mozidesign.com Unorganized Thoughts of a Game Designer

New UDK Scene: Falls

Over the weekend I was bored and I put this UDK scene together. It is quite small and simple, but I did that on purpose because many folks have asked, how do I do level design. And what better way to teach level design than with a small and simple level. In the next few days I will gather my notes and retrace my steps and will soon teach you guys how I put this little scene together. As always feel free to ping me on twitter @mozidesigner.

Enjoy!

Game Review Round Up

After every game I finished recently, I always said I would do a review but I never did. Sorry about that, I just tend to get side tracked by other games or mod projects such as my recent Gears of War level I made. Well instead of doing a full review in my usual fashion of the good, the bad, and ugly, I’ll do three relatively short and spoiler free reviews of the following games, FEAR 3, Infamous 2, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

FEAR 3
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FEAR 3 or as the box has it written F3AR (“fthreear”) returns once again to bring back a blend of horror and FPS gameplay. Along with the return of the gameplay style the FEAR franchise is known for, this third installment also has the return of Point Man and Paxton Fettel, the original protagonist and villain from the first game. However, instead of going against each other, Point Man and Fettel are now working together to find their mother Alma, who as usual plays the role of the freaky looking girl to scare shit out of you now and then during gameplay.

Since Point Man and Fettel are now working together in the story of the game has caused a shift in FEAR’s core single player gameplay to be co-op based, where one player can control Point Man and the other Fettel. I am going to go into some spoiler territory here, but shame on you if you have not played the first FEAR game, it’s awesome, and you should play it if you have not done so. The co-op of FEAR 3 is interesting with the fact that it offers two different gameplay styles depending on who you choose to play as. If you choose Point Man, you get a pretty standard FPS experience, guns, grenades, and melee attacks. However, if you choose Fettel you get to play the game as ghost, since technically Fettel is dead due to Point Man’s actions from the first game. As a ghost, you have some pretty interesting telekinetic attacks as well as the ability to take over the minds of enemy soldiers and use them against their teammates within the combat spaces provided within the game.

However, even though the idea of co-op is awesome for FEAR 3, I feel that the introduction of it caused a core foundation of the game to be lost, which is the horror element. I have not played co-op but I have watched some of my co-workers play it, and during their gameplay experience there are no horror moments to be seen, I found that to be odd, but then I figured that maybe the horror has not kicked in yet. Once I played the game on my own, I noticed quite a few horror moments, such as Alma sightings and other strange events, in the exact same places where my co-workers did co-op gameplay! Then it clicked for me, if you play on your own you get the scare moments, if you do co-op you don’t see anything. All you get is a standard and overall solid FPS game experience. Which brings an interesting design question, can one design co-op horror? Perhaps the answer or discussion can be saved for another blog post.

Overall, FEAR 3 was a fun game and solid FPS game, though I felt that story and horror elements within a single player only run felt weak and were not as strong as in the previous two releases of the franchise.

Final Score 7.5/10

Infamous 2
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Infamous 2 was great, in fact I stand by my opinion that any PS3 exclusive title such as God of War or Uncharted usually brings along the awesome sauce and delivers an amazing gameplay experience with extremely solid and stunning visuals. With Infamous 2, the developers at Sucker Punch Productions out did themselves by improving and expanding upon the familiar gameplay of the first title in addition to beefing up the visual quality of the game. I am not saying that Infamous 1 looked like crap or anything, that game also looked great, but the sequel looks even better than the first by giving the players a new and interesting sandbox world to explore.

To get thing started the game follows a tried and proven game design concept of giving the player an awesome and over the top introduction, with a God of War style boss fight between you and all of your awesome electrical powers against a being known as the “The Beast”. After this explosive introduction the player is taken to a new location known as New Marais, which is basically New Orleans in terms of visual design just with a different name.

