A Bug’s Life was released in 1998 as a tie-in to the video game of the same name. It wasn’t very good. The problem with Bug’s Life, as with the video games of its ilk, is that it hails from the mass-produced school of the game design. You play the main character of a film you have recently seen in a movie, conversing with other characters you have recently seen in a movie. You jump about on platforms and you jump on a monster’s head to kill it (because all video games are Mario).
You collect lots of collectibles and occasionally a glassy-eyed 3d model of a character you recently saw in a movie challenges you to a race around a part of a level in order to collect an important power-up for later on in the game. Sadly, all sense of flow is ground down by the haunting knowledge that you are playing a licensed game, where the experience of playing the game is made to match the way the movie unfurled.
The interface is standard in that you interact with the game world through the actions of the character you play (I avoid using the word ‘avatar’). The D-pad controls movement, there is a jump button, a fire button and shoulder buttons for the camera. The camera controls in particular are painful, but they were a relic of an era that couldn’t count on the presence of the control-sticks that are the industry standard today, so we can be merciful in that one regard.
In all other ways, A Bug’s Life fails to make the game personal or meaningful in any way, because every aspect of it screams ‘This part of the game is made this way, because this is what all 3d games are like’. Given that the designer is Psygnosis (or ‘the guys who made Lemmings’, a thoroughly original concept), I think there might be a reason for this: Licensed Games are a good way to make money. ‘Licensed Games’ require interacting with the film industry and people who are talented in their own field but have a pared-down understanding of what makes a game a game.
At the time when A Bug’s Life was being created, creating a 3D game was a massive undertaking compared to making 2D games. Creating a failed 3D game would have cost whoever made the game on two major fronts – firstly, the expensive 3D licenses would suddenly have looked a whole lot more expensive given that they weren’t making money back and it would have been harder to acquire any other licenses in the future. In the end, making A Bug’s Life the way it eventually turned out would have been a much safer proposition for the company and for the film studio executives who didn’t really know how games are made.
Of course, who really wants to spend time pushing the envelope when they’re making a kid’s game? (The answer? 5th Cell. Scribblenauts. The only reason I’m not reviewing them is because I haven’t picked up my copy yet.)
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Trivial Pursuit
Trivial Pursuit is an inherently unbalanced game. In a family game, all players start with the one piece at the starting area. There is the normal board-game disadvantage in that if you go first and your opponent goes second, you are both stupendously lucky in your rolls and you answer one correct question each turn, you will win 100% of the time. However, Trivial Pursuit’s other imbalance is very sneaky. The age you are and the country you grew up in can combine to form an insurmountable advantage, depending on the edition of the game you are playing.
I have experienced a game of Trivial Pursuit in which we invited a family who were new to town over for a casual game. We thrashed them quite soundly and laughed privately at their ineptitude with seemingly simple questions. The next weekend, we were playing a casual game when they brought out their copy of Trivial Pursuit and thrashed us. What is the point of this innocuous story? The family in question had just moved from South Africa. When we played with our (Australian) question cards, we had an unfair advantage. When we played with the South African question cards we were completely unable to answer even simple questions, such as “where is the Voortrekker monument?”
Thus, Trivial Pursuit is a board game in which 'who you are as a person' can actually change the play experience for the worst.
I have experienced a game of Trivial Pursuit in which we invited a family who were new to town over for a casual game. We thrashed them quite soundly and laughed privately at their ineptitude with seemingly simple questions. The next weekend, we were playing a casual game when they brought out their copy of Trivial Pursuit and thrashed us. What is the point of this innocuous story? The family in question had just moved from South Africa. When we played with our (Australian) question cards, we had an unfair advantage. When we played with the South African question cards we were completely unable to answer even simple questions, such as “where is the Voortrekker monument?”
Thus, Trivial Pursuit is a board game in which 'who you are as a person' can actually change the play experience for the worst.
Black & White
Black & White is a God-simulator game by Peter Molyneux of Lionhead Studios and one of the most expensive Tamagochis I have ever owned. You are a ‘god’, defined by dictionary.com as “one of several deities, esp. a male deity, presiding over some portion of worldly affairs.” In this case, it seems likely that you are the god of neurotically pointless weird stuff.
