By Chris Rhodan
So when discussion our student project (which I will probably write more about later), the idea of timed missions was raised, and specifically, whether we wanted to include them in some form. My answer was clear; no way in hell!
Time limits, for the most part, serve only to frustrate the player by forcing them to play the game at a pace uncomfortable to them, which is usually, also annoyingly difficult for them. In fact, because timed challenges operate in a different style of difficulty to untimed challenges (as the skills required to do a certain action don’t necessarily correlate to the set of skills required to do that action quickly, for example a player could be excellent at a strategy game when given time to think, but unable to effectively strategize when the game is played at a fast pace i.e. chess vs lightning chess) a player who doesn’t immediately translate their skills into speed, often can’t improve in a noticeable way, regardless of time spent trying. The only obvious way around this is to rebalance the difficulty so that the section is easy enough for anyone to progress through, however that has the side effect of making the section feel out of place in the level (as it’s so much easier than other levels) or it defeats the purpose of having a timed mission (as it’s so easy there’s little pressure on the player).
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By Chris Rhodan
Note: The majority of this was written late last week, look for some newer impressions after the weekend.
Bioware’s latest RPG masterpiece is finally upon us, and it’s obvious that they’ve made the most of the 6 years they’ve spent developing it (that’s right, for those unaware, Dragon Age was announced well before Mass Effect yet has only beaten Mass Effect’s sequel to stores by a couple of months).
Obviously a game with such a long development time has some huge expectations… expectations I stayed away from by distancing myself from as much of the previews and trailers as possible so that I could stay out of the hype and just enjoy the game, rather than being concerned with whether it met my expectations. But you know what; I don’t think it would have mattered as the game is, in a word, “brilliant”, though far from perfect. In fact, perhaps “difficult” is more appropriate as it seems to be the first thing that pops into mind when I talk to people about Dragon Age.
More after the jump.
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By Chris Rhodan
So, E3 was back to its old tricks, stepping out of the shadow of itself that it’s been for the past few years and reverting back into the far more exciting behemoth it should be.
Quick satire of major announcements and my thoughts on some games from E3 after the jump.
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By Chris Rhodan
Welcome one and all to my new blog. Now that university has finished for the semester (hopefully successfully), I finally have had the time to set this up properly (It may not look to different from when I set it up initally, but a lot has change on the back end) and to start writing for it.
I’d encourage you all to check out the About page if you haven’t, just to give you an idea of what my blog is about.
I’ll be populating this with some new posts over the course of the next week and will be (hopefully) updating 2-3 times a week, depending on my free time.
Hope you have fun here and enjoy my blog.
