Red Faction: Guerrilla Preview

Red Faction: Guerilla has options. In fact, options is the name of the game, or at least of the PS3 demo I've been playing for the last few days.

Guerrilla's calling card is "destructibility." And in this aspect, the game truly does separate itself from the sheaf of other third-person shooters. Pounding a mullet through a wall is quite satisfying. As you blast through a wall, shingles or bricks go flying with the impact, revealing rebar support beneath the surface. Even better, enemy EDF soldiers have no place to hide; burst through their cover, and they'll go flying along with everything else. You feel powerful.

Don't like physical labor? Destructible objects are everywhere: one-shot bio-hazard drums, gas-filled towers that explode into green plumes of flame, propane tanks that can be lifted and tossed, and machinery that electrify and then, what else, explode. Additionally, one of the primary weapons are remote mines. Throw a bunch of these out, hit circle to detonate, and they'll blow-up in succession. It brings back fond memories of GoldenEye. These are no measly explosions, either; they're big, colorful, and feature all sorts of heat distortions. Explosions instantly devour buildings and launch nearby enemies into the air. Developer Volition's clearly devoted much effort to the effects, and it shows.As buildings become damaged, they are shaded red in the mini-map in the lower-left corner and a percentage is displayed over them to signify its degree of durability. The lower the percentage, the closer the building is to being fully destroyed, a feat which nets players resistance-moral points. These percentages, such small things, nag at players like dangling carrots, coaxing them to finish buildings off. The reward is moral points and sweet sweet satisfaction. Notch one more on the belt.

On top of destruction, Guerrilla also offers up a decent third-person shooter is also present, featuring, apparently, a couple dozen weapons. Players can jump, run, crouch, "fine aim," and standard to all of the genre now, cling to walls, peek around walls, and roll away from walls: all useful abilities. In the demo, you have access to an assault rifle, remote mines, mallet, pistol, and shotgun, not to mention heavy gun turrets. The game has no lock-on function, but does have a liberal snap-aim. Something of note, the cross-hairs differ per weapon (and also, oddly, are colored to blend with the background), each type representing that weapon's firing-area. Headshots certainly play their part here, but overall, the game does not require precise aiming, asking that players simply mow enemies down. Running and gunning is entirely dependent on the number of enemies around, not unfeasible, but taking cover is advised. Also, the player-character regenerates health liberally.

Vehicles are also available and, more pointedly, prominent. Using vehicles is almost mandatory, and encouraged, because once enemies start swarming around the player in droves, it becomes more and more difficult to fend them off with the ole' lock, stock, and barrel. Running over them is so much easier, and turrets, with an over-heating based ammo system, are far more effective than your standard guns. Best of all is the walker, a bipedal construction mech. Well, more like destruction. Hold down the R2 button, walk through a warehouse, and watch it come tumbling down on you. If blowing up buildings with planned demolition charges is like popping bubble wrap, one, bubble, at, a, time, then crashing through buildings with the walker is like squeezing the living hell out of the whole sheet.

The latter section of the demo is an on-rails shooter wherein you defend the truck from encroaching tanks. It's a good time, particularly when trying to take out passing buildings on the side while still fending off the AI.

If you achieve three kills in quick succession, regardless of means, a running "killing spree" counter will pop up. Another dangling carrot, and an effective one. Once this is on, there's no going back. My best score so far (on foot) is nine. These points add into some greater points purposes, but I don't fully understand it without playing the entire game. A similar destruction points system exists too that, if I'm guessing correctly, results from quickly knocking down a bunch of buildings. These systems are nice additions. They don't interrupt the gameplay really, except by player free-will, and add an additional, self-assumed challenge.

The combat isn't spectacular; rather, it feels a bit muted, distanced, but it is good fun and has its challenges. The controls are a bit strange, though, all three options. Though, by and large, they all perform competently, some vital function is always relegated to the R3 button: fine aim or melee. Why not set these to circle and set the much less often used detonate to R3? Really, in this day and age, I see absolutely no reason players should not have the option of fully customizing their control scheme. Ultimately, I settled on the Alternate 2 option, which assigns L2 to fine aim and R2 to fire.