The problem, in a sense, is one of agency. Although you are promised the 'freedom' to be good or evil, in reality you are given a narrow path to walk along, where the left side is 'doing as the designer intended, but evilly' and the right is the same, but with slightly shinier lighting effects. Your character is confined at all times. When you first begin, your exploration is curtailed by two little talking heads who attempt to introduce you to the game’s interface with a series of clunky and difficult activities that you are unable to avoid or circumvent. After spending a little more time free-roaming you discover that your exploration of the world around you is actually limited by your ‘sphere of influence’. This might not be the nail in the coffin.
The nail is truly that its features do not combine to make a ‘god game’ as advertised, nor is it truly a strategy game. “You”, in your capacity as god, are unable to micromanage your villagers meaningfully and there is no particular tech-tree, but all the same you are unable to exert your potentially-useful miracles anywhere where they would be important. Similarly, your creature is a liability in most levels of the single-player game: at first it is small, stupid and useless and given to occasionally eating your villagers or pooping on your village, it is captured in the second level, becomes the main objective in the third and throughout the fifth it is cursed to gradually lose power and swap alignments. In the fourth level of the game, fireballs rain down from the sky.
From the perspective of game-balance, the challenge to the player doesn’t start out low and gradually increase, it starts out unfamiliar and then level-by-level throws out all the information you accrued during previous stages of the game and replaces them with a fresh, novel game state. What is Black & White? In the end, it is not so much as a single game as a mismatched jumble of tiny little games.
The problem, in a sense, is one of agency. Although you are promised the 'freedom' to be good or evil, in reality you are given a narrow path to walk along, where the left side is 'doing as the designer intended, but evilly' and the right is the same, but with slightly shinier lighting effects. Your character is confined at all times. When you first begin, your exploration is curtailed by two little talking heads who attempt to introduce you to the game’s interface with a series of clunky and difficult activities that you are unable to avoid or circumvent. After spending a little more time free-roaming you discover that your exploration of the world around you is actually limited by your ‘sphere of influence’. This might not be the nail in the coffin.
The nail is truly that its features do not combine to make a ‘god game’ as advertised, nor is it truly a strategy game. “You”, in your capacity as god, are unable to micromanage your villagers meaningfully and there is no particular tech-tree, but all the same you are unable to exert your potentially-useful miracles anywhere where they would be important. Similarly, your creature is a liability in most levels of the single-player game: at first it is small, stupid and useless and given to occasionally eating your villagers or pooping on your village, it is captured in the second level, becomes the main objective in the third and throughout the fifth it is cursed to gradually lose power and swap alignments. In the fourth level of the game, fireballs rain down from the sky.
From the perspective of game-balance, the challenge to the player doesn’t start out low and gradually increase, it starts out unfamiliar and then level-by-level throws out all the information you accrued during previous stages of the game and replaces them with a fresh, novel game state. What is Black & White? In the end, it is not so much as a single game as a mismatched jumble of tiny little games.
Final Fantasy
Which Final Fantasy? I don't like any of them.
Final Fantasy is well known and well-regarded. It is a Japanese style RPG. The characters of Final Fantasy are recognisable, ‘beloved’ and highly marketable. However, the single-player of final fantasy is banal to the point of excruciating boredom. Commands are issued to your four characters by choosing one of four buttons at the start of each round of combat: “Fight”, “Magic”, “Item” and “Run”. ‘So,’ you may say, ‘you have four options to use in each round. That’s a decent number of options for a menu system first developed in 1987!’ You might say that AND IF YOU DID YOU WOULD BE WRONG. For, as you may be well aware, Final Fantasy has a class-based system throughout most of its incarnations.
