Five Steps to a Better Game

While it is generally considered that games made back in the 80's are on average harder than those made today, there are still plenty of crazy hard games being produced. While some of these, such as Metal Slug 7 and Contra 4, are continuations of earlier series new IP's such as Super Meat Boy, Battle Kid, and Legend of Grimrock all provide new settings in which to put your gaming skills to the test. What follows are five simple steps to get better at these difficult games, with techniques that can also be applied to most games.

Step one: No Cheating
Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start. One of the best known cheats of all time and unfortunately a very easy way to prevent yourself from getting better at the game. Having 30 lives per continue means that you can progress through the game by attrition only. When playing Contra 4 I don't even let myself use a continue, while this is more extreme than the no cheating rule needs to be, the point is that my progress in the game is due purely to getting better with the controls.

Step Two: Use Training/Challenge Stages
Quite often these extra challenges and levels ask you to do something much harder than what is required in the main game. The advanced skills you develop will not only help you excel in the sections of the game you are already familiar with, but also mean that you will be better prepared for new more difficult levels later on.

Step Three: Demand Perfection
This is something I learnt from my sister. Her and I played Rainbow Islands a lot as children and if she lost a single life before reaching world three she would slam on the reset button and start again. I also adopted this system, later changing it to not losing a life before world four, and both of us eventually managed to finish the game.

Step Four: Learn From Others
Guides, tips, tricks and advice in general can greatly help improve your game. I mentioned above that both my sister and I finished Rainbow Islands, but what I didn't mention is that while she merely finished it, I got the harder to achieve good ending. I was only able to do this because of one key game mechanic that I read about in a gaming magazine.

Step Five: Find a Rival
As a child my rival was my sister, as an adult my girlfriend. By pushing each other and throwing down the gauntlet to say try and beat that score both people become much better at the games involved. I was once shaken awake at 3am to be informed that my high score in Sin and Punishment: Star Successor had been beaten, naturally I dragged myself out of bed and played until I was once again number one (this score also put me in the number three spot for the regional online leader board).

So there you have it, five simple steps to playing a better game. Now what are you waiting for? Go win some games!

Going for Speed

Yesterday a new world record for speedrunning The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was set at 22 minutes 43 seconds. This involves using a glitch in the game and a video of the play through can be seen here.

This got me thinking about speed running, playing a game with the intention of reaching the end a quickly as possible. Speedrunning is generally considered to have been popularised by Metroid as this game had five different endings which were determined by the length of time it took to defeat Mother Brain. The 'best' ending is achieved by completing the game in less than an hour and not only reveals that Samus is a woman but you get to see her in a purple bikini.

There are different types of speedruns with the easiest to conduct being the tool assisted speedrun. These use emulators in ease some of the challenges associated with a legitimate play through of the game by enabling the use of save states and also the option of slowing down or speeding up the game's frame rate. Twin Galaxies keep a record of what they consider to be the legitimate records for games on their website and looking there we can see that the record for Super Mario Bros. is 5 minutes 8 seconds and for Metroid is 17 minutes 22 seconds. Generally the rules associated with these records do not permit the player to exploit glitches or use cheats and as such the fastest listed Ocarina of Time completion time is just over 5 hours.

I find it interesting to note that after helping to create the sport of speedrunning the Metroid series revised their ending system to instead rely on what percentage of items were collected during the game.

Don't Fear the Reaper

Or at least mildly inconvenienced

 Last week I wrote about how permadeath can add tension to a game. It can also add frustration and kill the replay value if you have to go through a long slow introduction period at the beginning of each new game. While permadeath is a lot less common in modern games, back in the 'good old 8bit days' where games were heavily influenced by the arcades it was the norm. Sure some games used a continue system or passwords but there was almost always some serious set back associated with dying.

Jump forward to today and most games try to minimise the inconvenience of death. Quite often they include regular check points to keep the amount of lost progress and time following death minimal; other games use a respawn, rather than reload mechanism, where you are returned to life at or near the point of death in exchange for some kind of penalty. I find looking at the different ways developers approach player death interesting, especially as it can have a major affect on the feel of a game.

In Bioshock I find that the respawn near to where you die with no penalty (and sometimes even a benefit in the form of more health or eve) to greatly weaken the experience. When I first started playing it, I found the whole game world creepy, the splicers calling out in the darkness and the boom of a Big Daddy's feet as it walks the halls gave a fantastic atmosphere. And then I died, which resulted in me promptly popping back to life in the room next door with health, eve and the damage I had inflicted still on the enemy that had killed me. So when I had my first Big Daddy fight, rather than wasting health packs and eve stims I just let him kill me, and ran back to continue the fight. This lack of penalty had turned the 'big bad' into a timid kitten and as a result I find the game most engrossing and exciting when not fighting. Borderlands has a similar respawn system except it docs some money and heals all the enemies on the map, so you can't just advance by attrition.