Red Faction: Guerrilla offers choices to players, so many choices. Blow up a building or tear it down. Do neither. Kill people. Pass them by. Go for killing sprees. Kill them with vehicles. Kill them with guns. Getting a picture? I will say that in combat, all of these options mesh together fairly well, as I used whatever means most handy to take people or buildings out. But the game's options feel too disparate. As a player, I don't know what the game is asking of me. What does it want me to do? And I think the answer is this: whatever you want.

Well, that's actually a more difficult question than it seems. Because, if I just want to win the mission, I can jack a vehicle, drive right by the AI, jack the walker, and talk it to the truck. Simple, and really not much trouble. But it's too easy. Challenge is fun. And so if I want to have fun, ignoring the mission is the best course of action. I am referring to the demo mission alone, of course; I'm sure the whole game with its hundreds of missions offers many more challenging goals.

But to squeeze the most fun out of the demo that I could, I started making challenges for myself. This, ultimately, is where I feel Guerrilla will offer its choicest meat. I gave myself a sprint challenge: get to the walker and bring it to the truck as fast as you can. It was fun; my record so far is 1:51:39. I also tried taking down every building without the use of the walker; I never beat that one. How about get the highest killing spree you can? The game opened up for me once I gave myself these challenges, and I began to appreciate its potential. But I fear that with its abundance of options, everything comes off as a bit diluted. The key to the game's structure is not only showing players that they can go crazy in whatever ways they want, but also offering them reasons to do all of the things it offers. And I think the game admirably tries to do so with its myriad of points systems and overall story goals. Whether or not it succeeds we'll have to wait for the full game to find out.

The last point I want to mention is the game's being in third-person. Volition argues that the reason for this decision is so players can see more of their surroundings and have a better view of the destruction they cause. I'm not entirely sold on the idea. I think third-person does do both of these things. But I also think the game feels dulled from the perspective, and could have had a considerably more visceral impact from first person. Based my experience with the demo, I also think the game could have benefited from a slower pace and from tighter, more directed gameplay. Everything happens so quickly, and I think the game would be stronger and carry more weight if the pace were more deliberate.

Red Faction: Guerrilla is a fun game. I've played the demo many, many times now, an obvious testament to my enjoyment. I think Guerrilla is one of those games that will become more and more fun the longer you play it and the deeper you delve into its story and scenarios. I look forward to playing through the whole thing.

Images from Gamespy.

Further Notes on A Melding of Concepts

1up has posted an absolutely excellent interview with Prince of Persia devs Benn Mattes (producer), and Michael McIntyre (level designer). The interview is long, but covers a ton of topics, including interesting ideas on co-op design, and offers some truly great insight into the minds of these developers and the philosophy of Ubisoft Montreal. I would highly recommend reading the article. But for my purposes, the developers discuss at length the game's level design, which I also discussed in an article a couple of days ago.

Their explanations differ slightly from my own earlier conclusions, particularly the use of the term "linear," but I think the end result is the same. They explain themselves far better than I ever could, so. . .Commence Quotations!

Ben Mattes:
But not sandbox. We literally tried sandbox and it didn't work. We literally had level design that was fully beautified. It was shippable quality -- we had post effects, and everything was working in it. And we brought it to be playtested, and no one got any flow because they were overwhelmed with choice. You still had the ingredient-based controls: A to jump, B to swing off the ring. And yet they'd jump and land on a beam, and then they would just stop, because they didn't know, "Should I swing off of that pole or climb on that ledge or go over to that crack or climb up that wall or drop down to that beam?" So every step was slow, and we weren't getting that flow through the world that we wanted.

Michael McIntyre:
For acrobatics, we wanted them to be Prince of Persia-like, meaning they require inputs -- different inputs the whole way along, not like Assassin's Creed where you hold down buttons and you just flow and go. As soon as we knew we wanted that philosophy, the idea of an entirely open world wasn't working, so that was where we really had to decide to differentiate ourselves with a very controlled open world with a network of designed paths -- that's when things really started working for us on the design side.

