jukezypoo

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Open World Done Right

By jukezypoo 3 Comments

Yesterday my copy of inFAMOUS came in, and while the demo had gotten me excited, I simply wasn't prepared for how well made the game is. The graphics are slick, the action is fluid, the platforming is well executed, and while it doesn't do anything revolutionary, every aspect of the game is polished to a mirror shine.

InFamous Manages To Execute Nearly Every Aspect of Gameplay Beautifully
It's hard to put your finger on the reason why the game is as good as it is, but what struck me was how large the city felt, without actually being much larger than the average game-space. I am still on the first of the game's three islands, and while I can't say whether the gameplay will continue to impress, I find it hard to believe that the feeling of a large, living city will be destroyed.

This started me thinking, how did the developers pull it off?Games like Far-Cry 2, which focus on making the world as massive as they can, end up feeling empty, barring the few checkpoints and areas the developers focused on expanding. On the Other hand, there are games like Fable 2, with relatively confined areas, which are fully developed and expanded, which end up feeling smaller than the world of an open game world should.

What I have found with InFamous is that the developers managed to strike a happy balance between the two. The city is open and relatively large, while still maintaining the feeling that there is something happening in most sections of the city. The developers chose several areas, large squares, parks, and developed city-centers, that they decided to build up more than others, and these give the player a sense of familiarity with the city that they would not get without them.

However, the feeling of knowing certain landmarks is offset by the fact that I still can find myself getting lost in the city, if I'm not paying attention to my map and just frolicking about. The reason for that may be that several areas are relatively non-descript, but if I look around, I always get the feeling that "hey, next time I'm here, I'll remember it," even if It's not true.

Far-Cry 2 Relied Upon Players to Find Their Way Through The World, Rather Than Guiding Them


Matched with this is the over-arching goal that games like Far-Cry 2 lacked. That game just said "here's you are, figure it out." While having an enormous sandbox to play around in is fun, developers are able to create much more dynamic scenarios when they manage to guide players along a pre-determined path. It is finding the balance between these two aspects that will ultimately decide which way the industry shifts.

In short, InFamous succeeded where so many games failed by creating a world that feels large, while still keeping it small enough so that it could be filled, from edge-to-edge, with people, cars, buildings, and enemies. It is by maintaining the balance between size, and content, that I feel the developers have created a city I'll be happy to play in for the next 12 or so hours until I beat the game.

What do you think? Do you prefer a wide open sandbox, a straightforward, linear game, or one that strikes a balance between the two? Is the trend of wide-open world games a good one, or would you prefer games that give the sense of an open world, while not actually having one?

 

PS: An update on content. I am just finishing up the massive game that is Persona 4. Along with this, I am completing X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and of course, inFamous. I will have reviews of all three upon completion, so expect reviews of Persona 4 and X-Men Origins to be on the horizion.
3 Comments

Health-Bars Be Damned

By jukezypoo 11 Comments

This is an opinion piece, and as such, contains my opinions. However, I am not looking to incite a flame war. I am open to intelligent debate, as I still am unsure of a happy medium (Bad Company with less frequent health refills?), but this is not intended to be flame-bait, so do not take it as such. This was taken from my blog.


I was recently playing through Splinter Cell: Double Agent, which continues to be one of my favorites from the series due to a well crafted narrative and some interesting environmental choices. Something I noticed on this play-through that I hadn't before, however, was the regenerating health system and its impact on game-play.

The Call of Duty franchise was another franchise that followed Halo's lead and switched over to a regenerating health mechanic in its sequelNow Splinter Cell was not the only series to make the change from the traditional health bar to a regeneration mechanic. The original Call of Duty, one of my favorite games of recent times, also relied on the traditional magical-first-aid-kit method, which was then scrapped in its successor.

What I fail to understand is why the change was made. Other than the obvious reason that "Halo did it," why would developers feel the need to scrap a mechanic that had worked so well in the past to create tension for the player, in favor of one that encouraged players to sit in a corner sucking their thumbs, waiting for their wounds to heal.

Some have cited realism as a possible reason for the change, but I fail to understand why it is more realistic to assume that nursing ones wounds for several seconds is in any way a more viable means of healing ones wounds than using magical health packs.

Halo was a game about a super-powered, genetically modified, Captain-America esque future warrior, and as such the healing mechanic made perfect sense in its universe. He was not healing his wounds, he was waiting for his shields to recharge. However, for reasons I can't fathom, developers then decided to migrate the same mechanic over to a game where you play the every day soldier, just another fighter in a war much larger than him.

I find mysef wondering, far too often, what the merits are to a system that makes even the most difficult games piss easy. What if Contra had had regenerating health, would it still have been the classic it is today?

 

What do you think? Was the regenerating health mechanic just the next step in the logical progression of game-evolution, or was it a fad induced by the wildly popular, and yet decidedly mediocre, Halo series?
11 Comments

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