Playing in the Sand
Posted: 2008-10-31
I can remember the days of games like Microplay/Rainbird’s 1989 Midwinter and the later sequel, Midwinter 2: Flames of Freedom published by Microprose quite fondly. They were in-essence the hybrid of first person shooter and RPG, with a large open world and a sandbox-gameplay mechanic that meant you could lose yourself for hours and hours just exploring Mike Singleton’s creation.
As I look back over the years I’ve been gaming, since I had my start on an old ZX-80 with games like Hunt the Wumpus there have always been these sandbox style titles that attempted to break free of the shackles imposed by linear gaming. Now as we firmly rocket closer to 2009 we’re given a veritable slew of games that are embracing this gameplay mechanic as the new Messiah of gaming, along with my all-time favourite gameplay mode: cooperative gaming which is to be the subject of a later article.
This particular article stemmed from my desire to talk/rant about sandbox games, the kinds of sandboxes I like and perhaps the sandboxes yet to be created. We are all aware of the GTA phenomena and the inevitable clones that it spawned over the years. From the 3d sequels Vice City and so on to the spin-offs that were inspired, such as Just Cause and Saints Row we’ve had a pretty good time as sandboxes go. Even the superhero genre has titled towards the old sandbox with the latest Spider-Man games especially Spider-Man: Web of Shadows.
If you read my review you’ll see why I rate that game amongst my favourite sandbox Spider-Man games to date along with Spider-Man 2. Assassin’s Creed provided us with a historical sandbox to run around, climb and generally leap from roof to roof and whilst playing it I couldn’t help think that Ubisoft need to get their hands on DC comic’s Batman license and then do a sandbox Batman game using that engine.
The very nature of a sandbox game would be perfect for the Caped Crusader and could even include the aforementioned cooperative gameplay mode. I think it would be immense fun to have access to a virtual Wayne Manor and the hidden Batcave. It could serve as the global hub of operations and then random crimes could be displayed on the Bat Computer for you to select and deal with as you see fit. There’s a wealth of options there in costumes and vehicle design with the chance for players to explore land, sea, air and Batman’s various gadgets.
Iconic villains could serve to further the global story and minor bad guys would be of course served up on the plate of punishment to give the player a break from the main goals. Sandbox gaming should be all about player choice and whether it be single or two/more player cooperative gaming it should present a large enough world for the player to enjoy, enough challenges that they don’t get bored and there should be one single caveat for future games in this genre. No more flag collecting missions, yes, Ubisoft – I’m talking to you here!
Assassin’s Creed was a wonderful sandbox, with some pretty awesome dynamic combat and great chases. What spoilt it for me was the same thing that Just Cause suffered from, a lack of enthusiasm and repetition in the side-mission design, most of the time they just weren’t all that fun and you had to repeat the same core side-mission types several times. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to repeatedly stab and gut the arrogant assassin jackhole who kept on losing those flags and then crowing about how I was the asshat of the order. At least I didn’t drop 30 flags around Jerusalem when I was sent to kill someone!
Whilst I’m on a do’s and don’t rant, we shall poke a little at the recently released Mercenaries 2 on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. When you give the player a pretty massive sandbox to play in, the first thing they want to do is shoot people or blow things up. When you tout that you’re giving them an over the top destructible environment and enough arsenal to wipe out all known life within a ten mile radius, don’t immediately make it so that said player has to run up and play tag with a beacon then have to stop, select the beacon and then throw it to deploy said device.
Then have about a second in which to run away from massive explosion of death, that’s just asking to implement a degree of frustration that takes away all the fun of actually blowing stuff up in the first place. Remember what I said about player choice in sandboxes? You should make sure that you give the player a decent control system and allow them freedom to use it, immediately tagging a quick mini-game into the satellite strike didn’t annoy me at first, but after a while I began to tire of it.
If you’re going to have jackable vehicles, here’s a tip, make the jack look cool by all means but don’t put a damn quick-time event into the vehicle-jack as an attempt to lengthen gameplay since each jack is different and you have a split-second to press the right button before you’re hurled to your non-doom on the ground below/kicked in the teeth or shot in the foot. The moment you put a quick-time event into a sandbox game you take away that vital element of choice and replace it with the element of frustration for most gamers who just want to BLOW things UP!
Most sandbox games of the GTA-style genre are guilty of things like that, from poorly implemented controls to a lack of design in terms of missions and some are just missing that element of fun. The True Crime series tried very hard and succeeded in some places, mostly let down by control issues, graphical troubles and a bland story/design. Morrowind, the epitome of freeroaming RPG goodness had a story (somewhere) that was buried in a myriad of side-quests and exploration. Morrowind lacked focus however and for everyone who loved it, there are people who hated the fact that it took an Act of the Gods to actually find the main story.
This brings me onto my next point, the sandbox storyline. You need that kind of cohesion in any kind of game, linear or not – you need a good solid story that drives the player on and on to the next goal, or you get Crackdown, which was fun but in the end lacked the final push to make it any more than just a sandbox to kill gangs in with a good friend. Thankfully Rockstar have always understood this with the GTA series and whilst IV was a dark and gritty game, it was a solid one with a twisted bitter story and thoroughly real main character. My only major gripe with it is that I got sick of being pestered by friends to go out bowling and drinking, especially when I was about to embark on a main mission.
The problem with sandbox gaming is that by definition it’s a mode where you can ignore the main story, focus on exploration and doing side-quests/missions to your hearts content until you want to slip back onto the main core story and finish the game. Developers put diversions in, taxi missions, vigilante missions and so forth. Getting the player back on your story is a hard thing, you have to make sure that the missions are fun and interesting, many developers therefore make the side missions bland and uninteresting in order to try and focus the gamer’s back onto their plot. This kind of railroading of course often leads to games like Just Cause and so on, where you’d rather finish the main story because the side missions are annoying, over too quickly and aren’t at all very much fun.