An ‘optimal’ party consists of a Fighter, a Black Mage, a White Mage and an X (where X is ‘anything that isn’t black belt’). A fighter will always be attacking. A black mage will always use magic. A white mage will use magic, or, in an emergency only, a one-use Phoenix Down to resurrect a fallen comrade. The ‘X’ will do only one of those things (if X is the black belt, that thing will be ‘dying, followed by wasting a phoenix down’. Oh, Black Belt, is there any joke you can’t be the butt of?). To summarise – the optimal use of each character is limited to ONE choice out of ‘fight’, ‘magic’, or ‘item’. It is rarely a good idea to use ‘item’ outside of boss battles, specifically the last and most difficult. Lastly, there is the run command, equally useful for all characters. The only caveat to that statement is that if you want to run away, you’re generally running from a powerful monster. The more powerful the monster, the less likely you are to be able to escape. Thus, one should regard the interface as a sort of spiteful illusion: you have one button for each character.
To top it off, each character needs to be as close to the maximum level as possible (a modest cap of ‘level 99’ seems to be the standard) to have a decent chance of survival against the final boss, or the ‘bonus boss’ that follows it. So that’s one button to press, for 99 levels, at which point you mix things up a bit with careful use of items and then you win. The importance of choice and emergent play is not held in very high regard at Square-Enix, I fear.
Final Fantasy is well known and well-regarded. It is a Japanese style RPG. The characters of Final Fantasy are recognisable, ‘beloved’ and highly marketable. However, the single-player of final fantasy is banal to the point of excruciating boredom. Commands are issued to your four characters by choosing one of four buttons at the start of each round of combat: “Fight”, “Magic”, “Item” and “Run”. ‘So,’ you may say, ‘you have four options to use in each round. That’s a decent number of options for a menu system first developed in 1987!’ You might say that AND IF YOU DID YOU WOULD BE WRONG. For, as you may be well aware, Final Fantasy has a class-based system throughout most of its incarnations.
An ‘optimal’ party consists of a Fighter, a Black Mage, a White Mage and an X (where X is ‘anything that isn’t black belt’). A fighter will always be attacking. A black mage will always use magic. A white mage will use magic, or, in an emergency only, a one-use Phoenix Down to resurrect a fallen comrade. The ‘X’ will do only one of those things (if X is the black belt, that thing will be ‘dying, followed by wasting a phoenix down’. Oh, Black Belt, is there any joke you can’t be the butt of?). To summarise – the optimal use of each character is limited to ONE choice out of ‘fight’, ‘magic’, or ‘item’. It is rarely a good idea to use ‘item’ outside of boss battles, specifically the last and most difficult. Lastly, there is the run command, equally useful for all characters. The only caveat to that statement is that if you want to run away, you’re generally running from a powerful monster. The more powerful the monster, the less likely you are to be able to escape. Thus, one should regard the interface as a sort of spiteful illusion: you have one button for each character.
To top it off, each character needs to be as close to the maximum level as possible (a modest cap of ‘level 99’ seems to be the standard) to have a decent chance of survival against the final boss, or the ‘bonus boss’ that follows it. So that’s one button to press, for 99 levels, at which point you mix things up a bit with careful use of items and then you win. The importance of choice and emergent play is not held in very high regard at Square-Enix, I fear.
Monopoly
Once again, this is a popular and successful game that has ‘withstood the test of time’. It sits squarely on my list of disliked games for several reasons. Firstly, because the game is unbalanced: the player who moves last will often be moving along a board now peppered with properties owned by their opponents, unable to acquire any properties for themselves by the time they have finished paying rent.
Secondly, it is possible for a player to be defeated without chance of recovery many turns before they are actually removed from play and much longer before the game actually reaches an ending condition. This means that a player’s choices become completely irrelevant – their choices are limited to proceeding around the board, hoping to collect money from passing “Go” to make the next rent payment, or leaving the game.
Over a game of Monopoly, it is entirely possible to achieve a stalemate, with a number of players leering over the board, jealously guarding their properties and refusing to trade. In this situation, small gains and losses will be sustained but without the sizeable advantage that owning a Monopoly on a given set of matching colours would bring, it is unlikely any player will ever gain or lose enough to establish a winning advantage.
