Time's Always Ticking

No matter what you do, time is always passing. While it may not always seem so, it is a good thing it always flows forward. It means you can't go back to last Thursday and pay your phone bill on time, but if time was unpredictable it wouldn't be very good for your sanity. It might not be a good thing to wake up in yesterday tomorrow.

Time also flows in many games. Most of the time, this is really just a cosmetic effect. Day and night go by to no real concern of the player. Sometimes, it will have a minor effect on gameplay. This might be that stores are closed at night, and the player will have to wait for day to dawn before they can sell their loot. Designers must always consider time when making a game. Even if there is no passage of time within a game, they must still consider how long the player will spend in the game. At other places, developers may use time as a means to increase the challenge of a particular objective.

Trying to jump across a series of platforms is always more difficult and nerve racking when a clock is ticking at the same time. Just like trying to mail a letter before the post office closes, the threat of the platforms disappearing in ten seconds makes the task harder. Unless you work very well under pressure, it actually can be harder to write that letter the way you want with the timer going. Likewise, adding a timer can make a player rush and cause themselves to fail a simple jumping challenge they would have otherwise made. In this way, one can add difficult to a game, as well as the overall time the player spends playing (since they have to make more attempts).

Sometimes, timers are used as a cheap trick. No game makes a better example of this than Star Fox Adventures. I recently guided a friend through the game and warned him that, "Everything is timed." While this is not entirely true, it is a pretty accurate description of the game. Basically every challenge has a timer linked to it. The few that don't involve precise timing anyway, by say requiring that you quickly turn off a series of fire jets quickly to prevent them destroying a bomb quickly flying past. Quickly, quickly! Time is always against you in this game, and it gets rather grating very quickly. A time challenge here or there is fine, but if the player is constantly pressed they get burned out.

Another side to time in games, is the ability to manipulate it. Unfortunately, time manipulation has become incredibly common place, particularly in first person shooters in the form of bullet time. The ability to slow down time for everyone but you is quite advantageous in such games. However, as I indicated before, it is so common that it fails to interest many players anymore.

But what about the forms that have not become common place? How about rewinding time? Few games have used this ability as well as Prince of Persia Sand of Time. Braid is more recent and also did very well with it, but I am less familiar with Braid, and so I will use Sand of Time. The basis was very simple, here is the story of what I did earlier. Because the entire game is the Prince just recounting the story, he might "goof" in his recollection. While it may be hard to believe his memory is so faulty that he may accidentally claim he was sawed in half, and then quickly correct himself, it is quite handy if you actually are sawed in half. With a simple button press, the prince's body will reconnect and he will leap backwards through the air to land on the platform he fell off of. Then you can try again. And again. And again. While it may seem like this makes the game simple, just keep trying since there's no penalty because you'll eventually make it, the game managed to maintain a good level of challenge throughout. Faulty memory not withstanding.

At this point we come to my favorite time manipulation game, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. If you are familiar with the game this choice may strike you as odd. If you are not, let me explain why it would be odd. To do this, let me start by setting the scene. Time is always ticking. You have three days to save the world before it is destroyed by the creepy looking moon crashing into it. Time passes at a rate of one second of real time to one minute of game time. This means you have 72 minutes to beat the game. You've also been turned into a Deku Scrub, which really can't do much. In the last moments (the last six hours) you confront Majora's Mask, but are powerless to stop it from calling the moon down on you. You do manage to reacquire your ocarina, which it stole from you, and remember the Song of Time. If you play it, the Goddess of Time will aid, or so you've heard. At that moment, your companion cries out, "Help! Someone, anyone! Goddess of Time! We need more time!" Which is true, so you play the song... and find yourself back at dawn of the first day.

All of a sudden, the time limit becomes less of a problem. You can reset time as often as you need to. You also get the ability to slow time to 1/3 it's normal speed giving you much more time to do things. I said earlier that constant time limits are grating, and while this game is constantly timed, it is mostly a back burner type issue. The interesting thing about the time manipulation, is that you can go forward 12 hours, but you have to reset all the way back to go back in time. Since all the actions of the NPCs are dictated by time, missing an appointment means you will have to reset time in order to catch it on the next set of days. Resetting time has another interesting consequence, all but the most important progress is lost. The bosses must be defeated again, you must introduce yourself to people again, etc.