Ben Mattes:
Yeah, when we made that decision to go to the network structure, everything just opened up to us. One of the great things about this network structure is I really believe we found the recipe -- I don't know if it's the only recipe, but it's a really good recipe -- for giving the player some of the freedom of an open world game, i.e., "Do I want to go there first or there first or there first?" putting a little more authorship into the hands of the player in terms of the experience they're going to have when playing the game, while maintaining the benefits of an on-rails, hold-your-hand linear game. Because we can more or less be guaranteed that every X number of minutes, you're going to have a relatively major set-piece type of experience, and you're going to encounter something spectacular, and we're going to push the story forward in an important way because of the way the world is organized.

We really think that fans of Drake's Fortune and God of War and Prince of Persia and all those linear action/adventure games who've never played a sandbox game, they're not going to walk into this game and suddenly feel overwhelmed by possibility, because they're still going to have the benefit of Elika's compass power, and the map structure, and the way the world is organized to have a more structured experience. But people who really like the sandbox games should hopefully feel like they're in control a little bit more, so they kind of get to dictate how the game unfolds -- and hopefully, they'll enjoy that element as well.

Interesting stuff, for sure. Ubisoft's priority was on retaining the spirit of Prince of Persia, which meant creating an environment that promoted acrobatic flow. The game hasn't come out yet, but based on everything I've seen and read, I think their final conclusion on level design will prove effective.

A Melding of Concepts

The battle of level-based versus open-world games has raged since the early days of video games. Mario and Sonic were level-based, but Metroid and Zelda featured worlds open for exploration. Indeed, the two game design models are engaged in a never-ending tug-of-war. A few years ago, the commercial and critical success of Grand Theft Auto 3 KO'd the long popular level-based design, decrying level-based games as "linear." In this generation, for a game to be called "linear" stands out as the worst form of sacrilege.

Meanwhile, open-world games were a fascinating new breed, unbound by the constraints of a level-based structure, allowing players to stretch their virtual arms and relish in the beauty of freedom, exploration, and choice. Games that relished in open-world design include Crackdown, The Incredible Hulk, and the Mercenaries series. But as the past-generation fades and the present hits its limelight, critics and game designers alike have bored gaping holes into the formally lauded open-world structure, revealing many pitfalls of its own. The tug-of-war continues, with both level-based and open-world games planting their feet firm before the mud-pit.
Ubisoft's Far Cry 2 was released only a couple of weeks ago, and the reception has been fairly split. Just look at Gamespy and Gamespot's catch-lines for their respective reviews of the game.
Gamespot's Shaun McInnis writes, "...Far Cry 2's first-person action squeezes every last drop of potential out of the unique African setting." Whereas Gamespy's Fargo writes, "Visually breathtaking and ambitious in scope, Far Cry 2 falls shy of it's amazing potential."
McInnis goes on to write, ". . .Far Cry 2's free-roaming terrain brilliantly harmonizes with the first-person combat." Fargo, meanwhile, writes, "The pacing of the game is way off. The majority of your time is spent driving to or from missions or safe houses or bus stops." And continues, "Far Cry 2 could've easily been a four-star game or higher if the focus would've been on the missions and not the travel."

Similarly, Chris Remo wrote an opinion piece about Far Cry 2 on Gamasutra, about authored narrative versus emergent narrative. Remo writes:

The game's persistent component parts feel designed to convey a convincingly (but not flashily) coherent world, but even more importantly to increase the chances of memorable things happening. [...] In fact, the game tries to define a set of rules and an environment in which memorable experiences are likely to happen, and simply lets the player loose in its world -- a fascinating prospect.