Upon arriving in New Marais, the player is presented with a familiar mechanics from the first game and gameplay paths either to become evil or to be the savior of New Marais. In addition to the familiarity, one thing the guys at Sucker Punch did which was awesome is added a sense of fear and urgency to the game with the implementation of timer, in the form of distance, and a map showcasing the location of “The Beast”. After your first encounter with “The Beast” in the introduction you escape to New Marias as mentioned earlier, however, “The Beast” wants a re-match and is on its way to New Marias! Every now and then you get a message stating that “The Beast” is for example 1000 miles away from New Marias, As the distance gap closes between you and “The Beast” the sense of urgency and the anticipation builds for a rematch between your arsenal of electrical powers and the might of “The Beast”.

In addition to the overarching story of the player and the choices they make to be good or evil, the town of New Marias offers interesting gameplay mechanics and puzzles to keep you entertained. As mentioned New Marias, is basically New Orleans, and with that in mind the sandbox world offers various locations to explore including a core city, swamp lands, and a section of town which is completely flooded. The city areas presents the player with multiple routes of vertical gameplay as one can climb up various buildings and grind across power lines going from rooftop to rooftop. The swamps and flooded sections of the city create interesting traversal puzzles given the fact that player has a handful of electrical powers which don’t mix very well with water.

In summary, the gameplay is very solid and addicting, in fact I finished the game in one weekend. I could not let go of the controller! If you have not played Infamous I highly recommend it and after that play Infamous 2, both are solid PS 3 titles which offer hours of amazing gameplay!

Final Score 9/10

Deus Ex: Human Revolution
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Finally we come to Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DX: HR). Before I get started I just want to point out that I am huge Deus Ex fan boy, I am one those people who regard the original Deus Ex to be one of the greatest PC games ever made. In fact I like it so much that I have original box on my desk at work! Before Human Revolution, Deus Ex had a sequel subtitled, Invisible War, and no offense to any one that worked on it but honestly that game sucked. It failed to deliver on the promise and expectations of what a Deus Ex is a game which offers multiple options of player choice, and presents the player with various consequences for their choices. I can do an entire rant on why Invisible War failed to be Deus Ex game but I’ll save that for another day. Long story short, with the disappointment of Invisible War many years ago, was quite cynical and distrustful of what Eidos would do for the third iteration, basically I was thinking to myself please to don’t screw up Deus Ex a second time! Like I said I am fan boy…

However, Eidos won me over, they made a true Deus Ex game with Human Revolution, so good in fact it makes me forget about the train wreck of Invisible War. (Again no offense to ex-Ion Storm folks out there, just sharing my honest opinion) From the start, the game offers player choice by giving the player a combat situation which can be approached head on guns blazing or if you feel clever can be completely avoided using stealth tactics. From then on, the game is all about player choice, allowing one to choose a lethal or non-lethal play style.

Each play style has its pros and cons and that is what makes DX: HR feel like a true Deus Ex game, your choices effect how everything else plays out. For example in an assault play through one may gun down all the enemies and follow the obvious path within the level. However, a non-lethal stealth run may be harder but it makes one think about alternate routes to avoid combat by finding air ducts and vents crawl through, or computers to hack to disable security measures found within a level. Again it is all about choice, me personally I choose the stealth route in my first play through and only killed enemy AI when I had no choice or was caught in a tight spot. Currently I am on my second play through now and have chosen to be more aggressive going in guns blazing killing anything that moves or shoots back! In addition to choice in core gameplay, players are also given the choice of which augmentations they want to invest in to benefit their play style, be it improved hacking skills or improved armor for combat situations.

In terms of story, DX:HR is actually a prequel to the events of the original Deus Ex and if you have played the original game, you will find tons of references to it while playing DX:HR so be sure to read all those emails, notes, and pay attention to levels especially within Picus Media and the shipyard levels.

The only major flaw this game has, and I hate to beat a dead horse, but this has been brought up over and over online and in other reviews is that the boss fights suck. And I have to agree the boss fights suck big time. Again a topic for another day of why the boss fights sucked and how they can be improved, long story short, all four boss fights felt out of place and take the player out of the mind set of being a super spy type character and throws you into an all out brawl of who can shoot faster you or the AI boss. There are some other minor flaws in regards to some visual details, characters, and animations but those can be overlooked as they do not hinder the core gameplay experience.

