Giving Up On Games
Splinter Cell: Blacklist and Mass Effect 3. I tried to play them – I really did – but slowly with both I have succumbed to distraction and boredom, and laid them aside. For the foreseeable future at least. Neither motivated me to play for more than one mission at a time, even doing that required effort. But I bought them, so there they sat, both with slow to non existent progress. I didn’t want to start anything...
The Benefit of Awkward Controls
I like awkward controls. I love that feeling of building familiarity with an arcane or obtuse control scheme, that almost feels like learning a new language, or an instrument. I like the challenge that comes from something being hard, not just because it’s punishing or complicated but because the interaction requires careful, almost hesitant button presses. I don’t like bad controls. If something is unreliable,...
Tearaway and the 4th Wall
Tearaway is one of three titles in 2013 which directly dealt with the relationship between the player and game, in addition to The Stanley Parable and Bioshock Infinite. Bioshock Infinite hasn’t been short of any attention. It’s clever, beautiful, flawed, but endlessly interesting. Then there’s The Stanley Parable, a witty exploration game overtly about player freedom and game design. In both there is stuff about...
Are Hard Games Better Than Easier Ones? A Response to PBS Game Show
Are Hard games better than easier ones. Yes, according to PBS Game Show. My first reaction was to bristle. No, that’s too simple, challenge and difficulty are complex issues, it’s short sighted to say harder is better. Besides, how do you define hard? Also, what about personal taste? But at the back of my mind I did wonder. Super Meat Boy, Dark Souls, Spelunky, some of my favourite games are considered very hard and...
Randomness. Or, Why I can’t Stop Playing Spelunky
Randomness and chance have always been key parts of game design. The coin, dice, and deck of cards are the dynamic cores to countless games that were around way before computers. But it’s in video games where one can feel the effects of randomisation most dramatically. One only needs to look at the enduring popularity of Tetris to see how brilliantly engaging randomness can make a game. Chance is hugely felt when playing an RPG,...
Returning to: Vice City
Vice City was one of my favourite games growing up. Everyone played it. In the months leading up to it, even the popular kids would be staring at the promotional website in IT class, scouring it for details. I remember distinctly a collective “ooooh” when we saw a screenshot of the protagonist wielding a chainsaw, and a bigger one when when we saw him on a bike. Suddenly images of zipping between cars, popping wheelies, and...
Offensive Defence
These are but a few of the comments that graced Matt Lees’ video about Killer is Dead’s Gigolo mode. They won’t fuck you no matter how badly you defend them, Matt. “Whydon’t you actually talk to these ladies” It’s gigolo mode, not feminism mode god what a fag Ew, fuck you. Suda 51 rules. ...
Zombie Design and The Last of Us
There’s no right way to do zombies; fast, slow, infected, resurrected, they all have their place, but the key appeal of all types of zombies, for me at least, is their relationship to their past human forms. If a zombie doesn’t have a semblance in its look or behaviour of its past life, then its just a monster. Monsters can be scary but the way they’re scary is different; either more abstract, or primal, or plain...
Returning to: Tomb Raider
I’ve found myself on many nights sat with my Vita playing the original Tomb Raider; in part because of the upcoming reboot, but also because my Vita felt underused. For those that haven’t had the pleasure, you play as Lara Croft, the bucksome, inappropriately attired, dual pistol wielding, video game sex symbol of the nineties. You explore caves, ruins and tombs while trying to kill all the endangered species you...
![Decisions, Decisions [Part 1]: Morality Metrics Done Right](http://www.digitaldrift.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Gonzo-David-2-240x240.jpg)
Decisions, Decisions [Part 1]: Morality Metrics Done Right
This is the first article in a series David Merrett is writing on morality and choice in gaming. The second can be found here. Whenever a game has a metric for tracking morality or gives you patronising choices between good and evil they end up as aesthetic choices, not moral ones. You don’t feel tested on a moral level by these games but rather use them as a way to enhance the roleplaying. “I’ll have a normal...
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