The Adventure Construction Set was a fun start for the twelve-year-old me, but it was just the beginning. I don’t think I got into videogame world-creation again until my adult life, when Neverwinter Nights was released with its Aurora Engine. The C-like language that they gave you enabled me to program my own rules for resting, where you were only allowed to set camp once per day, and you had a chance to be interrupted by wandering monsters. At an inn, you healed fully and there was no chance of monsters.

Neverwinter’s scripting engine allowed me to set scripted events, triggers, and traps, and do more than you’d ever expect. All in all, I spent a good year creating my Neverwinter Nights adventure. I think there was only once person who ever played it, and not to completion, but I had fun and learned a lot.

Today, games like LittleBigPlanet allow people to create some pretty amazing things, but as a console game, it can’t have as deep a toolset as a PC counterpart could have.

Andrew Armstrong brings things a bit further, incorporating RTS games and Sim City into his construction theme. I suppose that if I expanded like that, the one game I’d certainly include is Dungeon Keeper. The game is ancient, but it’s still very good.

In closing, I really enjoy games that allow me to create worlds, but the whole operation is so time-consuming that I can only really get into it once every ten or fifteen years.

So here we are at the fifth part of my series on the elements I enjoy most in games. This time, I’ll be talking about games that allow you to create and customize something. The two games that come to mind as having done this very well are the Mechwarrior series and the old Commodore 64 game Autoduel. Both give you the ability to construct vehicles and modify them with weapons and armor, and then ride them into combat.

I haven’t played Autoduel in many years, but I loved putting together vehicles with specifications geared to my own play style. You could select a sedan, a station wagon, a van, or any of a number of vehicle bodies. You’d then select a power plant and a tire type. Puncture proof and solid tires did especially well against spikedroppers. Then you’d place armor on the car’s various locations. If you were planning on charging enemies head-on, you’d put lots of armor up front. If you felt daring, you could save weight and money by not putting armor on the car’s undercarriage, but then if you ever hit a landmine, you were screwed.

The game then let you pick from many weapons, and place them wherever you wanted. You could mount dual rocket launchers on the front, a recoilless rifle on the side, or maybe a flamethrower on the vehicle’s rear. Personally, I was a big fan of the side-mounted laser. I’d just put tons of armor on that side of the vehicle, then drive circles around the enemy and fry him.

If there were ever an update of this game, they could add in turrets, gas versus electric engines, varying traction for different tire types, and maybe even ablative armor, which was always a favorite of mine when we’d play tabletop Car Wars.

In the Mechwarrior series, you select from a number of light, medium, heavy, or assault chassis, and then pile on armor and weapons. Weight is a serious consideration, as each chassis has a maximum weight limit. As you begin to add weapons, the heat they generate also becomes a factor. You can add heat sinks, but they take up more space and weight. Thus, the four limiting factors you have to consider are weight, heat, space, and of course money.

Mass driver weapons such as machine guns and autoguns are a standard, but you need to be sure to add ammunition for them, which takes up space. You can add as much ammo as you like, but should the part of the mech where you’ve stored the ammo take significant damage, the ammunition might explode, causing additional damage.

There are also energy weapons such as lasers and particle projection cannons. They require no ammo, but tend to generate much more heat, and you may find yourself waiting longer in between shots in order to prevent a forced shutdown triggered by excessive heat buildup.

Missiles can also be a good option. They tend to lock on, and thus require less work to aim manually. They require ammo just like mass drivers do, and have the same potential issues with ammo explosions. But they can take up a lot of space and weight, and don’t usually fire as quickly as the other alternatives.

Thus, it’s a trade off. The construction of a mech can be as much fun as playing through the actual combat. When you perfect a build that you really enjoy, deciding to add in jump jets, enhanced radar, anti-missile devices, or any of the other options, playing with that mech can be all the more rewarding.

I’ve always loved these types of games that give you a lot of depth in creating your engine of destruction, and then use them to kill enemies. I haven’t seen a good one in years. Hopefully this lawsuit doesn’t stop the new Mechwarrior game from coming out. I’d love to play it.

Pool of Radiance (1988)
I originally bought Pool of Radiance for my Commodore 64 because it was a Dungeons and Dragons game. Based on first edition “Advanced” Dungeons and Dragons, it allowed you to create a party of Fighters, Magic-Users, Clerics, and Thieves, and pit them against the kobolds and ogres in the city slums, and the skeletons and ghasts inhabiting Sokol Keep. The game was completely turn-based, and you could position your wall of fighters so as to line up your magic-user’s lightning bolt just right, or maneuver your thief into place for a x5 backstab. If you positioned a fireball just right, you could hit so many enemies that you’d have to sit and watch for nearly 2 minutes while the game reported everyone who was injured or killed. This was the first game I’d ever played that included truly tactical combat.

