Metal Slug’s greatest asset, its sumptuously animated take on warfare, works for and against the play experience. The games merit an infinite credit ‘free play’ run purely on the grounds of aesthetic feast. Each mission bursts to life with the hand-drawn exploits of befuddled military men, overly elaborate death animations, and richly coloured plumes of explosion. The juicy interactions provide a certain degree of sensory satisfaction and Metal Slug pushes the shooting and stabbing out at a high frequency.

However, the chaotic gunfights also generate visual clutter. Although Metal Slug adheres to some key principles of good 2D shooter design (i.e. brightly coloured bullets set against muted backdrops), the eruption of animation can obscure the play space when untamed, resulting in stray bullets finding their way through the noise to the player target. Fan-favourite Metal Slug 3 is perhaps the series’ worst offender in this regard.

Another consequence of the aesthetic feast is the limits placed on the player’s movement options. The first couple of missions in each game simplify the challenges by setting soldiers along a horizontal—sometimes hilly—plane. Sure, they can jump or perhaps swing in from a vine, but from a spatial perspective the gameplay challenges remain simple. As the missions roll on, the landforms emphasise both axes of 2D space; jumping challenges broaden the game’s palette beyond shooting and stabbing; and enemies begin to attack from both directions.

Metal Slug 1, 2, and X somewhat attempt to ease the player into this increased complexity. Their gameplay challenges are more tailored around distinct gameplay ideas, allowing the developers to organise them appropriately. The later games are much less consistent. Still, even considering the more grounded approach of the earlier games, the lack of space to move characterises the stricter second halves of the games. All too often, the on-screen action locks the player into a state of inevitable death.

This unfairness extends to other aspects of the games. Some challenges cannot be beaten with the default handgun (such as the train carriages in the fifth mission of MSX). Enemies can enter the screen and attack with limited warning, and similarly some boss attacks don’t telegraph—or have very short—windup. These problems chip away at the integrity of the gameplay challenges. As such, it can be hard to take the series seriously. Fortunately, Metal Slug Anthology offers the option to play each game with unlimited credits in ‘free play’ mode, an ideal way to survey the sumptuous sights of Metal Slug’s unique brand of disorganised warfare.

The turn of the decade has prompted me to revive this ‘year in review’-ish article series I began 11 years ago (has it been that long? Wow!). The list below catalogues my brief thoughts on the games I’ve completed over the past year.

Yoshi’s Story (N64)

Pretty bad for a Nintendo EAD game.

Mischief Makers (N64)

A Treasure game through and through. Inventive and diverse level concepts. Some are touch and go. Few outstay their welcome. Amazing boss battles. Tuning is 90% of the way there, but some extra polish would have been welcomed.

Killer Instinct Gold (N64)

I’ve always been attracted to KI’s distinctive character designs, but the combo system reduces the game to a static war over input strings.

1080 Snowboarding (N64)

As a mega fan of 1080 Avalanche, I wanted to love the original, but couldn’t execute a 1080 despite hours of practice. Failing to land particular jumps also marred the match race experience. A technical marvel which looks and runs far better on the Virtual Console than on original hardware.

English of the Dead (DS)

A fun curio I picked up when travelling in Japan earlier in the year.

Battalion Wars (GCN)

Like other genre mash-ups, Battalion Wars ends up having to compromise the strategy and third-person shooter essence to keep its gameplay together. Take for example, the challenges of balancing the early 2000s third-person camera and zoomed out strategy cam. The camera perspective during action gameplay limits the player’s view of the battlefield. With less information to work with, it becomes harder to make informed decisions and respond “just in time” to a constantly evolving game state. The unit design space and mission designs are great, but the aforementioned limitations shift the gameplay towards perspective management.

Battalion Wars is one of those games I invested a good deal of energy into, even though I recognise the weaknesses of the game’s design. Some friends and I recorded a super productive but yet-to-be-releasedi podcast working through the contradictions in BW’s design.

River City Ransom (NES)

Feels like a demake of the Yakuza games. People rightfully say that River City Ransom was ahead of its time. The secret kunio-kun game Nintendo World Cup was one of the first games I owned, so it was nice to see the same sprites and similar mechanics in their original manifestation.

Battletoads in Battlemaniacs (SNES)

Bad game. Contextual attacks interfere with the player’s agency. Story sequences make no sense. Bad 3D problems.

Superscope 6 (SNES)

Weird. Both the Blastris games are pitifully easy and barely warrant their own existence. On the hardest difficulty, Blastris A withholds the piece you need to win to artificially prompt a loss. Blastris B is super slow. Conversely, the two shooting games are pretty tough.

Super Punch-Out!! (SNES)

Super Punch-Out!!‘s sound effects, animation, and use of dramatic pauses are highly satisfying. However, fights need a dynamic element to diversify the scripted sequences and free the player’s learning process from dry rote.

The final two boxers broke the fairness test for me.

Super Metroid (SNES)

After subjecting myself to a number of rather strict and challenging titles this year, returning to Super Metroid reinvigorated my love for the medium. Most of my old SNES carts have kicked the bucket, but Super Metroid fittingly lives on.

It’s amazing that people put Symphony of the Night in the same sentence as Super Metroid. SOTN isn’t in the same league. Metroid’s room challenges are finely tuned and each unique within the game’s diverse palette of game concepts. Space and time play breathe dynamism into combat, with a strong foundation of aiming and moving through space. Unlike SoTN’s litany of abstractions, Super Metroid communicates its confrontations visually.

The atmosphere and macro level progression are medium-defining.

Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions (PS1)

One word: redundant. Metal Gear Solid’s design space is much broader than it is deep. VR Missions explores the nuance that is there, but it ain’t enough to substantiate a game of its length. A decent proportion of challenges are either arcanely nuanced or 100% gimmicky lolz (never on the level of Super Monkey Ball 2 crazy, though). Some challenges are super strict. Most others are a cakewalk. The slew of missions is fairly inconsistent.

The package’s nuanced-focused nature draws out quirky examples of poor tuning of game mechanics. For example, the way Snake holds out his left hand when holding a grenade makes him appear orientated slightly to one side. The contradicting visual reference makes it difficult to throw grenades straight.

The aiming is similar to Metroid: Other M, but Snake doesn’t register enemies as quickly and the bullets don’t home. Aiming from a distance is futile.

Final Update

In terms of my own writing, I spent the entirety of 2018 rewriting Adventures in Games Analysis and completing Speed Boost (both of which I endeavour to release this year). In 2019 I didn’t do any game-related writing, aside from some research for the next Game Design Companion book. Overhauling my original writing with the help of a professional editor was a laborious but necessary experience and I wanted to give myself a break before getting back in the game. In a few months, I hope to invest more time into the next GDC book.

The turn of the decade has prompted me to revive this ‘year in review’-ish article series I began 11 years ago (has it been that long?). The list below catalogues my brief thoughts on the games I completed over the past year.

Rhythm Thief (3DS)

Rhythm Thief feels unfinished. For some mini-games: button inputs don’t match rhythm, sound effects aren’t tuned to backing tracks, and the visuals don’t readily communicate how the player is supposed to act (R21 is a classic example). This is to say nothing of the mismatch between voice acting and text or the off-brand Professor Layton character design.

Space Invaders Extreme (PSP)

I was impressed by Space Invaders Extreme‘s ability to craft distinct gameplay concepts out of simple AI, enemy properties, and layered elements. It’s a superbly tuned game overall. One of my favourite shoot ’em ups. Difficulty needs to be toned down, though.

Groove Coaster (iOS)

An excellent visual concept carries much of this iOS rhythm game. The music is utterly amazing. The frequency of actions on the harder difficulties both erodes the integrity of the gameplay. A good case for stylus-based touch gameplay.

Onimusha (PS2)

A button-mashy Resident Evil-like. The fixed camera perspective obscures the relative distance between enemies and avatar. The similar Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword features a more substantial combat system.

Contra 4 (DS)

The spread shot and machine gun are pivotal to success in Contra 4 as the campaign is not tuned around the default pea shooter (mainly due to the layering of enemies making certain sections particularly strict). Each death forfeits the currently held weapon and so a single misstep can cull quite a number of lives. Hence, as mastery rolls forward, the player’s goal becomes one of minimising the aforementioned bumps in the road.

I completed 24/40 of Contra 4‘s challenge levels. The strict design (i.e. enemies everywhere, barely any room to move), inconsistent difficulty within each challenge, and lack of tuning (especially randomised enemy spawns) create a lot of needless repetition.

Super C (NES)

A refreshing antithesis which gets the balance right. Each level does something different with the core run n’ gun gameplay. I’m particularly fond of the Aliens references.

Contra (NES)

Not as polished as Super C and the bad 3D tunnel levels are a pain. Still better than Contra 4.

Mole Mania (GameBoy)

Mole Mania extracts a surprising amount of content out of its humble design space. By the end, the addition of puzzle-meddling enemies and an increased presence of complex, reading-focused puzzles take the lustre off this underappreciated gem. Not as good as Pax Softnica’s other two GameBoy gems, Balloon Kid and Donkey Kong 94.

Wolfenstein RPG + Doom 2 RPG (iOS)

Imagine the original games in a dungeon crawl format where the main gameplay loop is attack-attack-heal. Thoughtless.

Valkyrie Profile (PSP)

Props to Tri-Ace for creating a one-of-a-kind RPG in many respects (aesthetics, narrative, progression structure, combat system). The nuance-driven battle system skews more towards complex traditional RPG than Mario & Luigi. With few tutorials, I couldn’t get my head around some of the finer details of combat (even after hours of online research). Still, the timing-based combat system and frequent additions of new characters and abilities kept me with this one for some 30 hours. It’s a pity then that a major difficulty spike locked me out of the game around two thirds of the way through.

F-Zero X (N64)

I’ve written at length about F-Zero X for my upcoming book Speed Boost, so I don’t have much to say here aside from what I mentioned on Twitter:

After playing F-Zero X on the WiiU VC (which is the 60hz NTSC version), I tried my PAL cart and found that: X Cup and Master difficulty are unlocked from the start; there’s less input delay; and 50hz is super slow. In sum, it feels like a very different game.

Pilotwings (SNES)

Whilst an early technical feat for the Super Nintendo, the hardware restricts the simulation’s realism (and ability to render perspective) obscuring important cues needed to fly proficiently. As such, you often don’t have sufficient information to make informed decisions.

Pilotwings is more a game of landing than flying. The finnicky landing requirements dictate success and failure.

From best to worst vehicle: helicopter, rocket belt, sky diving, light plane, and glider.

Having to complete three missions in a row forces the player to retain more information (challenge complexities) over a longer period of time as they swap between each craft each mission. As such, one of Pilotwing’s main challenges is keeping all of your new learning in your head. Personally, I find that this requirement is a somewhat arbitrary.

Pilotwings 64 (N64)

If it weren’t for Super Metroid, this would be my favourite game of 2019. A number of factors greatly improve the playability of this sequel, namely the 3D rendering (ability to judge depth) and camera system (ability to survey maps pre-flight and adjust the camera mid-flight). 