Clearly, people are of split opinion on open-world structure and of Far Cry 2 specifically. But each of these three commentators above make valid points. McInnis believes that Far Cry 2's open-world meshes well with its first-person-shooter gameplay. Fargo feels the open-world structure (of Far Cry 2, at least) creates a cohesive world, but is hindered by hideously repetitive sequences. Remo, on the other hand, is excited by the "prospect" of memorable, emergent gameplay scenes only made possible by the game's open-world. Who is right? They all are, really. But lets look at some more examples.
A game which eschews the open-world structure, soon to be released, is Blue Omega's Damnation. Damnation is a level-based third-person shooter which emphasizes verticality. In fact, the game is often marketed as "Taking the Shooter Vertical." Jacob Minkoff was interviewed a few months ago in Play Magazine. In the interview, he defends Blue Omega's decision to keep Damnation level-based in a time when both publishers and gamers seemingly refuse to invest in anything but open-world. And I think Minkoff makes something very clear: level-based is not synonymous with linear. Level-based games have accrued this stigma of linearity, which even itself isn't bad but has been painted black by critics and forum-goers. Even so, Minkoff explains why level-based games can be fun without being linear:

I sort of equate it to the idea of a three-year-old getting their own soda from the soda machine. I love coke, and I love orange, and I love lemonade, and I'm going to put them all together--but then, oh my god, I don't want to drink this! I think that's the feeling that occasionally happens, it's like, you want choice, well here you go. Here's every choice you could ever want. Well, now there are so many choices I don't know quite what to do. What we're trying to do [with Damnation] is find that balance. You've got choice. You won't feel trapped or claustrophobic or held down in the game, but you're not set adrift.

To achieve this, every level in Damnation has a clear objective in the distance. The player's goal is to reach that objective by any means necessary. In the same Play interview, Minkoff likens the concept to a famous trilogy: "Lord of the Rings is all about that. Tower, get to it."

Taking the shooter vertical is more than just a marketing line, its a design foundation. Blue Omega didn't want for Damnation to fall prey to the pitfalls of the open-world genre, but also wanted to avoid the negative perception of the dullness of linear progression, and so they designed with a mantra of interesting, tall level design. The levels in Damnation offer multiple routes for tackling situations; players have to be both observant and skilled to make the most of the environment. Additionally, players have access to a "spirit vision" or a self described "wall hack" which allows them to see the glowing auras of nearby enemies. Everything works hand-in-hand.

And this is really the core philosophy behind Damnation: The levels, platforming, shooting, spirit vision; everything was designed in unison to function cooperatively. The game wouldn't be the same in first-person; the freedom of platforming would likely be lost. Likewise, the game wouldn't be the same with an open-world structure. You're probably thinking by now, "Well of course; that's obvious." Is it? The only reason it seems obvious is because Blue Omega designed a cohesive structure. They could have just as easily tried to fit Damnation into an open-world structure, but as is, the attempt would have failed. The point is that neither level-based nor open-world is "the right way." Both offer their own opportunities and limitations. Good design is taking advantage of either form and building a game to mesh with the chosen structure.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Another platforming game soon to be released is Ubisoft Montreal's Prince of Persia. Unlike Damnation, Prince of Persia takes place in an open-world. But just like it would be incorrect to label Damnation as linear, it would be unwise to label Prince of Persia with all of the negative connotations recently associated with the open-world structure. In an interview with IncGamers, Thomas Delbugeut explains PoPs unique structure:

Granted, there are a lot of things that are different about this Prince of Persia – the prince is completely different, the atmosphere is completely different – but we wanted to keep all the core elements that make it Prince of Persia. We lost most of that trying to incorporate an open world structure. So we went back to the drawing board and created more of a network thing, which allowed us to get more of those step-by-step sequences. It was a lot more interesting and ended up giving us the game we have now.