Wasteland (1988)
I didn’t play Wasteland until much later, but it took the semi-tactical combat of games like Ultima IV and V and combined it with the interface of the Bards Tale games. You got the “good graphics” (for the time) of the Bards Tale games, and at the same time you got the top-down view which allowed you to split up your party and move in your melee characters while keeping your gun-havers at a distance. It may not have been nearly as tactical a game as Pool of Radiance, but it was innovative for the time.

Baldur’s Gate (1998/2000)
Here’s the one that you knew was coming. Baldur’s Gate was the game that introduced the awesome “Infinity Engine”. I recently listened to a podcast interview with the guy from Bioware in which he discussed the origins of Baldur’s Gate. Twas awesome.

Baldur’s Gate originated the idea of creating a pseudo-turn-based game by allowing you to pause the action whenever you wanted. It also used 2nd Edition Dungeons and Dragons rules, which included a huge number of races, character classes, and spells. This allowed you to create a huge variety of characters and institute tactics that included ranged weapons, backstabs, area effect spells, trap laying, and more.

Fallout Tactics (2001)
I didn’t buy Fallout Tactics right away. As a huge fan of the first two Fallout games, (which were based largely on the above-mentioned Wasteland) I’d heard that the story in Fallout Tactics wasn’t nearly what that of the first two games had been, and that made me sad. This is my sad face. When I finally picked up the game, I found that they’d added a lot of complexity to the actual combat system. Cover and partial cover, the ability to kneel or lie prone, and complex 3d line of sight mechanics were all in place. While you could play the game in real-time, the pseudo-turn-based gameplay is what really made the game great for me. It worked much like Fallout 3, using an action point system. Although the gameplay could be real-time or turn-based, the action points were the main factor in whether or not you could do something.

The environments and maps in the game’s various missions were a big part of what made the game great for me. I was a big fan of the sneak skill, and I’d use it to sneak forward, plant some landmines, and then sneak my sniper up to a really good vantage point where he’d lie prone and wait. Then I’d have a character with a shotgun sneak up as close to the enemies as possible, perhaps just on the other side of a sandbag wall or embankment. Then I’d have a character pop up and throw a grenade, have the shotgun guy pop up and fire point blank, and the sniper would start sniping. Fun!

Temple of Elemental Evil (2003)
Temple of Elemental Evil certainly had its issues. It shipped with a lot of bugs, and many of them were never fixed properly. But the actual combat engine was simply awesome. As a fan well-versed in the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 ruleset, I found the options available for combat to be a playground. I could ready my archer so as to shoot at any enemy if he prepared to cast a spell, I could charge and get double movement for an attack, I could fight defensively for an armor class bonus, even make a five foot adjust so as to retreat without provoking attacks of opportunity. I can certainly see how these rules might take a lot of getting used to for someone who isn’t already familiar, but for me, seeing the rules with which I was already familiar implemented so well in a video game was awesome. The complexity in the rule system for this game probably surpasses any of the others, which is part of what I love about it.

Dragon Age: Origins (2009)

The tactical combat in Dragon Age took some getting used to. I’ve now gotten a better feel for how the game camera zooms and pans – it’s a little odd, but it can be comfortable once you get used to it. I’ve also figured out how to stop my archers and mages from charging. It’s all about the “hold position” button that I didn’t know existed.

I’m having a lot of fun sneaking forward with my rogue to place traps and backstab, positioning fireballs and cones of cold for maximum effect, and looking forward to a point in the game when I’ll be able to use spell combos. Controlling four characters rather than the six you were allowed in Baldur’s Gate is a slight letdown, but overall I’m loving the game.

And these are the games in which I’ve most enjoyed the tactical combat. Next week, I’ll be bringing you the final installment in my Variations on a theme series.

The two examples I like to look at for gameplay variety are The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Beyond Good and Evil. Twilight Princess has swordfighting, goat-herding, fishing, chicken gliding, sumo wrestling and wolf-howling. Beyond Good and Evil has fighting, vehicle driving, platforming, first-person shooting, puzzle solving, item collecting, air hockey, and my favorite: stealth. All are drastically different types of gameplay, and serve to keep the game fresh as you play.

Variety like this in what I can only term an “action-adventure” game is rare, but it’s hard not to love a well-made game with gameplay diversity as deep as that in the above two titles.

Indigo Prophecy had a good deal of gameplay variety, which is a large part of the reason I liked it, and games like Super Mario Galaxy and Space Rangers 2 certainly try hard. But I can’t think of any games that have come out in the past 2-3 years with gameplay variety close to that of Twilight Princess and Beyond Good and Evil. Can you?

Early on, I found that one of the themes that came up in many of my favorite games was atmosphere. I remember the first time I played Half-Life 2. At one point, I came to a beach with the sun setting over the water. The scenery was so amazing that I had to stop and just stare for a few seconds. In those few seconds, I got shot.

