I was reading a blog post a few days ago. The author made a comment that there are basically just three types of combat in games. I thought it was an interesting observation – and one I’ve never really thought about.

1. Combat is the game. The combat has to be interesting and strategic. This includes strategy games and fighting games (e.g. Street Fighter).
2. Combat acts as an obstacle or speed-bump to completing the game. This includes games like Mario Brothers and Zelda. Most of the combat in those games (against, say the turtles and mushrooms) is easy, and it acts as an obstacle to rescuing the princess.
3. Combat is used to get experience or items – in other words, it improves your game character in some way. Role-playing games follow this pattern. The blogger made the comment that his friend got bored of combat once his game character was maxed-out in experience.

I do have to wonder, though, how many games include mixtures of all three game elements? Does it make for a better game? I guess the original Zelda does have mixtures of all three: lots of easy enemies that do little more than act as obstacles, a few “boss” monsters that requires some strategy, and they often drop important loot.

Interesting quote from Tycho (of Penny Arcade):

Generally, I prefer turn-based games to real-time for the same reason I prefer writing to speech. [Gears of War, Ping-Pong, etc.] require the cultivation of a “Now Mind,” a highly reactive awareness that I’m never called on to posses. My role in multiplayer shooters is typically to absorb bullets intended for my teammates.
(Link: Penny Arcade)

I tend to prefer turn-based games over real-time games as well. Though, it’s not that I’m bad at real-time games. It’s that I dislike the frantic pace and reactive / instinctual / knee-jerk method of play required by real-time strategy games, as opposed to the more thoughtful planning of turn-based games.

Well, Fallout 3 gets released tomorrow. I’m interested to see what they do with it. I was a little concerned that the transition from overhead-view to first / third-person view might mess up some things. From the articles I’ve seen, they say the game is uneven – good in some parts, poor in others. I expect to wait at least a week and let the reviews pour in before checking it out for myself. It’s too bad there’s no demo for the game. I really like to check out demos before I buy a game. The game developer said that the game world can’t be cut-up into a convenient demo format (although, I have to wonder about that claim – couldn’t they make a little sandbox area? Maybe throw together some game-world pieces into a 5-minute demo?) I’m leaning towards “we didn’t have the time to make a proper demo”.

It’s also too bad they got hit with piracy – causing the game to be leaked almost three weeks before the release date.

Speaking of Fallout, there’s an old abandoned factory not far from my house. Whenever I pass it, I think of the Fallout series. It looks rather post-apocalyptic, and could easily be an inspiration for some quest in the game.

I happened to stumble on this the other day while cleaning up some stuff. It’s an article from PC Gamer published exactly 10 years ago this month. In the very last paragraph, he makes reference to Duke Nukem Forever as being “on the way”. Heh. Ten years later and it still hasn’t been released.