Secondly, it is possible for a player to be defeated without chance of recovery many turns before they are actually removed from play and much longer before the game actually reaches an ending condition. This means that a player’s choices become completely irrelevant – their choices are limited to proceeding around the board, hoping to collect money from passing “Go” to make the next rent payment, or leaving the game.
Over a game of Monopoly, it is entirely possible to achieve a stalemate, with a number of players leering over the board, jealously guarding their properties and refusing to trade. In this situation, small gains and losses will be sustained but without the sizeable advantage that owning a Monopoly on a given set of matching colours would bring, it is unlikely any player will ever gain or lose enough to establish a winning advantage.
Cluedo
Cluedo is, objectively, a successful and popular game. I personally have no interest in this game, but I don’t necessarily think they’re horrible games, nor do I wish ill on anyone who plays this game. With that said, let the bile-spewing begin!
Cluedo’s conflict is expressed through two main avenues: the conflict between the player’s pool of information and the contents of an inanimate yellow envelope and the race between all the participants to ‘solve the mystery’. The conceit of solving a murder through investigation and the player’s fantasy of being a detective doesn’t lend itself well to the most efficient way of playing: drawing up a huge logic grid as might suit a particular kind of child’s puzzle book and then huddling over it as you cross off various suspects. There are very clear and concise steps a player can take towards ‘playing to win’.
Each player has access to an equal percentage of the whole truth (represented by the cards in their hand), but the imbalance in this game is derived from the skill ceiling’s gargantuan dimensions. A single talented player at a table full of new and inexperienced players will find the game ridiculously easy to win through superior record-keeping and deductive reasoning, but a single inexperienced player sitting at a table of professional Cluedo players will unintentionally share so much information that the game is ruined for all involved.
Cluedo’s conflict is expressed through two main avenues: the conflict between the player’s pool of information and the contents of an inanimate yellow envelope and the race between all the participants to ‘solve the mystery’. The conceit of solving a murder through investigation and the player’s fantasy of being a detective doesn’t lend itself well to the most efficient way of playing: drawing up a huge logic grid as might suit a particular kind of child’s puzzle book and then huddling over it as you cross off various suspects. There are very clear and concise steps a player can take towards ‘playing to win’.
Each player has access to an equal percentage of the whole truth (represented by the cards in their hand), but the imbalance in this game is derived from the skill ceiling’s gargantuan dimensions. A single talented player at a table full of new and inexperienced players will find the game ridiculously easy to win through superior record-keeping and deductive reasoning, but a single inexperienced player sitting at a table of professional Cluedo players will unintentionally share so much information that the game is ruined for all involved.
Bad Games
The following games were selected because of my personal distaste (or hatred) of them. This is not to say that they are 'bad' games. Other people may very well like them and they're welcome to it. These are just games with flaws that I believe merit discussion and that I personally do not enjoy. I recognise that many of the games I have expressed fondness for have flaws, but they had merits that merited discussions and I like them. In the end, nothing on the earth is good or bad, but thinking made it so.
"Bad Games": Cluedo, Monopoly, Final Fantasy, Black & White, Trivial Pursuit, A Bug's Life.
"Bad Games": Cluedo, Monopoly, Final Fantasy, Black & White, Trivial Pursuit, A Bug's Life.
GG: Plants Vs. Zombies
Plants vs. Zombies is a marvellous example of flow in gameplay. A game in the tower-defence vein, the adventure mode starts off ridiculously easy – there is a single avenue along which a trickle of zombies approach, which you can easily hold off with the single plant type you have available at your disposal. At the end of the level, you gain a new plant. This is possibly the single most important feature of gameplay. An entire night’s gaming session can be justified based solely on seeing what happens next. It will come as no surprise that there are many different kinds of zombies with strengths and weaknesses, a new one is introduced in almost every level, there is a new plant to master each level, a host of different viable strategies, new mini-games and puzzles which are unlocked during normal gameplay and must be completed to unlock the gold trophy (representing 100% completion of the adventure mode as well as replaying the adventure mode with ‘Crazy Dave’ picking some of your plants for you giving you either inspired and brilliant choices or choices that will have you surreptitiously looking at your computer’s hard drive for signs of cocaine consumption). Plants vs. Zombies has an aesthetic that makes it easy and enjoyable to interact with, a well-paced difficulty curve and holds the carrot just far enough in front of your nose that you will happily run all day after the blessed thing.
