Sunday, September 26, 2010

New games coming out

So, been trying to catch up on some games lately.  Picked up Deathspank, thongs of virtue over the weekend.  Think of it as a cross between diablo and monkey island style humour.  The first game was very well done, and the second game has kept the humour level going, but every enemy so far seems to be ranged, and you lack any decent infinite ammo ranged weapons like the first game, so it's taken a little bit of adjusting between the two games.  Looking forward to Dead Rising 2 this week, along with some more games of Civ V and starcraft 2.  So of course, time for some mechanics, today we are looking at travel.

So why travel you ask?  Almost every game has some form of travel in it.  From sonic racing across the fields, to flight paths in world of warcraft, to hopping between pipes and gaps in mario brothers, traveling is in every game, and every game does it differently.  Now, most games use travel as just a means, a way to get from point A to point B, without much fanfare.  We do have a whole genre of games devoted just to traveling, racing games (of which I fully admit I have not played much of so I cannot comment much on them right now).  Of course, some games also use travel as a small mini game, like Kingdom hearts in the gummi ship.  It's a way to travel between worlds, and also a small space mini shooter.  Travel can also occupy most of the aspects of a game, such as exploration.  Adventure games reward traveling from place to place by unlocking new items you can use, while some online games grant new forms of travel across vast stretches of land, reducing the amount of time needed to get there.

So,  some games actually seek to cut down on travel for players, either shuffling them from place to place without much input from the user (rail road shooters or even some new rpgs do this) and some games will actually discourage travel outside of certain areas, by putting vastly powerful monsters in your way.  So, this mechanic is kind of weird to talk about, as it's so common and spread out across so many genres that it becomes difficult to pin it down into one form or another.  I've actually had some ideas for some games tat would involve mostly travel as well, but I will save those for a later blog post.

So, with halloween coming up, I'm going to begin putting up some reviews of some survival horror games, some some more in depth looks into what makes a good survival horror games, and maybe even a gust post or two about some games.  Until next time, folks.

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