|
Thursday 21 February, 2008
game log 2
GAMEPLAY
Playing for a while longer, I was able to sample a bit of every game play mode of Soul Calibur III. From what I was able to play through, I found the Chronicles of the Sword mode to be the most interesting and addictive to play through. The standard arena and tournament combat modes are the classic basis of most fighting games, and offered little in terms of interesting new elements of game design to study. The "Tales of Souls" game mode was essentially the classic lame "story-line mode" using a weak variant of the general background storyline centered around the specific character you choose to play through with, loosely using the storyline as an excuse to string together a series of fights with a sad excuse for cutscenes in between certain battles, otherwise offering little new game play aspects to explore.
The Chronicles of the Sword game mode, however threw together a much more interesting story line surrounding a custom player avatar, which can be customized using unlockable and purchasable items from the in-game item shop. The customizable character adds a greater sense of player involvement and closer connection to the otherwise distant storyline of the game. Additionally, I found the RPG and RTS elements of Chronicles of the Sword mode to be a unique and interesting addition to the game, giving me a much stronger desire to keep playing to unlock more unlockables (as opposed to a continuous stream of 1 vs. 1 battles against seemingly arbitrary enemies, such as in the "story mode." Without it, I could care less for the background of Soul Calibur III, as there are so many different characters that understanding the entire story by piecing together of the entire story by playing through each storyline seems like too much a chore to bother doing. Further more, since some of the characters are a complete nightmare to try and play with (due to balancing issues, discussed further down), it's even more deterring, in a certain sense.
DESIGN
In terms of design, I came to appreciate the control set up, which enabled the player to quickly press combinations of keys much more easily by mapping 2 of the 4 attack buttons to the L1 and R1 triggers (by default setting, too). Although not an immediately intuitive way to think of a control scheme for effectively unleashing button combinations, but after a while it really clicked. However, despite the effectiveness of the control scheme, I discovered a strong imbalance in the game's characters.
The way the some of the character's move sets (compared to others) were designed is rather poor. While the move sets for "non-standard" weapons (such as the scythe, hoop-blade, and tambourines) are rather creative and interesting, not all move sets are created equal. I found the scythe especially difficult to work with, getting every other move blocked--if I can even make a move before being continuously pounded into the ground again after getting up--because the weapon's attack speed is so damn slow. I went through numerous different strategies of varying aggression, defense, and evasion, and I kept coming to the same conclusion: The balance between weapon speed, range, and power is not well balanced with all weapons. Some weapons are extremely easy to use and very powerful while others have powerful combos "in theory," but are practically useless because they can't effectively engage the opponent to begin with.
However, of the characters whose move sets were well designed, the ease of use is excellent, with a smooth progression from basic moves that are easy to use to more difficult but effective combos for more advanced players to use, thus providing a decent library of attacks, but not too extensive such that the move set is ample enough for advanced players while not being overwhelming for beginners. What is unfortunate is the mismatch of difficult-to-use characters thrown in with easy to use characters, making it difficult to know (without prior experience) which characters are apt for button-mashing for 2-player mode and which characters are impossible to use for anything. A smaller library of all well-refined characters would be much better than a large mish-mash library of good and poorly refined characters. The inclusion of characters that are impossible to use simply due to balance issues is a big failure in the testing department in my opinion.
|