The game structure, where the player stays with the same craft and can repeat missions to improve their score, is conducive to sustained periods of practice where the player can familiarise themselves with the nuances of each challenge. This alteration suits Pilotwings 64’s challenges being longer, more diverse, and more sophisticated than the original game. Overall, the developers struck a good difficulty balance by increasing the skill ceiling, broadening the skill range, and allowing the player to repeat individual challenges.

Firstly, I recently completed the manuscripts for my forthcoming two books, Adventures in Games Analysis Vol. I and Speed Boost: The Hidden Secrets Behind Arcade Racing Design. Both titles have been sent away for editing and I’m hoping to be able to release the pair in early 2019. More details will arrive in due course.

Secondly, I’ve contributed to a few podcasts and video projects over the past few months as part of VG Commune (a sort of video game book club). The first item of which is a podcast on cult classic Killer 7. In the podcast, thinker / game developer Adrian Santiago and I discuss the worst parts of Killer 7, such as the janky enemies, shallow bosses, and trivial puzzles. Killer 7 is an interesting distillation of Resident Evil with amazing aesthetic qualities. However, the issues in the game design are immense, to say the least. Our discussion counterbalances an earlier podcast on the positive aspects of Killer 7.

Adrian also invited me to talk about The Cave of Atman with various members of Design Orientated, another games analysis community which I am involved in. The discussion starts off a bit slow as we slowly tease out some pretty fundamental ideas within puzzle game design (e.g. complexity vs. depth).a

Lastly, I partook in a series of audio recordings on Game Boy platformer Balloon Kid, which were subsequently edited to fit a video form. Greg Livingston, who headed up this project, has done an excellent job in distilling the conversation and presenting the comments in an easy-to-understand manner. If you haven’t played it, Balloon Kid captures the best aspects of early Game Boy game design, simple concepts done well and fit to the limitations of the hardware.

Otherwise, Adrian, Greg, and I are currently recording a series of podcasts on The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. This title, with its boundary-pushing game design, has made great fodder for discussion. I look forward to sharing more about this title in the future.

The Animal Crossing games have a unique talent of engaging player interest over a sustained period of time. However, the titles don’t rely on the traditional challenge-skill-reward loop of most video games. Rather, the genius of Animal Crossing is in how it uses systems of the everyday to draw the player into its social simulation.

Time Cycle

Animal Crossing‘s game world reveals itself over time as the internal clock (in conjunction with other measures and timers) triggers a host of behaviours and scenarios. These include, but are not limited to:

• Weather patterns;

• The presence of flowers, fruit, fish, insects, and fossils;

• The coming and going of your neighbours;

• Festivals;

• The dialogue of individual characters;

• The availability of products;

• Access to the general store.

The player’s response (or lack of response) to each time window ripples forward through the game world. Chat with your neighbours regularly and they’ll be more inclined to remain in the village. Forget to check in on your town for a month and it’ll become infested with weeds. The time cycle encourages the player to play a little each day over an extended duration of time to maintain the smooth running of the village.

Game World

Animal Crossing is set within the confines of your reasonably small village. The size of the game world, in combination with its Truman Show-esque clockwork of daily activity, emphasises the small, evolving details (what *insert favourite animal friend* is going to say today, the new item on sale at Tom Nook’s store, the growing of a sapling into a tree, etc).

The Hooks

The time cycle and compact size of the township facilitate the social sim’s first hook—the characters. By virtue of the player moving around the confined space of the village and the characters going about their daily routines, the player is likely to stumble upon the animal characters and, in good odds, talk to them. Your neighbours are, after all, the most dynamic and interactive game element in town. Even if players choose to ignore the population of zoo creatures, their furry friends will occasionally run over to ask a question or dispel of some random thought bubble or throwaway piece of furniture. Tom Nook’s initial errands also set a precedence by sending the player out to interact with potential customers and chase debts. Needless to say, your animal friends are pretty hard to avoid.

It’s through the process of regularly seeing and interacting with your neighbours that you come to form an affection for them, not unlike real life. This affection is helped along in great part by the incredible localisation which makes each personality larger than life. The animals will call you a friend, give you nicknames, spout out their own personalised catch phrases, and share their obscure and funny musings on the world around them. They’re engineered to be loved.

The second hook can be explained much more simply: customisation. The Animal Crossing games present the player with a wealth of customisation options. The player can modify the avatar’s name, hair style, clothes, house, furniture, wallpaper, flooring, and the name of the village. Once the foundation is laid, new opportunities for creative ownership arise in the form of the animal characters asking the player for opinions, catch phrases, and secret best friend codes. The power of customisation is that it gives the player a sense of ownership over the game world because it asks that they invest some of their creative energy into shaping the fictional environment.

The phenomenon described above is similar in nature to the third hook: player agency. As mentioned previously, many of the player actions ripple forward through time and your town thereby becomes a collective representation of your individual experiences. The more you play and the more of yourself you invest into the game world, the more of that investment is reflected back at you through gameplay.

Conclusion

Animal Crossing‘s real-world time cycle encourages the player to play the game regularly over an extended period of time. The small size of each village makes it difficult to avoid the population of animal characters going about their daily routines. It’s the frequent interactions with these characters as well as the many opportunities to customise and affect the game world which allow the player to be drawn into Animal Crossing‘s social simulation.

To close this series of posts on Mario and Luigi: Dream Team Bros., I’ve compiled a few smaller thoughts into this one article. For more on Mario and Luigi: Dream Team Bros., look forward to the (eventual) first issue of Adventures in Games Analysis where I explore how AlphaDream leveraged the 3DS hardware to evolve the Mario and Luigi battle system.

Wiggle Room in Combat Feedback

Depending on how well the player performs an attack, the words “Excellent”, “Great”, “Okay”, or “Miss” will appear on screen as a form of feedback. All “Excellent” Bros attacks net the same amount of damage no matter if the player executes the sequence quickly, slowly, with perfect accuracy, or perhaps with a minor mistake. Given the wiggle room within each bracket, it would have been nice if the damage count more accurately reflected the player’s performance. For example, I always challenge myself to complete Bomb Derby as quickly as possible, yet there’s no difference between a successful slow run and a successful fast run, although the former demands more skill. Tweaking the damage count as suggested would add a barely noticeable layer of complexity to the combat and increase the skill ceiling for more savvy players like myself.

Expert Challenges

Expert challenges are player goals built into the combat system. These optional objectives increase the skill ceiling of the game and provide a means for keeping advanced players more engaged, if indeed they choose to pursue such objectives. On completing each challenge, the player is rewarded with points which lead to special equipment once set tallies are reached.

It’s a fabulous system marred somewhat by an uninspired set of objectives. Of the 111 challenges, 61 involve the player finishing a battle with a particular enemy without getting hit, 34 involve performing excellent attacks either with a particular mechanic or for 10 times in a particular location, and 16 involve dodging 10 enemies in a row in a particular location (full list here).

The objectives blur together under the mantra of “play good”, when perhaps they could have been used to encourage the player to explore more of the design space. Think the Hooraw Beef-off battles where the player is challenged to defeat four bosses under special conditions, but extended to cover the main game. A flashing prompt on the touch screen could inform the player of when such challenges become available. With a quick tap, they could then enter into these alternative battles. Personally, I would find this tailored form of branching difficulty much more attractive than an extra difficulty select where enemy values are arbitrarily increased.

Gyro Prompt

In the pre-attack screen preceding Bros and Luiginary Attacks, the 3DS’s gyro sets the position by which all later gyro movements will be anchored around (much in same way the analog stick is calibrated). The calibration becomes apparent the first time you start one of these attacks while holding your 3DS at an awkward angle, which you must then pivot around for the subsequent sequence. Thus, the pre-attack screen also acts a reminder to hold your 3DS in a neutral position.

Tutorials

Many of the Dream Team Bros. reviews complained about the game’s supposed heavy handed tutorials. Let’s put the number of tutorials into perspective for a moment. The introduction sequence before the Bros. arrive at Mushrise Park features a lot of needless chatter that doesn’t function very well as tutorial or story (the quiz and jumping mini-game come to mind). Afterwards, there’s a few important tutorials on the core mechanics, and then you’re left to your own devices until you acquire the next new ability. With each new mechanic added to the Bros.’s ability set, Starlow spends 1-2 minutes introducing the new move. So across the forty-hour adventure, the player probably has less than an hour of tutorial time, most of which they can skip if they choose. The anti-tutorial sentiment simply doesn’t stand up to basic scrutiny.

Producer Akira Ohtani’s response (responses?) to this interview question bemoaning tutorials in Dream Team Bros. explains the situation well. AlphaDream, as with most developers, want their work to reach as wide an audience as possible and tutorials enable them to cater to players of a variety of ages and skill levels.

Within games criticism exists a niche subset of “challenge-run” criticism where a player will attempt to beat a game while adhering to a set of self-imposed rules. These rules—such as, not firing a bullet or trying to beat the game on one life—act as a prism through which the player can then critique the game. Personally, I’m not a fan of this form of criticism, but I have started using some of the techniques to help me become a better player and hence a more insightful writer. For example, last year I beat The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword with only three hearts in order to better understand the motion-based combat.

Given my dislike of levelling and equipment systems in the Mario and Luigi games, I played Mario and Luigi: Dream Team Bros. underleveled and paid little attention to the equipment system. As with Bowser’s Inside Story, I used the badge system as a means to top up my SP so that I had more opportunities to master the Bros. and Luiginary Attacks. These decisions, I believe, allowed me to play a more skilful game and better understand the core actions of the combat system.

“Challenge runs” usually bring a particular aspect of a game into focus, and for Dream Team Bros. my more skill-based approach left me unprepared to tackle the game’s surprising number of difficulty spikes. Friend and regular commenter on the Daniel Primed blog, CM30 covered the worst offenders in his piece Opinion; Mario & Luigi Dream Team’s Toughest Bosses, so I’ll let his words do the legwork here. Given AlphaDream’s attempt to make the series more approachable to a wider audience, this issue stands out as a major oversight. Fortunately, I could overcome most of the difficulty spikes thanks to gold ol’ fashion attacking and dodging—and a long view towards winning the war of attrition. However, my earnest attempts were no match for Dream Team Bros.‘s final boss Dreamy Bowser.

The confrontation is simply rigged. Initially at least, the gaudy-coloured tyrant plays out like most other boss battles. However, after the first few turns Bowser then withdraws into the background to chow down on a magically spawned pile of meat, curing around 500 HP across him body and arms. Each turn another pile of meat drops out of thin air and Bowser’s mid-battle snack continues while the player is left strong-arm their way through an army of technicoloured goons. Even if the player uses a taunt ball on their next turn to lure Bowser back into the foreground (an already somewhat nuanced move), Bowser will have already recovered a significant amount of damage. And so the war of attrition rages.

The biggest problem with this battle is the difficulty of Bowser’s attacks and the protracted learning process it takes to learn the tells. Each individual attack is actually a sequence of smaller attacks which run over a continuous period of time, and Bowser will usually attack more than once per turn. Furthermore, since one mistake can throw off the timing needed to stay in sync with the sequence, individual hits can quickly snowball. When this happens, the player needs to heal, in turn conceding an opportunity for Bowser to heal as well. If one of the Bros. is knocked out, then the player must forfeit the entire turn in order to reconsolidate. So the player must avoid most attacks or struggle against the slippery slope.

