Just Cause 2: Positive Design Elements
An expansive, detailed game world. As a gamer, I find exploration and discovery to be a necessary part to most of the games that I enjoy. There’s nothing quite like starting up a game, looking at the world map and realizing that you’ve only explored 8% of the map in a few hours of gameplay. Sacred, Morrowind, Oblivion, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, these are all games that offered me a huge amount of area to explore, and even better, there were little things to discover along the way that made exploring the game world more interesting.
In-game weapons, vehicles, and tools–like the grappling hook–allow the player to complete the missions in many different ways. There’s something to be said for riding on the nose of a fighter jet, jumping off of it before it explodes in the middle of a group of enemies, landing on top of a limousine and attaching a passing car to a tree with your grappling hook before ducking inside of the limo, removing the driver, and kidnapping a dignitary at eighty miles an hour. Games that don’t lead me by the hand have some of the most memorable mission events.
A fun, lightheartedly sarcastic and cynical main character that is instantly likeable. Rico Rodriguez is an anti-hero of sorts. Yes, he’s an operative, but he’s an operative who does the job the way he wants. He knows that the likelihood of his survival is miniscule, but what the heck, he’s going to have fun until he dies. A likeable main character is integral to enjoying a video game, because you’ll be seeing a lot of him or her.
A physics engine that is aimed more towards enjoyment than realism. The Half Life 2 physics engine was amazing. It created a game world where air-filled pontoons are buoyant enough to lift wooden ramps, where bricks can be used to anchor things in place, and where falling from twenty feet would probably break your legs. Just Cause 2 isn’t quite that literal. Rico’s momentum-cancelling grappling hook allowed you to free fall from a helicopter at 30,000 feet, hook the ground as soon as possible, and pull yourself to safety without so much as a grass stain. Sometimes the fun is in the ability to do things that we can’t in real life.
Just Cause 2: Negative Design Elements:
Mouse and keyboard controls are cumbersome enough to detract from the fun of the game. It’s pretty obvious that this game was designed with the console gamer in mind, which is fine, but it makes it quite difficult for a PC gamer who likes to use a keyboard and mouse for, well, just about everything. I don’t own a gamepad, and I don’t want to spend the extra $30 to purchase an additional Xbox controller or wireless adapter just for my computer. There are more controls to set in Just Cause 2 than either a left or right handed player can comfortably reach at any given time. Additionally, being a left-handed player, I’ve got an even greater handicap because of the right hand side of most keyboards being as sparse as they are. Games that are ported to the computer need to have controls that are intuitive to that platform, otherwise it looks like the company who released the game just wanted to cash in on another group of players.
The story takes a back seat to the rest of the game. As I stated in the Positive Design Elements section, the story for this game is much the same as for its predecessor. You’re an agent. You have to overthrow a ruthless government. Here’s a grappling hook and a parachute. Albeit, the action is definitely the focus of the game, but a good story makes completing the game a worthwhile endeavor. Without a good story, players are likely to only play the game for its sandbox quality, quickly grow bored with it, and sell it back to a game store.
With the exception of the initial tutorial section, interactions between Rico and the supporting characters becomes boring and tiresome as these characters are often voiced badly. Rico is a likeable, fleshed out character. His supporting cast is not so bright. Bad accents, poorly scripted dialogue, and cliché riddle Rico’s interactions with these NPC’s to the point where you want to just skip the cut scene and read about it in the mission log.
The size of the game world makes it difficult to get anywhere in a hurry. Even after commandeering a fighter jet, it takes a lot of real world minutes to get from point A to point B in Just Cause 2. There is a fast travel option, where a guy with an annoying accent can pick you up in a helicopter, talk your ear off, and then drop you from 10,000 feet above your destination, but the mandatory cutscenes of the helicopter picking you up, and the subsequent parachute drop, leave you tapping your foot and thinking about what else you could be doing.
Dragon Age Origins: Positive Design Elements
Fantastically immersive storyline with multiple twists and turns that pulls you in and makes you care about each and every character in some way, even the bad ones. Why should you care about Loghain Mac Tir after he caused you so much strife during the majority of Dragon Age Origins? Because he is doing it for reasons that would almost seem noble in any other light. Dragon Age Origins delivers a narrative that is both engaging and intriguing. You want to move forward and experience the rest of the story and you know that, for the most part, character actions are going to be explained. The thing that really makes the story great though is your influence on it. Your choices as the hero affect the greater game world and you may find yourself, twenty hours in, thankful or regretful of a choice you made sixteen hours ago.
The musical score for the game is so good you’ll buy the soundtrack. A good soundtrack can make a game fun to play; a great soundtrack can manipulate your experience by pumping you up during battle, creeping you out in a dark cavern, or jerking tears from your eyes as you witness the wholesale slaughter of a favorite character. I still listen to the Dragon Age Origins soundtrack because it makes me feel like a hero, even when I’m not playing the game.
The game is genuinely challenging, forcing you to think strategically during battles in order to win. This is important to a game that has so many different skills, pieces of equipment, and character classes. If the enemies could be destroyed by simply equipping the strongest sword you have and right clicking a few times, the game would quickly become boring.
The voice acting, for the most part, is top notch and fun to listen to. With a few exceptions, nothing ruins immersion in a game like bad voice acting. Great voice acting really accentuates the story by ensuring that players will listen to everything a character has to say.
