Some Analysis - Batman Arkham Asylum (Oldie now, But Always A Goodie)

I figure that every now and again, it's OK to post some personal analysis I've done on some of my favorite (and not so favorite) video games. While I want to display a variety of topics on my blog here, there are many things that can be written about and for video games. Here, I'll present some positives, negatives, thoughts and concerns about some titles (or aspects of a title) to present some critical thought from a game design perspective.

 

1) Batman: Arkham Asylum (6/30/2011) - Xbox 360/Playstation 3 (Highly rated video game)

Positives:

- Graphical User Interface not cluttered, extremely easy to navigate. This includes choosing Batman’s special devices, including Batarang, Cryptographic Decoder, etc.

- “Detective Mode”, which allows Batman to essentially see through walls and spot enemies/items/environmental interactions, is a great way to let the player feel as if they have Become Batman. It also allows a greater ease when searching for clues that point to the next destination, as well as alternate routes for stealthily taking down enemies.

- The player is rewarded for almost everything that she does correctly with a certain amount of experience points that can be used to buy upgrades for Batman. This includes solving The Riddler’s riddle challenges, defeating enemies, successfully hacking door nodes, acquiring/unlocking character profiles, etc.

- New abilities that Batman acquires add in different ways to take out enemies, allowing for more thoughtful approaches to combat rather than just running in and spamming the punch button. Notably: Inverted Takedown – Batman can hang from gargoyles, lying in wait for an enemy to pass below, and then drop down and tie them from said gargoyle. Great fun, and rewards player with stealthy takedown (most of the time).

Negatives:

- While combat is nicely designed around context-sensitive button pressing, and successfully creates superhero quality combat, it can get a little tiresome. However, there are enough upgrades and different weapon tactics that player can use to spice things up (after upgrades are purchased).

- At first, it is hard to understand how Batman’s health is gauged. The HUD doesn’t really clearly mark it out, and I couldn’t figure out how health was being regained until I actively watched as the health meter was refilled after gaining experience.

- There really isn’t a tutorial system in the beginning to teach players what everything means, and how to perform certain actions. Everything is prompted to the player by on-screen pictures of when to press certain buttons, but being left to figure these things out is a little confusing at first. For example, I didn’t know how to use the Batarang to catapult myself up to higher ledges at first, until I swung the camera around every which way. Easily fixed, but a quick annoyance.

- Using certain items is, again, not explained very well in tutorial form. For example, the Cryptographic Sequencer was a little difficult to figure out at first. The game tells you to manipulate the analog sticks, but not how or to what end. Again, it teaches by doing, but a quick annoyance.

Thoughts:

- While I enjoyed the game, until Batman starts gaining new abilities and all the moves are figured out (on my own), gameplay is a little slow and sometimes frustrating to manage.

Pow! Slam! Video Game!

- The experience system is set up in such a way that you can only ever really buy one upgrade at a time, as it takes quite a bit of experience to fill up the upgrade gauge. I understand this is a level cap of sorts, but it would be nice if there were easier ways to gain BIGGER amounts of experience (I mentioned before that XP is gained for almost anything, but not big amounts)

- Batman pretty much has three modes of speed: really slow walk, walk, and all out run. While usually this is fine for most games, running is especially hard to navigate at first because of the small hallways of Arkham Asylum. Often getting caught on edges, corners and walls, especially when getting used to the controls. Collision detection is especially good, however, so there aren’t any serious glitches or graphical faults when this happens.

- Detective Mode is so useful, in fact, that sometimes I find myself keeping it on much more than the regular view type. Regular viewing almost becomes pointless for long periods of time.

Would Likes:

- Easier handling while running, maybe varying run speeds

- Easier ways to net large amounts of XP

- Lower cost to certain upgrades, or just more upgrades in general

- This is a great game, and there’s not a lot to comment on besides what I’ve already mentioned. However, I would perhaps like more power in using certain weapons during combat, like the Batarang. Also, some enemies seem to never give up. This makes for interesting and balanced combat at times, but given the low amount of button presses required for getting through battles barebones, this could be tweaked.

