Game Breakers

1up is running a feature looking at some not-so-fun design decisions that have been made in games over the years. "Innovations" like pits, spawn points, and long FMV sequences are just some of the choices they take to task here. From the article: "Rumor has it that videogames are not, in fact, movies. This might seem obvious to anyone who plays them, but the entertainment industry — and even a few game designers — have yet to comprehend this. Developers like Metal Gear's Hideo Kojima insist on cramming their games with cut-scenes that are often inscrutable, occasionally entertaining, and almost never interactive. Sometimes, you can't even press the Start button to skip them."

Re:Yerp. Figure it Out, Already.

[Southpaw018]

If you want to see how cutscenes should be done, play through Half Life 2 and HL2: Episode One. Pay attention to the commentary in EP1. They addresss how they specifically create "live" cutscenes at several commentary points.

One example is early in EP1. As you approach a T intersection from the south, they have a lone soldier firing at you far off to the right. You can easily pick him off, but then your attention is forced to the right side hallway and a realtime event: a gunship in its final throes, banging into the walls and crashing before exploding. Bam, there's your cutscene, entirely done without even removing control from the player.

FPS Games Fail A LOT

[Digital Vomit]

This article has touched a sore spot for me, so I'll post an article I wrote a while back that discusses this very issue, but focuses mainly on First Person Shooters. Unfortunately, it's just as applicable as when I first wrote it...

I'm a fan of good first person shooters, rare as they may be. One of my favorite video game pastimes right now is playing James Bond: Nightfire for the GameCube. I just set myself up in multiplayer mode with six bots (all Snow Guards) on the Skyrail level and blast away in 'professional' mode. That's pretty much the only way I play the game (I don't even think I've finished the single player portion of the game). Sadly, the game lacks a good mix of automatic weapons. Oh how I miss the good old AR44 and RCP90 from the N64 game Goldeneye.

As fun as the game is on my regular setting, it does get a tad tiresome. You know you've played a FPS too much when you start using a pistol to snipe while on the run (it is, however, quite satisfying getting a good sequence of one shot kills with the Raptor .50). But it was hen I started using one of the game's only automatic submachine gun set on semi-automatic mode to snipe, I knew it was time for something new.

So, my brother and I go out and rent GoldenEye: Rogue Agent on the weekend. *sigh* I'll forego describing its major shortcomings and rant about the state of the FPS genre on the console.

Okay. Here is how the video game industry should be: find out what is good about a game in a particular genre, then include that feature in every subsequent game. There is absolutely no excuse for multiplayer mode in a FPS shooter not to have every single one of the following features:

1. Bots Not everyone can gather a group of people together to play multiplayer games. Every FPS should include computer controlled players in multiplayer mode. At the very least these bots must fill in for missing players. A better standard would be the existence of bots in addition to the human controlled players. Nightfire is a perfect example of how all FPSes from now on should be, allowing up to four human players and six computer controlled players at once.
2. Customizable Controls No FPS should exist without at least four different control setups. The control layout should be displayed on-screen. There is no excuse not to do this (I'm looking right at you, Medal of Honor: Frontline, whose control layouts weren't even in the manual!). The best would be if each button were customizable. Players should be able to change controls in the middle of a game. Any sensitivity controls (and there should be sensitivity controls!) should range from frozen molasses to greased lightning (not frozen molasses to regular molasses, GoldenEye: Rogue Agent!).
3. Good Weapons No FPS game should have fewer than twenty weapons. That is the absolute, bare-bones minimum. A good number of weapons is thirty or forty. The complete weapon set must include the following:
   • At least two high-powered assault rifles, capable of automatic and burst fire (e.g. the AR-44 from Goldeneye)
   • At least two submachine guns with high rates of fire (e.g. ZMG and RCP-90 from GoldenEye)
   • At least one submachine gun with a silencer (e.g. Deutsche M9K from Nightfire)
   • At least one, good sniper rifle
   • At least one rocket launcher.
   • At least one grenade launcher.
   • Hand grenades
   • Proximity mines
   • Laser trip-mines
   • At least one automatic shotgun
   • At least one laser weapon
   • At least two good, normal pistols
   • At least one pistol with a silencer
   • At least one machine pistol
   • A knife
   • The ability to punch (i.e. attack without a weapon)
   • The ability to use an empty gun as

Re:On the Topic of Not-So-Fun Design

[XO]

Hmm, I didn't notice any of that. Looked fine for me.

Oh, yeah, I use Opera.

And I have a script that removes a ton of advertising elements automagically.