GG: Warcraft III
This game is a personal favourite of mine; I waited four years from the time I first heard it was being created and played it devotedly for several years. The only aspect of the game I have not seen fit to play and replay is the ‘melee’ (read: vanilla gameplay, with no rules added or changed) multiplayer format. The reason for this is simple: the game is unintuitive. In another strategy game (Starcraft, for example), a player new to the game might be able to see the synergy between a unit that is a weak fighter but is capable of healing its allies and say, any other unit. In Warcraft, that player would be making a mistake to see synergy. The best target for this healing ability is another healing unit! In a multiplayer game, having a ‘balanced mix of units’ means not having enough resources to upgrade each of those units to their full potential and increases the likelihood that you will be mowed down by an army of squishy magic-wielding spell-casters.
My love for Warcraft is based on an entirely separate feature of the game – its map editor. The editor allows players to tweak rules and maps in such a way that a new and different game can be created. Warcraft has reignited the ‘tower defence’ genre, the success of the ‘Defense of the Ancients’ map has spawned games in its style like ‘Demigod’ ‘League of Legends’ and ‘Heroes of Newerth’.
My love for Warcraft is based on an entirely separate feature of the game – its map editor. The editor allows players to tweak rules and maps in such a way that a new and different game can be created. Warcraft has reignited the ‘tower defence’ genre, the success of the ‘Defense of the Ancients’ map has spawned games in its style like ‘Demigod’ ‘League of Legends’ and ‘Heroes of Newerth’.
GG: Paranoia: Mandatory Bonus Fun Card Game
Paranoia is a curious game; the only winning move is to play it as often as possible. The game is played with a bevy of cards and tokens. Players are represented by not one but two cards (one contains the name of the character and some basic rules, the other contains the character’s ‘security clearance’, which determines the number of cards and the amount of wounds and treason points they can shrug off before dying) and a six-pack of clone tokens. Knowing the rules of the game is considered treasonous and punishable by death and the objective is supposedly to ‘serve your friend, the computer’ (a malevolent AI dictator in the vein of Harlan Ellison’s AM), however the ending condition of the game suggests that your actual objective is to cause as much havoc as possible without drawing attention to yourself.
The crucial flaw of this game is the balance of power, which arises from a couple of factors. The ending condition of the game is that one player loses the last of their six ‘lives’ at which point the winner is declared to be the surviving player with the highest security clearance. Gameplay is rife with backstabbing, with players using action cards to betray their comrades in order to gain a higher security clearance. A higher security clearance allows the player to draw more action cards, which in turn makes them a more effective backstabber. Thus, if you draw out ahead early... you will be set upon by a pack of rabid dogs unwilling to let you pull out too ahead of the pack, which is as it should be in a multiplayer game. However, if you fall behind early, you are stuck with fewer resources, fewer remaining lives and much more likely to be killed when a player hoping to force an early game finish hides a grenade in your backpack. If you play the game with timid players, establishing an early lead and brow-beating those furthest behind makes it all but impossible to lose. I believe, however, that you are as likely to be in front as you are to fall behind and if you play your cards right (i.e. with a good sense of gaming politics) any situation is tenable.
The crucial flaw of this game is the balance of power, which arises from a couple of factors. The ending condition of the game is that one player loses the last of their six ‘lives’ at which point the winner is declared to be the surviving player with the highest security clearance. Gameplay is rife with backstabbing, with players using action cards to betray their comrades in order to gain a higher security clearance. A higher security clearance allows the player to draw more action cards, which in turn makes them a more effective backstabber. Thus, if you draw out ahead early... you will be set upon by a pack of rabid dogs unwilling to let you pull out too ahead of the pack, which is as it should be in a multiplayer game. However, if you fall behind early, you are stuck with fewer resources, fewer remaining lives and much more likely to be killed when a player hoping to force an early game finish hides a grenade in your backpack. If you play the game with timid players, establishing an early lead and brow-beating those furthest behind makes it all but impossible to lose. I believe, however, that you are as likely to be in front as you are to fall behind and if you play your cards right (i.e. with a good sense of gaming politics) any situation is tenable.
