The personal site of Christoffer Radsby

My favorite genre

Friday, January 22, 2010

There are a lot of video game genres that I like and few that I actually dislike, this is probably because I’ve always been open to all games. I think about the love and the hard work that the developers has put into their games and I play them because I believe that most games has something to offer the player and it helps to be a true video game fanatic. There are always stuff in the way though, I’ve never owned a hand held console, that’s really sad because there is a lot of games out there that I want to play. Owning a PS3, Xbox 360, Wii and Gamer PC I don’t have the time I want and need to spend on every game that is released.

Senses

Oh well, from all the games I’ve played there is one genre that I like the most, it doesn’t necessarily be a genre by itself but more of a game-mechanic. Most games uses two of our senses, our sight and our hearing but in almost every game the dominant one is sight. The games I like are the ones that places just as much focus on our ability to hear as well as our ability to see. There are a few genres that comes to mind: Horror games & Stealth games.

Some Horror games like the Swedish Penumbra-series places big importance on sound to make every player terrified and it’s great because it’s actually working. Another great game is Call of Cthulu : Dark corners of the Earth which adds more sound effects as the player character gets more afraid or loses his mind from all the scary experiences he has to face. But my favorite game-mechanic of all time is easily the stealth-mechanic.

We see and play it games like Metal Gear Solid, Splinter Cell, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Tenchu, Thief etc. My main favorite thing about this mechanic is that it forces players to think and act with caution. It forces players to be stealthy and to listen to the enemies every move, it forces players to take their time and plan their actions before executing them, and it’s this excitement I’ve always loved. Be it first-person or third-person I love it either way and there are some games that succeed with this mechanic better than others. I actually prefer the first-person view because it enhances the immersion for me, one of the first first-person stealth games I played was Theif but also The Elder Scrolls:Oblivion, they created a pretty simple experience that works out pretty good if you mod it for the PC. The only thing missing was hit-boxes for different parts of the bodies, so that headshots would be fatal every time, I remember how funny it would look when you stick an arrow to a human head and he came running after you. Oh well

If we take a look at one of the more famous stealth-series Splinter Cell. In my opinion the SC-series are great, though they do something that I don’t like, they sacrifice usability, flexibility and agility of the character to force the character to be stealthy. The controls are somewhat clunky, and as a new player you feel the impact directly since it’s hard to aim, you don’t have the fire-power to take people down with ease. The SC-series does succeed in some areas though like the use of light and darkness, and the use of sound. The use of light and Darkness isn’t new but Splinter Cell have had a sort of visibility gauge that helps players know how visible they are in the current lighting condition. They have also done a great job in the area of sounds, by constantly giving feedback to the player just how noisy he/she is helps the player being stealth, even the environment sounds have an impact on how much noise the player can make, if it’s raining the players footsteps will be harder to hear, and if enemies are playing music they are less likely to notice other sounds and all of this is calculated within the gameplay. Great stuff.

The big let-down of the latest game Double Agent was the middle-parts of missions, the ones you spent at the HQ. Where you had a time-limit to do everything on you objective list. That is I don’t like, when playing stealth games I want to be sure that I have the time that I need. I don’t say that those parts weren’t necessary for the game, but I just don’t like them, without the time limit I would probably have liked them more.

Another big stealth series is the Metal Gear Solid series, this series excels in using camouflage. The MGS-series has been the pinnacle of stealth games for a long time and even though they are clearly action-based you’ll always have a harder time going through the game without being stealthy. The series often has problems in the enemies range of vision though, sometimes even in clear daylight without camo you cannot be seen before the enemy is 65m feet away (20 meters). I think that most games would be really hard if they could though, but it feels like that part of the game needs more change.

Issues

My main issue with the genre is that there is currently no game that completely delivers the full stealth experience and with that I mean accurate light/dark stealth, the use of sound surrounding, camouflage and without clunky controls when playing a stealth character you should be like a ninja, be it a modern ninja or not the player should always feel like he/she has total control over the character he/she plays, even in desperate situations. The player should also have the means necessary to take down the opponent he/she wants. The game should offer either open-world style of gameplay, linear gameplay or a mixture of both, the important thing is that the enemies should be smart and coordinated so that the player must play smart and patiently to actually succeed. The enemy should remember his friends and their voices, so that if they let out a scream when you are about to take them down they hear it.

Everything about stealth comes down to planning, after that it takes skill, patience and timing to succeed in your mission and that’s what I love about playing stealth games.

Tags: My thoughts