Majora's Mask is one place where the time manipulation is highly controlled, and has consequences. The Prince of Persia can rewind ten seconds if he misses a jump and try again. But if Link resets time after missing a jump, it's a lot more work to get back to the jump. Also, resetting time is the only way to permanently save the game. I usually don't like games with limited saving, but here I enjoyed it. I like a game that forces you to run a tight ship (but not too tight) and Majora's Mask does just that.

In the end, time manipulation is far from a new concept and perhaps needs to be given time to rest and cool off. Individual timed challenges can be good when well placed, but overusing them as Star Fox Adventures did wears the player out. Majora's Mask's answer of a long overall timer worked for me, but it was one of the main criticisms of the game, alongside being too short. Perhaps the best answer is to take the real world example and let time just go by as normal. Just like it's good for our sanity in real life, it may be best for the player's sanity as well.

There, that is the moon and you have three days to stop it. Go.

Communcations 101 - (Un)Expressivness

When talking to another person, body language plays a key role. Even the slightest facial twitch can completely change the message your sending, whether you meant to or not. Over the phone this is lost. However, it can usually be made up enough by tone of voice. The way you say something can be as effective as a face twitch. But then we boil communication further down to just text. It can be surprisingly hard to pass on the way you're currently feeling through text alone. This is probably where emoticons came from to add mock facial expressions to text chat. In case you're unfamiliar with the term emoticon, that's adding things like :) to make a smiley face. You've probably seen those around. I use emoticons frequently in text only chat because it's very hard to convey my type of humor without them.

But what about the non-humans in games? Even in online games, there's still communication without a human on the other end. These are usually done through text only in the online sector. But, on the single player offline games, giving voices to most or all of the characters has been a standard for a long time now. How expressive these people are depends on a few things. First, the voice actor. I've gone into voice acting in great detail before, so I'll just reiterate that the person needs to be able to read expressively to give the character some depth. Second, the writing needs to be descent. If the lines are stupid, then they won't communicate well no matter how good the voice acting is. Third, and the one I'm going to go on about here, is facial expressions and body language. This is important for the same reasons it is important in real life.

My Dad recently got me thinking about Botox, and not because he got it. But it sometimes seems like many NPCs in games have gotten several Botox shots, their faces don't budge at all. One might argue that this is a minor point, and so the animators should spend their time on other areas. Fair enough, but it can sometimes really wreck the immersion in a game when you zoom way in on someones face and they stare at you all zombie like. They blink at regular intervals, their eyes move back and forth methodically, and they all have a scowl, happy, or neutral face. The only time their face changes is when it moves between these states. The rest of the time it is frozen in one of those positions. At least their mouth moves when they talk. But they're content to stare at you for hours like this until you select a response. Problem is, it's still really creepy.

I are robot BEEP BOOP. Fear my neutral expression.

Because this frozen face bit is unsettling, it breaks the player out of the game. This is something we want to never do. The player should feel like part of the game world, and throwing them out of it with zombie facial expressions (unless they are talking to a genuine zombie) is a problem. I do have to give Oblivion credit (Bethesda really) for taking the initiative to do such close facial conversations, and being the first I know of to do so with every NPC and with such detail. It had problems, but every game since has gotten better. This is a problem that will fade out as the technology improves for one, and as game developers get better at making conversation system that use this, but it is one that should not be forgotten. This is one of those simple things that can really jar a game.

Sometimes, a nice fist is what's required to stir conversation up a bit and bring out the angry face.

Would You Like A Hint?

Games, regardless of genre, always present a challenge in some form. Maybe it's a complicated puzzle or a boss battle. Either way, the player has to figure out what needs to be done in order to proceed. The question is, when do we help the player with this and how much help do we offer?

There are the two extremes, no help at all and giving the answer away. I've found that the "no help at all" approach is mostly a thing of the past now. Maybe I just haven't been playing the right games, or I'm extremely smart, but lately games seem to have been giving me more than enough help to get by. This "no help" method used to be the approach taken by the old adventure games such as the King's Quest games, a genre which was notorious for having trains of thought that only made sense to the game's designer. On the other end lies the "giving the answer away" crowd. I've never played Uncharted, but apparently it frequently presents you with ancient mystical puzzles and you solve them by opening your journal and reading the answer out of it. One of my favorite reviewers called this the "Dan Brown school of thought approach to puzzle solving".