From my experience, the war of attrition rages for about 10 minutes before Bowser’s HP drops to where he’ll start using his strongest attacks. However, should the player fail to adequately respond to Bowser’s new moves (which they likely will as they need time to learn and encode the new attacks into memory), then they’ll have to spend another 10 minutes in the trenches. Hence, the process of mastering Bowser’s later attacks is highly protracted.

My “challenge run” had taught me that playing Mario and Luigi: Dream Team Bros. as a purely skill-based game with little investment in the levelling and equipment systems has its limits. In this case, Dreamy Bowser is the point where player skill no longer translates into success in the combat system.

Postscript

After struggling against Dreamy Bowser for several hours and ready to put Dream Team Bros. on the shelf, I was airing my grievances with CM30 when he gave me a tip. He suggested that I equip the Miracle and Gold badges, grind up some badge meter, and use their power to freeze Bowser for a few turns. This way I could squeeze in one more attack per turn and finish him off before he entered into his meat-eating recovery state. And it worked! Within 5 minutes I had Bowser beat (CM30 did it in three!). So maybe skill wins after all!

Additional Readings

Six Challenge Runs Everyone Should Try – USGamer

“Compared to previous games in the series, this one has a lot of volume. A lot of people said they wanted more to play in the third game, so I definitely wanted to increase the volume a lot for the next one.”

Akira Otani, game producer of Mario and Luigi: Dream Team Bros.

Akira Otani and AlphaDream’s aspiration to increase the game volume of Mario and Luigi: Dream Team Bros. is perhaps best summarised by the data below taken from How Long to Beat, a play time aggregate website based on user submissions.

Superstar Saga – Main Story: 18.5 hours Completionist: 27.5 hours

Partners in Time – Main Story: 18 hours Completionist: 37 hours

Bowser’s Inside Story – Main Story: 22.5 hours Completionist: 35.5 hours

Dream Team Bros – Main Story: 40.5 hours Completionist: 60 hours

NB: The play times on the site are constantly changing due to new submissions, so these times were captured at the time of writing.

As you can see, Dream Team Bros. is as large as the previous two games combined. The question is, where does the extra 20 hours of gameplay come from? Unfortunately, answering that question would require a massive amount of data on how long players spend in particular sections of the game, which isn’t so feasible. Based on my own experience with the Mario and Luigi series, I would argue that the following factors contributed significantly to Dream Team Bros.‘s extended play time:

• the new Luiginary Works mechanics and their respective level challenges which bulk up the sidescrolling gameplay
• the larger map sizes which increase the time spent in the overworld
• the expanded swarms of peon enemies which extend the duration of battles

The influx of peon enemies create more spatial and strategic gameplay (which is covered further in Adventures in Games Analysis). However, they can protract the length of battles if the player doesn’t pay attention to the specific group AI patterns and exploits these weaknesses. Then again, the same can be said of the core action-reaction interactions as well.

For the purpose of this article, I’m more concerned with the increased amount of time spent outside of combat as these sections—like in most RPGS—are the less interesting parts of the game. Whilst games should include gameplay of varying levels of intensity (with combat, in this case, being the most intensive), Dream Team Bros.‘s forty-hour play length only makes the minimal gameplay outside of combat more apparent. This is particularly the case for the dream world challenges, which constitute a significantly larger portion of the gameplay mix than in Bowser’s Inside Story. But why exactly are these areas of the game so lacking in the first place?

Overworld

The isometric overworld gameplay benefits from the basic dynamics of space and the limitations of the camera perspective. The camera only captures the area directly around the Bros. and so the player needs to move around each environment to trace the outline of each room and mark points of interest in their short-term memory. Once the player has enough knowledge of their surroundings, they can make an informed decision about how to engage with the particular challenges of the room. This simple form of cartography provides the most basic form of engagement on the overworld.

As the player moves around and checks items into their short-term memory, they’ll probably put enemies at the top of their mental checklist. Similar to the Zelda games, enemies populate the Dream Team Bros.‘s overworld and persuade the player to move in particular ways. However, the overworld is not tightly tuned around these interactions. When contact with an enemy instantly warps the player into a battle which can last several minutes at a time, the developers don’t have many options for increasing the richness of these interactions without skewing the game disproportionally towards combat. So in balancing the consequences of touching an enemy on the overworld, the developers give the player enough space to slip past their foes without too much trouble.

Further to the points above, the camera and jump mechanics simply cannot facilitate the act of subtly avoiding enemies in space. Even with the stereoscopic 3D screen, the isometric camera perspective inherently has difficulty communicating the distance between bodies in space. Luigi, as a trailing partner, also collapses the space around the player.

Tying simple cartography and avoiding enemies together, puzzles pave the player’s path to progression. AlphaDream designed the majority of puzzles around the Bros. out-of-battle techniques, such as jump, hammer, and ball hop. Unfortunately, even though the player can usually use these abilities on a wide range of game elements, the mechanics lack the dynamic qualities and nuances necessary to facilitate a variety of engaging puzzles. With so little complexity to work with, the Bros.’s abilities usually function as little more than keys to locks and most puzzles revolve around the player using their various keys to activate switches in a particular order so as to access a new area.

Being a Mario and Luigi tradition, AlphaDream baked in various collectables into Dream Team Bros.‘s overworld, namely beans. In Bowser’s Inside Story the player, as Bowser, explores the overworld map and comes across bean holes which they cannot uproot. Since these bean holes are hidden in plain sight, players have to store their locations in their short-term memory for several hours until the Bros can make it out to the overworld and uproot them. When the Bros. do escape, the player can explore the overworld from whichever direction they wish, and so the order by which the player recalls the locations of the beans is very organic and player-driven.

In DTB, beans add an observation element to exploration. However, the game lacks the dynamic memory suspension twist of BIS as the player can collect the majority of beans on their first pass through an area.

Although the overworld contains a small set of diverse activities (which already make DTB’s overworld far more engaging than the majority of RPG overworlds), each task is fundamentally simple and doesn’t become more complex or layer with other elements to create more sophisticated gameplay challenges. So naturally such simple gameplay can only sustain a certain amount of interest over an extended period of time.

Dream World

The dream world frames the action from a sidescrolling perspective and most of the challenges incorporate the new Luiginary mechanics. Yet despite these significant changes, these sections still lack meaty gameplay.

AlphaDream designed the dream world sections in accordance with its side-scrolling camera which allows the player to easily judge the height of jumps. So the levels consist of a series of connected rooms with various platforming challenges. Gravity plays an important role in these challenges, but the force is perhaps too strong as the Bros. don’t hang for very long at the apex of the jump. Having the two Bros. jump at the same time further hampers the jumping trajectory. And so overall, these limitations restrict the potential range of actions possible with the jump mechanic. Factor in a lack of acceleration or momentum and navigating the dream world is almost as static as navigating the overworld. The main difference is that the camera enables players to jump over enemies instead of walking around them.

Unlike the mostly static out-of-battle abilities in the overworld (and the rather static jumping in the dream world!), each of the dream world’s Luiginary Works have a dynamic quality or hook. Some examples include:

Luiginary Stache Tree – The elasticity, ability to angle of shots, and having to predict trajectories leading off-screen according to visual memory

Luiginary Ball – The momentum built up by the ball

Luiginary Cylinder – The physical manipulation of the drill via Luigi’s nose on the touch screen and the player-controlled timing challenges which emerge from it.

Luiginary Gravity – This mechanic changes the way the player understands and interacts with the level design, opening up spatial challenges which require lateral thinking.

Luiginary Propeller – Wind acts as a dynamic force which affects movement, jumping, and potential interactions.

To accommodate the broader movement ranges of some of these abilities, AlphaDream housed the Luiginary Works challenges in large rooms. However, the developers failed to strike an appropriate balance between rooms sized for specific Luiginary Works and those sized for the relatively pint-size Mario Bros. Far too many rooms are sized beyond their purpose, leading to an abundance of negative space within the levels.

Aside from the room sizes, the Luiginary Works challenges have a number of their own issues. Although the more dynamic actions make the challenges more engaging than the overworld puzzles, the mechanics are simply overused and become repetitive, especially in the early and middle portions of the game. The challenges also aren’t particularly difficult. It’s easy to just switch off your brain at many points throughout the game. I was hoping that Dreamy Neo Bowser Castle would combine the abilities together to create a super end-game challenge, but only one type of Luiginary Works ability can be used per room. Although this decision keeps the interface clean, it also limits the potential design space.

Despite its sidescroller presentation, the dream world doesn’t differ much from the overworld. The player can jump over enemies as well as navigate around them; however, with strong gravity and few dynamic properties, jumping provides a limited range of movement. The Luiginary Works mechanics are far more dynamic and interesting than the overworld mechanics, but their respective challenges are easy, repetitive, and drawn out due to the oversized environments. For every step of progress, the game takes another step backwards.

Conclusion

In developing Mario and Luigi: Dream Team Bros., AlphaDream doubled the size of the game content in response to fan feedback from Bowser’s Inside Story. A sizable portion of the increase in content came from the larger overworld and expanded dream world gameplay. Unfortunately, these sequences are rather simplistic and static in comparison to the main combat gameplay. The lengthier adventure only highlights the shortfalls of these low intensity moments of gameplay. As a result, Dream Team Bros. often drags its feet across the extended forty-hour story.

Round tables symbolise collectivist ideology where all participants are equal. Each member sits equal distance apart and is therefore able to see everyone else at the table and easily participate in group discussion. With Dream Team Bros.‘s hub-based map design, each area is equal distance apart and requires roughly the same amount of play time to complete. Players can easily navigate between areas through the centre point (engage in the main conversation) or move between adjacent areas (converse with the person next to them). Since everything is orientated around a centre, the design minimises the amount of backtracking (private conversation).

Rectangular tables contain a head and a foot for those individuals of distinction. Similarly, Bowser’s Inside Story‘s worlds of varying shapes and sizes fit within the confines of a rectangular box. The access to different areas of the map is therefore uneven much in the same way that someone on one side of a rectangular table might struggle to speak to someone on the other side. The design favours those who sit in the middle of the table and are able to navigate between conversations on either sides. Meanwhile the corners remain isolated. Usually, if someone wishes to talk to a person outside of clear speaking distance, they’ll move or switch chairs at some point later in the meal. Similarly, as the player progresses through BIS, they’ll discover the underground train network known as Project K which allow them to fast travel across the map.

What I like about games like BIS is how this unevenness in the overworld design characterises the play experience. Dimble Woods and Blubble Lake are frequent junctions, sharing the centre area of the map. You pass through these areas multiple times and they have multiple entry and exit points. Toad Town joins Blubble Lake and Peach’s Castle, while Plack Beach archs around between Dimble Woods and Cavi Cape. Both areas act as a sub-juncture. Bumpsy Plains is a small join between areas. The remaining locales dwell on the outskirts and naturally take longer to reach. To further complicate the relationship between these areas, the Project K railroad links the fringes in a circle. The uneven jigsaw of worlds gives each area a personality pertinent its relative positioning and functional role within the geography. The dynamics of space and mobility play out much like the social dynamics governing where we choose to sit and who we choose to sit next to at a rectangular table.

