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Game Pacing Pitfalls Discussed

Posted by simoniker on from the also-bad-paced-games-have-bad-pacing dept.

Thanks to GameSpot for their editorial discussing the problems in pacing a videogame correctly, as the author theorizes: "It's almost always the same sorts of things that make us get sick of them in a hurry", and goes on to pinpoint game facets that affect pacing adversely. He suggests: "Loading times are quite possibly the single worst thing about today's games", and also points out "...providing the player with easy access to often-used features" as a pacing-killer, referencing Vagrant Story's "unwieldy menu system." Finally, he argues that "the ideal game should never require pausing or fast-forwarding", mentioning that Star Wars: KOTOR had "...combat [that] was paced seemingly just right so that I'd be able to react to what was happening as it happened, not in between desperately toggling the pause button."

1 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. And don't change the pace... by Sentry21 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I was playing The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker for a while. What a great game, it kept going, it was fun, innovative, imaginative, and, well, more fun. The wandering around in the ocean thing got old fast, but then I got the Melody of Control or whatever, and that solved that.

    And then that goddamn Triforce quest.

    The whole game proceeds with action until this quest, when it suddenly turns into Errands Online. You have to find eight Triforce Charts that are scattered around the world. Then you have to get them decoded, which means getting a crapload of money. Then you have to go actually GET the triforce shards. Ugh.

    Yes, I could have done it. I could have finished it in a day. But god, what a fucking boring way to spend a day off. No thanks. I traded it in and got Skies of Arcadia instead. Way to drop the fucking ball, Nintendo.

    Metroid was the same way. For the first half of the game, you're getting powerups left and right. Morph ball, bombs, varia suit, everything. Then it just fucking stops. You have to wander around and get a bunch of artifacts. It's easy enough to do, except you have to cross the fucking planet like four times. Ugh. No thanks. The map system didn't make life much easier either. Boooring.

    Both of these games were paced very well until those spots, at which point the developers dropped tbe ball and fucked it up. If you're going to develop a game (or a movie or TV show), then there's one thing people have to do, and that's pick a pace and stick with it. SWAT did this well, Jedi Academy did this well too (er, not that I'd know of course, wink wink nudge nudge), but very few other games do.

    Of course, there are notable exceptions (Final Fantasy 6 had a nice blend of action, relaxation, panic, and butterflies-in-the-breeze), but that's hard to do right.

    --Dan