Games within games.

Sorry for the missed post on Thursday, personal issues arose that made it so if I had posted, it would have been so angst ridden and poorly thought out that I would have deserved to be slapped about the face with a trout.  So back to the topic at hand.  Games within games.  Sometimes called mini games, other times side adventures, and even other times not given a specific name, just something else to do.  These will pop up in various kinds of games, such as RPGs, strategy games, platformers and even some adventure games.  They usually involve performing some tasks that is different from the standard style of the game.  Examples of this include the mini defense game in ff7, the racing game in Beyond Good and Evil and the shooters in Dead Space.

The purpose of these games usually depends upon the context of it within the game.  For Beyond Good and Evil, it's used to collect extra items, and sometimes to advance the plot slightly.  For Final Fantasy it's used to illustrate a story part of the game where a city is under attack.  The actual reasons range from these to just something extra the developers of the game wanted to put into it, to either test the waters for new ideas or even because they wanted to present the player with a different kind of experience then they would normally get within the game.  Sometimes these side games will be quite helpful and give the player new rewards or items.  Sometimes they will just be there as time sinks within a game.

Short post tonight, as tonight is the start of The walking Dead TV show on AMC, and we're still cleaning up a bit after the Halloween party we threw.  Going to be doing a double post this week to make up for some lost space etc, and thinking of trying out a few new ideas.