I have decided to discuss the game atoms of SSX 2012.
For those who look at this and say TLDR I have three short videos at the bottom summarizing what I've written.
Players
The players in this game do not interact physically, only physically with the AI. What I mean by this is, when playing the campaign, which is offered to the player, you can push the AI as you snowboard in order to gain an edge over them. The multiplayer is player vs player in a free for all game style where everyone is pitted against each other. However, since the developers knew that not many people will be online at the same time, the online challenge only comes from the leaderboards. How they then populate the scene without player's playing the game at the same time as you, is that they created replays of other player's runs and they call them ghosts which are holographic replays of another player's run.
Objectives
There are three different objectives in this game and this goes for both of the single player and online play, and those are: race, trick, and survive. For race, the objective is to simply be the first one to the bottom of the mountain. With trick, you are trying to accumulate the highest score by lining up multiple tricks in a row while building and maintaining a combo. Finally in survive you try to escape or evade some form of elemental danger whether it be cold, low oxygen, rocks and trees, gravity, or even avalanches. Best way to complete these objectives is to explore the mountain run before attempting to set a highscore. The objectives that come with this game are: Race, Alignment, Escape, Construction, Exploration, Solution, and Outwit.
Rules
SSX does not enforce many rules in the gameplay. The major rule was the boundary in the game. Even though the mountains seem like you can go anywhere on it, there are invisible walls that will not bounce you back in to the world but instead suck you into a vortex that kills you. Other boundaries that kill you are the crevasses in the mountain that you can fall into.
Resources
In the game there is one major resource available and that is boost. The boost in the game allows you to be able to move faster. With this resource the player can get higher jumps to do more tricks, avoid danger easier, and make it to the bottom faster. To acquire this resource the player needs to complete tricks. Doing tricks adds to the amount of available boost. The game also offers a series of bonuses to boost, speed, trick score, and other perks for gear which can be considered resources since they need to be managed on your in game currency and when you need to use them for the runs down the hill.
Game States
One of the most noticeable game states in the game is if you are riding down the mountain. Other game states that are seen while playing the game are: idol in the helicopter, tricking, tricking in the air, tricking on a rail, using a wingsuit, a game state for each equipment and if they're being used, about to die, rewinding, tricky mode, super tricky mode, wipeout, and the finishing game state.
Information
The hud in this game provides specific information about the player's progress as well as what you are doing in terms of tricks. So in the top left it provides details such as your distance left on the mountain, speed, time for the run, and total distance traveled. The top right provides information on the other player's scores. At the bottom it shows details about your tricks like trick combo, trick score, total score, tricky state, and boost meter. There is also a status bar to tell the player how his equipment and health is doing. Everything is available to the player, the challenge ahead is what to do with all of this information.
Sequencing
When racing, the time puts a serious pressure on the player. They feel very eager to get to the bottom of the mountain. With the 3-2-1 Go! online mode that was released in a patch, it allows player's to take part in events such as race or trick in real time against each other in a free for all. This gives added tension to the player's as they play side by side without being able to see the goal they need to reach since it will be provided at the end when everyone has placed their score.
Player Interaction
As I said above, the player interaction is limited other than in the 3-2-1 Go! online mode and the competitive ladders. There is also a world events section where player's can spend in game currency to compete against each other in the attempts to win other's in game currency. Other forms of player interaction is this game mechanic called a Geotag. What a Geotag is exactly, is a marker in the world that any player can put in the world, if any player playing the game does not go to the same spot in their game where you put the marker, you achieve maximum in game currency the Geotag awards you. However, if a player does then you achieve less and the other player will gain in game currency. This is how player's can interact with each other.
Theme/Setting
Similarly in my previous Dekonstruer, I said that Greg Hasting's Paintball 2 was going for realism, SSX 2012 went for the same thing as you will see in the video I posted below. With the realistic physics for the avalanche as well as movement and control of the character, it feels very realistic and immersive. Another way they simulated realism is by using real life mountain ranges with real mountains. They also took real life environment dangers and used then as mechanics you need to survive. Only difference between my first game I analyzed and SSX 2012, is that the developers wanted to pertain to their former audience which really liked their old SSX games that were outright over the top in scale and humor. That's the only thing that draws the game from a full try hard mode to be completely realistic like Greg Hasting's Paintball.
To conclude, I leave you with a few videos of some gameplay as well as what I see to be dev diaries of the game. They cover just about everything I mention in this blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment