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Thursday 21 February, 2008
GAMEPLAY
So now that I've had a chance to warm up and meet my hit-and-run quota, I'm ready to settle down and explore some of the more mundane aspects of gameplay. Here I am standing in front of the hospital looking for some work. I've made a pledge to myself not to use violence to meet my goals (at least for the time being), although I'm down to stoop to some carjacking. I watch cars drive by for a while until a taxicab pulls by, that looks like a good steady line of work. So I run in front of it and claim it for my own. I hit a button, and suddenly I have objectives. Welcome to the taxi mini-game.
I ticking clock now resides in the corner of the screen, I have to pick up fares and take them to their destinations before time runs out. Its a Crazy Taxi clone, but I don't mind because I'm in the GTA universe, and I can leave my taxi and beat a hooker to death whenever I get bored. I drive around, picking up fares and trying to keep my murder rate low. It's fun for a while, but eventually the police start chasing me for reckless driving and its back to car-chases and violence. As soon as I've left the hospital I look for another non-violent profession. I run around to the back of the hospital and find a waiting ambulance. I climb inside and start the ambulance driver mini-game. It's very similar to the taxi mini-game, only now my destination is always the hospital and my fares start in slightly more amusing situations. Again, I rapidly get bored, and after a few hospital runs, I'm back to unrestrained violence. This time the cops get me and I'm sitting outside the police station. Time for a new job.
This time, I resolve, I will find a slightly more entertaining job. I think I want to be a vigilante. Luckily, I'm right outside the police station, so I steal a police car, activate the vigilante mini-game, and all of a sudden, I'm a semi-licensed killer. A drive around, killing whom I'm told for a while. This is a game that I have the proper skillset for. Heres my job: Drive quickly to where the criminal is. Attack his car until it's about to explode, the criminal will then get out of the car. Run over the criminal. Find the next criminal. What a rewarding career. Also, as I progress, there are more and more criminals to kill each time. What a world!
DESIGN
As I've played GTA: San Andreas with a game designers mindset, I've picked up on some important design elements that really make the game fun. So first off, lets label the obvious important design features and get them out of the way:
1) massive world with no load times
2) huge variety of cars, weapons, npcs, etc. The world is beautifully populated.
3) compelling and humorous story with well scripted missions that moves along only when the player wants it to.
Now lets talk about what I noticed as I played today. One aspect of GTA: SA that I think is super important but also fairly subtle is the contrast between the plot and general game mechanic with the career mini-games. It is tons of fun to go through the missions, shooting, driving, and killing. Its also fun to just run around doing those things: shooting, driving, and killing. On the other hand, the career mini-games are repetitive and boring. You usually just have to complete the same task over and over again, simply competing against a ticking clock, and only making chump change. I'm not sure this was done on purpose, but as I reflect now, I'm sure it was.
The fun of breaking the law to make money and succeed contrasted with the law-abiding way of making money (minigames), really shows how players are encouraged to break the law to succeed. I'm sure there is a paper here on the ethics of this choice, but both the story and the actual gameplay really push across the point that crime does pay. I also think the fact that real jobs are boring and being a criminal is fun makes for a more realistic gaming experience. In real life its true, crime does pay, its a fast and relatively easy to make money, the only problem is that in real life crime comes loaded with tons of consequences. In a game, when all of those consequences are stripped away, we can completely revel in a life of crime.
Another really important design aspect of this game is the incredible amount of collectible items. While this is nothing revolutionary, and previous GTA games have definitely used this strategy, it is incredibly important for a game of this scope. In GTA: San Andreas there are 6 kinds of hidden collectibles and 60 - 100 of each. Which means hours upon hours of extra gameplay. What these collectibles do is reward the player for their continued interest and devotion to the game. Recently other games have attempted to copy the GTA sandbox style of gameplay. For our uses we will use Just Cause as an example, it is very similar to GTA in that it is a 3rd person action game with a massive explorable world, and non-linear gameplay. The problem is, when you finish the plot of scripted missions there is nothing left to do. Sure you can keep running around and exploring the world but the game stops rewarding you for doing so. I mean the rewards in GTA: San Andreas are pretty sparse. Getting a horseshoe for climbing to the top of a building isn't that great, but its a lot more than nothing.
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