In terms of its impact on the experience, the design of a table doesn’t differ much from the design of an overworld in a video game. These analogies work because the dynamics of space and mobility are universal.

The best way I could summarise Mario and Luigi: Dream Team Bros‘s gameplay progression would be to say that it’s a hybrid of Partners in Time and Bowser’s Inside Story. In PiT, the player enters each major area through warps points littered throughout Princess Peach’s Castle. With each locale being standalone, once the Bros. complete one area, they can move onto the next. In BIS, the player criss crosses a large interconnected map Metroidvania style and unlocks new environments as they gradually acquire new abilities. DTB features both the segregated areas of PiT and folded design of BIS.

Once the player has completed Dream Team Bros.‘s opening tutorial, they work their way around the game’s hub, tackling one locale at a time (as with PiT). Each area contains an overworld section set in an isometric perspective and a dream world section set in the sidescrolling perspective. (Resident commenter and friend of the blog Cheatmaster30 describes the dream world as being Mario and Luigi’s equivalent to a Zelda dungeon). Later, after Princess Peach is captured, the Bros must complete a scavenger hunt to collect the various zee parts of the Ultibed. The game progression then shifts from a linear to a freer format where the player can revisit the previous five locations in any order they choose (folding over prior areas like BIS). Finally, after a short interlude where the Bros meet up with Bedsmith, the player must tackle Somnom Woods and Dreamy Neo Bowser’s Castle in the lead up to the finale.

AlphaDream also integrated various side events into Dream Team Bros.‘s story to allow the player to shape their progression through the game. These optional extras come in the form of Pillos, anthropomorphic head rests which act as portals into Luigi’s dreams. Each excursion into the dream world offers additional challenges and rewards which can assist the player in the main game.

Dream Team Bros. and Bowser’s Inside Story differ in how they organise the flow of gameplay, how this organisation can be read through the game world, and how the player can choose to deviate from the main story. These two approaches to game progression give each game a distinct feel.

After some lead-in, Dream Team Bros. falls into a comfortable rhythm of overworld-to-dreamworld, locale-to-locale gameplay where the player has the option of taking minor deviations if they wish. This model is highly explicit. With each area requiring a roughly similar time investment, the player can read their game progress by simply looking at the world map and noting the number of worlds they have completed. Along the same lines, Pillos clearly signpost additional content, dream world challenges which are themselves wholly separated from the overworld. Each major area on the world map stands by itself as well, with minimal bleeding into adjacent zones. The clear cut and explicit nature of the game world establishes clear expectations for how the adventure will play out, although some players may find this approach to be somewhat artificial.

In BIS, the progression of gameplay isn’t quite as explicit. AlphaDream organised the game’s story around the Bros. and Bowser much in the same way as DTB is organised around the overworld and dream world, but the size of each chapter of gameplay (usually the length of time the player spends as either avatar) varies significantly more than it does in DTB. And because the developers designed the interconnected worlds of the Mushroom Kingdom as a jigsaw and not as a hub lined with separate locales, the player doesn’t simply finish one level and move on. Rather, they visit the same junctures multiple times throughout the course of the story as needed. Many of the optional activities therefore emerge organically as the player passes through familiar areas with new abilities. These various elements give the experience a degree of inconsistency which can make the adventure seem to unfurl organically (even though it’s still tuned by the game developers).

Between Partners in Time, Bowser’s Inside Story, and Dream Team Bros., each title organises the Mario and Luigi adventure in a unique way (much like the Wario Land games). Partners in Time‘s adventure is heavily compartmentalised; Bowser’s Inside Story flows more organically; and Dream Team Bros. finds a comfortable midpoint between the two. When we pair these observations with the those from the prior article, we can see that with each iteration, the Mario and Luigi games evolve on multiple fronts.

In the last few years I’ve moved away from including game repair ideas in my critiques as any suggestions on my part ultimately reflect my own tastes. However, these alternative visions can still make for good food for thought, particular when the my own views are quite different from the game in question. Uncharted 2 is one such game. The following notes were written back in 2013.

All Gunplay and No Interplay

Realistic gunplay lacks interplay, so when the player can fire high-impact, fast-moving projectiles at their enemies, there’s not much room for back-and-forth interactions. The inherent limitations of bullets can potentially limit the dynamism of the gunplay. Uncharted 2 already includes a few dynamic interactions (such as shooting soldiers off ledges), but not many. The following ideas could make the shooting much more responsive:

• Destructible cover. When an enemy’s cover is shot / blown out, they’re forced to retreat to another hiding spot.

• Stunning riot shield holders. When Drake fires a shotgun or any other high-powered weapon at a riot shield, the holder could stops moving and shooting and hold their position for a brief second. By exploiting the stun effect, the player can inch their way around the holder so as to catch them with their body exposed.

• Leg moves. Shoot a guard in the foot or leg and they’ll fall to the ground where they’re vulnerable. Drake could then shoot them again to finish them off, knock them out (contextual attack), or they could shoot Drake or crawl away. To communicate the enemy’s fallen state to the player, the henchmen could fall in a particular way or yell something like “I’m down”. Once they’re on the floor, they could make a shuffling noise as they try to move or get up. This would make it easier for the player to find their position.

• Reactive enemies. Shooting an armoured enemy’s bullet-proof vest could prompt a change in behaviour. For example, they could act more aggressive after being shot. This would give them a raging bull persona.

• Drake is knocked back when an enemy falls on him.

• More opportunities to change the environment, such as shooting an aquarium to make a floor slippery.

These recommendations would not only make the game more dynamic, realistic, and engaging, but they’d also allow the player to explore the inventive side of Drake’s personality, creating their own mini-set pieces.

Bending Realism for the Sake of Difficulty

Uncharted 2‘s hard mode floods the battlefield with soldiers which can sustain multiple head shots and take incredible amounts of damage. By the end of the game, the number of these superhumans ramps up significantly. This lazy form of difficulty adjustment has a number of problems:

• the guards disobey their visual form as human beings

• the levels generally weren’t optimised around an increased enemy load, so the bigger intake can create bottlenecks in the challenges. Although the experience is more difficult, the gameplay balance can be inferior.

• the changes primarily demand better aiming from the player, but don’t address other important skills such as strategising, spatial awareness, etc.

Scalable difficulty would allow the game to better address the needs of amateur and advance players while also fitting within the game’s existing context. Here is one potential application:

• Branching paths. Near the end of the freer gameplay challenges, the game could present the player with two or more paths. As Drake approaches each path, he or the AI companion could comment on its difficulty by saying something like “Sully, are you sure this is the safest way to the old market?” Once the player chooses a path, Drake or the AI companion could then add a few more quips to reinforce the challenge ahead. For example, Sully could later respond “Keep your wits about you, kid”. The branching paths would funnel the player into separate areas optimised for player difficulty.

Nothing Climbing

Spot an obvious-looking grapple point and push a button to have Drake jump to it, that’s about all that’s involved Uncharted 2‘s climbing sequences. The problem isn’t the contextual nature of navigation or the mechanics, which are direct and generally intuitive. It’s just too easy.

The developers could increase the challenge by de-optimising Drake’s climbing mechanics. Zelda: Skyward Sword does this with the energy metre (which adds a timing and risk/reward element to climbing). This widget could be a good fit for Uncharted.

Alternatively, the developers could repurpose the climbing sequences so as to reduce the number of cutscenes and support the game’s primary function, shooting. Most climbing sections precede shootouts, so they’re well positioned to function as a scaffold. Climbing sequences could give the player a good view of the upcoming arena and inform them of enemy patrols, cover spots, and the locations of explosive barrels prior to arrival. This reorientation in climbing would positively impact the game in a number of ways:

• The climbing sections could potentially be more engaging as the player is likely to gather intel and think through their approach for the next conflict while simultaneously moving Drake from ledge to ledge. The structure encourages the player to take a more active role.

• If the developers also reduced the number of checkpoints, then a good balance could be achieved between making the player complete more than one large confrontation in succession and supporting them with important visual information pre-combat.

• The time gap between viewing an arena and engaging in combat encourages the player to maintain the information in their short-term memory, which again demands more active engagement in the game. The developers could further tease this out by increasing the duration of retention or presenting pieces of information out of order.

• The added perspective on the battlefield addresses the limitations of the over-the-shoulder viewpoint and would minimise the player’s need to manually spin the camera to scan the environment.

• Many of the game’s dialogue sequences could be converted to radio chatter that plays over the climbing sequences.

In order to facilitate the use of climbing as scaffolding, the levels would need to be reworked to include more dimensionality or openings through which Drake could climb past undetected. More opportunities to shoot whilst climbing or even shoot to open up areas for climbing would go a long way in adding more dynamic interactions to these rather static sequences.

Functional Approach to Chapter Design

Critics generally believe the two train chapters to be the best sequence in the game. Unlike most other chapters where the gameplay lacks a coherent direction, Locomotion and Tunnel Vision benefit from a functional design. The developers based the two chapters around a clear set of interactions which they then apply to a variety of increasingly complex gameplay scenarios (Adventures in Games Analysis will contain a full critique of Locomotion). Here are two theoretical examples of how Uncharted 2‘s levels could be orientated around a particular set of interactions.

• A sandstorm engulfs a desert outpost. The enemies are wearing protective masks, so they’re not blinded by sand in their eyes. The player can still see, of course, but Drake must cover his eyes and therefore cannot aim from the over-the-shoulder perspective. Drake must keep the militia at bay while he waits for the storm to pass. [Blind firing and shooting from the hip].

• Drake enters a mansion to retrieve an historic artefact only to trip an alarm when he finally claims the prized possession. Already deep inside the premises, the player must go back the way they came, fighting off a squad of heavily armed guards in the process. However, since supplies are scant, Drake is forced to use a lone riot shield as portable cover as he makes his way towards a backdoor exit. [Riot shield and armoured enemy types].

By incorporating some more dynamic elements into the shooting gameplay, the developers could also increase the sophistication of the gameplay challenges while still keeping the action grounded. For example, using grenades to flush enemies out of cover (AI) or exploiting the lack of mobility of enemies caught in knee-high water (environmental element).

Conclusion

Gunplay and interplay, scalable difficulty, easy climbing gameplay, and functionally organised gameplay are issues which extend beyond Uncharted 2 and into a variety of other games (Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Timesplitters 2). Likewise, I took many of my suggestions from games which I believe address these challenges well (Resident Evil 4, Evil Within, Perfect Dark, and Zelda: Skyward Sword). Of course, without implementing these ideas and testing them in practice, they are simply food for thought.