Shitty boss fights aside, DX: HR is an amazing game offering multiple options and play styles to keep you entertained within an alternate reality of science fiction and global conspiracy theories. You don’t need to play the original game to enjoy DX: HR, in fact it may be difficult as the visuals are highly dated on the first game, but the story does hold up if you are in the mood for some classic PC gaming and would like to have some insights onto how DX: HR and Deus Ex are related. One last thing if you do finish DX: HR stick around for the end after the credits for a nice surprise.

Final Score 8.5/10

Edit about the boss fights, it was not Edios’ fault…blame these guys instead…

Forsaken-Gears Visual Scene

I really had a fun time working in the Gears editor once again, even though many of the latest and greatest features of Unreal Engine 3 never existed in this build of the editor. Nonetheless, it was still interesting to play around with the assets to create a visual scene which could exist within the Gears universe. So without further delay check out the fly by video and the screens below. As always feel free to send any comments to me on twitter @mozidesigner. Cheers!

Watch it in HD as well!

Thoughts on LA Noire

Below are my thoughts about LA Noire, and just as a heads up I do mention some story events in my write up. So if you have not beaten the game I’d advise you to finish the game first and then read what I have to say as my opinion and ideas my differ from your experience and I do not want to ruin your experience based on my reactions to the game.

For those of you who follow my twitter feed, not long ago I said that LA Noire was a bit of a let down. Well it kind of is but, allow me to rephrase what I said. Overall, LA Noire is a good game, with some pretty slick graphics and engaging gameplay. However, what LA Noire lacks, which makes it sort of suck is that it is missing a key component that make video games fun in the first place (in my opinion at least). That component is the “Epic Win”.

In her TED talk (which I highly recommend watching if you have not seen it already here is the link ) Jane McGonigal discusses the “Epic Win” as gaining a high positive experience within extreme circumstances while playing a video game. This could be something like overcoming a boss battle, completing a very difficult mission, getting a clutch victory in a multiplayer game, or having an unexpected come back in a fighting game. Now LA Noire has no boss fights, nor any MP gaming or really any intense fighting like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat.

LA Noire is basically a crime solving mystery game, which puts players into the shoes of Cole Phelps. Cole’s story is pretty straight forward, as he is an ex-military guy coming back from WW2 and finds a job as police officer in 1947 Los Angeles. As you play the game you will solve various crimes which in turn will get you promoted from being a basic patrol cop to a full fledged detective who solves cases dealing with homicide and narcotics. Rockstar Games and Team Bondi did a fantastic job on recreating a late 1940′s early 50′s LA with very realistic characters, environments, and vehicles. Now this where part of my frustration with game begins, realism.

Every one is entitled to enjoy what ever game they like, but for me personally I enjoy more unrealistic games to have the occasional escape from reality. But now and then a realistic games can be fun depending on how they are executed. Games bounded in reality come with more rules and restrictions as compared to unrealistic games. Along with rules, games set in reality at times have events and consequences which seem realistic. Now this can be a good thing or bad thing. As an example, Heavy Rain, was a recent ‘realistic’ game with real consequences for your actions. I really enjoyed Heavy Rain, as it felt like a choose your own adventure book. Any action I did either lead down a path of positive or negative outcomes just like in reality. When the game was over the ending I got was purely based on the choices I made. Depending on my actions either I got the “epic win” or an epic fail (with characters dying off or something like that).

Now as Rockstar and Team Bondi made a ‘realistic’ game with LA Noire, where you follow a realistic path of getting promoted and even getting chewed out for your work on the cases. As you play the game you reach the level of being on the homicide team. These cases revolve around the real ‘Black Dahlia Murder’ which took place in LA during the late 1940s. You can find more information about that case online. Anyways, as you solve the homicide crimes you finally get close to the killer behind all of the murders in the game. In fact you even get to kill the bastard that did all the murders, getting the “epic win” but Rockstar and Team Bondi decided to play a realism card and turn that epic win into an epic fail.