                                            Next Week's Analysis: FINAL FANTASY XIII

Response to Jesse Schell's "Gamification" Seminar

It’s an extremely interesting point that Jesse raises when talking about the application and connections to reality that these recently successful games have been making. Social media like Facebook, or Club Penguin, and the Xbox Achievements all have roots in a bigger picture besides what the player is experiencing while they play. With Mafia Wars, these people are playing against their own friends, taking the feeling of playing a game of football or Frisbee without having to leave your room and without having to leave our bubble of comfort. Farmville is the same sort of concept, in that the players are interacting with their friends and other farmers, looking to improve the position of their farms. In many other cases, games are trying to break that bubble of comfort as much as possible and reconnecting people with things they wouldn’t normally be able to do in their life but they may want to. The result? These games were wildly popular, and made tons of money.

 

Obviously the point that Schell is trying to make is that this phenomenon is something that game designers need to be paying attention to. The possibilities for stretching reality and immersing more and more people are astounding. I’m reminded of the 2009 film, Gamer, where people could take control of inmates and pit them against each other in brutal deathmatches. Could this be the future of gaming? Could social gaming go so far as to push people to want to brush with violent realism in their every day lives, when they get home from work or school?

If gamification reaches the points that Schell described, then an evolution from modern games into iterations such as what we see in Gamer this would be totally possible. While I don’t agree with the full extent of his predictions, there are certainly things that can be found now that can evolve soon to reach a state of gaming in everyday activity. A good example of this would be FourSquare, the website where a person checks in to a location every time they visit it, and connect with their friends and also see who has checked in to a location more. This is already something that’s happening right now! Go to work, check in, and receive experience points. Once you leave, driving home can net you experience as well. Predictably, people will find more enjoyment in games based off activities that already have potential for fun rather than simple tasks like brushing your teeth and drinking Dr. Pepper. But, the possibilities are endless.

With social media sites reeling more and more people into a world of gaming, first as casual gamers, there is more potential for this person to continue to play games and look for ways to implement games into their daily lives. Once these new opportunities for game design are realized by the community as a whole, and new technologies emerge and are prototyped, the possibilities for this community to make an impact on society as a whole will become widespread. The future may be a place where every aspect of the global culture is rooted in gaming.

Two Games, One Genre: Dead Space 2 & Resident Evil 5 (Survival Horror cont.)

For comparison and analysis, I will be playing Resident Evil 5 and Dead Space 2. They are both survival horror games, with RE5 focusing more on action than most traditional survival horror games. The first Dead Space was very much a horror game, but I think that with the development of DS2, the levels expanded greatly and a heavier emphasis on action and a faster pace was put into place. For this reason, I think that RE5 and DS2 are perfect for a side-by-side analysis.

In Resident Evil, the player can cause more damage by targeting different points on the enemy’s bodies, which in turn cause either higher damage or temporary incapacitation. Obviously, head shots are the credo in a Resident Evil game, but the point is kill the foe in whatever fashion available. In Dead Space, the player is strongly encouraged to “dismember” enemies by firing at their limbs. This causes more damage, and will save the player ammunition. While resource management and conservation is important in Resident Evil, it is more readily available as a result of the heavy action element present in the design. Because of this, targeting certain areas on an enemy's body is present, but doesn't carry as much importance as in Dead Space 2. More on resource management shortly. 

In the game, there are two main characters: Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar. The player controls Chris by default, while Sheva is controlled by the AI. There are situations where Chris must give Sheva a boost up to a higher ledge, where she runs about pulling switches to open a door so that the player(s) can progress, or she grabs a key, or acts as overwatch to Chris while he proceeds through a bottleneck. During this time, Chris must fend off attacks on himself, and also attacks on his partner. It’s important to note that if at any time Sheva dies, the game ends. In Dead Space, strictly speaking of the single player campaign, the main character Isaac Clarke plays through the game on his own. While he meets several other characters that interact with and occasionally hinder his progress, there is no use of NPCs for puzzle solving or overall game progression. Dead Space 2 relies heavily on a sense of isolation, and a heightened sense of horror and player tension throughout. The NPCs are off-screen, "helping" with the story progression but not directly with Isaac's troubles. While Resident Evil is played with another character, and sometimes another player, the horror is more based on macabre imagery and suspenseful "peekaboo" frights. The player often feels like they are able to run-and-gun their way through certain levels, and this is certainly true.