Player agency separates video games from passive media such as film and literature. Unlike these other art forms, players of video games must exert skill so as to overcome challenges. And so playing a video game requires effort and commitment, much like any other skill-based task. However, not everyone wants to sit down after a hard day of work and put their learning and mastery to the test. And so in the last decade or so, the games industry has seen an increase in titles in the AAA games space which attempt to appeal to a wider audience at the expense of player agency and gameplay. The Uncharted series stands out in this regard. In a series of livestream discussions surveying games criticism on the Uncharted series, critic and game developer Richard Terrell concluded that Uncharted 4 (the latest game in the series) is a “super casual game”, citing the simplified shooting sequences and increased proportion of low intensity climbing and walking sections. While I haven’t played Uncharted 4, I would argue that the series has always sought to appeal to a wider audience by creating a more passive game experience. The following examples from Uncharted 2 may seem slight on their own, but together they play a significant role in reducing the player’s agency and the potential interactivity.

Too Many Cutscenes

According to How Long to Beat, most players need 10.5 hours of game time to beat Uncharted 2, yet around 3 hours of this time consists of non-interactive cutscenes. To put this into perspective, for roughly every 3 minutes of play time, the player will spend 1 minute watching a video. While well written and engaging, these sequences mostly consist of characters in dialogue, exchanging information which perhaps could have been integrated elsewhere. After all, Uncharted 2‘s plot isn’t terribly complicated.

Overuse of Checkpoints

For every significant gunfight won, the player reaches a checkpoint. While this measure keeps the game moving forward, the constant checkpointing also shortens the sustained length of time during which the player must play well in order to overcome a challenge. As a result, the player has little to lose going in to most confrontations and thus the game gives licence to more thoughtless play. The fast turn around between failure and attempt also reduces the intervening time where players subconsciously internalise mistakes and formulate new strategies. With Drake’s recharging health and ability to sustain multiple gunshots as well as few hard locks forcing the player to engage with each challenge, the generous checkpointing only makes running past enemies an even more viable strategy.

Early Clue Prompts

If the player waits around in a given area for more than a minute, a clue prompt will appear on screen. Activating the prompt makes the camera frame the next point of progress. The hint usually doesn’t spoil any puzzles; however, I find that it chimes in way too quickly. Oftentimes throughout my playthrough, I’d be notified of a free hint before I even had a solid grasp of my surroundings—and once it pops up, I doubt few players could resist using it. In this way, the clue prompts sap some of the exploration out of the gameplay.

Best of Friends

The developers turned friendly fire off, which means that the player can’t accidentally shoot Drake’s companions. However, the AI generally tends to occupy the space to the sides of most confrontations and Uncharted’s third person view and open combat environments provide the player with plenty of visual and physical room to easily manoeuvre around the other characters (there are, for example, few firefights which take place in narrow corridors). So in this sense turning off friendly fire cuts out the effort needed to work around your team mates. Other third-person shooters such as Resident Evil 4 turn on friendly fire and thereby allow the AI character to add an extra wrinkle to the gameplay. In Uncharted 2 though, Drake’s companions don’t change the gameplay in any meaningful way.

Bubble Wrapped Realism

Despite the painstaking visual realism, Uncharted 2‘s environments are for the most part static window dressing. Animals, lights, glass, and vases, among other things, don’t react realistically when shot. Only in specific instances where the game designers need Drake to shoot something that isn’t Eastern-European or explosive will the item respond.

Not only do the player and game world lack interplay, but the game elements don’t react to each other either, as I found out when I got Drake to hold a gas canister over an open flame. For contrast, in the first level of Syphon Filter lights, windows, bottles, computers, padlocks, and police cars all react realistically to gunfire. Uncharted 2 can’t even match the interactive realism of a PSone game. Amazing.

Conclusion

Aside from these examples, Uncharted 2‘s low intensity climbing sections and the lack of dynamic interactions within the gunplay significantly reduce the interactive experience. However, these issues relate more to Uncharted 2‘s core gameplay, and so I’ve saved these topics for the next repair-focused article.

[When developing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, director Koji Igarashi wanted to make a game which would “overturn player’s ideas about Castlevania, yet also feel like a Castlevania game”. In pursuing this vision, his team made SOTN’s game system much more complex, incorporating RPG systems and a wide variety of nuanced player actions. This series of articles will examine how these additions shape SOTN’s core gameplay of moving through space to dodge and attack enemies.]

To conclude the series, I want to discuss a handful of game challenges which demonstrate how SOTN’s designers leveraged the game’s various systems and complexities to create the moment-to-moment gameplay. The examples generally fall into one of two categories: challenges which utilise the core dynamics of space, time, and gravity and challenges which test the player’s knowledge of SOTN’s nuanced complexities. By looking at these examples, we can make sense of how SOTN’s game systems work in context.

Bone Pillar and Morning Star Trap on Stairs

This example is one of the few challenges that leverages gravity to great effect. At this point in the game, Alucard shouldn’t yet have the double jump or high jump, so the player cannot jump over the arrangement of game elements. The Bone Pillar’s fire breath shoots out at set intervals, so the challenge is orientated around timing. However, by defeating the Bone Pillar, Alucard releases the morning star which subsequently rolls down the staircase. So defeating one challenge organically facilitates another. Alucard’s lower position on the staircase limits his options for escape. (He should probably jump to the left and then swing back to the right, which is hard to do with limited hang time). The designers leverage height and gravity to create a lock and increase challenge.

Blood Skeleton Mosh Pit

Blood Skeletons (enemies that walk back and forth, and rebuild themselves after taking damage; think Dry Bones from the Mario games) swamp the shallow pit. The low ceiling and raised ledge sandwich Alucard and make it difficult for him to enter the crowded space. These limitations encourage more creative solutions. I came up with two: running through as Wolf Alucard and air kicking my way across, allowing the mosh pit to carry Alucard.

Corpseweed in a Dome Pit

A series of curved pits draw the player towards the centre where a corpseweed lies. The slowing effect of the bowl, the crouching height of the weed, and the flat space in the centre for the player to crouch attack together converge to shorten the time the player has to stop the weed from sprouting into a giant plant. Air-kicking the leafy mass allows the player to traverse this area quickly as the diagonal-downwards trajectory avoids the slowing effect of crossing the curves of the dome and allows the player to rebound and jump into the next dome, setting up the subsequent attack.

A Tight Squeeze Past Balloon Pod

Balloon Pods fill the gaps that lead up the shaft. If Alucard attacks or touches a Balloon Pod, it will burst open, unleashing a spray of spores. Since the spores fill the gap and take several seconds to vanish, the arrangement encourages the player to carefully squeeze past the obstacles, with dexterity being a required skill.

Imp Swarm

In this long, narrow shaft, a steady stream of Imps spawn. These pests track Alucard and interrupt his ascent by knocking him back to the ground. The longer the player spends recovering from knock backs, the more Imps spawn in, and the harder it is to avoid the swarm. Furthermore, the floating devils sometimes petrify Alucard or curse him to stand on the spot and attack, allowing even more of their pitchfork-wielding friends to swoop on in. The column constricts the space around Alucard and by extension the player’s movement options, while the pit (pictured) acts as a choke point, trapping Alucard within. The arrangement of game elements leverage two nuances (Alucard’s knockback and the Imp’s petrify and curse attacks) to create a unique “race against time” themed challenge.

Galamoth Boss Fight

Interviewer: Who do you think is the toughest enemy in Symphony of the Night?

Hagihara: Under normal conditions, Galamoth is a tough fight. If you don’t have any extra power from equipment it’s a real slog.

Igarashi: We made him so that if you just tried to fight him normally, you couldn’t win. I mean, that’s the kind of character he originally was. (laughs) Please enjoy him as one of the post-game challenges.

Hagihara: The truth is Galamoth was supposed to be far stronger than Shaft or Dracula..

Interview Source

The developers intentionally inflated Galamoth’s difficulty so as to encourage players to find creative ways of defeating the monster. In this case, taking advantage of the complexities and nuances of SOTN’s combat system. The video below highlights the excessive extremities of SOTN’s abstract subsystems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X72uf-HcZmA

Shield Rod + Alucard Shield – This technique requires that the player exploit a hidden property of the Shield Rod. According to the Castlevania Wiki, when the player equips a Shield Rod and Alucard Shield, the Alucard Shield has:

“the ability to deal a base 255 Hit damage multiple times per second when in contact with the enemy. The shield also recovers 8 HP, 1 Heart, and grants 3 seconds of invincibility, although MP is drained continuously when in use”.

The Shield Rod’s text description (“Extra Effective With Shield”) appears to be the only clue the game provides. Even after following the hint, a significant degree of trial and error would be needed to unearth the combination and its effective application against Galamoth.

Use the Duplicator to Spam Healing Items and Expendable Weapons – Post-game pick-up the Duplicator allows Alucard to hold an endless supply of items. So when facing Galamoth, the player can spam healing potions to minimise any damage taken. Then when they have a moment to breathe, they can shower the boss in TNT. I suppose with the Duplicator equipped and limitations on single-use weapons removed, the player can finally experiment with this tertiary area of the SOTN’s combat system.

Wear Lighting Mail to Reduce Damage – Knowledge of the elemental attributes and equipment systems can reduce some of the challenge of the boss battle. Given that Galamoth clearly fires lightening out of his rod, this suggestion makes sense.

Use the Beryl Circuit to Absorb Galamoth’s Damage – The Beryl Circuit absorbs lightening damage, so Galamoth’s lightening attacks heal Alucard instead of hurting him. Given the nonsensical sidequest needed to obtain the Beryl Circuit, this technique is easily the most far-fetched in the video.

Trap Galamoth in a Stun State – The video shows two positions where the player can trap Galamoth in a stun state: in the bottom-right corner and when attacking his head on the right-hand ledge. Although this technique exists within the spatial game, it’s more of an exploit than a genuine solution.

Conclusion

From the traversal mechanics, weapons, and subweapons anchored in the dynamics of time and space; to the less functionally effective systems of expendable items, spells, and familiars; to the abstract layer of equipment and levelling; and finally the excesses of super nuanced techniques required to defeat Galamoth, Symphony of the Night‘s complexities support the core gameplay of moving Alucard through space to dodge and attack, have very little of an effect at all, and even warp the gameplay into something else completely.

Overall, I would argue that the majority of SOTN’s new additions don’t really enhance the game very much at all. And even the most grounded addition, the weapon system, shifts the gameplay in a dramatically different direction, and not necessarily for the better. By allowing the player to choose their weapon, SOTN forgoes the tuned and optimised gameplay of the earlier titles for a rawer, more player-driven experience. SOTN’s developers provided plenty of options which players can tinker with, but struggled to create rich and challenging gameplay out of those options.

[When developing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, director Koji Igarashi wanted to make a game which would “overturn player’s ideas about Castlevania, yet also feel like a Castlevania game”. In pursuing this vision, his team made SOTN’s game system much more complex, incorporating RPG systems and a wide variety of nuanced player actions. This series of articles will examine how these additions shape SOTN’s core gameplay of moving through space to dodge and attack enemies.]

As established over earlier articles, SOTN’s combat is the deepest and most dynamic aspect of the game. Out of a few simple, intuitive rule sets, the core dynamics of space, timing, and gravity facilitate complex and varied gameplay. However, these elements can only do so much. As SOTN demonstrates, enemy and level design shape the nature of time and space within each level challenge.

