Game Mechanics
A blog looking at game mechanics, design and commenting on interesting gaming news.
Monday 26 August 2013
On hold!
Due to various things that will be keeping me busy over the coming months, I've put writing this blog on hold until further notice.
Monday 19 August 2013
Civilization 5, Brave New World: Review
Big expansions come with equally large expectations, and
Brave New World is Civ 5’s second major piece of DLC. Now expansions and strategy
games are old bed fellows, you can find one for just about any strategy game
you care to name and the majority of them followed a familiar trend. Lots of
new toys to play with no attention paid to balance issues.
You spend hours investigation all the new options, but once
you’d finished that exploration, the cracks would be laid bare and you interest
would be gone again. And this is what makes Brave New World so interesting. It
bucks the trend completely, instead being a carefully crafted expansion to fix
the problems Civ 5 already has.
And Civ 5’s biggest problem by far was a lack of mid to late
game action. It was all too easy to build empires that would be entirely introverted;
completely focused on their path to victory which involved no one else. You’d
just be clicking next turn to see if you could complete your science victory before
someone else filled the culture bar. Only a warring nation could throw a
spanner in the works, provided they had the technology to do it.
So what does Brave New World do to get players round a table
and interact? Well it introduces a very important table in the form of the
World Congress and makes you pull up a seat. Once an early game technology is
completed and the simple matter of meeting everyone is achieved, the World
Congress begins. Every thirty turns, new proposals are put forward for approval
by all nations. These range from putting trade embargos on your enemies to
trying to decide the world religion and ultimately, voting for the world leader
as a diplomatic victory.
It elevates the importance of diplomatic relations and makes
them relevant again. You can use spies you gain to instead act as diplomats,
allowing you to haggle over back room deals with the other leaders. A large sum
of gold and a few resources may well secure you those crucial votes to enact the
policies you need. Each vote can be quite a tense moment as you never know
exactly who will be in favour and who might see your proposals as being one
step closer to war.
Other changes see a revamped cultural policy tree as well as
the introduction of ideologies. Each of the three ideologies is an extra tech
tree of cultural policies with some powerful late game bonuses. These also have
a great impact on international relations by affecting your empire’s happiness.
If your populations think it looks more fun over the border, your happiness can
take a serious hit. Riots can spring up, and you may be forced into towing the
line and switching to the more popular ideology.
Cultural victory has had a complete re-work which it definitely
needed. Before it was simply a case of building culture producing buildings and
filling up a progress bar to win, hardly engaging. Now a cultural victory sees you doing battle
with tourism as your offence and your own cultural progress as a defence. You
utilise great writers, artists and musicians to produce works that you can put
on display giving you tourism points. This will slowly build up through the
game and if you focus on it, your tourism begins to eclipse the culture of your
opponents. If your tourism score is greater than every other’s nation’s
culture, the game is yours as the world marvels at your artistic output.
The UI does a good job of tracking and displaying you
tourism progress, with clear indicators to show if you’re making progress or if
you’re falling behind. You can also swap great works with other nations to
achieve theming bonuses that can give you a little extra boost. It also adds
another late game element with archaeological digs. These appear as a bonus
tile improvement with the right technology and with a little effort, will let
you find artefacts to display in museums (where they belong), further boosting
your tourism output.
All these new elements are also nicely accommodated by the
previous expansion, Gods and Kings. There’s clearly been a lot of effort put in
to make these expansions feel like a cohesive whole, as all the new elements
can interact with the religious choices you make. If you get other leaders to
agree that your religion is the world religion, you gain further votes in the
world congress. Other choices can give your tourism a boost, so there’s a nice
link to the new mechanics.
Crucially the AI is capable of playing a competent game with
all the new additions. It’s able to sensibly assess the proposals made at the
World Congress and knows where its votes will benefit it the most, as well as
how much it should demand if you want to buy its votes. War is also a lot more
predictable, if leaders start denouncing each other, you know war is only a few
turns away unless you make efforts to smooth things over. Not that a war
focused AI will care much for your offerings, but I felt that war didn’t
suddenly arrive on my doorstep as a surprise like it used too.