The sense of isolation in Dead Space and the partner system of Resident Evil also plays into the subject of resource management. While being watchful over the space in your inventory is important in Dead Space, it doesn’t seem to play as much of a huge role as in the other game in question. The player can purchase upgrades to Isaac’s armor, which in turn offers better protection, added offensive/defensive perks, and more storage space for items and ammunition. In Resident Evil, resources must be divided up between Chris and Sheva’s extremely limited carrying space, and strategy must be employed in order to have what is needed for the current situation on hand and ready to use. More storage space cannot be acquired or bought. Unlike previous titles in the series, there aren’t “storage boxes” in which the player can store extra items when needed. Dead Space 2 does however feature storage spaces, which also help ease the need for stringent resource management.

As mentioned before, Dead Space 2 features an equipment upgrade system that allows the player to tweak not only Isaac’s equipped armor, but also his arsenal of futuristic weaponry. This is done at “Benches”, and instead of the game’s main currency being the resource needed to upgrade weapons, special items called “Power Nodes” must be obtained (which are fairly rare in comparison to currency) in order to activate nodes in the weapon or health meter’s load-out. New suits can be purchased with Credits, but more exact upgrading is done with Power Nodes. Resident Evil 5 also features a similar system, but a stronger emphasis is placed on customization in Dead Space. You are only able to upgrade weapons, albeit at a much higher capacity than in Dead Space, and there are on average more weapons to obtain in the game. Also, there is no special item needed other than Gold, Resident Evil’s currency. While there is enough to do in terms of upgrading weapons, it would’ve been interesting to see a higher level of customization with armor, or maybe even character abilities. Dead Space 2 has utilized the customization option in a slightly more engaging way overall.

April 9th, 2011 - Survival Horror

Part 1

I have recently played through the Dead Space series, Extraction through Dead Space 2. This is one of my favorite franchises, and a big influence over my qualities and visions as a game designer. But, as true as this may be, I realize that it’s important to play a game as a designer nowadays, not simply a video game player. Recognizing the flaws is just as important as enjoying the beauty of a game’s design.

Survival horror is one of my favorite genres, and has been for over 10 years. Dead Space is, in my opinion, one of the few games in recent memory that has done a fantastic job of staying true (for the most part) to the key aspects of survival horror. One area in which they succeed with flying colors? Atmosphere.  When you play any of the games in the franchise, you are constantly noticing the great design behind the many environments you’re traveling through. You can hear things clinking and crashing in the distance as if something nasty were slithering by; there are little bits of dust flickering about in the dying lights; the music creeps up into haunting crescendos, before dying down again and melding perfectly into the background noise again.

Another thing that is done well is the sense of isolation and powerlessness that you have against the horrors of the Ishimura (Dead Space/Extraction) and The Sprawl (Dead Space 2). You can truly feel the alien strength and violence behind the enemy’s attacks, your heart rate rises, and you try your very hardest to fight for your survival. Of course, you’re not without aid; the player is able to upgrade her weaponry and armor through the discovery of “Power Nodes”, and this can give you an extra punch and defense against the hordes, but then the attacks get more fierce and intense! Long and short, the enemies gain strength as the player does. This retains the challenge, and, as a result, the horror stemming from isolation and weakness.

I could go on about the things that I love about Dead Space, but that’s not the whole point. There are drawbacks. While this problem has been fixed to a degree in Dead Space 2, there is little variation in the mission types that you’re given throughout the game. Most of it consists of find (insert key item here), fight for your life, get back to the destination to use (insert key item), next chapter. Basically, Dead Space is fetch quest after fetch quest. The characters actually even make a reference to it, and while it doesn’t break the “fourth wall”, the fact is never more present that there is very little variation in the gameplay. Dead Space 2 fixes this problem somewhat, and there is more varied environments as well, but much is left unchanged. But, don't get me wrong here. While there is little mission variety, the paths in which you take to complete your goals are fraught with dangers and terrifying moments that keep the player looking over their shoulder and expecting the next thrill.

