Builder of Worlds

For the past few days, I’ve been playing Minecraft for hours on end. I’m not a big builder when I play the game. I’ve only recently taken on my first relatively large construction job, which is a sort of castle/cathedral mix. The building itself isn’t that tall, maxing out at probably 25 blocks.

To be honest, I’m not even very excited to build the building. I’m more excited to create everything around it: gardens, ponds, fountains, etc. I even happened upon a natural deep hole that I’m going to fill with water and turn into a well. Creating environments is definitely my favorite thing to do in Minecraft, not make Giant Structures.

I’ve been fascinated by the environments in games since I started playing them. When I was younger and wasn’t able to progress in games, I didn’t mind, because just running around the world was enough for me. Mario 64, Mario Sunshine, Ocarina of Time, and Wind Waker have probably impacted me more than any other game when it comes to this. I spent hours and hours traversing the world, exploring its nooks and crannies, but not actually doing anything. 

Those games have really influenced the way I play Minecraft. I want to build underground forests with light streaming down from holes in the surface. I want to build an entire village on a floating island in the sky. I want to build a glass castle beneath the surface of the ocean. (I do actually plan to create these things eventually.)

Maybe I should be a level designer for games. Or maybe I should just keep thinking up these things that I’ll probably never have the patience to do.

My Favorite Kinds of Gaming to Watch

I love to play video games. Enough to write about them, obviously. I also love to watch people play games. I could (and often do) spend as much time playing games as I do watching videos of other people playing. Here’s a few of my favorite things to watch:

Tool-Assisted Speedruns (TAS)

Speedruns are cool to watch. Tool-Assisted Speedruns are cooler to watch. I know unassisted speedruns take far more skill and practice to actually do, but a TAS is far more entertaining. The impossible things done in TASs are incredibly cool, and that’s what I love about them. The best part, I think, is that you can watch a full run of a game in a few hours time. For example, I’ve been watching a TAS of Super Mario Sunshine (in honor of my recent repurchase of the game), and the whole thing is done in an hour and a half. Awesome.

Competitive First Person Shooters

I’m not a huge fan of first person shooters, mostly because I’m bad at them (also because there are just SO MANY OF THEM). But that doesn’t stop me from getting some major enjoyment out of watching dudes who are really good play them. The best videos to watch are the ones where you get to hear team chatter (callouts, banter, etc.). It’s really amazing to see players work together and utilize their teamwork to overcome their opponent. 

The Megas Commentary

The Megas is a band that writes songs about MegaMan (they’re good, check them out). One of the members (Josh Breeding) is a pretty good at playing MegaMan. He sometimes records a playthrough of a MegaMan game and then the whole band provides commentary over it. The guys are hilarious, so that’s where most of the entertainment comes from, but Josh is actually really good at playing, so it’s still quite a spectacle to see him play the game.

Role Playing Games

This isn’t something I can watch YouTube, because there’s something about sitting in front of the TV watching someone else play an RPG. I think my first experience of this was watching my brother play Final Fantasy X back in the early 2000s. Ever since then, I’ve been totally cool watching friends and others play RPGs. It’s weird, because RPGs are incredibly boring, but there’s just something about watching them that I can’t get enough of. 

SHINE GET!

I just bought a copy of Super Mario Sunshine off eBay for $17, which is a pretty good deal considering it’s got the case, manual, and inserts (not that I care about that stuff, but it’s cool, I guess). I imagine Mario Sunshine will be that kind of game where people look back in twenty years and are like, “Remember Mario Sunshine? They gave Mario a weird thing that sprayed water and worked like a jetpack. That game was weird, but it was SO GOOD.”

Lucky for me, I now have a copy of it forever. I just need to find a Gamecube to play it on. I guess I have my Wii, but it doesn’t reliably turn on every time anymore. And by that, I mean I have to flick the power a handful of times before it actually works. Plus, if I just get a Gamecube, I won’t have to have all the extra wiring of a sensor bar and whatnot. I suppose I could use a classic controller instead of the remote’s IR, but that’s almost equally annoying. A Gamecube will just be easier. 

However I end up playing it, I’m excited that I get to. I loved the music in Sunshine, as well as pretty much everything else about the game. I really just can’t wait to platform the crap out of Delfino Plaza.