So the real question is, do the additions give you enough to
consider in the late game, or are you still doomed to click next turn? Playing
a standard pace game against the AI, there were moments where that did happen,
yet it was never long before something required my attention. A quick paced
game or one with friends will likely give you plenty to do for most of your
turns. So on this point Brave New World is a real success. It may need a few
balance tweaks, but considering the complexity of Civ 5 with all its DLC, it’s
likely that any imbalance is perceived rather than it being a real underlying
problem.
It does however fall down at my second question. Is it worth
the money? Not really. If you buy it full price, it’s nearly as expensive as
the original game and it’s only an expansion. This probably won’t be a problem
for long though as Civ 5 and its DLC is regularly on sale. So as soon as that
happens, Brave New World jumps triumphantly into the must buy category for
anyone who already owns Civ 5.
Monday 12 August 2013
Antichamber: Review
Ever wondered what it would be like to explore one of those
impossible pictures? The type where the staircase always goes up, where doors
are on every surface? Well Antichamber answers those questions whilst
delivering a truly unique puzzle experience.
Right from the start, Antichamber throws out the traditional
rules of level design. As you explore down each corridor, you’re never quite
sure what you’ll find next. You could end looping back on yourself, finding a
secret path or witness the level changing before your eyes. The game pushes the
boundaries of what is possible with geometry; completely breaking traditional linear
level design. An early example you encounter is a room full of cubes. Looking
into the cube from each side shows you something different, which should be
impossible, but isn’t in this world: and with a bit of searching you find one
side of a cube turns out to be a path into an entirely different part of the
game.
It may sound mind bending and it certainly looks it, yet its
complex design is delivered in a simple way we all understand. You learn the
game through play. Exploring areas teaches you the game mechanics, you learn how
to overcome each obstacle and then use that knowledge to progress further when
faced with more complex challenges.
The controls are kept simple. You can run, walk and interact
with pictures found on the walls. The pictures often compliment the puzzles you
just solved, showing how they can be a metaphor for an aspect of life. These
moments can be quite thought provoking and left me wondering why the designer
didn’t keep the original working title, “Hazard: The Journey of Life”.
Some
complexity is added to the game as you progress; giving you more tools to
approach problems that previously seemed unsolvable. As you travel, you come
across some gun like objects. These allow you to manipulate coloured blocks if
different ways and each adds new controls on top of the previous one. And with
one simple instruction on the wall, the game has given you everything you need
to get past the puzzle in front of you and carry on.
For me,
playing Antichamber swung between a few emotions. I’d start off intrigued,
discovering the crazy areas ahead of me, understanding where and how far I
could progress. Then I’d switch to frustration as I’d fail to solve anything
and get stuck. Finally, a few minutes later I’d have a moment of inspiration
and break through the barriers in front of me with a real sense of triumph, and
start the cycle all over again. In many ways, that’s a familiar description of
any puzzle game. But I’d say Antichamber can often linger too long in
frustration as it’s not an easy game and it doesn’t offer much in the way of
hints.
Due to
the game’s non-linear design; you will have to remember how the various paths
you can travel connect to each other in weird ways. There is a map in the hub
area that highlights where you currently are and the path you just travelled.
Both useful pieces of information, but it doesn’t clearly show which bit
connects to what, which means you’ll end up mousing over a lot of it to display
the more detailed information. It does helpfully show branches off areas you’ve
been through, so a glance at the map will show if you haven’t fully
investigated an area or remind you that you may need to come back later.
Occasionally
you will see some arrows appear in the game to give you a hint in what
direction you’re meant to be travelling. You will need good peripheral vision
to spot them though as they’re quite subtle. These helped me out on a couple
occasions as I got lost on more than once, often finding bonus rooms that
revealed how some of the game design worked, which was a nice touch, yet a
little disappointing when I thought I was making real progress. A possible
improvement would have been an easy mode that gave a more prominent guiding
hand to steer you in the right direction.