In the next post, I'll be comparing Dead Space 2 and Resident Evil 5, and seeing how they stack up against each other.

Sheldon Lee and Chris Crawford: Comparisons

I've just finished reading "Chris Crawford's Guide to Interactive Storytelling" and "Story and Character Development For Games" by Sheldon Lee (which are both great books, if you're starting into game design), and it was such an interesting experience reading them one after another. First off, while they share some similar views, most of their main underlying themes and goals are very different (and not just because one is about game design straight on and the other is about "interactive storytelling").

Crawford maintains many times throughout his book that interactive storytelling and games are two very different things, and denounces games as proper storytelling mediums at several points. While he gives credit to games' evolution through the years, he dare not give them as much credit as they deserve (at least in my opinion). Many of the techniques that he lists that are "flawed" ways of diversifying an interactive storyworld are techniques that Lee talks about extensively and encourages for enriching a video game. (It's important that I mention that I know Crawford is talking about interactive story engines; very different things in his opinion than video games. But, the point for me is to take lessons for both and enrich my game designing, which is why I'm reading these books in the first place).

Crawford says that simply filling your world with characters is a hollow way of adding depth, and while this is correct, Lee encourages this practice as long as you're taking the time to add depth and dimension to the NPCs. I believe that there is truth to both statements, as there's nothing more worthless than NPCs who give the one piece of information they're programmed to give and then repeat it over and over. While it's impossible when populating a game world to make every character live and breath and speak like a normal person with feelings and thought patterns, it is possible to select the characters that will truly be important to the story and the world and make them 3-dimensional and worthy of the player's empathy.

Although, the two authors do seem to agree on one thing: branching storylines and dialog are usually a mistake, but for different reasons. Crawford says that people usually don't like it because of the workload involved, while Sheldon says that the idea is a good one but usually poorly implemented. And from reading the responses in the discussion boards at school about what the students think contribute to interactivity, many of them happened to mention branching storylines and dialog with different outcomes help greatly with it.

But, I'm often thinking about why Crawford's book was chosen in a course about storytelling in video games, not interactive stories, which are a completely different medium. Chris Crawford's storytelling engine that he's worked on for the better part of two decades is centered around a totally different goal, which is the pursuit of a truly interactive and immersive  story, which he has taken plenty of time to separate boldly from video games altogether. This is fine. Many of these concepts can certainly be applied to enriching the stories that we game designers create every day in our work, and I feel as I've walked away with much more wisdom than when I entered the class. As a mainstream industry, there are few examples of truly famous interactive stories. I feel that the closest that we've come to the concept in this generation of gaming has been Heavy Rain, a title that feels much more like an interactive movie than a video game.

What do I think? I'm a story kind of guy. I like linear stories, and games with linear stories. Far more of the games that I associate with and love are linearly told stories than games that have multiple endings. Personally I think that video games can be a great vessel for telling a great story, as the person who wrote it intended. I feel like I'm in an increasing minority on this one, as lots of players tend to "skip" the hell out of cutscenes even when they haven't seen them before or experienced the story at all. They just want to shoot crap and get on with the gameplay. And that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. But, I think that there's just as much duty to providing a fantastic story that IS there to be experienced, no matter whether the player gives a damn or if they truly are looking for a great story to touch their heart. This is what I want to have a hand in. Making great stories, with excellent worlds to employ them in.

MCCLOUD'S UNDERSTANDING COMICS

This book was shipped to me as part of my first game design course, and at first I didn't really understand. Comics? This is game design. But, as I've learned the hard way several times before in my short college life, sometimes my naivete knows no bounds. After reading the first two chapters, I soon very much realized why this book was put in my hands. Huzzah!

After reading only a little bit of Understanding Comics, you soon realize that the word comic in this case is very much interchangeable with other nouns: games, and movies. As I read through, I got into the habit of simply switching out the word comic with video game. Or even just game, really. Doesn't have to be a video game. But, as we all know, most people who get into game design aren't usually thinking of analog games, and I'm no exception. My brain operates in video game mechanics and scenarios, dabbling forever in that realm of sense that is beyond the conceptual realm, thinking of new ways to breath life into a world and characters that can be manipulated by my Playstation controller. But...this isn't my point. On to McCloud's book...

