A Few Comments on Cut the Rope

February 12th, 2013

I’ve squeezed quite a bit of gaming out of my iPod over the past 2 years. Cut the Rope is one of my favourite titles. I don’t follow the mobile scene much, so if you have any good iOS game recommendations, please let me know in the comments.

Cut the Rope follows a simple, repeated structure that’s easy to understand. The game elements obey form fits function, and there’s a nice visual contrast between them and the background. These qualities make this simple puzzler a great game to play, as well as watch being played.
None of the levels require the camera to scroll both vertically and horizontally. Everything is either kept within a single screen or spread out in one direction. By keeping the camera only moving along a single axis at most, it’s easy for the player to follow the action.
The physics add a playfulness to the gameplay. This is the game’s core appeal.
Cut the Rope is an action-puzzle game, so even when the levels focus on problem solving (knowledge), execution skills (dexterity, reflex, timing) are still needed to carry out the solution (which is different from a standard puzzle game, like Picross or Crosswords). Most levels tend to focus on execution skills. This aspect, along with the physics and cute-n’-clean presentation, are what make this game so accessible.
Each box is based on a certain game element, which is first introduced on its own and then combined with existing elements to create layered challenges. The game is logically organised around its gameplay.
Stars are a form of scalable difficulty.
Often, the way to obtain all three stars is different from the way to obtain the first two, which is usually rather obvious. The first two stars thereby facilitate the creation of a red herring in the player’s mind, which takes more knowledge and adaption skills to overcome. Level 2 – 21 is an example of this phenomena:

At first, the player is likely to cut the top-right rope, as not only is doing so the quickest way to reach the time-active star, but the rope itself appears to be the longest, drawing the player’s eye. After the player does this, they can’t reach the star on the right. When they come to repeat this level for a perfect run, they must think around the original solution to come up with another plan.

For more discussion on Cut the Rope, please check out this thread on the Critical Gaming Facebook page.

A Few Comments on Star Ocean: Second Evolution

February 10th, 2013

I played this game for 10 hours before giving up. I’m sure it gets better, but who has the time to wade through so much filler? Here are my thoughts:

A significant portion of Second Evolution‘s gameplay involves reading through protracted talking sequences. The occasionally-voiced anime archetypes blather excessively about nothing and are far too polite for their own good. There’s just no punch to the writing and no conflict to keep the story moving forwards.
Battles take place in a circular arena where the player can move around enemies to dodge their attacks and target their weak points. The 2D sprites and digital controls weaken the spatial dynamic by making it harder to align and judge the relative position of the two parties.
The battles run in real-time. The player has several party members, but can only control one at a time while the others follow their pre-set AI behaviours. At any time, the player can switch between party members so as to manually attack, use items, or cast spells. This allows them to micromanage the battles. Since there’s minimal interplay between the different party members (for example, stacking attacks) and party members and enemies, this mechanic is only useful for tending to the AI-controlled characters when they’re low on HP or MP.
The enemies don’t coordinate their attacks or use their numbers to close in on the player and make use of the spatial dynamic.
Because the battles lack dynamics and interplay, there’s very little to keep the player engaged. I won most fights by just pressing the attack button a few times and watching the action unfold automatically.
Similar to the PSone Final Fantasy games, the overworld is rendered in 3D, while the towns and dungeons are pre-rendered images of 3D environments. The awkward angles of the 2D stills, coupled with the sprite avatar and digital controls, sometimes make it tricky to navigate these areas.
The 2D landscapes are littered with treasure chests that reward exploration. Over time, the player amounts a small bounty of seemingly useless trinkets. A money-for-skills system allows the player to forge these items into something useful. The whole process is bogged down in needless abstraction that’s best remedied with a visit to GameFAQs.

If anyone’s interested in this series, there’s a fan-translation of the original SNES game (which was later remade for the PSP in the same vein as Second Evolution).

A Few Comments on Burnout Revenge

February 9th, 2013

Back in 2007, I sunk 42 hours into Burnout Revenge. I’ve always had a fondness for arcade-style racing games like Daytona USA and Crazy Taxi, and Burnout Revenge was the first arcade racer I’d played with a meaty campaign that I could really sink my teeth into. When I returned home for Christmas in 2011, I took Burnout Revenge for a spin. Here are a few of the things I noticed:

The core engagement of Burnout Revenge comes from driving at fast speeds (reflex skills) while simultaneously managing various side tasks to build your boost meter (knowledge skills).
There’s a lot of variety in the things you can do to earn boost: drifts, jumps, takedowns, near-misses, taking shortcuts, and comboing up loose vehicles are some examples.
These sub-goals scale up too. Chain together multiple takedowns, for example, and your boost meter will max out.
The track designs and distance between most racers ensure that the player can’t exploit the same boost-gaining techniques: they must vary up their skill set.
There are loads of ways to organically scale the difficulty, including speed, alternate routes, moving with or against traffic, as well as the previously-mentioned sub-goals.
In order to maintain the game’s speed and offer enough breathing room for the player to multi-task, the designers took a few liberties with the game’s realism:

The player isn’t heavily penalised for hitting walls. They can actually skirt barriers to minimise the loss of speed.
The player’s car can hit small vehicles from behind to send them flying (which earns them boost). Big vehicles, though, lead to rear-end collisions, while the player can only knock other racers.
It’s difficulty to crash a landing.
The wind marks as the player’s driving create the sensation of speed without speeding up the gameplay.

When the player does a takedown, the camera spins around to show the full extent of the collision. Although the stylish shot interrupts gameplay, the screen turns yellow and the player’s car switches to autopilot so that the transition isn’t jarring at all. The auto-pilot itself doubles as a reward.
Blowing up your car after you crash feeds back into the strategy and extends the interplay between competitors

Feels good to be back in the writing loop. Anyone have any experience with this game or the series as a whole?

Posted in Game Discussion | Comments (8)
Tags: burnout, burnout revenge

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