Of
course as a puzzle game, the difficulty is subjective. If your logic is in
synch with the game, you could find it to be an easy game. I did end up having
to consult a guide towards the end as I had decided the path I was meant to be
following was a dead end. In fact it was the same puzzle twice in a row, I just
had to repeat the solution as I didn’t realise the location I was in changed.
The
clear positive of Antichamber is its design. There are all sorts of nice
touches that make it such an interesting title. You can quick travel between
any areas you’ve accessed simply by hitting the escape key. This takes you back
to the hub room and you simply click on the chamber you want to go to. The hub
room also contains all the game’s options on the wall. It seems a bit trivial;
yet interacting with an options menu in a first-person view is a little novel.
The
aesthetic choice is stimulating throwing a lot of vibrant and varied colour at
you to break up the clinical white corridors. It’s used to highlight various
puzzle elements adding consistency into the world. This is complimented by an
ambient music soundtrack that includes various intriguing sound effects to
emphasise certain puzzle elements.
This is
definitely a game that was difficult to make a decision on. A big part of its
appeal is the experience playing it, exploring and understanding the
curiosities around you. But if you get stuck, then that’s taken away from you,
leaving you looking for a solution. For myself, I got a lot of enjoyment from
Antichamber and if you’re looking for a puzzle game, this should top your list
after Portal and Portal 2. It’s incredible to think that this title was
developed by one person, Alexander Bruce. He’s created what can be honestly
described as a truly unique experience.
Labels:
Antichameber,
indie,
platformer,
puzzle,
review
Monday 5 August 2013
The Walking Dead, Episodes One to Five: Review
Fed up with the oversaturation of zombies in popular media?
Then this is the game for you! Honest! I was bored of all the TV shows, films
and games that were all cashing in the zombie phenomenon. I had even watched
some of the TV series adaptation of The Walking Dead graphic novel. Yet this
title stands out head and shoulders above the crowd. So how did a game based on
the same graphic novel covered in zombies capture my interest?
Easy, the game is all about the characters; the human interaction
in the desperate situation of a zombie apocalypse and how it pushes everyone to
their limits. You play the role of Lee, an African American who starts his
story in the back of a police patrol car. You’re on your way to jail, but
slightly bizarrely, the game initially hides the reason behind it.
It makes you first few interactions with other survivors slightly
dicey, as you have to decide whether you reveal or hide where you were heading
at the start of the outbreak. And they’re not easy decisions to make. The game
makes it clear that your decisions will affect the outcome of the story. But you
never know who will become a long-time companion that you have to rely on, or someone
you just meet in passing. Lying to a friend could have severe consequences
further down the line and impact the choices you have to make. Thankfully, you’re
not left in the dark for too long. Lee’s past is revealed part way into the
first episode and becomes a really interesting issue to handle.
The gameplay is predominately point and click adventure with
a dash of quick time events (QTEs). Now QTEs have definitely received their
fair share of flak for being annoying and unexpected, requiring you to memorise
button presses just to progress. So The Walking Dead sensibly side steps a lot
of the problems with some simple design choices. All QTEs in the game rely on
the same button presses and are used consistently for action sequences. They’re
also short lasting only a few seconds at a time, so if you fail and get reset
to the start of the event, you don’t feel unfairly punished.
That shortness also adds to the tension, whether it’s
fending off Walkers in a frantic attempt to escape, or having to deal with some
of the hostile survivors. It’s by far the best implementation of QTEs I’ve
seen, although there were still a couple that didn’t immediately make sense. In
one instance, I had to fail the first QTE, to then save Lee in a second. But
that wasn’t explained at all. So I spent a minute madly mashing the button
before I gave up out of boredom because I thought it might be a bug.
