Usability is a theme dear to my heart. I’m a staunch believer that every game should have mappable control buttons and allow me to invert both the X and Y axis. Damn you Final Fantasy XII for ruining my ability to turn left and right correctly the first time!

In that vein, LevelUp’s Gaming Tidbits last week pointed me towards Improving Usability in Games. I fully agree with the points in part 1, with particular emphasis on point 5: Know what the f’k I’m doing.

A player should be able to put down a game for a period of months at a time and still be able to hop right back in. Anything else is self-defeating and counter-productive.

How to Make Games User-Friendly: Part 1 - James Portnow on Next-Gen

This problem is exactly the reason why I’m so passionate about journal systems in games. It applies to games as simple and linear as Army of Two or as complex and unwieldy as Deux Ex: Invisible War. I and so many other gamers, simply cannot afford to play every day or even every week. When we do find the time to get return to a game after a holiday, (or after a month of Guitar Hero 3 obsession ;) we need to be reminded of what the hell we were trying to achieve before RL got in the way. A simple log of what’s just happened and where we could go next would make our game experience so much happier.

I’m not quite as enamoured with part two of the series but James makes some good points about the advantage of an in-game manual and SD-TV compatibility. Read them yourself at How To Make Games User-Friendly: Part 2

What are your most reviled game design decisions?

Popularity: 7% [?]

Age Rating:

12 (BBFC)

What is it?

A Bioware RPG witha futuristic space-colony setting and third-person-cover combat

It is fun?

Hell, yes.

Is it worth the money?

(£39.99)

Yes, yes, yes. At £1 per hour, it’s very good value for money.

Why?

I love western-style RPGs. I love sci-fi settings. And I love taking cover during combat. I love Mass Effect. This game is almost made for me :)

There are flaws. I talked about Mass Effect’s dialogue issue back in December. The inventory interface is quite possibly the worst I’ve ever seen, as is the party selection menu. Still, I had so much fun playing the game itself that I don’t really care.

The Good:

• Purpose - You have actual goals throughout the game that aren’t simply “shoot everything in sight”. Sure, that’s generally the means to your end, but at least there’s a purpose behind it.
• Combat - The combat system is great. It’s like Gears of War but less frustrating. Gears feels like you’re wearing a huge chunk of magnetic armour and everything else is made of iron. Mass Effect gives you more control when running and it’s far easier to go around things.
• Breadth - You have a giant world to explore. This isn’t a sandbox game but you can spend hours just exploring the Citadel and pick up lots of side-quests
• A useful journal! Longtime readers will know, I’m a bit fanatic about RPG journals. This one does the job, though could have done with listing the target locations more prominently. Iinstead, you’re forced to open up every single item repeatedly, to find the nearby missions.
• Force powers Biotics - These mysterious powers are great fun. There’s a little something for everyone - healing, direct damage, disabling, shields, sharpshooting… I love it. None of them look quite as spectacular as KOTOR2’s Force Storm, but the combination of Lift and an assault-rifle-wielding teammate looks impressively violent.
• Advancement - I’m not sure if BioWare did a sneaky enemies-level-up-with-you but if they did, it was very subtle and much more satisfying than Oblivion. In Oblivion as you got more powerful, it never felt that way because even the lowliest grass-dwelling bandit mysteriously sprouted glass armour and would kick your sorry ass unless you specialised in combat. In Mass Effect, you can do the majority of the game in any order and it’s always challenging, but you still get the feeling of becoming more powerful.

The Bad:

• The interface and dialogue system. The interface will need a whole post to explain, so I’ll save that for another time. Just trust me, it’s rubbish.
• Uncharted worlds - These are fun to start with. The first time you get dropped on an uncharted world, it’s a breathtakingly beautiful scene. The next hundred and fifty seven times start to grate. Ultimately, the uncharted worlds all feel the same - drive around from way point to way point, drive in circles shooting something, fall off a mountain, find building, kill everyone, search back room (or for variety, upstairs back room), play unlocking mini-game, The End. But it’s the only way to get that level 50 achievement so, for some insane reason, I did them all. There’s no way I’m going for level 60 on another playthrough.
• Repetition - The endless combat in corridors for the main quest does get a little samey after a while.
• Achievements - If you collect gamerpoints compulsively, Mass Effect will swallow you for days. Assuming that you play as efficiently as possible, you’ll have to play the game all the way through twice and the middle four planets at least once more with different allies. Considering it took me around 40 hours to hit level 50 with almost all the sidequests, that’s something in the region of 80-100 hours to get all the gamerpoints. I’d advise you to rent Avatar: The Burning Earth instead, but you probably already did.
• Tower of Hanoi - Has BioWare ever made an RPG that didn’t feature the Tower of Hanoi? I’ve been solving this puzzle for at least 15 years now. I know it was in KOTOR and I’m sure I saw it in another BioWare game. Here’s a compromise; show us the puzzle and have a character ask what it is. If we answer Tower (or Towers) of Hanoi we get a free pass, okay?

In summary:

It’s a brilliant space-shooter RPG. Mass Effect would get my vote for Game of The Year 2007.

Mysteriously HUD-Free Screenshots

Popularity: 19% [?]

Here we are at the conclusion of my post series on computer RPG journal design. I will admit, I am a usability freak. The one thing that will wind me up faster than anything on earth is software design that isn’t based around the user. This website makes my skin crawl.

