Easy game control is a good thing. Well-done game mechanics is another good thing. But when Ubisoft removes much of the charm of being stealthy and sneaky by rewarding me with the function to be able to shoot all the bad guys I see with the touch of a button - then I wonder, was it really a gameplay related point of the reward?

It works like that, the new system of Conviction. A possibility to win by putting out a small red marker to kill a whole bunch of enemies by pressing a button. In my world it becomes more of a punishment, because I play stealth games to get to feel really über-awesome to sneak up on every enemy - and kill them silently.

[...]

This is surely wonderful for many when Conviction turns into a cool movie, complete with the Jason Bourne-influences and everything.

(Translated from Swedish) - http://www.gamereactor.se/blog/petter/#162263 (18/4/2010)

I disagree and I think he just doesn't get it. It's weird, really. I respect him and he usually writes good stuff, but this time I'm just no sure what he's thinking. He complains about the game turning into a movie instead of game, because of the feature to "mark" several enemies and execute them with a press of a button. I see it another way. All they've done is that they've moved and refocused the gameplay.

To be able to execute this technique you first need to perform special actions, like killing someone in stealth close combat, so the stealth gameplay is still very much there and heavily encouraged. The gameplay now focuses on preparation, placement of Sam Fisher (the avatar) and the execution/activation of a planned attack. That for me, is still a whole lot of fun, interactive and not in any way "automatic" or a movie.

Basically, they've just done the shooting aspect of the game more streamlined, which still isn't the entire game, thanks to the stealth, the gadgets and the maneuverability.

Sure, one could argue that the result is a less fun game if you're looking for a precision shooter. But I'm pretty sure the devs knew the game inside and out when designing the levels and scenarios, so claiming that the game became too easy just because of this it strange, because it's a result of many things.

Batman still PWNS Sam though. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/8/28/

Anyhow, the thing I wanted to share with you was something that happened to me. Have a look at this first screen and look at the top of the screen and then in the center at the syringe that's referred to.

Evade Syringe

When I noticed the open hand icon and the text "Evade Syringe" I thought; "Whoah! That was close. I almost stepped on the syringe! I'd better avoid it.", so I left it alone and moved on.

STOP!

I read the open hand as "Stop!" and "Evade Syringe" as a warning. But lookie, lookie, what I noticed shortly thereafter:

9mm Rounds

The hand means to pick up and not to stop and the text was the name of the object. The "Evade Syringe" was a usable item that I could use to gain some evasion skill for a short duration.

It's not a huge deal, and I won't be making that mistake again. But the hand in combination with that name sure fooled me.

So lesson learned for me, when making user interface you have to think on how it's read.

This is more how a pick up hand looks in my head:

I actually made this pic.

Anyway I thought it would be fun (for you, not me) to see some of my bad designs as well.

Back in the summer 2006 I wrote a game design document for a game I was thinking about trying to have developed as a spare time project. I called it Agumented as a project name and it was a top down shooter with some strategic elements in a Sci-Fi setting. I might have been a fun game indeed, but not earth shaking in it's innovations. In the end, I never tried to develop it.

Looking back at it, the "worst" part about it must be my mini-map.

How it works:

• It's in full 3D, formed as a cube, where each side represent a perspective of the level.
• The player wouldn't start with 100% of the map discovered, unless it's been acquired somehow in advance.
• The cube could be rotated by being controlled by the player.
• It would show your location as well as enemies within your line of sight or otherwise detected with various equipment.
• It would be placed in a corner of the screen meanwhile playing, so keep in mind that it's a mini-map and not a map reached from the Pause screen.

Have a looksie at the picture.

The different sides on the cube are "cameras" looking in XYZ.

Why it's bad:

If I were to see this design in a game today, it would probably drive me crazy. I can really understand how I thought back then and in theory it works, but the problem is that I don't think it's easy to read at all. To actually understand my surrounding and what's going on, I would have to look at all three sides individually and then combine the gathered data into one piece of information.

Heck, I don't know. Maybe that's easy for a person to do, but if there's a complex environment with walls, stairs and the player's position along with five enemies, I think it would be hard to get an instant overview.

When using a simple top-down map like in most games, we can process the information instantaneously.

Any piece of on-screen-information like this should require an absolute minimum of time and effort to compute, if you ask me. Clearly, that's not the case here.

The mistake I made:

Unfortunately, I think the main reason for why "this happened" was because I wanted to make something new and interesting, instead of using something old that's proved to work. I'm not against innovative thinking at all, but I don't think it should be forced like I did here. I did it "because" even though the results were worse, which I didn't see at the time.

There you have it. One of my bad designs over the years. I hope enjoyed it, because I didn't...

A very likable and pleasant adventure with great music from Michael Land and first grade voice acting from the one and only; Dominic Armato as Guybrush.