Long story short, your police chief comes to you and says you can’t reveal the name or identity of the killer you just put down because he is related to a high ranking politician and doing so will tarnish said politician’s image. Seriously!? I can give rats ass about some politician, it is a video game why play this reality bullshit about ruining people’s image. Why did you steal my epic win of solving all of these murder cases away from me?! Because of my actions I reached the conclusion I was hoping for but the scripted events done by the developers says other wise that I can not have my reward for playing the game.

For your hard work of basically not being recognized for your actions you get promoted to go work on vice cases which deal with narcotics, homicide is no more, just forget about it and move on. As you move on to vice a similar epic win steal is done by the developers of the game by playing the ‘realism’ card. As you solve various narcotics crimes, a scripted cut scene plays out showing Cole Phelps doing something he should not be doing. Now as you get to very end of the vice cases on the verge of bagging one of the main guys behind all of the drugs, that scripted cut scene of Cole we saw a while back comes to bite us in the ass. What happens is that Cole is thrown off the case and off of the vice squad and you never get to see the out come of solving the chain of events in the vice cases. You get demoted and thrown into the shit list squad of the police department which is arson crimes division.

In real life this shit happens. People get promoted, do stupid shit which comes to light and gets people fired from their jobs. It is sad and depressing and honestly not fun when seen a video game. Going back to Heavy Rain, if I got a negative outcome it was my fault as that game requires you to make your own choices. In LA Noire, I got the epic fail because I am supposed to. The developers scripted all of the events, even the cut scene where you do the stupid shit that gets you fired from your case. Why script failure into game. It is not fun to steal away an epic win, with force scripted events that set you up for failure. If failure occurs in game it should be the player’s fault not the developers. This is why LA Noire is a let down. All of the pretty graphics, crime solving mechanics, characters, and story telling mean nothing when all the game does is set you up to fail.

I have done my fair share of spoilers here but I won’t say what happens at the end, except for be warned that the game will set you up for failure and steal your epic win by giving you a seriously lame epic loss.

With that said, is LA Noire a bad game? Not really, it has its merits but as I mentioned before it relies too much on the rules and events of reality. The game tries to present meaningful outcomes or lessons but they don’t mean much because you have no part in getting those outcomes. They are all scripted events, you have no choice but to go down the same path of failure no matter how many times you play the game.

I am sure someone will tell me that your standard run and gun FPS is full of scripted events and why I am not bashing those games. Well, truth be told, yes a lot of games in the market have scripted events. In fact that what games are, a bunch of scripted events. The difference here is that those scripted events are setup in way to provide the player with best possible outcome, such as success or “epic win”. Rarely do developers intend for player failure or frustration, but LA Noire went all out on being ‘realistic’ that it sets it self up to be morbid and depressing tale of what happens in life sometimes. No matter what you do, will get the same outcome every time, failure. In a standard FPS game, you go up against a boss, and you may not succeed the first few times around, but then you find the right tactics and advantages to overcome failure and attain your “epic win”.

Reservoir-UDK Scene

Screens of my latest UDK scene. Soon I’ll post a ‘slide show’ matinee to showcase some of the movement and sounds within the level. Feel free to leave any comments on my twitter feed @mozidesigner. Cheers!

The Gardens of Morbias

I decided to make a new UDK scene. Honestly, I did not have a lot of time to do something super innovative or new. So I took a simpler route.  Take a level that exists and give it a new ‘paint job’ so to say, a visual spin. I choose to take DM-Morbias from Unreal Tournament.  Not an overly complex level, basically two octagons and two hallways.

I however, decided. Morbias can be so much more. Yes, the UT3 remake took the arena layout to outer space which was very cool. But one thing kind of bugged me about the level. If it were a real arena, how would combatants get in to it? What sort of surroundings would encompass the arena aside from walls?

Well the answer, in my mind at least, is the taking the concept of Morbias outdoors to the what I call, The Gardens of Morbias. I plan to do a fly matinee of  the level soon, but before I do that I need to fix some glitches in lighting on the terrain, and add in minor polish items like particle effects and sound. Till then enjoy the screens, I hope you guys dig it. As always feel free to shoot any comments to me on twitter. One last thing, original credit for Morbias does go to Elliot ‘Myshca’ Cannon.