A network. Not open-world, not level-based, a unique approach to level design. In a Developer Diary, Producer Ben Mattes describes the structure "with an analogy" of a highway system, wherein players choose different routes connecting various cities in the world. As with Damnation, the routes are specifically designed to function with the Prince's acrobatic abilities and powers. Wall-runs, slides, pole hugs, shimmy's: sounds linear, doesn't it? But Montreal has in-fact (presumably, of course) completely avoided the stigmas of both level-based and open-world structures by merging the two forms. It's worth noting that Prince of Persia is different from open-world games such as Mercenaries 2 or Far Cry 2 in that it's not focused on emergent gameplay situations. But that's actually the beauty of the design. Prince of Persia is about scripted gameplay sequences; it's a puzzle-platformer. But by opening up the world halfway with a split-path structure, Ubisoft has avoided any prospect of being undermined as linear.
There's one more game coming out this winter that forgoes open-world structure for straight-up level-based gameplay. Not to say it's linear, either. I'm talking about Mirror's Edge, the first-person parkour game developed by DICE.

Chris Remo (again) recently interviewed Mirror's Edge producer Nick Channon for Gamasutra. In the interview, Channon discusses the philosophy behind the game's structure:

I think it's just looking at what you've got, looking at where your strengths are in your game, and in your mechanics, and building the levels out around it. And the fact that we could've gone open world, we could've made a game that felt very open, but we went for a more linear story, and we went for a more level-based game -- and the reason for that was that we wanted to pack as much action in as we could.

As soon as we'd have gone open world, I think that would've watered it down. So I think that was one learning, in the fact that a lot of people think, nowadays, that open world's the way to go, and it's the next-gen thing -- I don't think I believe it is.

It's clearly right for some games, absolutely, but you can actually get a lot more in, at times, in more of a level-based [game].

Channon hits the nail on the head. Open-world structure is right for some games, but it wasn't right for Mirror's Edge, and DICE realized this. DICE had goals, priorities. And like Blue Omega has also done, Mirror's Edge has been designed for every aspect to work cooperatively. Something I didn't mention earlier, Ubisoft didn't feel the open-world structure catered to the intense, one-on-one fights that were to take place in Prince of Persia; they weren't making Dynasty Warriors, and they knew it. So Ubisoft designed the world alongside the combat structure, so the two fit together like a nice little puzzle. In a similar manner, DICE had certain things they wanted to accomplish with Mirror's Edge, among them being a strong, linear narrative. And to achieve this, they designed the game with levels, because they felt it fit their intentions and motivations. But a linear narrative does not mean linear levels. Far from it. In the same interview at Gamasutra, Channon expounds upon the above statement.

You have to give a choice; it can't be just, 'Do this, do this,' you know. And that's what we've done: We've built every level out to have lots of choice, and I think the thing that we're really pleased about is that, actually, the amount of choice in every level is just limited to your imagination. Which really plays in the movement, and the parkour elements that we talked about.

You see what Channon is saying? Level based. In part to help the narrative, but still offering freedom of movement, split-second, instinctive choice, to complement the fast-paced action. Additionally, DICE has consistently said that they want the levels to be replayable. How many times have you played the demo? Exactly. Much like time trials in racing games, the levels in Mirror's Edge are intended to be played again and again, encouraging players to find, and successfully perform "that perfect run."

Here is the point of my rabble: it's about the design. Level-based, open-world, a mix of the two, they're all correct so long as the game is designed from every perspective, every facet, ever aspect to work cooperatively as one cohesive unit. Far Cry 2 was designed open-world to keep player's immersed in the illusion and to encourage experimentation with the nigh infinite weapons and approaches available to any given situation. Damnation promotes experimentation with approach as well, but in a completely different manner with a level-based, vertically oriented structure. Prince of Persia blends the benefits of both worlds to maintain its puzzle platforming gameplay without feeling overtly linear. And Mirror's Edge focuses high-speed action within a linear narrative by offering split-path levels.

The tug-of-war between the the two sides is likely to continue, but we're also starting to realize that both approaches offer plenty of opportunity for effective gameplay scenarios if designed properly.

Update: Mirror's Edge Discussion Continued Here.

Tomorrow: Linear is Fun

Sources:
Sonic and Knuckles from Neoseeker
All other images from Gamespot