The action sequences are sensibly dotted throughout the
story, yet they are definitely not the focus of the game. It’s all about the choices
you make in conversations, how you steer the group and what you think is the
best option for survival. It’s also about who you care for, which characters
you like and those you hate. The first survivor you meet is Clementine, a little
girl who’s lost her parents. Lee realises that he’s going to have to take care
of her, and so you become her guardian.
I’ve never cared so much for another character in a game. Even
though Lee isn’t her dad, I felt that I had to take care of her, no matter
what. And that’s a testament to the quality of the writing. She’s not some
annoying tag along escort quest character. She actually acts like eight year old,
with her own personality and capabilities. There’s often moments where you’ll
rely on her to get through a tough spot, rather that constantly having to
protect her. It forms a natural team between her and Lee.
Then there are your enemies. Your other group members have
their own clear opinions on the best way to survive, and you’ll be caught in
the middle of it. You won’t be able to keep everyone happy, so you’ll have to
choose your conversation options carefully. Some of the best story moments are
when you’re presented with the tough choices. You will be in situations where
you have to choose who lives and who dies; and if someone has been working
against you, can you take the high road and save them?
You don’t always get a lengthy amount of time to weigh up
your options. Sometimes you’ll be forced to react to events in conversation,
adding to the pressure of the situation; fearful of what happens if you take no
action, which is often a valid option. Silence can speak louder than words on
many occasions. The only problem is it can be a bit harsh on slow readers.
There are two options for the point and click element of the
game. You can play with all the intractable elements highlighted or revealed by
mousing over them. There’s never a large amount of objects to interact with at
any one time, but I would recommend playing with highlights on. The points you
can click on are often fairly small and there’s no point in handicapping
yourself. The point and click portions are fairly linear and only use a few
objects at any one time, so there’s never a complicated puzzle to solve, though
this lack of complexity may be a bit of a disappointment to point and click
fans. I only had one moment where I had to walk around and click on everything
to progress, which was satisfying for me as I hate getting stuck when the
design logic isn’t clear.
Currently, a complete story is told over the five available
episodes. Telltale Games are becoming masters of episodic content, as each episode
provides a complete chapter of the story that concludes, but also leaving a
cliff hanger teasing upcoming events. There’s a new DLC episode ‘400 Days’ in
development which will allow you to play other characters and see their
perspectives of the apocalypse. The events of the first five episodes will then
continue in season two, with a current release date scheduled for later this
year. As an excellent story driven game, it’s good to hear that more content is
on the way, but it does raise the issue of when will the story conclude?
All in all, I can definitely recommend season one, even with
a further problem discussed within the spoiler alert below. It will provide an
excellent story driven experience that runs for around ten hours total for the
first season. It’s left me looking forward to both the upcoming DLC and season
two.
So the final problem of the story that can only be discussed
with spoilers:
Spoiler Alert!
You would expect The Walking Dead to have multiple diverging
paths with plenty of endings, given the amount of serious decisions you have to
make; but that’s not the case. Really there’s only one ending at the end of the
first season of five episodes. How you get there can be quite different and the
journey is definitely the heart of the game. Yet it robs the game of replay-ability
and it’s exactly the same issue suffered by the Mass Effect trilogy. Telltale
Games have stated that your decisions will carry over into season two, so it
may only be a catch for now.
Monday 29 July 2013
Cities in Motion 2: Review
It’s a city transport sim! Now, before you run off back to the
grey-brown shooters, stop for a second and consider what Cities in Motion 2 has
to offer you.
You take control of a brand new transport company who’s
tasked with developing transport networks across a number of cities through a
campaign mode, multiplayer or sandbox game. To do this, you build new infrastructure
and construct routes to get all the busy sims from A to B, whilst extorting as
much money as you can from their pockets.
The cities themselves are all pre-constructed playgrounds
for you to start building your empire in. They do slowly expand outwards which
you can encourage by building new roads, but for the most part, everything is
ready for you to build on from the get-go.
Taking the first scenario as an example, you’re presented
with a sprawling city that has big hubs in the middle surrounded by smaller
island blocks. The objective is to increase your network coverage up to a
certain percentage. This is represented by circular catchment areas around each
stop you place, showing how far the sims are willing to walk to get on public
transport.