In Chapter 2, titled "The Vocabulary of Comics", McCloud explains that the picture of a tobacco pipe isn't a tobacco pipe, despite that the picture is telling the reader otherwise. It literally says, "this is a tobacco pipe", or something to that effect. It's a picture. Of a pipe. But really, it's just lines on a paper, with shading and other details, made to look like a pipe. Comics are an art form that use symbols, and icons, to represent what we as humans can identify as that symbol's and icon's real world counter part. This example is shown better in the picture of a man's face. There are several different steps, starting from a drawing with almost photographic detail, to a stick figure/smiley face combo. But what does our mind see in either case? A person, or a man. Whichever.

What does this have to do with video games? Everything. It can make several different statements, none of which are any less important than the last. Games themselves are indeed a representative art form. Although facial-capture technology and 3D graphics in general are expanding, games even five years ago left a lot of blanks to be filled in by our brains. But this is where I think the whole affair is brilliant: games are nothing more than stacks upon stack of imagination, compiled together to make a journey and experience for humans to take. You could say that a lot of imagination is poured into the creation of a digital game, and a lot of imagination is required to play most analog games. In either case, myself as a game designer and we, people, as players, must be willing to let our minds do what they do best: fill in the blanks.

In the same chapter, McCloud talks about the conceptual world and the realm of senses. The realm of senses is where video games thrive, and I could write much more on this...but I feel it's a little too late in the evening. Next time, then.

March 9th, 2011 - Must Design

   So it's been a couple of crazy weeks. I've truly started to get into the flow of what my life is going to be like, but I'm still working on it. I've started adding contacts, got more in-depth with my storytelling, and also have working my way around some basic game design programs before I tackle the big stuff. Big stuff being? C# and C++ coding language for one, and also the Unity 3D and Unreal Dev. Kit engines. I learn more every day, but I have a certain tendency to try and challenge myself with way too many projects at one time. I keep telling myself, take baby steps, because there's no way all of this information is going to fit inside your head. You're going to lose some of if for sure. So, I'm going to try and stick to my guns and tackle my tasks one at a time.

This is what the agenda has for me: I'm using my Action-Adventure/RPG/Platformer design, tentatively titled 'Dirty Harey', as my focus in my storytelling course right now, so this is giving me a great opportunity to know what is required in order to fully flesh out my stories. There are two big designs in my head right now, 'Dirty Harey' being one of them, and I have so many ideas but lack the structural information to set it all up in order to put it into an actual game design. So I do all the work required for class on DH, then I copy all those same assignments and do the same thing for 'Sanctuary' (my passion project...will detail in a later post) and any other designs I might have. I'm going to take on the "Building a World" and "Interview with your Main Character" assignments tonight.

The other task I need to focus on is making it through all of the tutorials for Game Maker. Luckily, some of the advanced tutorials introduce me to concepts that hold water in other subjects, such as coding, so working my way around game design programs such as this is going to be a big help. There are a couple other programs on my list that I plan to download before moving on to learning C#, but again...baby steps. Game Maker first.

Also, I need to start making the best of my LinkedIn connections and start talking to people. What good is a connection if you don't actually have a relationship with that person? It's no good! At all! But this is another one of my main problems...I've taken the Networking Bootcamps, I'm making use of some great networking sites, but I still have a lot of trouble going up to people (in person and on the internet) and talking to them and getting to know them. I get the feeling I came a little too late, that everybody in my classes is already talking, and I missed out on some big inside joke. This is something I feel in the rest of my life as well, not just with my professional connections, and it's a big problem that I need to overcome. Does anybody know how I feel? I hope so. It's always good to know you're not alone, but seriously kid...get over it! Put yourself out there! It'll do you good - people WILL like you.

And...I've digressed. I have a feeling I'll be doing that a lot in these entries, but that's what I'm using this blog for: a professional and personal journal that I invite all to see. I hope when I'm interviewing in the future, my possible employers come across this.

NEXT TIME, ON THE PETER VAUGHN SHOW...I'll talk about my two main designs, so that whoever reads this knows what the heck I'm talking about!