One of the big factors when considering how much help to give players is how much time the player has to act. In the middle of an intense gun fight with the main villain, the player usually does not have a good chance to sit back, survey the area, and determine that there is a representation of the Fibonacci Sequence in the corner that the player needs to add the next number to in order to expose the boss' weak spot. On the other hand, in a game like Myst time is never an issue and so the player may take as much time as they wish to complete a puzzle. As a result, the puzzles get more complex, and the hints get fewer and farther between.

As usual, I find the answers for such problems lie somewhere in the middle. Take Metroid Prime for example. You can scan every enemy in the game to get information about them and how to defeat them. This is nice, because it makes obtaining the information optional. You are not forced to get the games hints, but can fall back on them if you are stuck or having difficulty figuring out how to topple a given foe. Scanning an enemy takes precious time, and you cannot attack, so getting the info leaves you vulnerable. However, it is worth it, as the data is very useful. The important thing to remember here, is while scanning often outright tells you the method to beat an enemy, you still have to actually pull that method off yourself.

Compare that to Luigi's Mansion. To take out the ghosts with your vacuum, you must first expose their heart. For the common enemy this is fairly easy, but for others it can be very complicated. You have the option to scan their heart for hints, which leaves you wide open for a long time, but usually the information isn't very helpful. One ghost, when scanned, says that no one can see him in the darkness. However, lighting the torches around him is only step one. You must then drain his food, kill the two butler ghosts who appear to replenish his plate, drain the plate completely, and the dodge his fireballs he belches at you until he gets tired. Then he can be captured. The entire time, all scanning mentions is the darkness bit.

Still, I find bad information is better than having the game beat itself for you. As I implied at the end of the Metroid Prime discussion, even with hints or just figuring it out yourself, you must still do it yourself. But what if the game were to do that part for you? In Super Mario Galaxy 2, if you fail at a given point a certain number of times, a friendly "Cosmic Guide" (who will look very familiar if you played the first Super Mario Galaxy) will appear and offer to guide you to the star. I have never taken her up on this offer, as her appearance just makes me more determined to do it myself, but what's the point of trying if she'll just take you to it? Oh, because if she guides you there it's a bronze star, which doesn't count. So then why would I ever take her up on her offer? Having never used it, I'm not sure what the guide process looks like, but I fail to see the logic behind the mechanic at all. The only use I see getting out of it, is that the path is shown to you if you don't know the way. But the worlds are basically linear, making getting truly lost an unlikely possibility.

How to steer the player the right way without holding their hand is a tricky problem. I find too many games these days are hand holders. How much help do you like?

Uh, yes please Ma'am. And while you're at it, could you do the rest of the game for me?

Options: The Few and the Many

Most of the time, options are a nice thing to have. Options allow you to play the way you want to. Maybe you'd rather kick the fortress door down and charge in instead of sneaking around the back way. More ways to complete objectives gives more flexibility and adds replay value to that game, since players will want to try different tactics next time.

There's another kind of options though, the kind that lives in the Options section of the Main Menu. Usually just below "Return to Game" and just above "Quit", this is a menu area many rarely visit more than once, depending on the game. Sometimes, people don't return for good reasons, but often the reason is bad: there are too few options that don't change enough necessary things.

This area seems neglected by developers a lot. Sometimes, it's just plain left out. On the PC, this usually isn't as much of a problem. That's because PCs need to have a lot of options for display. The hardware is not immediately known to the game. On the consoles however, this is largely unnecessary because the hardware is (well, should be) immediately known.

That all however is the Graphics and Audio section of the Options, but what about the Gameplay section? Some games are excused from having a section to alter gameplay, namely online games that always involve multiple players. But then there's the single player only games, they don't have much of an excuse. Maybe there's a difficulty slider to add or remove challenge from the game. Maybe there's things that aren't really gameplay related, like disabling public chat in private areas (from Dungeons and Dragons Online, which could be excused from this). But there's some options that I'd like to see that I never have: Always show the short attack animations, Disable speaking in combat, Left or right handed character, and Don't confirm when selling items (seen this, but not anywhere near enough).

