Category Archives: Game Design
Shadow of Mordor: Focus in games and downsides of the Nemesis system
I’ve beaten recently Shadow of Mordor. It’s pretty damn good. Tolkien-wise, dig deep enough and you’ll find contradictions to the lore (though, considering that it’s in the universe of the movie, one might argue that doesn’t necessarily count), but it’s a fun and visceral open-world game. And I think it’s a perfect example for a topic I wanted to talk about: focus in games.
Assassin’s Creed Series Stealth Viability Analysis
Being a more or less active part of Assassin’s Creed fan community, there are several things I noticed that are, one might say, constant among quite a big number of its members. For example, a lot of people say newer Assassin’s Creed installments that take place post-1700 don’t feel like a real Assassin’s Creed game because guns (and that’s despite the fact that our protagonist got a gun in Assassin’s Creed II, and our enemies received firearms in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood… oh, the irony).
One other thing that I see quite often is how the latest 2013 installment, Black Flag, is not assassin-y enough. That as a bombastic pirate adventure with a considerable naval part it’s a Pirate’s Creed rather than an Assassin’s Creed. One of the biggest reasons cited would be lack of stealth in comparison to previous games (Ezio’s trilogy especially, supposedly).
So I got curious. Whenever possible, I play Assassin’s Creed the stealthy way, and I remember quite a lot of stealth in Black Flag. So I wanted to compare how often stealth is a viable option in each of the games. And here are the results, a full spread sheet worth of information. Oh, and Assassin’s Creed IV has got the most stealth possibilities in the whole series, just so you know.
Here’s the link to the Google Spread sheet
Read the rest of this entry
Evil Islands Playtest Story (Translation)
What goes below is a translation of an article written by Aleksei Sviridov back in the year 2000. Aleksei was the lead writer of Evil Islands. This article was my first glimpse into the world of game industry, and I think this is the one that has started an avalanche in my decision process of choosing a future career. It’s a pretty funny story, so I hope you all enjoy the read.
Adventure Puzzle Design
Writing recently about A New Beginning, I thought it would be a nice time to talk about adventure game puzzle design, and just adventure game design in general. Puzzle design in traditional & click adventure games is arguably one of the weirdest facets of Game Design. For the most part you’re not really designing actual puzzles, more like situations that require some sort of a logical solution. And the ‘logical’ part can be problematic.
Achievements as a Design tool
I have somewhat of a love-hate relationship with video game achievement systems. The ‘hate’ comes mostly from the fact that I tend to really disagree with how they are used nowadays. I believe achievements can and should be part of a game’s design, but more often than not they’re relegated to just some medals for completing certain parts of the game or pure boring grind. There are also skill-based achievements, like getting a perfect run in Super Meat Boy, – I think those are perfectly valid since, well, you have to actually achieve something. But then there’s achievements that can motivate the player to experiment with the game, try out different things, and it seems to me there’s just too few of that.
Assassin’s Creed II – Plot Pacing
Let’s just get one thing out of the way as soon as possible. Assassin’s Creed II has got a good story. It’s not as thought provoking as its predecessor’s, and it’s a simple one with a very straightforward character arc, but it’s still good. That being said, at certain points it suffers from bad pacing and poor writing (which seeps into the mission design and gameplay, which is one of the reasons I decided to tackle this topic before going to a more detailed Sequence 10 post). So I’m going to talk more about that today. Spoilers ahead, obviously.
Assassin’s Creed II – Sequence 9
Assassin’s Creed II is widely regarded as the best Assassin’s Creed game. And I love Assassin’s Creed II, don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of awesome things about it. But there are also quite a few flaws that it gets away with, in my opinion, and having repeatedly argued about these topics with a number of people over a certain course of time, decided to make a small blog mini-series. I’ll start with Sequence 9. Spoilers to those who haven’t played the game.
Assassin’s Creed III – Hostile Negotiations
Hey, guys. This is it. The last post in my Assassin’s Creed III Level Analysis series. Before I start, I would like to thank the people from UbiSoft forums for all their feedback, and especially a person by the nickname of Sushiglutton for taking on a task of challenging a lot of things that I say – I really appreciate that. This post is going to be about Hostile Negotiations. This is going to be a bit different in nature from my other posts, because for the most part I talk about what Assassin’s Creed III has done wrong in its mission design and how I think it would be better to improve it. In this post, I will talk about what the game has done right. As usual, spoilers bellow.
Assassin’s Creed III – Lee’s Last Stand and the Combat System
Hey, guys. Sorry for quite an absence, but I’m back to wrap up my Assassin’s Creed III level design analysis series. Really, there are only two levels left that I want to talk about: Hostile Negotiations and Lee’s Last Stand. I’ll start with Lee’s Last Stand, because it’s got the boss battle, and… this post will be much more about the combat system that it’s going to be about level design, though. As usual, spoilers.
(sorry in advance for the lack of any screens in this post to vary it up visually)
Tomb Raider and Gameplay/Story Segregation
So, the new Tomb Raider is out. In this new reboot, Crystal Dynamics has set out to create an origin story which shows us a realistic depiction of Lara’s transformation from a naïve and afraid college student to a courageous badass from the previous iterations (the Hero’s Journey, pretty much). Due to some statements that were made in development, this has led to quite a few controversies, but I’m not going to touch upon this. The real question is: did Crystal Dynamics succeed in their endeavor with Lara’s character? And my answer to it is, well… Kinda. For the most part.
Stanislav Costiuc 