Instant kill

Now I finished Brotherhood. Most of the plot-significant stuff happened in the last ten minutes of the game. The 10+ hour game. So content-wise Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood was a bit of a let-down. But gameplay-wise it has improved slightly over AC II. The reason is that pretty much any random enemy in the game can be instant-killed.

Let me elaborate. The combat system in Assassin’s Creed is excellent. It is very satisfying and ties seamlessly into other parts of the gameplay. And the game never slaps you with a combat situation that you can’t avoid. Due to the fact that The Witcher 2 whispers ”finish meee…” when I go to bed every night, I’ll be making comparisons between that game and Assassin’s Creed.

The Witcher 2, and many other games, rely on random encounters. While you are travelling from point to point B in a ‘dangerous’ environment, there will be some enemies along the way. Enemies that you probably won’t have to kill, but if you want money and experience points, you will. In The Witcher 2, there are several enemies that can easily kill the player if he does not fight perfectly and with an optimal strategy. Combine this with long load times and you have a recipe for red hot frustration. And even if they are easy to steamroll over, they usually sport enough HP to provide an annoying speed bump on the way. Most of the times the encounters do not make any sense. In Dragon Age II, a night stroll in the city can net you over 30 dead members of a female-only cult.

In Assassin’s Creeds, when not doing memories (missions), there are no fights to slow you down. The guards will generally regard you as a village idiot, running around and jumping into objects. Only the rooftop guards react to your presence with force, and they are easy to introduce to your hidden blade. Or to just run away from. Only when your Notoriety is 100% will guards be on the lookout, and even then avoiding them is quite easy, albeit a tad slow. Only when the player screws up will he have to fight.

In The Witcher 2, you are pretty much constrained to the one trick you have put all your skill points into. Every enemy generally has one strategy which you have to play around. And if you do not take the one skill whose name I don’t recall right now, an enemy behind you will deal a boatload of damage, resulting in flinching which makes it difficult to block another attack.

In Brotherhood, Ezio has over a dozen ways to kill a guard. And everyone is suspectible to all of those ways. Even if they aren’t by default, Taunting will make them. Instead of finding the optimal strategy and applying it ad nauseum, you can pretty much select your favourite weapon (unarmed, double hidden blade, dagger, medium weapon with pistol or a large weapon) and go nuts. Personally I prefer the speed and wince-inducing visciousness of a dagger, but I tend to vary. Or then you can use a smoke bomb to give you time to work your hidden blade. Or summon your apprentices to kill the guards for you. Or shoot them with your gun, your crossbow or your throwing daggers.

Guards have variable amount of health, but that won’t matter since no-one is safe from an instant-kill. Counter-killing, disarming and performing a three-hit combo will make Ezio perform a cool and merciless killing maneuver. While he’s doing it, pointing at another guard and pressing Attack will make him perform another instant-kill on the target. This is called Execution, and there is no limit on how many times it can be chained. The only thing that prevents one from killing every guard in a battle is that you can’t block while doing it. Instead of being an annoying timesink, even a large, ten-man combat can become a short, death-ballet interlude to whatever you were doing.

If your patience is too short, you can always disengage, turning the combat into a chase, utilizing the wonderful free-run system. Climb a few roofs, jump into a haystack and lay low for a few seconds. If a guard comes poking at your hiding place, you can perform an Assasination From Hiding, which is a cool maneuver in itself. I especially like the bench assassination for its cheekiness. The guards are never a problem in the overworld, unless you want them to be.

If there is something that I would change, it would be the Hit Point system. In the first Assassin’s Creed, HP was called ‘synch level’. When you took damage, you went out of synch with Altaïr, and if you took enough, you desynchronized. I liked how it implied that Altaïr never missed a jump or took damage in a fight, the badass he was. It also explained away the abstractness of Hit Points, tying it to the game world. From AC II onwards, Ezio can carry around up to 15 potions of ‘medicine’, which restore health points with the power only a renaissance-era medical knowledge can impart. It both requires suspense of disbelief, but also ensures that the player will never die when he has a half-second to press left on the D-pad. The old AC system meant that if you managed to screw up a battle, you had to run. It improved dynamics.