I leapt straight in and brought up the cities information
window to see where there were large concentrations of blue-collar worker
houses, and their workplaces. This colour coded every building to give a clear
picture of where there were hotspots and straight away, I noticed a big clump
of houses next to some workplaces. Great I thought, setting up a quick bus
route here will guarantee a nice bit of starting income. I couldn’t have been more wrong. No one gave a
damn about my buses and I was immediately losing money.
And this was after I had played through the tutorial, which
takes you through how to do everything in a nice and concise manner. Three
restarts later as I kept making bad routes, I decided to try something
different. I went to the centre of the city a built a giant trolleybus route up
and down the main avenue. To my surprise, every stop immediately had people queuing.
I had to immediately buy extra vehicles and amend the timetable to reducing
waiting times between services. With my business saved, I experimented with
other long routes between nearby hubs. All turned out to be successes; and then
I realised one thing the tutorial neglected.
Sims are more than happy to walk short journeys and don’t
focus your routes on one demographic. With those mysteries solved, I took out
loans to increase my network and meet the objective. Building new routes is
simple enough and you can pause the game to build; which is a good job because
one way streets are a pain in the backside. Just as you think you have your
route sorted, you realise that the loop you planned on using to turn around is
a one way street in the wrong direction! To be fair, the road markings are
clear and with proper planning, one way streets aren’t a big problem.
Construction is quick. For a bus route, all you need is a
few stops and a bus depot. With that sorted, you jump into the route editor and
simply create the route you want between them. The game is smart enough to work
out the shortest route between any two stops, but you can tweak the route is
you prefer by adding some free waypoints. Other transport options include
trams, metros, waterbuses and the aforementioned trolleybuses. These are
slightly more complex whilst providing faster and higher capacity services.
Beyond setting up the transport infrastructure, you’ll have
to manage both your staff and ticket prices. The game is kind enough to inform
you when tickets are becoming either to cheap or expensive, so you don’t have
to keep constantly checking them. Your staff are also simple to manage. You can
set the wages of your drivers, mechanics and ticket inspectors which affects
how good they are at their jobs, which is clearly displayed in the same window.
You only have to decide the amount of ticket inspectors you hire, and this a straightforward
choice of; does hiring another increase how much I earn in penalty fares? The
economy of the city does vary up and down, so these values do have to be managed
throughout the game.
You do get thrown a few extra side objectives to pursue over
time. These usually involve building specific routes or building more lines.
There’s not a great variety, and worse, the feedback on your progress is
incredibly unresponsive; to the point where you begin to wonder if it is
actually bugged.
The main problem of the game is caused by the depth of the
sim. As it’s tracking and updating so many different variables like the population,
traffic density, energy prices and so on. It means the game begins to chug after
a few hours of play. I set the game speed to maximum at all times I wasn’t
building and it still ran slow on my modest quad-core. I ended up leaving the
game running in the background at several points, simply because it didn’t need
my attention until I had earned some more money.
You can increase the game speed with your own custom rule-set,
or play in one of the smaller cities. Both notably increased the speed when I
tried, but it feels like having to use a work around and custom rule-sets can’t
be used in the main campaign. However, you can share your rule-sets and player
built cities via the Steam Workshop. So there’s plenty of additional content
that you can easily tap into.
Ultimately, I enjoyed Cities in Motion 2 for the first few
hours, but after that I found the game became handicapped by a lack of variety.
There are only a handful of vehicles to choose from and once I had the game
figured out, it was too easy to turn a large profit. I can’t recommend it
unless you are very specifically looking for a Sim that fills the niche between
Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe (OpenTTD) and SimCity (four or below, five is horrible). Alternatively, if you’re
looking for a very relaxed game, Cities in Motion 2 does provide satisfying laid
back experience. Just remember to put on something to listen too like a podcast
because the music is bland and repetitive.
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