It's interesting to note that often 'lets players' (people who record video and commentary of themselves playing a game) often change the rules regarding death, either by making the game easier through cheat systems or harder with restrictions such as one life runs, no healing or no continues. It make me wonder what it would be like to do a permadeath lets play World of Warcraft, especially on a PvP server.

The Difficulty Slide

In most video games as the player progresses the difficulty of the game increases, this change in difficulty is known as the difficulty curve. Some of the reasons for changing a game’s difficulty are that as players gets more experienced and skilled at playing the game they require a larger challenge to keep them interested, it lets you ‘upgrade’ the player's character enabling changes and new challenges that fit the game's narrative, and by having a mixture of easy and difficult sections you can create feelings of tension and relief for the player.

The first of these reasons is the simplest to illustrate. Consider Tetris, as the player clears more lines the speed with which the new blocks drop increases, meaning that a player must develop better and faster reflexes to progress further through the game; if however the speed didn’t change, a competent player could keep playing indefinitely, or at least until they got bored. The other two reasons are tailored to the game world and usually involve equipment and skill upgrades coupled with the introduction of new more challenging situations. It is also possible and fun to have the threat introduced before the solution, meaning that a player will have to run and hide during the early sections of the game, but later on after receiving the appropriate upgrade will be able to stand and fight; of cause after letting the player feel comfortable and in control for a while a new bigger threat should be introduced.

However, there are quite a few games, primarily in the casual/mobile gaming market, that feel the need to have large amounts of game content locked at the start. This content is unlocked not by progressing the story, but by rather by collecting specific game world items that can then be exchanged for the new features or by paying some additional amount of real world money. What really makes these games different is that the upgrades are bought after you lose your current game and apply to your future games, making them easier. For example in the iOS game Mega Jump, your progression through the game depends on collecting enough coins to not fall, after the eventual falling to your doom you can then use the coins gathered to by new upgrades such as a magnet which will pull the coins towards you making it easier to collect them, easier to progress further, and easier to buy new upgrades which will again make the game easier.

There are two main reasons for this difficulty slide. Firstly, it is a way for the developers to make some extra money off the game, as some people will want all the upgrades and features available from the start. Secondly, it can increase the replay value of the game as players try to unlock all the content. While these reasons are understandable in the casual and free games market there are plenty of full price games which also use this model. For example, in the on-rails shooter House of the Dead: Overkill as you progress you can buy access to better guns, which is fine as the levels also get harder except that these better guns can also be used in any earlier level and the high score table doesn’t make a note of what weapons were used, making them rather pointless early on. Personally I think that a better way to add replay value to such a game is by simply putting the high score table online. Sin and Punishment: Star Successor is also an on-rails shooter, but the weapons you start with are the same as the weapons you finish with and the replay value comes from the games high difficulty and online leader boards.

I will finish by clarifying that I do not consider the ‘New Game +’ feature (starting the game again with all the upgrades, equipment, and abilities you had when you won it) found in some games to be the same as the difficulty slide. This feature is to enable players who have already won the game to go back and look for secrets and bonuses they may have missed the first time through.

The Game Just Hates You!

Yesterday I attended a board gaming meetup, where I played Battlestar Galactica, and Mansions of Madness. While I enjoyed playing both of these games, the most ‘epic’ game being played at the event was a seven player game of Arkham Horror with all the expansion packs; this took up a sizable amount of space and time just to set-up.

Once the game was over I talked with some of the players about what they liked and didn’t like about the game. Interestingly one comment appeared as both a like and dislike, the game's high difficulty. Some players found it frustrating that their lack of knowledge about what exactly they would be facing meant that they would sometimes be given a skill test with no way to pass, while others found that it added to the flavour and suspenseful horror feel of the game.

This discussion reminded me of Talisman, where again the game is at times just unfair. Personally this is what I love about this game and I always play with The Reaper expansion to maximise the chance of an unfair death! Talisman also has the added fun of both PvP combat and griefing being a serious strategy. I believe that where these games get into trouble is when a player doesn't know what they're getting into. Also sometimes players develop an attachment to their character or equipment making them disappointed when they die, even though plenty of Talisman games are won by replacement characters.

As a final note, while I often hear people telling stories about the time they just managed to win one of these against all odds type games, I almost never hear stories about the ‘fairer’ games.