• SOTN has over 100 enemies. We can loosley group these enemies into two main types: grounded humanoids which stagger back and forth and smaller creatures which move in more dynamic patterns.
• Being stuck to the ground, the humanoid enemies reduce space to the 1D vector of relative distance. So in engaging these enemies the player must dance in and out of the enemy’s attack range waiting for an opportune moment to strike. Of course, the player can still jump and crouch and enemy attacks move vertically as well as horizontally, so the gameplay does punctuate into 2D space. However, 1D relative space constitutes the majority of the player’s spatial engagement.
• With less space to operate within, the confrontations with humanoids tend to emphasise player reaction and reflex.
• The inherently limited movement and attack range of humanoid enemies severely restricted the developers ability to create a range of unique humanoid enemies. The following four foes demonstrate their range:

Zombie – These enemies spawn from the ground and walk towards Alucard. They function as short timers which prompt a reaction out of the player.

Bone Scimitar – Skeletons that walk towards Alucard and then shuffle back and forth just outside his range. Once Alucard enters their range, they swing. The swing is slow enough that the player can counter by attacking first. Alternatively, they can take advantage of the cool down between attacks.

Bloody Zombie – These foot soldiers quickly walk towards Alucard and strike with a dagger. They’re similar to Bone Schitmars, but require faster reflexes to counter the quicker attack.

Gorgon – The Gorgon is a slow-moving, horse-like creature that walks along the ground and breathes grey, petrifying fire when Alucard is in close range. The saddle on its back is helpful when jumping over the enemy. Otherwise, they’re identical to the prior two enemies: attack first or dodge.

• Overall, the developers have a handful of variables to work with: enemy size, movement speed, attack trajectory, and additional effects. The main challenge is the lack of 2D space. 3D games with hand-to-hand combat (think Zelda or Dark Souls) work because the gameplay is set in 2D space with some punctuations into 3D (Skyward Sword stands out as one of the more 3D hand-to-hand combat games). Hand-to-hand combat in the side-scrolling perspective, however, is just inherently limited in terms of design space.
• The humanoid enemies also create a number of other problems which cumulate in a negative net effect on the combat gameplay. Firstly, these enemies usually require flat ground, which makes the castle a much less interesting space to traverse (see the extraneous number of hallways).
• Secondly, the hand-to-hand style of combat of humanoid enemies stresses the game’s ability to communicate attacking / defending states visually. And SOTN unfortunately struggles to meet the challenge as the side-scrolling viewpoint flattens the perspective around an enemy’s arms. Furthermore, the game’s ornate design makes it harder to decipher the movement of enemy limbs during busy gameplay.
• Thirdly, since the humanoid enemies generally don’t react to Alucard’s attacks, the player can easily steamroll through rooms by walking up to these combatants and spamming hits. A recoil property would potentially allow enemies some distance to reset the game state and prevent spamming.
• The smaller enemies like fleas have more mobility and better leverage game’s core dynamics. As such, they prompt players to use a wider variety of traversal mechanics to navigate space and aim attacks. They are more akin to the enemy types seen in the Metroid series, which is overall a more spatial game than Castlevania.
• Since most of Alucard’s weapons are melee weapons (as opposed to projectiles), the player must get close to an enemy to attack it. However, to do this, the player needs to be able to read enemies and find openings before they attack them. This is why humanoid enemies start attacking when Alucard is still at a distant range, to give the player an opportunity to read the cues.
• The designers often layer humanoid and more mobile enemies together to create more sophisticated level challenges. In these instances, the humanoid enemies wall off the player’s movement range. With often very limited room to manoouvre and having to monitor the movement patterns of the mobile enemy and the state of the humanoid enemy (which isn’t very clear in the first place), these challenges are usually far too strict and restrictive.
• Projectiles and enemies which track Alucard along two axes tend to move slowly or in simplistic patterns so that they don’t overpower the player in terms of mobility.
• Alucard falls sharply and doesn’t obtain his double jump ability until some way into the game. As such, SOTN’s combat doesn’t have a strong air game. So attacking airborne enemies can be tricky because of Alucard’s limited hang time.

***

[When developing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, director Koji Igarashi wanted to make a game which would “overturn player’s ideas about Castlevania, yet also feel like a Castlevania game”. In pursuing this vision, his team made SOTN’s game system much more complex, incorporating RPG systems and a wide variety of nuanced player actions. This series of articles will examine how these additions shape SOTN’s core gameplay of moving through space to dodge and attack enemies.]

The image above maps each of SOTN’s systems in terms of how related they are to the core challenge of moving through space to attack and avoid enemies. The visual encapsulates several key points discussed so far:

• The weapons and subweapons draw on the spatial and timing dynamics and therefore tend to enhance the core gameplay by facilitating new forms of interactions. For example, the subweapons introduce an aiming element.
• Being set in time and space, the systems within the grey bubble are much more concrete and easy for players to understand.
• The spells, familiars, levelling, equipment, and expendable weapons tend to be more opaque for various reasons (limited explanatory text, limited supply, poor form fits function of enemies, abstract variation), and the game doesn’t really teach the player or provide a space where players can learn and master these complexities. (The game doesn’t do the same for weapons and subweapons too, but because the player can see these items move through space, they can easily figure out how to use them).
• High jumping and dive kicking have little practical application within the main gameplay challenges and are thus further out from the centre.
• Aguena and the Cross subweapon function more like spells and are thus organised as such. The spells do have some bearing on the moment-to-moment gameplay and should sit on the edge. However, their ability to dilute the core gameplay pushes them into the white.
• Alternatively, some might argue that the systems on the white background engage the player with a separate kind of challenge, understanding the nuances of the game system. For example, equipping the right item for a given combat scenario does stress the player’s knowledge of SOTN’s enemies and combat. It’s this part of SOTN’s game system which feeds the online speed running and Youtube community.
• Given that the elements on the periphery don’t have much of an effect on the main business of defeating enemies (the main roadblock to beating the game), one has to wonder why they were included in the first place. Players looking for the path of least resistance will simply overlook these cluttersome elements.
• With more complexity within the system, the designers also have a harder job of communicating all of the necessary information to the player.

***

[When developing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, director Koji Igarashi wanted to make a game which would “overturn player’s ideas about Castlevania, yet also feel like a Castlevania game”. In pursuing this vision, his team made SOTN’s game system much more complex, incorporating RPG systems and a wide variety of nuanced player actions. This series of articles will examine how these additions shape SOTN’s core gameplay of moving through space to dodge and attack enemies.]

SOTN’s movement mechanics, standard weapons, and subweapons leverage the game’s core spatial and timing dynamics to offer the player various means of engaging with enemies (dancing up close with fists, aiming a projectile at a distance, etc.). However, the developers also made some weapons and mechanics too abstract, nuanced, or only particular to certain cases. As such, these parts of the game system fall way beyond the reach of the average player. SOTN’s tertiary systems generally fall into the same category, wasteful portions of the game design which contribute very little to SOTN’s core gameplay.

Expendable Weapons

The player can find various single use weapons throughout Dracula’s castle, such as javelins or TNT. These items function much like subweapons, but the pick-ups aren’t very common, leaving the player with few opportunities to experiment and figure out how best to work these attacks into their repertoire.

Furthermore, using an expendable weapon requires the player pause the game, unequip their current weapon, equip the expendable weapon, unpause, and then use the weapon. As players probably won’t have too many expendable weapons in hand, they’ll likely have to repeat the process soon after to re-equip their original weapon. So the interface acts as a further barrier to entry.

Spells

After buying the respective script from the castle’s librarian, Alucard can perform a spell by inputting a fighting game-esque sequence of inputs. (Alternatively, if you already know the button combinations, say, from an online FAQ, then you can learn the spells without paying for them). Although the text descriptions for spells are quite short, they provide enough information to get the player started. However, the spells aren’t particularly worthwhile, unless you’re looking to water down the combat difficulty. Dark Metamorphosis falls back on the blunt / sharp weapon attributes. Summon Spirit, Tetra Spirit, Soul Steal, and Sword Brothers attack nearby enemies (with Soul Steal healing Alucard as well). These insta-win spells aren’t terribly different from the Cross sub-weapon and allow the player to opt out of engaging enemies head-on. Wolf Charge and Wing Smash function similarly to Samus’s speed booster mechanic in the Metroid games, although without the destructible environment. Given the abundance of lengthy hallways and occasional large open area, these mechanics do allow for some fast travel. Hellfire’s teleportation doesn’t have much functional purpose (most enemies can be avoided with the traversal mechanics, which is a much more engaging than inputting a spell).

Familiars

Hagihara: But the familiars were something we barely had time to finish in the development, and they almost didn’t get added to the game. So most of the enemies aren’t really balanced with regard to the player using a familiar. What I’m trying to say is, please don’t overlevel the familiars. (laughs)

Igarashi: For people who think they’d be helpful for them, it’s fine to use them. But for those who don’t want the game balance broken, it’s also fine to ignore them.

Interview Source

Familiars are equipable buddy characters. They float around Alucard and perform certain actions depending on their individual personality. For example, the faerie heals Alucard when he’s low on health, while the sword will do various sweeping moves to attack nearby enemies. Other than choosing which familiar to equip, the player has no control over these assists. They attack on their own and level up on their own. In this sense, they generally make combat easier and introduce a weak variable factor into combat which can occasionally prompt the player to switch up tactics.

Equipment

Along with standard weapons, Alucard can equip headwear (for intelligence and defence), armour (for defence), cloaks (for constitution), and accessories (for added effects). As well as increasing Alucard’s stats, these items can grant specific properties. For example:

• Spike Breaker armour lets Alucard to walk through spikes.
• The Blood Cloak converts Alucard’s damage to hearts.
• The Shield Rod and a shield, when equipped in combination, allow Alucard to perform a special defence-boosting spell.

Unfortunately, the item description text in the equipment menu only offers a brief description of these nuanced properties, so knowing what items to equip and where to use them is a matter of trial and error. On the other hand, you could simply ignore the attributes and simply equip the item with the best stats.

Experience System

If you’ve read my writing before, you’ll probably know that I’m suspicious of levelling as this abstract force can deconstruct a game’s core gameplay. Although SOTN features character levelling, the experience system curbs grinding and encourages the player to fight statistically stronger enemies.

The game developers designate each enemy a level. Alucard’s experience for defeating an enemy is calculated by multiplying the enemy’s base EXP by 1.25 or dividing the enemy’s base EXP by 1.5, depending on Alucard’s relative level. So, if Alucard is one level below an enemy, he’ll gain the base EXP plus an additional 25%. The trick, though, is that if Alucard is two levels below an enemy, he’ll gain the result of the previous equation multiplied by 1.25—so (EXP X 1.25) X 1.25—and so on, up to five levels below. Conversely, when Alucard is a level higher an enemy, the enemy’s base experience is divided by 1.5. The division can shrink Alucard’s acquired experience down to a single digit,, thus making grinding on peon enemies a rather fruitless pursuit.