GG: Street Fighter II
Street Fighter II was the inspiration for bringing a very important theory to competitive gameplay: the idea of the ‘scrub’. Street Fighter is a carefully balanced and highly technical fighting game when played by two equally-skilled people who are familiar with the game.
The problem with the ‘balance’ is best explained through the following anecdote – let us say Alice and Bob purchase a SNES and a copy of Street Fighter II and start playing. Neither of them have any prior skill with the game or the genre. Alice is particularly driven to learn new moves in order to become better at the game. Bob is particularly driven to learn a couple of moves in order to play the game, but he believes that learning all the actions the character can perform, or mastering any particularly powerful moves would be akin to ‘cheating’. In time, Alice knows each of the actions she can perform with any given character and how they interact with Bob’s moves, while Bob knows the same number of moves he considered ‘fair’ and he also knows in his heart with unshakeable certainty that Alice’s moves are cheap. What is the problem? The answer, completely uncharitable as it may be, is Bob. Bob is a scrub. He may very well have the same potential skill level as Alice, but he lacks the will to improve. Alice’s choices are much more effective because she understands the framework the game takes place in. Bob’s choices are much less effective because he makes his choices based on a framework which doesn’t exist- the moves in Street Fighter are part of the game because they are part of the game. They are not part of the game to give morally discerning players the chance to work out which moves are ‘cheap’.
In conclusion, if you play Street Fighter, it pays if you always play to win. It is a good game, but it is not a good game for everyone.
The problem with the ‘balance’ is best explained through the following anecdote – let us say Alice and Bob purchase a SNES and a copy of Street Fighter II and start playing. Neither of them have any prior skill with the game or the genre. Alice is particularly driven to learn new moves in order to become better at the game. Bob is particularly driven to learn a couple of moves in order to play the game, but he believes that learning all the actions the character can perform, or mastering any particularly powerful moves would be akin to ‘cheating’. In time, Alice knows each of the actions she can perform with any given character and how they interact with Bob’s moves, while Bob knows the same number of moves he considered ‘fair’ and he also knows in his heart with unshakeable certainty that Alice’s moves are cheap. What is the problem? The answer, completely uncharitable as it may be, is Bob. Bob is a scrub. He may very well have the same potential skill level as Alice, but he lacks the will to improve. Alice’s choices are much more effective because she understands the framework the game takes place in. Bob’s choices are much less effective because he makes his choices based on a framework which doesn’t exist- the moves in Street Fighter are part of the game because they are part of the game. They are not part of the game to give morally discerning players the chance to work out which moves are ‘cheap’.
In conclusion, if you play Street Fighter, it pays if you always play to win. It is a good game, but it is not a good game for everyone.
GG: Little Big Planet
Little Big Planet’s ‘conflict’ is abstract. The players are far more likely to remember a particularly tricky jumping sequence or some timed explosives rather than any character. The plot is blissfully unexplained until the very last levels of the game. It may come as a surprise to the player that the Story Mode has a plot, or an overarching villain.
The game is balanced in that being a platform based game in which the players all control identical avatars, all players experience the same game. The difficulty of the game isn’t ‘equal’ throughout the entire game. The first stage of the Story Mode is very easy and the last stage consists of gigantic rotating platforms that hurl the player into electrical death traps, but this is to be expected for a platform game – in an RTS or FPS it is expected that the difficulty of the game remains the same (mining resources does not become any easier and rockets do not do any extra damage). In a platform game, it is expected that the levels become far more complex to allow the player to become accustomed to the quirks of the control system and the physics of the game.
