I haven't been to see any movies recently, as you might have noticed, and that's partly why I've been branching out into book reviews and game reviews. These past coupla weeks I've been reading about game design and what makes a game good or addictive, so today I'm going to talk about a couple of games, one an example of what I consider good game design, and one I consider not-so-good game design.
So for the past week or so I've been playing two games in particular: Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare (Which we'll call PVZ if only to save time and eyeball stress) and Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition (Which we'll just call Guacamelee, because you can only make so many things acronyms before it gets tired). They're both very different games which put a unique spin on their genre, but I consider Guacamelee the superior of the two. Why? Well, let me begin.
First off, a full review of PVZ. It's a third-person shooter made by EA and translated into the Plants vs Zombies world, with point-scoring vanquish modes and checkpoint-capture "Gardens and Graveyards" which don't give much originality to the game, although the use of teleporters in the latter, as well as the ability to summon zombies or place potted plants for attack and defence, make it more interesting than your traditional shooter, as the typically one-man-army feel of most shooter games is replaced by the choice to swamp the enemy with heavily-armoured zombies.
I have no problem with the game layout or the maps here, understand. They're varied and they play to the strengths of each character in individual ways. And that's where my problem lies: the characters. Let's take the chomper, for example; it's possibly the most powerful character in-game, able to insta-kill any zombie if it gets behind or underneath them. Even head on it's a formidable opponent, doing fifty damage a pop, and its ranged goo attack can stun enemies long enough for it to score a vanquish in this manner. By all accounts it's got to be one of the most powerful characters in the game, right?
Well, no. See, after it insta-kills something, it's effectively stunned for a coupla seconds as it swallows the victim, and that leaves it open to attack from every other zombie around it. And since its burrow attack - an attack which is almost impossible to defend against, although most of the zombies have some sort of protection - takes time to recharge, and can't be used immediately after eating a zombie, you're more or less a sitting duck out there. This effect can be felt through the whole game: a sort of shoehorning abilities and limitations into characters, so that each character is capable of taking out a couple of enemies but is virtually defenceless against the others. It leaves it feeling a little unbalanced, a sort of hasty attempt at combat balance which doesn't really work and turns it into a sort of bizarre rock-paper-scissors game where you have to carefully pick your targets or risk death.
It feels especially prominent with the scientist too. A fragile healer, its weapon is a shotgun: powerful, close range, and totally useless at any range from which the plants can fire. To counteract this the scientist has a warp ability which teleports it a short distance towards the enemy, which is not often a good idea - when the plants have such abilities as potato mines or chilli bean bombs which are insta-kills for a scientist, and close-range kills at that, frequently you find yourself dying before you can get a shot off. Sure, you have the healing station, but the plants can destroy that and the scientist's healing ability is nothing compared to the sunflower's. The best ability is the sticky bomb - you can throw it from a greater range, and in Gardens and Graveyards it's really effective for clearing out the capture zone. They're good in vanquish mode for setting traps around corners too, although it's not so damaging as the plants' explosive weapons.
One final problem: there's no feedback. When I'm attacked there's no controller vibrate to tell me I'm getting hit, when I'm gooped by a chomper or stunned by an engineer there's no way to tell beyond some quiet alerts in the bottom corner of the screen. What it needs is more active feedback, to tell me I've been stunned or hit. It doesn't give you that feedback that a good game gives you, and that annoys me more than anything else.
BUT, FOR ALL THAT (Sorry, I had to make it loud so you'd notice) it's not an especially bad game. The rewards system is good, you get coins for vanquishes and heals, for assisting teammates in kills and for killing your nemesis - basically anyone who has killed you before - and pretty much anyone can rack up thousands of points in gardens and graveyards for defending gardens or capturing them, it's really a team effort. The coins can be used to buy sticker packs to unlock new outfit items to customise your characters, or even unlock new breeds of character with more powerful abilities and attacks. There's little interaction between players - everyone seems to turn chat off when they play - but it feels good to know you're working with a team of people who are all dedicated to protecting the goal. At least when they all seem to understand what they're doing (sniping zombies in Gardens and Graveyards are both a pet hate because they practically farm kills, and an amusing diversion because they never actually work towards the goal of capturing the garden).
