Deus Ex: Human Revolution, like its forebears, allows players to vary their approach, from direct combat to stealth, based on personal expression rather than the requirements of a given set-piece. The mechanics and level design combine to allow the player to engage in any encounter (excluding boss fights) through the use of stealth, combat, or some […]
Category: Game Mechanics
Analysis of specific game design mechanics, trying to work out what makes good games good, bad games bad and nothing perfect.
A number of people whose opinions I respect, assure me that Binary Domain is a game worth playing. Specifically in regard to its combat mechanics, narrative, and themes. While playing the first hour I took some notes. The reason the notes only cover the start of the game is that I have since restarted twice […]
Games are full of choices, moments where players have the ability to select between two mutually or at least partially exclusive options. They can also frequently present possibilities that are closer to The Magician’s Choice, an illusion of choice if not a choice itself. Both ways of determining future actions have their place, for the moment I want to […]
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Meaningful Actions.
I like Chess, I would even go as far as to say I think it is a mechanically perfect game. The strength of Chess is that there are no redundant actions, there are no actions without consequences. Achieving a checkmate is not only dependant on the final move but on every preceding move, right back to […]
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The Play Experience.
A fair criticism of my work is that I have a tendency to adopt a fragmentary approach to examinations of game mechanics. I’ve examined specific elements of a game in isolation, ignoring important mechanics and interactions in order to aid clarity. The obvious problem with this approach is that a game is a complex system […]
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Show me how to play.
Getting stuck in a game is far from uncommon. The specific reasons are as varied as the games themselves, though all such situations can generally be grouped into two categories; skill based obstacles or logic based obstacles. Common to action games, skill based obstacles stem from an inability to complete a given task. The goal is obvious, the […]
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Verb Development.
The ability to play a role is one of the manifold reasons people choose to spent time with games over other forms of entertainment. The ability to assume a new identity, to make choices as a different character, to manage the development of that character, is a vital part of what makes narrative games pleasurable and meaningful. So why […]
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Redundant?
For a choice to be meaningful, for the making of it to be worth consideration at all, requires that it be an informed one. We need to have an idea of the consequences of any choice, there needs to be a discernible difference between taking one action over another. An uninformed choice isn’t really a choice at all. When random […]
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Global Leveling.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion implements a global levelling system that ensures all characters, loot or weapons in the world are within the same level range as the player at any time. Therefore no area is overly dangerous for you to enter and all loot and weapons located are proportional to your level. The idea being that you are free […]
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Traps.
When playing Diablo II it is possible to open various containers (treasure chests, crates, bags etc), which all make a sound upon opening. Containers can be empty, contain beneficial items, or trigger traps. Though trapped containers appear randomly, the sound they make when opened is different to that of standard containers. Since the traps themselves take a […]