On the subject of the camera and the control system, Little Big Planet’s interface is simple, grok-able and exceptionally functional. The camera is always directed at the characters on screen at the appropriate angle for a side-scrolling platform game. The player is able to run (by moving the left control stick) jump (by pressing ‘X’) and grab on to objects (by holding ‘R1’) in order to manoeuvre through the levels. Some cosmetic actions can be made by placing stickers and decorations (the menu for this is brought up pressing ‘Square’) and the character’s avatar is fully pose-able (pressing ‘L2’ and ‘R2’ and the directional pad). In contrast, a contemporary console FPS would be expected to use each and every button and then possibly have some buttons work differently in certain contexts.
Lastly, Little Big Planet has exceptional emergent play value in that it is possible to create your own content for the game and experience other people’s vision of the game, which as might be expected alternates between new and innovative developments in the platform genre and crude pictures of naughty bits.
The game is balanced in that being a platform based game in which the players all control identical avatars, all players experience the same game. The difficulty of the game isn’t ‘equal’ throughout the entire game. The first stage of the Story Mode is very easy and the last stage consists of gigantic rotating platforms that hurl the player into electrical death traps, but this is to be expected for a platform game – in an RTS or FPS it is expected that the difficulty of the game remains the same (mining resources does not become any easier and rockets do not do any extra damage). In a platform game, it is expected that the levels become far more complex to allow the player to become accustomed to the quirks of the control system and the physics of the game.
On the subject of the camera and the control system, Little Big Planet’s interface is simple, grok-able and exceptionally functional. The camera is always directed at the characters on screen at the appropriate angle for a side-scrolling platform game. The player is able to run (by moving the left control stick) jump (by pressing ‘X’) and grab on to objects (by holding ‘R1’) in order to manoeuvre through the levels. Some cosmetic actions can be made by placing stickers and decorations (the menu for this is brought up pressing ‘Square’) and the character’s avatar is fully pose-able (pressing ‘L2’ and ‘R2’ and the directional pad). In contrast, a contemporary console FPS would be expected to use each and every button and then possibly have some buttons work differently in certain contexts.
Lastly, Little Big Planet has exceptional emergent play value in that it is possible to create your own content for the game and experience other people’s vision of the game, which as might be expected alternates between new and innovative developments in the platform genre and crude pictures of naughty bits.
Good Game: Magic the Gathering
The first ever collectible card game is near and dear to my heart. Magic the Gathering contains (ahem) OVER NINE THOUSAND cards, some of which are very powerful and some of which are named ‘Mudhole’. Despite the dizzying number of possible combinations, balance is achieved in several ways: although all cards are available to both players and it might be possible to stack your deck with the most powerful sixty cards in existence (sixty being the minimum size for a deck), those cards wouldn’t necessarily help you win the game.
A deck needs to be focused on one of three main strategies: ‘aggro’, in which victory is achieved by laying down a number of cheap creatures or damage sources, or accelerating into one big threat, ‘control’, in which the opponent’s threats are neutralised with counter-spells or by killing opposing creatures until the opponent’s strategy is exhausted before laying down a single creature to win at their leisure. A ‘combo’ deck uses a combination of cards that exploits one resource (cards in hand, the special abilities of creatures, enchantments or ‘mana’,) in such a way that you achieve victory in a single shocking turn. These three deck types are balanced in a classic rock-scissors-paper system.
An aggro deck is too fast for a comparatively fragile combo deck but will be neutralised by control, while a combo deck’s threat will be able to ‘go off’ before the control deck can achieve a lock down on its opponent. Magic’s other drawcard comes in the form of its immense potential for emergent play – discovering a new card that allows a completely new strategy, or that interacts well with another card, or creates a more efficient ‘combo’ deck is rewarding in two ways: the first time it is used, when the combo goes off and people are surprised and the second time, if the combo proves to be especially competitive and sees use in tournaments.
Magic also makes things personal. In a casual multiplayer game, players will often play with their favourite cards, in their favourite deck. Such a deck is often called a 'pet' deck and receives all the love you would usually save for something with big brown eyes and an adorable button nose. When you cast a spell that hurts that deck, its owner will respond as though you really were a wizard who had teleported into their home and set fire to their dog. In a tournament, if the player doesn't love their deck, the affection is of a different kind - building a tournament deck costs real life money. If you're willing to play in a tournament, you're betting a lot of time and money that your deck is going to win. Not winning is a painful, painful experience.