So that's PVZ. It's an example of not-so-good game design, where things seem a little hastily put-together and there's not enough feedback to give you the details of your situation. But the rewards system is fun and there's an overall sense of amusement about the whole thing.*
Onto Guacamelee then. Created by Drinkbox Studios, it's a platforming game with an interesting story, for a start: you are Juan, a simple farmer who grew up with El Presidente's daughter. Naturally, when she is kidnapped by evil skeleton Calaca for use in his rituals to merge the world into the land of the dead and rule it all, you are the first to go after her, sprinting to the rescue - only to be killed by Calaca the minute he sees you. Returning from the land of the dead with a wrestling mask and a newfound sense of purpose, you journey across the world with the help of Tostada, a fiery luchadora with similar powers, to rescue the princess and save the world. Along the way you gain new wrestling powers from a perverse goat god, all useful as you come across new obstacles or new creatures of the dead world to defeat.
In terms of gameplay it's very similar to any other platformer - find upgrades, beat bad guys/bosses, save the princess - but it introduces interesting new elements, such as the ability to switch between the mortal realm and the Land of the Dead, or the surprising power of turning yourself into a chicken (yes, really).
But there are two very striking things about the game. The first is the visual side. It's a very pretty game, angular and square-ish with a stylised Mexican charm, sort of blocky like the old 8-bit games but more realistic with the artwork. It's charming and unique and it really stands out from the other games on the Xbox marketplace (getting it free with Xbox Live Gold was just a plus).
The second thing is just how much they've packed into the one game. As well as the two abilities I've mentioned above, you can headbutt walls and enemies, throw a rooster uppercut to destroy certain blocks, and get harder-hitting headshots on the larger skeletons you face, ground-pound in the style of mario, jump from wall to wall, and unleash your inner luchador by building combos and channelling your rage against the enemies. And those are only the powers I've unlocked so far: there are fifteen goat statues throughout the world, apparently, and they all give you different powers (bestowed upon you, of course, by your pervy goat-man-god guide). Of those, I think I've unlocked five. And that's just the moves you can do - it doesn't cover unlockable costumes which give you bonuses, secret treasure chests and bonus rooms to traverse which will gain you heart containers or stamina points, all the bizarre side quests you need to complete to 100% this game, or the move upgrades you can buy from a talking skull on a table, which include suplexes and piledrivers.
The beauty of Guacamelee is that they haven't made it feel overwhelming. Most of the controls are direction-based, every move is a combination of direction and button. Sure, it feels a little odd when you first get the ability to shift realms at will - isn't a bit early in the day to be getting that power? - but by that point everything's gone all wibbly and you have to work your brain and your reflexes trying to fight enemies in two different realms at once, finding passageways in the mortal coil which aren't there in the Land of the Dead or vice versa, and the enemies and their attacks get more and more unpredictable and wild as you press on through the game (including the introduction of some flying enemies which - barring a well-placed throw or uppercut - are near-impossible to knock out of the sky).
What Drinkbox Studios have done is make a game that scales well. It rewards you more and more as you go through, but it also makes it more and more difficult to get those rewards (Of particular note here, I think, is the piñata mask, which nets you more gold for each kill but also makes you much more fragile). Overall it feels more complete, with a story which ranges all across the world map and back again, and throws you into a world of crazy, supernatural luchador wrestling and evil skeletons trying to take over the world. It actually feels well-made.
So that's my review of two completely different games, and I guess it's time for a confession: I've been playing PVZ more than I've been playing Guacamelee, but there's a good reason for that. First off, the rewards: there's a seemingly endless array of hats, tattoos and skins for each character in PVZ, and the competition of seeing someone else with a better hat and subsequently wanting that hat makes me want to play it more.
Second: when I play Guacamelee, I play it for hours. I can play PVZ for about two hours before I get bored, but the last time I played Guacamelee I played for four hours straight, and only stopped because I looked at the clock and saw it was past 2am.
So PVZ is a decent game with some balance issues but a good rewards system to draw you in and make you play. But Guacamelee? That just choke-slams your brain into instant addiction.
*EDIT: I just got a new controller, so I was interested to see what PVZ's split-screen mode has to offer. As someone with two younger brothers, I have to ask: Is that the best EA could really do? There are so many problems with the split-screen, it makes it a struggle any time they want to play it, all stemming from the one message on the bottom of the screen (again, badly placed and with nothing to draw your attention to it - feedback problems!) that says, "Only Player 1 can earn PvZ Coins, complete Challenge Stars for their characters, and earn Achievements." This, for a household with two young children, is not an acceptable substitute for dedicated multiplayer, especially when they can choose to play as their own gamertags, but are unable to access any of their unlocked characters if they are player two. And you thought having to play as Luigi was bad?
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