The amazing outdoor scenery and realistic run-down East European urban landscapes make Half-Life 2 an incredibly atmospheric and immersive game, but it’s by no means the only one. I had similar reactions to many areas in Oblivion. The snowy peaks of Bruma’s Jerall Mountains, the swamps around Bravil, and the softly glowing depths of Aleid ruins all stood out to me, made me feel that I was truly there.

The final pair of games in my immersive/atmospheric collection, which I feel I need to hit in tandem, is Dead Space and Doom 3. Both take place on dark spaceships filled with hideous demonic creatures. And while each does certain things better than the other, both make excellent use of light, darkness, and sound to create a tense and threatening atmosphere. They’re best played in the dark. Muahahahaha!

One aspect of games that I’ve always appreciated is innovation. When a game comes out that does something totally new or that bucks the formulas to which it might be expected to adhere, it’s hard not to stand up and take notice.

The most recent example of a totally new type of game I can think of is Scribblenauts. And while the game may not have succeeded on all fronts, being quite annoying at times, it did deliver on its promise to create nearly any object that you can imagine. You’re limited only by the words you can think of, and by how the game may misinterpret multi-word objects.

The game may be a full generation old by this point, but Shadow of the Colossus still stands out to me as an innovative game. It set you against sixteen opponents, and removed any possible distractions. No leveling up, no gear to acquire, and only two attributes to improve. Only sixteen unique opponents in the entire game. I imagine that this allowed the developers to focus on making the game a cinematic experience and making the colossi sufficiently epic, which they most certainly were.

Since Maniac Mansion and Myst, adventure games have innovated very little. Their text adventure origins led to graphic adventures, and then to point-and-click adventures. The advances since then have been small and incremental. While the genre certainly does have gems like Grim Fandango, The Longest Journey, and Syberia, they haven’t really broken out of the old formula at all. Games like Still Life have some limited real-time components, but not until 2005’s Fahrenheit (remarketed in North America as Indigo Prophecy) had I ever seen real innovation in an adventure game. Many people complain about the pseudo-quicktime events in the four-directional keys that take place during action scenes, comparing it even to old games like Dragon’s Lair. But beyond that, the fact that you had only seconds to reply in a conversation, the fact that they included stealth segments, and the inclusion of a sanity meter made the game new and different. There were even keyboard and mouse related minigames for completing everyday tasks that ranged from playing with a yo-yo to giving CPR. Not your standard adventure game fare. I’m looking forward to 2010’s Heavy Rain for many of the same reasons.

Perhaps Indigo Prophecy was a game mash-up of sorts. Mixing game genres is certainly becoming more popular, whether it’s Word Worm Adventure’s combination of word puzzle and RPG or Borderlands’s mashup of RPG and shooter. I think the first I’d noticed game genre mashing up was when I played Puzzle Quest for the Nintendo DS. That was certainly an innovative game. Later came Braid, with its mixing of platforming and puzzle genres. The time rewind mechanic as an alternative to losing a life may have been used previously in Prince of Persia, but in a 2D sidescroller, it seemed to be a totally different animal.

What are your favorite game mash-ups? What games do you think have been most innovative?

In examining my favorite games, I found that much of what made me enjoy various games was gameplay related: very atmospheric or innovative games, games with a lot of variety, or just games that are excellent examples of their genre.

The one element I was able to identify that seemed more thematic was conspiracy. Perhaps that’s not the right word. Let me explain. The two games I pinpointed here are Beyond Good and Evil and Half-Life 2. In Beyond Good and Evil, you’re a photographer working to destabilize the obviously evil government by obtaining photographic evidence of their wrongdoings. In Half-Life 2, you play Gordon Freeman, a human freedom fighter battling an occupying extraterrestrial army. Without gushing, I absolutely love both games.

While the government conspiracy in Beyond Good and Evil is clear, classifying The Combine in Half-Life 2 as a government may be a stretch, as may be label of conspiracy. Nonetheless, there are definite thematic similarities.

I suppose there’s something about taking on an enemy that’s so obviously more powerful that calls to me. Head-to head, the DomZ and the Alpha Sections would destroy Jade. That’s why it’s largely a stealth game. Head to head, Combine armies would overpower even the mighty Gordon Freeman. That’s why he so often has NPC companions and never fights more than one helicopter, airship, or strider at a time.

Perhaps it’s all about freeing oppressed people. In a totalitarian envoronment, a member of the populace arises to become the classic unlikely hero. Maybe that’s the lure for me.

Resisting a powerful government or occupational force is a theme we’ve seen in movies like Red Dawn and V for Vendetta, but not nearly as often in video games. I suppose the same could be said of Red Faction: Guerilla, but I haven’t yet played that game. Perhaps I should.