One reason this doesn't happen is to avoid showing too many options. Not to pick on DDO again, but the User Interface section is insane. There are (in order) 32 check boxes, 1 slider bar, 2 drop down menus, 14 color selection panels, 18 more check boxes, 29 more color selection panels, and one last drop down menu. That's 97 options in a single non-sortable list. In counting just now, I found several options I never knew existed, and noticed several that apply to only one very specific character type. What's worse, your choices do not carry to your other characters, you have to make your selections for each and every character. The opposite of this is Vanguard, where all options were shared between all your characters. My favorite was a cut down the middle, Everquest 2 where each character had their own set but you could choose another characters set to use or at least start from.

Having too many options in a fashion that more directly affects gameplay also comes forward in DDO, as well as Neverwinter Nights. Being based on Dungeons and Dragons, a character can level up in multiple classes. Might not sound like much at first, but it has a profound impact on the number of possible characters. There are so many different combinations to try. This is why I like these two games so much, but it's also why I'm bored with them. I keep trying so many different characters that I never get beyond the first few areas.

But the second, and probably more prevalent reason we don't see so many options, is that each and every one of those options not only has to be made, but made correctly and tested. Options eat up test time like almost nothing else. Multiple endings probably eat more time, but it's expensive to make options. I love options very much, but I probably won't see many more than are already there sadly.

This whole discussion doesn't even touch Controls at all. I'll visit that topic another time.

How many options do you like?

A Prime Piece of the DDO UI Options Section.

The Final Showdown

Forgive my last two short posts. I was about to leave for vacation and threw them together last minute. I'll try to make up for it this week.

Every game has final battle of some sort. Obviously it greatly depends on the game how this turns out exactly, but the story needs some form of closure. A final challenge that delivers the ultimate feeling of satisfaction when the player finally topples it. Some games pull this off excellently and, of course, others completely fail. The entire game is usually focused around increasing challenge and player skill, and players feel cheated if the ending fails to meet their expectations. Let's take a look at some examples across the spectrum for a little perspective on this.

The Ugly: Fable II.

When it comes right down to it, there is actually very little story to be had in Fable II, which is odd given its name. Most of the story points come down to "Go here and beat this". One could argue that most games, certainly RPGs, are this way and they would be right. But never has it felt so obvious as it did to me when playing Fable II. What is truly sad though, is the final encounter. Here you have the man who killed your sister and your dog (of you do the good ending), nearly killed you, enslaved thousands, and is attempting to take over the world using a method that destroyed the world the last time someone tried it. How do you defeat such a devious foe? By shooting him. Once. That's it. Didn't pull the trigger in time? No worries. The blind lady will shoot him for you if need be.

The Final "Boss"

"I thought he'd never shut up." I think the entire game was worth it just for that.

The Bad: Two Worlds.

I played this on the PC unlike most of my friends, and therefore thought the game was only half bad. The Xbox 360 port was quite hard to control. In any case, again, this was a game surprisingly lacking in heart. By that I mean depth. Most things seemed very shallow, and like Fable II, the story was stupefyingly short. I was disappointed, but not surprised, when I arrived to steal an artifact from a White Dragon nest to find no dragon. The actual story could probably be completed in a couple hours. Talk to this guy, this guy, this guy, that guy again (mind you there about ten feet away from each other), your sister, this guy again, collect these four things (the longest part, one of these things is in a white dragon nest oh no!), talk to this guy, go to one of five towers, kill the guy on top, go to final battle. The final boss is not the actual last fight in the game, but it is more difficult so I count that as the final one. This guy (one of the ones you talked to earlier, yay!) transforms into a demon and you kill him, through whatever means your character fights. As an archer, I ran away and shot him a lot. It took me about ten minutes. The entire time he hit me once, and instantly killed me. I appeared about 100 feet away with full health, went back and finished him off. Not that amazing, went like every other boss fight in the game.

Here's The Final Boss As I See It (Jump to 2:00)

Goes a bit faster as a melee, just wish his attacks weren't so obviously coming.

The Good: Donkey Kong 64.

