Note, the post this refers to has since been removed. Professionalism and what not.
Creating a great game is incredibly hard. For a studio aiming to produce triple A content on a current gen platform there are incredible and massive barriers to overcome. You have to create tech that is up to and maybe above a certain standard, generate a huge amount of art, get the backing of a publisher, create a solid and/or innovative design and then hone the gameplay. That is before the natural problems of dealing with a team of 100+ humans arise.
Prototype and Red Faction Guerrilla are both fantastic games. Their core concepts are exceptionally well realised and are amazing experiences. Special mention must go to the tech in each games. Wow, just wow.
Anyway, my problem with both games is that the difficulty curve doesn't match the game progression. Both games have a number of quirks that are incredibly unfair in certain situations and I specifically want to talk about Prototype in this regard.
For all their victories, videogames have never solved the super hero problem well. In a traditional videogame that has all of the trappings of a videogame (specifically a health bar in this case), super heroes often cause ludonarrative dissonance. How can Wolverine die? Why is Superman taking damage from things that aren't kryptonite?
Prototype runs into this problem as you play a character that is basically a god. He may not have the ability to create matter (maybe I didn't unlock that) but he outclasses every other character in the game. He has an overwhelming amount of powers and many of these dramatically change the game.
As a designer you are faced with a problem. How do you kill a god?
In this case they chose a high level answer and a low level answer.
For the high level they created an engine that can handle Godzilla. That is to say that at any time the screen can be full of fleeing civilian AI, military infantry and vehicle AI, zombie horde AI and monster AI all interacting. It is total chaos and it looks stunning. For the player it means there's probably one hundred things all trying to kill you at once. Therein lies a massive player weakness; chaos. Sometimes you just get overwhelmed, can't crowd control, get pinned and beaten to a pulp. It is frustrating but one of the few ways the designers can actually get you killed.
The low level solution (by which I mean discreet values or mechanics) is that in certain animations during which you have no control, you can be hit and killed. When hijacking a vehicle or consuming something for health you can be hit and knocked out of said animation. You can choose to enter into the animation but due to the zoomed in camera during the lengthy animations you cannot see what is going on and can be hit by the Hunters (which are really annoying as they have very little group AI to stagger their attacks) or missiles or tank shells and lose all of your health. This is really frustrating and eventually forced me to give up on the game.
Prototype is a great game and there is a lot of fun to be had but I am done with difficulty spikes and dying through no fault of my own.
I must reiterate though, Prototype is a great game.
On the subject of writing about games (last post), I want to link you to four of my favourite pieces of writing about games.
Ex GFW editor Sean Molloy talking about personal gaming.
Tim Rogers talking about Super Mario Bros. 3 as a memoir (read all 7 pages or die).
A review of Dead Space by Tim Rogers (I adore Dead Space BTW).
Leigh Alexander talking about the completely misguided Silent Hill Homecoming reviews.
I have also been wanting to pimp MC Lars for a while but haven't found a reason so whatever, here it is. He is one of my favourite rappers and it has been a joy to watch him grow as an artist. His new album is thoroughly excellent and it worth buying the physical CD for the emotional liner notes that catches you completely off guard. So here's a video (it's about videogames y'all).
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