Although the levelling system cleverly minimises exploitation, aside from encouraging the player to tackle stronger enemies, it doesn’t do anything to make the combat more engaging.

Conclusion

SOTN’s tertiary systems generally contribute very little to the game’s combat. The levelling system increases Alucard’s stats and therefore controls a significant aspect of game difficulty. However, levelling by itself does not make combat any more varied, dynamic, or deeper. Familiars do influence combat through their behaviours; however, unless a player allows a familiar to significantly level up, their influence is negligible. According to the developers themselves, they didn’t have enough time to balance familiars, so if pursued, these tag-along creates can potentially have a negative effect on combat.

Expendable weapons, spells, and equipment increase the player’s viable options, but face a number of obstructions which limit regular players from adding them to their regular repertoire. Expendable weapons are closeted behind layers of inconvenient interface and are rare enough that players don’t really have many opportunities to put them to use. Equipment suffers from being too nuanced and the limited instruction provided by a brief text description in a menu. Spells have some utility, but mainly to water down combat.

Taken in sum, these systems suffer from a lack of functionality and clarity. Players can much more easily get through the game by focusing on the combat dynamics which they can see directly in front of them, as opposed to the abstract complexities hidden within these tertiary systems.

[When developing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, director Koji Igarashi wanted to make a game which would “overturn player’s ideas about Castlevania, yet also feel like a Castlevania game”. In pursuing this vision, his team made SOTN’s game system much more complex, incorporating RPG systems and a wide variety of nuanced player actions. This series of articles will examine how these additions shape SOTN’s core gameplay of moving through space to dodge and attack enemies.]

As with the earlier Castlevania games, sub-weapons function as the primary form of projectile attacks. Their unique movement trajectories introduce a range of aiming techniques to the gameplay, and offer the player more ways of engaging with the spatial game. Aiming subweapons also draws on the player’s knowledge / observation of enemy movement patterns as well as their timing skills. SOTN’s projectile attacks don’t stray far from the series formula. Some of the changes and additions support the ability set’s focus on aiming and spatial gameplay, while other elements function more as spells or special attacks and stand out as anomalies within Alucard’s reportaire of subweapons.

Knife – A dagger which flies rapidly in a straight line (consumes one heart). The player aims by drawing a mental line between Alucard and their target. The quick travel speed renders timing out of the equation (unfortunate given that a slower strike would have made the attack more skill-based). Knives therefore collapse the space between Alucard and his target.

Axe – A projectile which travels in an upwards curve (consumes four hearts). Axes trade speed and ease of aiming for range and strength. The projectile’s trajectory covers a blind spot diagonally above Alucard, but also creates a new blindspot directly in front of him. Axes also travel more slowly than knives and continue to move fall after making contact with an enemy. The subweapon therefore requires much more spatial (aiming and covering blindspots) and timing skill than knives, but also rewards the player with effectiveness.

Cross – A large beam of light which attacks all enemies on screen (consumes one hundred hearts). The heart requirement offsets the weapon’s effectiveness. Crosses function more like spells and don’t require much skill besides trying to net as many enemies on screen as possible. This variation of the cross loses the unique spatial trajectory of the classic boomerang-esque cross.

Stopwatch – A trinket which freezes enemies for several seconds (consumes twenty hearts). Players can use the stopwatch to strategically open up holes in an enemy’s attack, to act as a buffer to dodge attacks, or to pause gameplay when overwhelmed. The effectiveness of the stopwatch depends on the player’s awareness of the combat dynamics at play and the particulars of a given situation.

Bible – A floating bible circles Alucard and protects him from nearby enemies (consumes five hearts). Since the bible both shields Alucard and attacks enemies, the subweapon doubles as both an offensive and defensive sub-weapon. The player aims the bibles by moving Alucard into the proximity of enemies. I can’t help but feel that if the bible weren’t so effective (i.e. if the movement speed were slower, allowing for holes in the shield), the developers could have extracted more nuanced play out of this subweapon (e.g. the player moving Alucard around enemies to cover potential gaps in the bible’s movement). Portrait of Ruin‘s bible subweapon works in this way.

Rebound Stone – A projectile that’s thrown diagonally downwards and bounces off walls (consumes three hearts). The rebound stone extends on the knife sub-weapon as it involves dealing with straight lines, but the lines move diagonally (more complex aiming), bounce off walls, and can move through enemies (which adds more strategy as one stone can potentially attack multiple enemies or one enemy multiple times). In practice, these simple rules create a great deal of complexity when aiming, which is why Rebound Stones are so engaging to use. The potential applications for this type of projectile attack are significant (check out Trajectile for the DSiware as an excellent example). The white trails stand out against the dark backdrops and help the player make sense of the projectile’s movement pattern.

Agunea – A lightning projectile which moves in a straight line and can sustain damage over time once it makes contact with its victim (consumes five hearts). Once the player lands a hit, so long as they hold down the appropriate buttons and don’t run out of hearts or take damage, they can maintain the attack (such as in the GIF). In this way, the weapon encourages the player to dodge incoming attacks or create an environment free of distraction (again, see the GIF). However, considering the conditions needed to make full use of the mechanic (finding one of only four available agunea in Dracula’s castle, having a sufficient supply of hearts, using it on an enemy with sufficient health, and avoiding all incoming attacks), few players are likely to unlock the subweapon’s potential.

Bibuti – A cluster projectile that’s dropped on the ground (consumes three hearts). The longer the fall, the more the water spreads out, and thus the wider the range. The density/range of the clusters therefore depends on the height of the player’s jump. Although the arc is a little different, Bibuti’s unique aiming—much like the Rebound Stones—remind me of aiming fireballs in Super Mario Bros. The unorthodox aiming position diagonally above an enemy creates a unique spatial puzzle. Alternatively, the player could leverage Bitubi’s active state on the ground and use it more like a landmine (as captured in the GIF).

Holy Water – A dropped projectile with similar dynamics to Bitubi (consumes three hearts). Since Holy Water is held in jars, the projectile won’t spread on descent. However, once the jar smashes on the floor, a large flame will rise up and remain active for a short period of time. Thus, the subweapon encourages players to predict enemy movement so as to catch enemies within the flame.

Conclusion

SOTN’s changes and additions to subweapons are a bit of a mixed bag. Agunea (a new addition) and the altered Cross function more like spells than subweapons. However, with the Bitubi (the other new addition), the developers built more nuance into the Holy Water design, allowing the subweapon to function as both a dousing projectile and a landmine. As the examples demonstrate, most of the subweapon complexities revolve around the speed, timing, and trajectory of projectiles moving through space. Since these weapons are built around the core dynamics of combat, they support the combat gameplay by providing functionally unique viable options to the player.

[When developing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, director Koji Igarashi wanted to make a game which would “overturn player’s ideas about Castlevania, yet also feel like a Castlevania game”. In pursuing this vision, his team made SOTN’s game system much more complex, incorporating RPG systems and a wide variety of nuanced player actions. This series of articles will examine how these additions shape SOTN’s core gameplay of moving through space to dodge and attack enemies.]

“Since we increased the size of the player character, we had to think about how that balance would work with the traditional whip; the problem is that the whip would reach across the entire screen, so we decided to make an action game based on other weapons instead”.

Koji Igarashi, SOTN designer

These “other weapons” form the foundation of SOTN’s combat system, defining the timing and spatial dynamics of each encounter as well as the player’s viable options. The weapon system provides the combat with a great deal of potential variety, but its sprawling and unregulated nature also clutter and fray the play experience.

The player can find around a hundred weapons scattered throughout Dracula’s castle and equip them as they please. The game organises the large number of arms into several groups: clubs, fists, shields, short swords, one-handed weapons, two-handed weapons, and throwing projectiles. By adjusting the variables below, the developers ensured that each weapon type occupy a unique functional position within the design space.

• Speed (how long it takes the attack hit box to enter its first frame)
• Range (the size of the hit box)
• Duration of attack (number of active hit box frames)
• Attack animation (the size, shape, and direction of the attack)
• Power (attack damage)
• Defence (for shields only)
• Additional properties

So short swords, one-handed weapons, and two-handed weapons represent the majority of arms and present the player with a reasonably clear choice between:

1. Short swords: high speed, low/medium range, and low power
2. One-handed weapons: medium speed, medium range, and medium power
3. Two-handed weapons: low speed, high range, and high power, but no defence boost from shield

Shields allow the player to block attacks; and as the only equipable to offer this function, they play a distinct role in the design space. Similarly, throws have a unique range and travel arc which allow the player to attack from a distance. Clubs cover Alucard from the front and rear and do hit damage as opposed to cut damage (an additional attribute). Fists have a limited range, but a high speed. At close range, fists can perform double damage and from above Alucard can attack enemies beneath him.

“Each staff member had a special attachment to a different kind of blade, so we ended up with a good variety…”

Toshiharu Furukawa, SOTN designer

Each weapon within a group conforms to the same general properties, but occupies its own space within the category’s range. Furthermore, many weapons are imbued with additional attributes which facilitate more nuanced playstyles and contribute to a more varied and wrinkly combat system. The three examples below demonstrate the implications that weapon choice has on gameplay.

The Estoc is a giant German two-handed sword with a strong attack, huge hit box, and long attack duration. These strengths are balanced out by several significant drawbacks:

• The sword is so large that when Alucard strikes, he lunges forward.
• The attack takes some time to start up.
• The attack leaves a large, exposed gap where ground enemies can slip through. The player can’t counter by crouching as attacking with the Estoc forces Alucard into a standing state.

Together these weaknesses make it impossible to attack half-height ground enemies, unless the castle architecture allows Alucard to approach from below (for example, on a staircase). This gaping blindspot encourages the player to develop new ways of engaging these foes.

Despite belonging to the same weapon category, Nunchakus (a pair of wooden hand batons) are completely different from the Estoc. They have weak attack, a small hit box, and a short attack duration. A fast start up time and a second follow through attack that occurs soon after the initial strike offset these cons. Although Alucard can attack quite quickly with the Nunchakus, he needs to be closer to his enemies to land the full attack, which puts him at greater risk. Thus, a Nunchakus wielder would need to have a greater consciousness of enemy openings and be able to develop strategies for sweeping in and out of enemy range.

The Icebrand and Mormegil are almost identical except for their elemental attributes. The Icebrand, being an ice elemental weapon, does extra damage against fire enemies, but heals ice enemies. The Mormegil, being a dark elemental weapon, does extra damage against holy enemies, but heals dark enemies. Depending on the given situation, the effectiveness of either weapon differs. So these two weapons encourage an awareness of enemy elementals and stress player knowledge.

“…though this did result in the developers’ favourite weapons being super-powered. Not realising that no one liked shields was a bit of a blind spot…”

Toshiharu Furukawa, SOTN designer

As the second half of Furukawa’s comment denotes, SOTN’s complex weapon design space suffers from a number of blemishes which significantly impeed the gameplay.