Dragon Age Origins: Negative Design Elements
The visuals, while solid for the game type, are basically everything we’ve seen before in a number of fantasy games. How many dirty, medieval villages have we seen over the years of fantasy gaming? A lot. Dragon Age Origins presents strong, technically proficient graphics with some great detail, but the characters, equipment, and locales lack original flare. The splattered blood is a nice touch, but I think I’ve seen those werewolves before. Dwarves are short, swarthy drinkers, and elves are slender, pointy-eared lovers. The role reversal of the elves (as indentured servants) and the dwarves (as a caste system society) challenged gaming norms, but the visuals were standard fare.
Some of the boss fights, particularly the final boss, are boring. There are regular enemy encounters that will tax a player harder than some of the set piece battles. The final boss battle in Dragon Age Origins wasn’t as exciting as I felt it should have been. It was anticlimactic and easy. The rest of the game, minus a few of the other larger boss battles, was fantastic, but when you build up to a battle with the ultimate incarnation of the Darkspawn, you want that battle to be epic.
The side stories for the non-romanceable characters, as in the cases of Oghren and Wynne, seem to be a bit shallow when compared to those characters that the hero can become involved with. In contrast to the back stories for Alistair, Morrigan, Leliana, and even Zevran, the other characters seemed to get the short end of the story-stick. For a game with such an engaging story, and characters that make you want to know them, pursuing a back story that comes up short of your expectations can be a real let down.
The silent protagonist. This is a difficult argument to make because part of playing through the eyes of a silent protagonist is imaging yourself as that character, and obviously if that character doesn’t have your voice, then he or she can’t really be you. However, I’ve seen this done well. Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 had fantastically voiced main characters that were still developed the way the player wanted them to be. I believe that character interaction between the player and the NPCs is damaged when it seems like the conversations are one sided.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Positive Design Elements
An engaging storyline that is told during in-game cutscenes, during mission briefings, and during character interaction on the battlefield. It is harder to tell a good story during an RTS because your major form of interacting with other characters is hacking them to pieces and then doing the same to their comrades. Warhammer delivers the story during multiple points during the game without it seeming like they had to shoehorn it all in.
Visuals that stand up well, despite the game’s age, and impart an original feel to the game universe. They aren’t groundbreaking anymore, but it is nice to come back to a game that is six years old and still be able to enjoy the game’s graphics. It also helps that the character and environment designs really make the game universe feel lived in and battled upon.
An equal balance of offensive and defensive abilities gives the player the ability to choose from different play styles in order to complete each mission. I find that my strategy in RTS games usually consists of hardening my defenses until my guns are bigger than the other guy’s guns. This doesn’t work in every game or in every situation, but Warhammer allowed me to do it for a few missions and there was nothing more enjoyable for me than to utterly devastate the computer when I finally did leave the confines of my walled in base. However, the tech tree grows quickly enough to allow players to go on the offensive much earlier than I did, which would appeal to the zergling rush type of player.
The limit cap on units and the finite supply of resources means that players have to think strategically about what to build and train in order to complete each mission. Even when I’m employing my strategy of holing up behind a wall of bolter turrets it is still necessary to go out and capture more strategic points in order to gain the resources needed to build my conquering army. Also, the limit cap on units means that I have to make sure I’ve got units to handle whatever the enemy has waiting for me outside of my protective ring. This kind of strategic thinking can make a game more fun and engaging.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Negative Design Elements
Players who don’t know anything about the Warhammer 40,000 universe will not understand many of the references in the game, such as the Imperium’s blind adherence to the “Emperor’s Will” and why the Chaos Marines seem so similar to the Space Marines. I made it a point to go out and read about the different factions in the Warhammer 40,000 universe because I was intrigued about the mythos surrounding the Imperium. Other players may not be so active in finding that kind of information. Any lack in knowledge about the character or characters that a player is using can lead to confusion or detachment from the game world.
The special powers for the different units, unit commanders, and hero units are cumbersome to use during gameplay, especially when you have a large number of units. I completed most of the game without even using the ultimate special powers for Gabriel, Toth, or Isador because getting to those powers after you linked the hero units to an infantry unit and then added that unit to a group meant hitting the tab key a few times to select the unit and then remembering the hotkey or left clicking on the power button and then left clicking again on the area or unit that the power would effect. I found that the game was a lot less aggravating when I pretended that the hero characters didn’t have any special powers.
During the single player campaign, the player controls the Imperium forces and the Eldar forces but does not have the opportunity to use the Orks or the Forces of Chaos. You do get to see some cutscenes that explain the link between the Forces of Chaos and the Orks, but you never get to truly experience those factions like you do with the Imperium and the Eldar. I believe an approach in the vein of Warcraft III or Starcraft, where you had the opportunity to experience the story from all sides, would have been more enjoyable.
The enemy factions have no good defense against the Imperium tanks like the Predator and the Land Raider. The Land Raider, in particular, really makes the game too easy when it is available. With a lack of defensive units, structures, or strategy, or the underutilization of them, the Land Raider and a healthy number of other units can literally steam roll all opposition in the single player game. This makes the game too easy at points, and made me feel like I was just playing a point and click adventure.
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