Electric Turnip
  • Blog
  • Stories
    • Story 000
    • Story 001
    • Story 002
    • Story 004
    • Story 007 - Unfinished
    • Story 008
    • Story 010 - BattleWagon
    • Story 012
  • Images
    • Adventure Caddie concept gallery
    • Page Design Gallery
    • Older Work
  • 5FEAT Video
  • Videos
  • Game Experiments
    • Climb
    • Super Shapetoy
    • TurboGarbageTruck
    • 031 - Best Games - Enchanter
    • 033 - Shader Test
  • Contact

239

5/29/2017

0 Comments

 
Since I am always anywhere from 6 months to 3 years behind on games, I recently started playing Metal Gear Solid V. So far I find myself in agreement with 90% of popular opinion on this game. I think it is fantastic.
That would be the smart place to leave it. Just acknowledge that I like the game and move on. I can go play it, enjoy myself, and not try to overanalyze it. If you have read any of these posts, you know that isn’t how I function. Figuring out why one game is more enjoyable than another game is sort of my jam. Saying things like “my jam” is also my jam. The full extent of the jam.
So, getting back to it, this is what I think makes Metal Gear Solid V a good game. It waits. This is a trait in great games that I have written a little about before. The Souls series of games is probably the most celebrated for waiting. By waiting, I mean that the game is happy to wait for the player to initiate play. This doesn’t mean that the game is slow or that it lacks intensity. It means that the design of the game is player reliant.
When you start a game of Robotron 2084 your character appears at the center of the screen and a horde of robots converge on you until either you clear the level and move on to the next or they touch you and the game ends. If you start the game and then lift your hands from the controls the robots will quickly close on you and end the game. The game system is player centric, but not player reliant. It will play itself to an end state with or without you.
With the exception of a few timed missions, MGSV is pretty willing to let the player take everything at their own pace. Want to lay down by a rock during a mission and research dog armor? Go for it. Want to retry that mission but only use grenades / sniper rifles / inflatable decoys? Not a problem. Want to run one mission over and over until you can finish it in a minute and a half? You can, and the game even expects that you might.
This waiting is different from a game that simply has no combat in an area or requires you to move to a new arena passing through an invisible switch that starts the next wave or puzzle. Even fairly sophisticated games that fall under that category, like the Uncharted series for example, really aren’t that much different from Robotron. You move from level to level, often without any indication that you have, and the game presents you with challenges that, in the case of combat, play out with or without your input.
Waiting is when a game operates in one state until the player chooses to trigger a new state through interaction. If the game provides a lot of options for how, when, and why the player triggers a new state, manipulating the system becomes the source of fun. This sort of goes back to my theory that fun is when our brains predict patterns from apparent chaos. A game system that waits until poked by a player offers pattern resolving opportunities by the bagful.
This isn’t to say that level or wave based games aren’t fun, they can be phenomenal, but they are player centric not player reliant. The player centric system will play out the simulation to an end point regardless of what the player does or doesn’t do. The player reliant system will just run. It’s possible that it would run forever while waiting for the player to interact with it. Even after the player manipulates the system it can keep running and never actually end the simulation. You as the player are required for the system to change, but the simulation is never driving toward any particular state. It just waits. It waits for you.
There, I took the time to write this, when really what I wanted to do the whole time is go back to playing MGSV. It’s late now, but maybe just one quick mission.

​
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    June 2012
    October 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    November 2010
    October 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010

    Categories

    All
    Adventure Caddie
    Best Games

    RSS Feed

Owen McManus
  • Blog
  • Stories
    • Story 000
    • Story 001
    • Story 002
    • Story 004
    • Story 007 - Unfinished
    • Story 008
    • Story 010 - BattleWagon
    • Story 012
  • Images
    • Adventure Caddie concept gallery
    • Page Design Gallery
    • Older Work
  • 5FEAT Video
  • Videos
  • Game Experiments
    • Climb
    • Super Shapetoy
    • TurboGarbageTruck
    • 031 - Best Games - Enchanter
    • 033 - Shader Test
  • Contact