A deck needs to be focused on one of three main strategies: ‘aggro’, in which victory is achieved by laying down a number of cheap creatures or damage sources, or accelerating into one big threat, ‘control’, in which the opponent’s threats are neutralised with counter-spells or by killing opposing creatures until the opponent’s strategy is exhausted before laying down a single creature to win at their leisure. A ‘combo’ deck uses a combination of cards that exploits one resource (cards in hand, the special abilities of creatures, enchantments or ‘mana’,) in such a way that you achieve victory in a single shocking turn. These three deck types are balanced in a classic rock-scissors-paper system.
An aggro deck is too fast for a comparatively fragile combo deck but will be neutralised by control, while a combo deck’s threat will be able to ‘go off’ before the control deck can achieve a lock down on its opponent. Magic’s other drawcard comes in the form of its immense potential for emergent play – discovering a new card that allows a completely new strategy, or that interacts well with another card, or creates a more efficient ‘combo’ deck is rewarding in two ways: the first time it is used, when the combo goes off and people are surprised and the second time, if the combo proves to be especially competitive and sees use in tournaments.
Magic also makes things personal. In a casual multiplayer game, players will often play with their favourite cards, in their favourite deck. Such a deck is often called a 'pet' deck and receives all the love you would usually save for something with big brown eyes and an adorable button nose. When you cast a spell that hurts that deck, its owner will respond as though you really were a wizard who had teleported into their home and set fire to their dog. In a tournament, if the player doesn't love their deck, the affection is of a different kind - building a tournament deck costs real life money. If you're willing to play in a tournament, you're betting a lot of time and money that your deck is going to win. Not winning is a painful, painful experience.
A Few Good Games: Preamble
My favourite games suck. My favourite RTS game (Warcraft III) is also one of the games I expect to lose every time I play it competitively. I play Magic: The Gathering because I love collecting the cards and enjoy putting new deck concepts together, but I bemoan the loss of every cent to my hobbies and groan when I have to deal with somebody else's new deck.
I think Counter-Strike is over-rated. I couldn't get into Fallout 1. I don't mind the pretty-boys and consumptive girls that make up Final Fantasy, but I have tried it now and decided that level-grinding in a single player game is nothing to be proud of. I've quit WoW multiple times, but I think any gamer over 18 has probably done that now.
Now, I'm creating a blog about my *unpopular* opinion on games. I'm starting off with a mammoth update of 12 titles, both board and card and video. Because every one needs an avenue through which to vent their opinions. But also because this is a university assignment by me, student number n6852432 for my personal assessment item number 2.
This blog represents a collection of a few good games. There are 6 games that I like and 6 that I dislike. Both are tinted by opinion but discussed in a scholarly framework, paying attention to such concepts as 'balance', 'choice', 'flow' and whatever tool is at hand to drive my point home. Like say, if my point were a nail and a certain concept were a hammer, I would totally use that concept. But if my point was a screw...
I think Counter-Strike is over-rated. I couldn't get into Fallout 1. I don't mind the pretty-boys and consumptive girls that make up Final Fantasy, but I have tried it now and decided that level-grinding in a single player game is nothing to be proud of. I've quit WoW multiple times, but I think any gamer over 18 has probably done that now.
Now, I'm creating a blog about my *unpopular* opinion on games. I'm starting off with a mammoth update of 12 titles, both board and card and video. Because every one needs an avenue through which to vent their opinions. But also because this is a university assignment by me, student number n6852432 for my personal assessment item number 2.
This blog represents a collection of a few good games. There are 6 games that I like and 6 that I dislike. Both are tinted by opinion but discussed in a scholarly framework, paying attention to such concepts as 'balance', 'choice', 'flow' and whatever tool is at hand to drive my point home. Like say, if my point were a nail and a certain concept were a hammer, I would totally use that concept. But if my point was a screw...
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