STILL playing Dragon Quest IX

Yes, yes, I’m stil playing Dragon Quest IX. And I’m playing it hardcore. I’ve logged 86 hours into the game as of now, and I can’t stop playing. From what I can tell, I have almost completed the main story.

I put off completing story missions for a while, just because I was worried that once I finished the main story, I would have no incentive to continue to play the game. I mean, I would still have things to alchemize and equipment to collect, but what purpose would that serve, other than checking things off a list? I want to do that stuff now, so I can use it to help me complete the story. And if I finish the main story missions, what purpose do I have for collecting all the equipment? 

Luckily, DQIX has pretty enticing post-game content, like items and weapons that are only available after the story is completed. After having attempted a few grottos (short dungeons that are accessed by using treasure maps), I’ve found that most of the grotto bosses are far too difficult at my current level. After completing my first lvl. 1 grotto, I got a map to a lvl. 8 grotto, and got trounced by the boss. I beat the lvl. 1 grotto boss a few more times and got a lvl. 3 grotto map, and was still unable to beat that boss (though it was close!). 

So, I am confident that I’ll have plenty to do after completing the games storyline, and I’m proceeding to finish the game now. I’m still blown away by the amount of content present in the game. I’m curious as to how many hours I’ll be at when I finally stop playing. Hopefully I’ll be able to at least double my current time and hit around 170 hours. That would be awesome.

All Games Should Be Fighting Games (sort of)

I think fighting games have the perfect gameplay design. I’m not a huge fan of the fighting game genre, but I think the mechanics used in fighters is something many games could learn from. Keep in mind, I’m not a game designer, so my ideas are not incredibly specific. However, I do think they are specific enough to get my point across.

Most fighting games have a core 4 actions that players can use: crouching attacks, standing attacks, jumping attacks, and grabs/throws. And each of those actions can be countered or blocked by crouching guard, standing guard, or grab counters. It’s essentially a slightly more complicated version of rock-paper-scissors, but instead of guessing, players have a small window to react. This complex, hectic rock-paper-scissors game is what allows every battle to be unique and exciting.

So, how do you apply this rock-paper-scissors mechanic to an action game like Zelda, or a shooter like Uncharted? Well, the one thing these games lack that is present in fighters is a dynamic defensive system. These games need something equivalent to a fighting game’s crouching and standing block, different ways for players to defend against different types of attacks. And if they choose the wrong defensive maneuver, they’ll get punished. This applies to not just the player, but the enemy AI as well. Enemies have to utilize their defenses as much as the player.

Fighting games (specifically Street Fighter and Tekken) also utilize an automatic health regeneration system. Many people are of the belief that health regen makes games too easy. Again, that’s not the case for fighting games. Even though players receive a full health bar at the start of each battle, many people think fighting games are some of the hardest games to play. If players actually manage to win a fight, they probably don’t have much more than a quarter of their health remaining by the end of the match. But you can’t just give players all their health back after defeating an enemy in Zelda, so how does it apply in a game like that? Again, I’m not an expert in game design, but I know at least one solution that would work.

Elder Scrolls utilizes a system that allows players to regain their health by “waiting.” The wait system makes in-game time go by at roughly one hour per second. After waiting for as little as the minimum one hour, players will have a full health and magic meter. The catch is, players cannot wait when enemies are nearby. This prevents players from using the feature mid-battle to come back in full health. It also just makes sense, because if a player waited for an hour mid-battle, they would be standing in place for an hour while an enemy was attacking them. There are two key components to this type of health regeneration: 

  • Enemies are not nearby
  • Players cannot be moving

Other games use somewhat similar styles of health regeneration, such as Shadow of the Colossus. The player can regain health by remaining still and crouching. There aren’t really enemies trying to kill you in Shadow of the Colossus, but I think it’s still applicable.

What it all comes down to is making each encounter with an enemy a battle that really challenges players, but is still fun. With a combat system that utilizes a variety of attacks and defenses by both the player and the computer, each battle will be unique and challenging. By giving players the ability to enter each encounter with their full health, the frustration of entering combat with almost no health is eliminated, making the game more enjoyable. 

There are many more aspects of fighting games that other genres can benefit from, but I think these two are some of the most important, and will improve games more than the others. 

Do you agree? Disagree? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment, or contact me in whichever way is easiest for you. 

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