Weapons not conforming to type

Although Nunchakus and the Estoc belong to the same weapon class, they facilitate completely different combat dynamics. Wielding Nunchakus involve dealing with enemies at close range (higher reaction and adaption skills), while the Estoc prompts the player to compensate for a gaping blind spot (more strategic, planned attacks). Nunchakus function more like fists than a heavy two-handed weapon. Weapons like Nunchakus (which are in no small number) therefore blur the clear separation between categories, which makes it more difficult for players to rely on the weapon categorisation to make informed decisions over weapon choice.

The Shotel, Combat Knife, and Basilard similarly betray the definition of a short sword. The Shotel has a medium range, the Combat Knife has a shorter range, and the Basilard has an even shorter range still, even though the game classes them all as short swords.

Too nuanced to be applicable for average players

As with the high jump and air kick, some weapon properties are too slight or nuanced to be functionally viable for your average player. For example, certain weapons have elemental attributes (such as Icebrand and Mormegil) or are sharp (swords) or blunt (clubs). Weapons with these particular properties work well against some enemies, but not against others. However, effectively exploiting these details in combat hinges on some unrealistic expectations:

• the player will be able to identify an enemy’s weakness through its appearance, even though the form-function relationship in SOTN is quite inconsistent. For example, some skeletons are weak against holy, but others aren’t. (Browse through the game’s bestiary for more examples).
• the player will pause the game to switch to the most effective weapon
• the player will know which weapon (out of a maximum of 90ish) has the required elemental attribute for the situation or will be willing to wade through their weapon list to find out

As for how many weapon attributes are too slight or nuanced, I find it hard to draw a clear line. I also haven’t tried out all of the weapons myself, so I’m not exactly sure. You’re welcome to judge for yourself though. This weapon list shows each weapon’s special attributes.

Weapons as progress indicators lead to clutter

Despite the significant array of choice on offer, most weapons conform to its category’s base speed, range, duration of attack, and attack animation properties, with the key differentiator being power. So as Alucard progresses through the castle, he stumbles upon similar weapons with increasingly higher power stats. The idea being that weapon power creates a sense of character development as the damage numbers go up. However, using weapons as a barometer for progress like this adds an excessive number of functionally similar items to the player’s inventory. Regardless of the fact that weapon specialties are perhaps too nuanced for most players, the paralysing effect of having so many choices in one’s inventory only makes it harder for players to realise the versatility on offer.

Conclusion

SOTN’s arsenal of weapons provides a rich design space which focuses the player on various facets of the game’s combat design (for example, close combat, agile but weak attacks, and elemental strikes). The weapon classes provide reasonably clear distinctions and help players organise their preferences. The variation works on a functional level because the properties of weapon size, length, hitboxes, and animation are grounded in the dynamics of time and space.

However, complexities relating to more abstract attributes (such as elemental and sharp/blunt indicators) sit outside of the average player’s reach. Also, some weapons function more closely to weapons outside of their designated type. These anomalies fray the distinctions of choice within the game. The overwhelming number of weapons on offer (for the sake of facilitating player progress) also swamp the design space, which makes it harder for unique options to stand out. One can’t help but think that 30 more functionally distinct weapons would be easier for players to manage than 90 reasonably similar weapons. So much like the traversal mechanics, the weapons suffer from unrefined details in the game’s design.

[When developing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, director Koji Igarashi wanted to make a game which would “overturn player’s ideas about Castlevania, yet also feel like a Castlevania game”. In pursuing this vision, his team made SOTN’s game system much more complex, incorporating RPG systems and a wide variety of nuanced player actions. This series of articles will examine how these additions shape SOTN’s core gameplay of moving through space to dodge and attack enemies.]

When Igarashi’s team were drafting up Alucard’s (the player avatar) ability set, they drew upon the framework established over the course of earlier Castlevania titles. However, the developers also made some alterations and introduced new mechanics which give SOTN its own particular character. I’ve picked out a few details (both new inclusions and series staples) which speak to the way SOTN mechanics and mechanical properties shape the nature of traversal and movement.

• Alucard walks at a constant speed and doesn’t gain momentum, which is appropriate given his relative size within the environment. As such, the player has enough time to see and react to the obstructions as they come into view.

• The player can control the height of Alucard’s jump through the length of button press and so the input has a direct relationship to the on-screen output which allows for a more intuitive sense of control.

• Alucard falls reasonably quickly, and so like the NES Castlevania games the player has little leeway to adjust their jumps in mid-air. In this way, SOTN prompts players to mentally foresee their complete jump trajectory before moving off the ground. For a lack of better word, the players need to play with more intentionality. This is particularly true in boss encounters where bad jumps can punish the player.

• Player’s can upgrade to a double jump with the leap stone relic. The second jump height is shorter than the first. The reason being that fitting two differently shaped pieces together when planning your jumps is a much more interesting spatial challenge than combining two equal halves.

• The extra hop gives the player two levels of added control over the jump. They can choose when to do the second jump and how high to make it. These options facilitate various types of higher level manoeuvres such as floating, high jumping, and hopping. A good amount of gameplay potential can be extracted out of a reasonably simple addition.

• With two jumps, players can also react to any sudden changes in the environment when Alucard’s mid-flight. In this sense, only having the single jump available at the start of the game encourages the player to be more cautious and observe more of their surroundings. Some time later, once the player is more in tune with the dangers of Dracula’s castle, the game provides them the means of better navigating around these dangers.

• Alucard can high jump when the gravity boots relic is equipped. The inputs (press down and up on the d-pad and then jump) make the mechanic distinct from jump and double jump. However, the somewhat particular rules governing the mechanic’s execution (Alucard can perform a high jump when on the ground and after a double jump, but not after a regular jump), cloud the technique with some ambiguity. Also, the screen-high ceilings of Dracula’s castle limit the applications for a jump which stretches two and a half screens tall. The occasional hall or exterior setting provide opportunities for players to use the technique, but pepperings of enemies in these areas restrict these few potential spaces. Furthermore, the bat form allows Alucard to navigate vertical spaces with much more foresight than the high jump. So although the high jump looks flashy, it doesn’t offer much functionality.

• When in the air, Alucard can do an air kick, slicing straight down or diagonally. As with high jump, the particular nature of the mechanic limits its functionality. The player must double jump to perform the technique, which increases the complexity of envisioning the attack and its trajectory in the mind’s eye. In terms of traversal, the diagonal kicks make light work of staircases. Players can also exploit the technique’s rebound (which allows Alucard to enter into another kick) to skim across a series of light fightings or off the heads of a row of enemies. Although highly satisfying, such techniques are too nuanced and the applicable situations too few for the majority of players to incorporate into their repertoire.

• The back dash is a quick backwards retreat that acts as a dodge move. It’s also a viable, if not unorthodox alternative to walking (and by the looks of most SOTN speed runs, a faster method too). Alucard’s animation state suspends between rooms, making it possible to continuously moon walk your way through the castle.

Overall, we can see that the complexity added to Alucard’s repertoire of traversal mechanics both in terms of the number of mechanics and the complexity of each mechanic lead to more nuanced-driven gameplay. I would argue that very little of the nuance (probably only the extra hop in the double jump) has the ease of use and functional benefit to serve your average play in any meaningful way. (On the contrary, these nuances help buoy the SOTN speedrunning scene). The inclusion of these nuances as well as mechanics with particularly narrow functional purpose clutter SOTNs play experience with unviable options.

Having extensively researched Resident Evil: Code Veronica‘s level design last year, I set myself an extra challenge when recently completing Resident Evil 3. I decided to defeat Nemesis (the Terminator-esque monster who ruthlessly pursues the player) in all 11 encounters with him throughout the game. Although my playthrough was greatly lengthened by the pursuit, the experience helped me better understand classic Resident Evil movement and combat and why they’re perhaps not so fondly remembered.

Level Design

Resident Evil 3‘s interlinked city environments belong to the Resident Evil 2 style of level design. The player traverses each main area about two or three times before moving onto the next. Usually one of the backtracking paths will feature new enemies or situations to surprise players. By contrast, Resident Evil 1 takes place entirely within the a single interconnected environment and can therefore craft more folded and organic level design. Code Veronica draws from both styles and as such I think it probably would have been a better title to close the trilogy, at least in terms of level design variety.

Jill’s path through Racoon City runs through a series of laneways and buildings which wind around numerous roadblocks resulting from the city’s decay. Yet while authentic to the game’s overall theme of aftermath and destruction, the mishmash of loosely associated environments don’t lend themselves well to memorisation. In particular, the linked rings layout of Downtown don’t break down into manageable shapes.

Movement

The player can make Jill run by tilting the analogue stick forward. By then tilting the stick to one of the adjacent diagonal positions, Jill will turn whilst running. However, if the player tilts too far in one direction and the input registers as a tilt to the left or right, Jill will stop running and rotate on the spot. The analogue nature of the dual shock stick makes it difficult to identify the sweet spot between the diagonal and horizontal input selections. So I found that I would sometimes inadvertently stop Jill dead in her tracks, thus leaving her vulnerable to attacks. This problem usually occurred in the Nemesis battles, which require Jill to tightly circle the monster.

Resident Evil 3 features a quick dodge mechanic where the player can avoid attacks by aiming and firing their weapon as an enemy attacks. The unintuitive button configuration speaks for itself in that sometimes the player will attempt to attack, but will instead dodge, and vice versa. In this way, the game’s output betrays your own input. The timing needed to execute the quick dodge is also extremely tight (on hard mode). And even though I defeated Nemesis on every occasion, I could never intentionally perform a dodge. Sometimes the dodge animation will put Jill in a position where she will take damage or cannot avoid the subsequent attack. For all of the reasons, I found the mechanic to be rather unreliable.

The quick turn (another new mechanic) also has its own quirks. In order to have Jill turn 180 degrees and run in the opposite direction (which is usually what you want her to do after turning), the player must press square and tilt down on the analogue stick before then tilting up to initiate the run. For quickly fleeing from enemies, the input process is simply too complicated.

The transitions when moving between prerendered backdrops require the player constantly recalibrate their orientation, which in the midst of a fight can understandably lead to error.

Beating Nemesis

Doing a “kill Nemesis” run fundamentally changes the nature of the game. Nemesis takes a load of firepower to down, so players must set aside a major portion of their munitions for the task. Given your regular neighbourhood zombie also seeks to drain you of resources, saving ammo translates to avoiding zombies, which requires a good understanding of their placement, direction, avoidance strategies, and reset options (leaving and re-entering a room). So by focusing on Nemesis, you stress a different area of the game system.

In terms of confronting the monster itself, the trick is to run around him, turn, shoot, and repeat. You must always brush past his shorter left-arm, as his right-arm has much greater reach. You must also stay within a set distance away from him, otherwise you’ll prompt him to burst out into a sprint attack, which is much harder to avoid. If you can master this simple technique, then Nemesis isn’t all that difficult…

…at least not in open environments. The first confrontation out the front of the police station provides a good amount of room to develop your technique. However, several of the subsequent scenarios take place in corridors, where you have much less wiggle room to navigate and effectively have to run into Nemesis to avoid him. Overall, I found that these confrontations tend to highlight the weaknesses in the movement mechanics, as mentioned earlier.