I played it on the laptop using my Home Cinema equipment for audio and video, lying in the couch using a cordless mouse. In short: the perfect setup for a classic "Point & Click" adventure.

My to my horror, I soon experience Telltale's new(?) design for walking around.

You'd think you'd just point and click, right? Like in Sam & Max for example. Or it could be a keyboard/gamepad solution as with Grim Fangando or The Escape from Monkey Island.

But no, it's this idiotic system of you holding down the left mouse button and then moving the cursor in the direction you want to move. I ask you; why?

This is kind of how it looks.

Actually, I think I know why. It's because it's also released for the Wii and I'm guessing the movement is controlled using the analogue stick on the "nun-chuck". I'd be very happy if someone can confirm this.

Thinking about it, I'm sure it works GREAT with the Wii. But playing on the PC using the mouse, it was horrendous with me running all over the place. Oh yeah, to run instead of walk, you have to press both mouse buttons. Tedious! I lacked precision.

Luckily, I played it using a mouse but I was playing on a laptop, so I could just as well have been using the trackpad and that's near impossible to navigate with! I say: Shame on you Telltale!

Why not just let me Point & Click? And this is what bugs me the most. I know you could have done it Point & Click-style! I know you have to consider production cost and time. I work in the industry, I know all about it so to be fair, it's probably not because you're dumb.

But I still can't forgive it because I know you have the technology already!

Exhibit A:

You Point & Click to walk around in Sam & Max, also lead by programmer Randy Tudor using your engine.

Exhibit upper-case B:

No mather where I stand in the world, if I click on a object Guybrush walks over there by himself. Meaning? You have the path-finding in the game, you have nav-graphs or whatever you're using and it works brilliantly! So why can't I just click on the ground as well?

Really, this bothered me during the entire chapter and I feel sick about thinking I'll have to use it for the upcoming episodes as well.

But Hear Ye, Hear Ye, it's still a great adventure and I recommend it to all adventure and pirate fans out there!

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge is my favorite adventure game along with Grim Fandango.

I played some City of Heroes, a little bit of Anarchy Online, a tad of EVE Online as well as a bunch of Free To Play ones, like Maple Story and ROSE.

Last weekend I spent quite a lot of time playing the open Beta of Ether Saga Online:
http://eso.perfectworld.com/ (14/4/09) 

World of Warcraft was and is aimed at the masses. "Everyone" (read: a lot of people) should be able to play it but some gaming experience is a plus, while Ether Saga is focused on younger audiences (read: n00bs) and girls (read: n00bs).

I enjoy them both, but they both suffer from the same problem that every single MMORPG suffers from.

INFORMATION OVERLOAD! 

In all games of the genre, but especially the ones trying to be user-friendly for rookies, this is just horrible! I'm an avid gamer but that doesn't mean I like it.

Unfortunately I don't know how to solve it if we're to tell the player of all this information that is shown; HP, MP, Lvl, Target, Skills, Buffs, Cast time, Enemy HP, Hit-damage, Cooldowns, Orders, Chats, Potions and so on... And so on...

Maybe we don't even need to keep the player up to date with all this, all the time?

Anyhow, it's a problem I think it's really about time for some MMO-Studio to try and solve.

I mean, just look at this!

Ether Saga Online, like any other MMORPG

1. Absence of story

After four hours I've still only encountered one "story part" of the game and that was right in the beginning. It set things in motion but didn't deliver more than it absolutely had to. I've yet to find any long term goal for the characters in the game. Just to clarify, I'm a fan of JRPG-games and I don't demand constant narrative but after over three hours just running around in dull and empty environments killing foes, I get bored and question my motives.

2. Constant

Here's the big one. See, almost everywhere in the environment there are rocks and threes and you can interact with pretty much everyone of them, searching for treasures such as items, XP, gold, attritube points like Agility and "Nothing". Yes, the player CAN ignore this but I, as many other I assume, run around and search almost all of them. Almost all of them got something of value inside too, so it's not a waste of time.

This is BORING. There is no joy whatsoever in running around, pressing A and getting another "Medecine". It halts the games flow, forcing me to run around along every edge of the terrain and makes me wait for the "searching animation" to finish.

It's just like destroying every single barrel, searching every chest and turning over every stone in Diablo (Blizzard) but much, much, much slower.

Personally I think this feature should be cut completely and limit finding stuff to treasure chests and such.

I heard from someone, sometime, somewhere that in Fable 2 (Lionhead) you can destroy barrels etc. in search of items but the game explicitly tells the player "Go ahead, but you won't find anything of value there". I can't say for sure that this is true, but if it is; I applaude them! That way I won't bother when I play Fable 2.

The shadows are quite dull to look at to be honest.

These two things might very well be deciding factors on whether to try and finish the game or not. Silly of me? Perhaps. But if a game hasn't got me hooked after four hours, we have a problem.