Please, cRPG designers, think about the journal early in your game design. Unless your game has all the complexity of Doom 3, a journal can make or break your game. Here is your cut-out-and-keep checklist of things to consider:

General Points:

1. Hired genre-appropriate writer?
2. Logged all known quests?
3. Category: Trailheads
4. Category: Quests in progress
5. Category: Quests completed
6. Category: Quests on the backburner
7. Category: Quests’ area

Quest-specific points:

1. Logged all details given in dialogue?
2. Logged information source?
3. Logged information source location? (if known)
4. Logged promised reward? (if known)
5. Logged what player has already done?
6. Logged where player should go next? (if known)
7. Logged known map locations?
8. Logged visited vs. unexplored areas?
9. Logged acquisition of unique quest object?
10. Logged loss/discard and location of unique quest object?

Click on each item to get the detailed explanations. Do you think I’ve missed anything? Do you disagree? Let me know.

[HRODC website found through Experts Exchange]

Popularity: 4% [?]

This is the fifth part in my ongoing series of articles detailing the essentials to consider when writing a journal for a computer-based role-playing game. The previous parts are:

• RPG Journal Part I - The Basics
• RPG Journal Part II - The Categories
• RPG Journal Part III - Information
• RPG Journal Part IV - Maps

Inventory

When I pick up an as-yet-unrevealed quest item, please please please, log it in the journal. I can’t stand it when you find odd items like A Toothbrush with no clue as to its importance. I learned my gaming habits from playing Steve Meretzky games. Did anyone else get caught out by leaving the screwdriver back in Arthur’s house in Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy? Or have their Simpleberry Bush confiscated in Spellcasting 201: The Sorceror’s Applicance? Growing up with those games has left me with a healthy inventory-centric paranoia.
Continue Reading

Popularity: 9% [?]

Long-time readers of The Average Gamer may have noticed a certain tendency on my part. Every once in a while I come over all excitable about some aspect of gaming. I’ll write an entire series of posts about it. Then the series stops. Abruptly.

I do apologise. Here is part 4 of How To Write an RPG Journal - Maps. Turns out maps are quite big enough to warrant their own section. For those of you who missed the series back in January, have a look at RPG Journal Part I - The Basics, RPG Journal Part II - The Categories, and RPG Journal Part III - Information.

Maps

Maps are important. Incredibly important. Even when your game isn’t the size of World of Warcraft. I know, it’s not the sort of thing that gets mentioned in reviews. Trust me, the map feature is sorely missed if it’s not there.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. If I recall, it didn’t have a map. If it did have a map, it was next-to-useless. Remember that giant bird cage in the menagerie? I climbed all the way to the top of that. Then I went on holiday. When I came back a month later I had no idea where I’d been or where I was going. I spent a few days running around in large but unproductive circles before moving on to a more rewarding game. Seamlessly-blended levels are pretty and immersive but make everything look very samey.
Continue Reading

Popularity: 9% [?]

This is the third in a series of posts that attempt to deconstruct the humble computer RPG journal. Other posts in the series are:

This post is all about fleshing out your RPG journal. Make it useful. I’m not about to tell anyone how to write. Rather, I’ll focus on what to include and what’s safe to discard.

Record everything

RPG quests can be horrifically complex. Well-written dialogue provides a lot of information. Journals for computer role-playing games are there to take some of the strain out of remembering. Don’t forget, us gamers are busy people. Between blogging, learning VB.net, having a social life, household chores and everything else, remembering the fine details of a D&D computer RPG quest is pretty low on the list. It is crucial not to overlook pertinent facts when writing a journal. Here’s a list of things you should include in every quest entry.
Continue Reading

Popularity: 14% [?]

This is the second in a series of posts that attempt to deconstruct the humble computer RPG journal. Other posts in the series are:

RPGs are about a story, a world and your place within that world. In such a non-linear environment, the entire user experience of the story centres around two things - 1) the journal, and 2) the way people treat your character. This post is about the importance of journal structure.

Categorise Everything

Gamers have jobs. Gamers have kids. A lot of us just don’t have the time or inclination to work through pages of chronologically-ordered diary entries hunting for that elusive clue that we overlooked the first time.

That’s what computers are for.

As I said previously, keep the journal entries for finished quests separately from the unfinished ones. Keep the entries for ongoing quest A away from the entries for quest B. Make it easy for the player to find the entry they’re looking for.

This can all be done in a fairly small and simple interface, thanks to the worldwide familiarity of hypertext. It’s handy, that Internet. Failing that, use tabs. Click on headers. I don’t care. Just keep it simple. Continue Reading

Popularity: 17% [?]

This is the first in a series of posts that attempt to deconstruct the humble computer RPG journal. Other posts in the series are:

RPGs. Role Playing Games. Games where the emphasis is on role-playing and story, choosing what missions to complete and how you complete them.

By their very essence, computer RPGs are complex. You can have five or more different tasks to juggle at the same time and for each task you can choose to do them a different way in order to achieve a different outcome. Gee, what would be useful to keep track of this? Why, a journal of course. How convenient that the game developers provided one for me. Now I don’t need to write everything down and lose it because the game will keep track of all the details, right?

Wrong.
Continue Reading

Popularity: 11% [?]