One Hit Kills game type. So the Perfect Dark system wasn't as well geared towards experimenting with minor alterations.

The number of options itself might have had an effect on our playstyle. In GoldenEye 007, using various weapon types, in various arenas, on Normal or License to Kill mode covered most of the available options. However, playing a similar 1-on-1 deathmatch-style game type in Perfect Dark would have meant not using quite a few of the available options, such as simulants and the various newly added game types such as King of the Hill. So it kind of felt like a waste to not use those options, which is probably what lead to our big army vs. army battles.

Another factor to consider is weapons, which were one of the most noticeable differences between the two games. In GoldenEye, most guns were based directly on real guns, and thus were generally slight variations on basic archetypes. There were three pistols, three sub-machine guns, a machine pistol, a shotgun, a sniper rifle, a few assault rifles, and various kinds of explosive, plus the throwing knives. In Perfect Dark though, all weapons were equipped with secondary fire modes, most of which were extremely flashy. One assault rifle could be turned into a proximity mine, one pistol could fire explosive rounds, and a common machine gun could be turned into an automatic turret. Many of these functions were not really appropriate for the ambush and kill gameplay of a typical One Hit Kill match, particularly once you got past pistols. However, the weapons were well suited for large, chaotic, high-casualty rate matches.

I do think that my change in playstyle moving from GoldenEye to Perfect Dark was influenced by game design, rather than simply changing tastes. When I was looking around at GameFAQs to do research for this post, I noticed that other people may have had similar experiences. A couple GoldenEye FAQs referenced License to Kill mode as a particularly popular choice. However, a big list of Perfect Dark multiplayer set-ups (apparently compiled from a large thread asking for people's favorites) universally included lots of Simulants and rarely involved One Hit Kills.

Super Mario Galaxy: Two Player Mode

Right now, my brother is going through Super Mario Galaxy. Since I like cooperative games and I would be watching him go through the game regardless, I decided to try out the two-player mode in that game.

The two-player mode in Super Mario Galaxy is an interesting novelty. It is very different than the alternating cooperative/competitive gameplay of the much older Super Mario games, and is a very refreshing change from not having any multiplayer support in the previous 3D games. The only other game with a cooperative multiplayer mode that really compares to it is Rare's old Jet Force Gemini for the N64. It is rare to have a multiplayer mode in which one player has a completely secondary role to that of the other player. While other games may limit the control options for any player other than the first (such as multiplayer RPGs), this is usually only for certain sections (such as movement between battles) and all players will have equal control over the game during other times.

Having one player be simply play a supporting role has a number of advantages. It removes the need to have two autonomous characters running around at the same time (which can be very hard to implement well, especially in 3D games). It makes it easier to simply add a multiplayer mode onto an existing single player mode, without resorting to the old system of alternating play. It also is a way of rewarding cooperative play by giving a slight increase in the character's ability; two players can do more with one character than a single player can.

Still, this implementation of cooperative games has a major drawback: it can be hard to make it fun for the second player. If the support role is not interesting, or feels redundant, then it becomes just a chore for the second player, and the value of having a cooperative mode is lost.

Overall, the way cooperative multiplayer works in Super Mario Galaxy in particular is imperfect. The second player functions as a hand to grab and throw Star Bits, and can also make Mario jump or spin midair. The biggest problem is that, despite the fact that the floating hand is the most important part of the second player's abilities, the first player still has that full potential at the same time. What is more, the first player can grab pull-stars, shoot Mario with those sticky pod things, and feed Lumas with his floating hand, as well as a few other things, but these options are unavailable to the second player. Rather than being essential, the second player is mostly redundant even in the cooperative mode, simply because the first player never has to depend on the second player to do something. It would be much better if the second player had full control of the floating pointer with no control over Mario, and the first player had full control of Mario with no control over the floating pointer. That situation would make the second player feel more useful, and make his role more consistent.

On a side note, I don't particularly like the feature of letting Mario jump higher if both players make him jump at once, simply because coordinating two people to do something at the same time is nearly impossible, especially in a pinch. The first player is better off just doing a backwards somersault or triple jump, rather than try to pull off such tricky timing. On the other hand, just having a second pointer on the screen is a great tool for trying to point out something that the first player didn't see, or to help point out a direction to go, which has often been difficult to do with words alone, so I approve of that feature.

I have had a lot of fun playing the game with my brother, but a lot of my fun with the game is because my brother voluntarily leaves a lot of things to me that he could do on his own otherwise.