I’m not saying that every combat system needs to be a copy of Assassin’s Creed’s. I’m saying that all combat systems should integrate themselves into their game’s concept and other mechanics as well as Assassin’s Creed’s. Don’t put meaningless combat in your game, and if you do, make damn sure it is not mandatory.

Harmony

What a busy week it has been, with schoolwork, flu and general apathy. Haven’t played any new games lately, and I’m reluctant to jump in Witcher 2 right now. What I have been doing is mourning the fact that Quantz‘ soundtrack is not available anywhere. I played the game again a bit to hear the soundtrack, losing myself to the game. As I played it, I realized that it is a harmonious game. And that analysis bears some thought.

Fundamentals of Game Design, a book by Adams & Rollings, describes harmony as a state of being for a game. When every aspect of a game work together to immerse the player in the intended experience. It is an extremely delicate state, which is shattered by a single pop culture reference or a compromise in the gameplay. One cannot design a game to be harmonious, but one will know when it is. I must say that I agree with the writers: A game can transcend from being just a game to something greater. Yet only a few games do. I’ll try to list a few that I would say have achieved harmony.

Quantz. A clever little puzzle game with gorgeous visuals and soundtrack. The astrology theme, ethereal backgrounds, beautiful music, they all enforce the feeling of the game: A great journey through mysterious words brimming with magic. Nothing was added for crowd appeal; The designers had a vision and managed to stick to it. And the result is a wondefully coherent experience.

Shatter, as I have mentioned.

Geometry Wars, mostly for the same reasons as Quantz. The visual style is strong, the music melodious and good and gameplay works. It offers exactly what it promises: Blasting foul geometry.

Prince of Persia – Sands of Time. One of the best games ever made. The old 3d is masked by strong style, fluent animations and clever graphical tricks. The platforming is graceful and unfrustrating because of the rewind-ability. Combat has a distinct feel to it: One can feel the attacks connecting to sand monster flesh and being blocked. The maneuvers are awe-inspiring and the trick of having to use the Dagger to actually kill the monsters. Even the shell menus are thought out, with the game being Prince’s narration of the events that transpired. The later games, while still good, managed to lose that spark, though.

Portal. I won’t bother describing Portal for you. If you have found this blog, chances are that you have already worshipped the game to death.

Space Rangers. The game has a strong vision and it delivers. The game is not meant to be taken very seriously, which is why it can have all those silly text adventures and still feel coherent. And the translation errors do not bother me, since the manual states that it is the language of the future in which the game takes place. Brilliant.

Crimson Skies. I’ll just state one fact: The game’s manual was printed in the style of a faux-30’s airplane magazine. The best arcade-style flight simulator there is.

Uplink. Read the post.

Looking at the games, one begins to see a trend. Vision seems to be an important factor. Without a strong vision the designer won’t know where to aim. Just saying: “I want to make a flying game where you are a pirate and you fly a four-winged airplane” won’t achieve anything. There has to be a drive, something to strive to. “I want to feel like I’m in an Errol Flynn-inspired dogfighting movie, where I exchange quips over an old-school radio with sky pirates and pirate hunters. I want to fly upside down next to a bomber and highjack it in the air. I want to hunt for a great treasure, meet dangerous women and get mixed up in a story of great treachery and vengeance, without forgetting fun and adventure.” That is a vision. I think this is a reason many game projects by new designers fail: They had not a strong vision. They flail in the darkness, hoping that safe, tried and true methods will bring success and glory. Glory comes from the inside.

Feature creep evaporates harmony. Adding features “because they would be so cool” will never add anything to the game, provided that the vision is clear. If a game does not absolutely need a feature to transmit the experience it was meant to, then it is harmful to the whole. I think this a reason most large-scale projects fail: Features are requested by people who did not see the vision. People guarding the money vaults want to emulate the success of other games, and mistakenly hope that by leeching on their features will make the product more appealing. That might be true, but I assure you, dear reader, that it will not make the game harmonious. A caged nightingale does not sing.

I hope that by now you wish to create a harmonious game. Harmony requires two things: Elaboration and definition. When you have an idea for a game, think about it. Refine it. Elaborate on what you want the player to experience. Define the most important aspects towards that goal. Then execute them perfectly. Let nothing wave your conviction. And in the end, if your vision was strong enough, you will achieve harmony.