All around an amazing game. The story was very simple, again, but unlike the other two this is not an RPG really. The goal was to collect enough Golden Bananas to proceed to the next area. That, and beat the boss of each area. It actually played a lot like Super Mario 64, but seemed to have so much more to it. There was a truly incredible number of abilities spread across the five Kongs, and you had to master each in order to reach the end of the game. Things really picked up when you go on a timed invasion of the enemy's stronghold, but he runs away before you can reach him. He attempts to fly away but ends up crashing behind your island. With nowhere left to run, he stands his ground and bring out one of the most complicated and amusing boss battles I have ever seen. It's set up as a boxing match (with how an entire boxing stadium fit inside his ship left conveniently unexplained). Each Kong is given two three minute rounds to take out K. Rool in whatever way matches their style. It truly requires you to master each and every Kong, since you have to play as each to beat this fight. This tops off the learning curve quite well. Unfortunately, it also means you DO have to be good with each and every one and Lanky's fight in particular is infamous for giving people trouble. In the end, a challenging fight that feels very rewarding to overcome. It also fits in very well with the game's undercurrent of slap stick humor.

The Introduction And The First Three Kong Battles. Don't feel like you have to watch the whole thing if you don't want to, it is quite long. But do give it a look.

"Fair and Unbaised" Give me a break.

The Excellent: The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time.

This one has frequently topped people's "Best Games of All Time List" or their "Top 10" type lists. I've only ever seen one person who did not like this game, apparently he didn't like the transition to 3D (this was the first 3D Zelda game). Most however, consider it a milestone, and a benchmark to measure other games by. Unlike all of the previous games I've mentioned, the story in this game cannot be summed up in a sentence or two. Oot had a complex story, though not hard to understand by any means (a problem plaguing many games today). Each boss felt like a nice finish to its respective dungeon. But then came the final battle. You had to climb to the top of his tower, hearing faint organ music that grew louder as you climbed higher. Finally, you entered the room where he was waiting for you. After giving the required speech, you fight him one on one. For the first time ever, your fairy is blocked from getting close to him, which means you can't actually target him, except when he is down.

Link VS Ganondorf

The way the light hits him when you shoot him with a light arrow looks so painful.

But wait! There's more! As he lies dying, Ganondorf commands his tower to collapse, initiating a timed escape from the falling tower! The path you have to take is different from the one you took up, so you gotta learn the way to go to get out in time. Just as you make it out the door, the tower crumbles behind you leaving nothing but a pile of rubble.

Yay! The Game Is Over, Right?

Obviously, there was a little more to do.

I love everything about that fight. I find it a bit odd that Navi could target this boss and not the previous one, but I'll let it slide. But seeing Ganondorf transform into Ganon, the King of Evil, and then having your sword (which is the sword of evil's bane mind you) knocked to where you can't get it just tops off the intensity. Unlike some bosses where each form is just a more powerful version of the previous one fought in that same way, the phases of this fight seem to flow into each other. Ganondorf's refusal to give up no matter what comes through here with his sheer determination. It truly was the crowning moment in an amazing game.

The Odd Man Out: The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask.

I don't feel this discussion is complete without mentioning this curious little bit. We've looked at games whose final boss is no challenge, through to ones that place the final cap to close the game. But about games like Majora's Mask? This is the only example that readily comes to mind but I'm sure there are others. What about games, whose final boss can be either super challenging and a nice wrap up, or that you can just walk over like its nothing?

This final boss comes in three stages, and requires you to be pretty good with Link. Unfortunately, I think they missed a lot of potential by having you transform into the other forms (Deku, Goron, and Zora). Transforming to these forms is not even possible. In any case, the fight is a nice challenge, and while not as good as Ocarina of Time, it is still a nice close.

There's a little secret though. If you collect all the masks in the game and complete an event requiring you to give them all to little kids with brain damage and limited vocabulary (seriously, those kids are scary weird) you obtain the Fierce Deity Mask. Wearing this (only possible in boss rooms) transforms you into Fierce Deity. FD is about seven feet tall, looks like Adult Link, and wields an awesome looking double helix sword. This sword shoots beams of power when swung at a targeted enemy. All three forms of the final boss have no defense against this beam... none whatsoever. So, if you're FD, you can stand in one place and swing your sword over and over until the boss dies. No challenge at all. The reason I exempt this from "Ugly" status, is because this is essentially a reward for completing everything the game has to offer. Most of the masks are not required, and some are very hard to track down and obtain. An interesting way to reward the player for their extra work.

It's also odd to note that the mask is given to you by the boss itself (effectively).

Final Battle, Without Fierce Deity


Final Battle With Fierce Deity (and getting the mask itself)


What's your favorite final?

Not actually the final boss of DK 64. This is the boss from the last level, a cardboard cut out. It was harder to defeat than it sounds.