As I look back over the years I’ve been gaming, since I had my start on an old ZX-80 with games like Hunt the Wumpus there have always been these sandbox style titles that attempted to break free of the shackles imposed by linear gaming. Now as we firmly rocket closer to 2009 we’re given a veritable slew of games that are embracing this gameplay mechanic as the new Messiah of gaming, along with my all-time favourite gameplay mode: cooperative gaming which is to be the subject of a later article.
This particular article stemmed from my desire to talk/rant about sandbox games, the kinds of sandboxes I like and perhaps the sandboxes yet to be created. We are all aware of the GTA phenomena and the inevitable clones that it spawned over the years. From the 3d sequels Vice City and so on to the spin-offs that were inspired, such as Just Cause and Saints Row we’ve had a pretty good time as sandboxes go. Even the superhero genre has titled towards the old sandbox with the latest Spider-Man games especially Spider-Man: Web of Shadows.
If you read my review you’ll see why I rate that game amongst my favourite sandbox Spider-Man games to date along with Spider-Man 2. Assassin’s Creed provided us with a historical sandbox to run around, climb and generally leap from roof to roof and whilst playing it I couldn’t help think that Ubisoft need to get their hands on DC comic’s Batman license and then do a sandbox Batman game using that engine.
The very nature of a sandbox game would be perfect for the Caped Crusader and could even include the aforementioned cooperative gameplay mode. I think it would be immense fun to have access to a virtual Wayne Manor and the hidden Batcave. It could serve as the global hub of operations and then random crimes could be displayed on the Bat Computer for you to select and deal with as you see fit. There’s a wealth of options there in costumes and vehicle design with the chance for players to explore land, sea, air and Batman’s various gadgets.
Iconic villains could serve to further the global story and minor bad guys would be of course served up on the plate of punishment to give the player a break from the main goals. Sandbox gaming should be all about player choice and whether it be single or two/more player cooperative gaming it should present a large enough world for the player to enjoy, enough challenges that they don’t get bored and there should be one single caveat for future games in this genre. No more flag collecting missions, yes, Ubisoft – I’m talking to you here!
Assassin’s Creed was a wonderful sandbox, with some pretty awesome dynamic combat and great chases. What spoilt it for me was the same thing that Just Cause suffered from, a lack of enthusiasm and repetition in the side-mission design, most of the time they just weren’t all that fun and you had to repeat the same core side-mission types several times. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to repeatedly stab and gut the arrogant assassin jackhole who kept on losing those flags and then crowing about how I was the asshat of the order. At least I didn’t drop 30 flags around Jerusalem when I was sent to kill someone!
Whilst I’m on a do’s and don’t rant, we shall poke a little at the recently released Mercenaries 2 on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. When you give the player a pretty massive sandbox to play in, the first thing they want to do is shoot people or blow things up. When you tout that you’re giving them an over the top destructible environment and enough arsenal to wipe out all known life within a ten mile radius, don’t immediately make it so that said player has to run up and play tag with a beacon then have to stop, select the beacon and then throw it to deploy said device.
Then have about a second in which to run away from massive explosion of death, that’s just asking to implement a degree of frustration that takes away all the fun of actually blowing stuff up in the first place. Remember what I said about player choice in sandboxes? You should make sure that you give the player a decent control system and allow them freedom to use it, immediately tagging a quick mini-game into the satellite strike didn’t annoy me at first, but after a while I began to tire of it.
If you’re going to have jackable vehicles, here’s a tip, make the jack look cool by all means but don’t put a damn quick-time event into the vehicle-jack as an attempt to lengthen gameplay since each jack is different and you have a split-second to press the right button before you’re hurled to your non-doom on the ground below/kicked in the teeth or shot in the foot. The moment you put a quick-time event into a sandbox game you take away that vital element of choice and replace it with the element of frustration for most gamers who just want to BLOW things UP!
Most sandbox games of the GTA-style genre are guilty of things like that, from poorly implemented controls to a lack of design in terms of missions and some are just missing that element of fun. The True Crime series tried very hard and succeeded in some places, mostly let down by control issues, graphical troubles and a bland story/design. Morrowind, the epitome of freeroaming RPG goodness had a story (somewhere) that was buried in a myriad of side-quests and exploration. Morrowind lacked focus however and for everyone who loved it, there are people who hated the fact that it took an Act of the Gods to actually find the main story.
This brings me onto my next point, the sandbox storyline. You need that kind of cohesion in any kind of game, linear or not – you need a good solid story that drives the player on and on to the next goal, or you get Crackdown, which was fun but in the end lacked the final push to make it any more than just a sandbox to kill gangs in with a good friend. Thankfully Rockstar have always understood this with the GTA series and whilst IV was a dark and gritty game, it was a solid one with a twisted bitter story and thoroughly real main character. My only major gripe with it is that I got sick of being pestered by friends to go out bowling and drinking, especially when I was about to embark on a main mission.
The problem with sandbox gaming is that by definition it’s a mode where you can ignore the main story, focus on exploration and doing side-quests/missions to your hearts content until you want to slip back onto the main core story and finish the game. Developers put diversions in, taxi missions, vigilante missions and so forth. Getting the player back on your story is a hard thing, you have to make sure that the missions are fun and interesting, many developers therefore make the side missions bland and uninteresting in order to try and focus the gamer’s back onto their plot. This kind of railroading of course often leads to games like Just Cause and so on, where you’d rather finish the main story because the side missions are annoying, over too quickly and aren’t at all very much fun.
