The Final Piece of the Gran Turismo Puzzle

The search for greater realism with every entry in a series is a noble pursuit indeed, and it’s this dedication that has given Poliphony Digital an almost unique reputation in the industry. As rewarding an ambition as it is though, it does limit the amount of changes that can be made from game to game. Over the years they’ve added more and more tracks and cars to their seminal racing series, but short of changing the laws of physics, the basic driving experience remains very similar from game to game. The question then is this: Is there anything missing from the Gran Turismo formula that could be added to the core gameplay?

For the past few iterations the series has seen nothing on this scale. The addition of online as well as dozens of new race types has given series fans plenty to play with, but there’s been little in the way of game-changing additions.

This is a by no means a bad thing when your core game is as solid as Gran Turismo’s is, but it does make it harder to retain the interests of the fickle casual fans of the series. It’s an unfortunate reality that for many a big, marketable feature is needed for them to jump into your latest release.

There does however exist a part of the car which has somehow escaped inclusion thus far. It’s a control more important than any other without which you wouldn’t even get off the starting line in reality. It’s the thing every learner driver struggles with, almost without exception. Despite all this, it’s hard to recall a single game which has attempted its inclusion.

The clutch is its name.

The Conduit 2 and Pointy Shooters

As is the case with many of the other games I think about nowadays, the Conduit 2 interests me not because of how it works, but because of how it doesn’t. Apart from its stale and unambitious design decisions - which I’ll admit, wouldn’t make for a good article at all - it suffers from much the same problem as many other shooters on the Wii; it simply doesn’t feel right.

This in itself isn’t much of a surprise. The problem of how to get as established a genre as the first-person (or indeed third-person) shooter working with the WiiMote and Move isn’t one that any developer has yet been able to solve, and High Voltage don’t seem to have brought any new thinking to the table in this regard. Infinitely customisable control schemes are all very well, but I hardly think throwing the problem into consumers hands is a valid solution.

Perhaps though I’m getting too ahead of myself. What exactly is the problem with the pointer-controller (henceforth used to refer to both the WiiMote and the Move)? First comes a problem of resting position. If you’re using a traditional dual-analogue control scheme and have no need to aim at any point in time, simply take your thumb off the right analogue stick. Through the magic of modern manufacturing you’ll find the stick returns to its resting position, and you no longer need to worry about your current view until you need to change it of course. With a pointer-controller you need to make a conscious effort to keep your view centralised, which over anything other than the shortest of periods is a complete pain. Lose concentration for even a small amount of time and you’ll find your view drifting as the cursor reaches the edge of the screen.

The second main problem involves the way you usually target enemies in a shooter. In using analogue sticks you’re controlling both camera and aiming at exactly the same time (since the reticule is always in the centre of the screen) and as such you never need to worry about one or the other too much. Simply get an enemy in the centre of the screen and fire away. However, when using a pointer, you’re having to first frame the enemy within the boarders of the screen, before then aiming at them manually. This is why shooters on the Wii can often feel so inaccurate and sluggish.

The only game to my mind that manages to solve this problem is Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition. It’s odd that this should be the case, given that RE4 wasn’t originally designed with the Wii’s control scheme in mind, but at any rate the game’s existing design happened to fit in exactly with how the controller works best.

Portal 2, Puzzle Games, and Thinking Outside of the Box

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat. In terms of traditional game design, a puzzle which forces you to ‘think outside the box’ is not a good thing. Sure it might look quite nice down there as a bullet point on the back of your box, but a game based entirely upon such puzzles is going to end up frustrating and excessively difficult.

So what exactly do we mean when we say a puzzle forces you to think ‘outside of the box’? Usually it means solving a problem in a way such a problem has never been solved before. You might seek to raise tax revenues by lowering taxes (see the Laffer curve) or perhaps get people to drive slower to reduce journey times (think less accidents etc.).

The reason such thinking works in real life is because the real world - in terms of the language of video games at any rate - is entirely procedural, whereas even the most complex games are based around simple rules. What this means in essence is that every solution to a puzzle in a game has to have been programmed in there by the developer.

So you can use the painting to create a platform. Yeah....thanks for letting me know that was possible Jonathan

This is why thinking outside of the box is simply impossible (or at the very least challenging) when within a video game. You’re not thinking outside of the box at all, your trying to think of the obscure solution that’s been programmed in. The term ‘out of the box’ implies creativity, and a refusal to play by the rules. What it actually comes down to is little more than guesswork.

Dear Difficulty

Difficulty is entrenched in the DNA of every modern videogame. Back in the days of arcades, where games were sold by the life, difficulty was needed to make money. You made your game difficult in order to drain the pockets of your audience. The less time you provided for their quarter, the better. 

The time of arcades is now past. Cabinets are slowly but surely being sold off to nostalgic collectors or destroyed altogether. Surely then, the need for difficulty no longer exists? The traditional philosophy behind making money is gone – now the more entertainment time you provide the better.

But we still need it, we still crave the satisfaction of tussling with a game, the sense of accomplishment when we walk out the other side victorious. Whether we like it or not – and we almost certainly do – difficulty is going to be with videogames until Mr. Kotick kills them off completely.

There are two kinds of difficulty though, one which only hardens the player’s resolve in times of crisis, and another which has been known to turn the most serene of individuals into emotional wrecks. The latter is often referred to as ‘cheap’ difficulty; the former I see as being ‘dear.’ What exactly is it that divides the two, and how can games do their bit to safeguard the controllers of the world?

Review Graphs

Review scores have come under their fair share of scrutiny over the years. Many have claimed that any attempt to distil a complex opinion expressed over hundreds of words into a single number is inevitably going to lose a great deal in translation. Others take issue with the way publishers have reportedly been using Metacritic scores to determine a development studio's salary bonuses.

Numerical scores aren't going anywhere any time soon; they fulfil simply too many useful functions – chief among them being the automatic ranking of every game an outlet ever reviews. That being the case, would it not be beneficial to look at how scores can be improved, rather than simply threatening to eliminate them entirely?

For example, a review score is a very constant identifier of a game's overall merit, but as we all know, many games will waver in quality over time. Even the greatest games will trip up now and again, and even the worst will contain flashes of brilliance.

Let's start then, with a simple graph.

The Fight for the Shooter Crown: Halo vs Call of Duty

Halo: Reach is a game in which you, an anonymous soldier, make your way through linear levels from a generally first person perspective. Your primary interaction with the world around you is through the barrel of a gun, which is handy because everything wants to kill you. Sometimes you come across men that want to kill things that want to kill you. This makes them your friends. You reach the end, credits roll, and then you head online to do much the same thing without the linearity.

Call of Duty is a game in which you, a largely anonymous soldier, make your way through linear levels from a first person perspective. Your primary interaction with the world around you is through the barrel of a gun, which is handy because everything wants to kill you. Sometimes you come across men that want to kill men that want to kill you. This makes them your friends. You reach the end, people rap, and then you head online to do much the same thing without the linearity.

Quantitively then, the two games seem identical, divided only by setting and a sales margin of $160 million at their last releases, but as anyone who’s played the two games will tell you, they’re both very different experiences. Is it possible to work out exactly how? Could doing so give us a new insight into which is the better game?