Game Design

    I've been looking at a lot of different types of design, from advertising to movies, but one area that always interests me is gaming.  It's what I grew up on, it's what I've loved, and there's a lot to it.  Looking at a fairly old game (by industry standards), Half Life 2, I've noticed some major differences between it and other, similar, First Person Shooters. 
    For starters, it has few cut-scenes.  This gives a very uniform pacing, where you are always moving forward with just a few in game pauses in the action.  The only two stopping points where you are completely unable to interact with the game at all are the beginning and the end.  The advantage of this is that it gives a smooth pace of action where you don't want to put the controller down.  The downside is that it makes the game feel less dramatic on a whole, since the two actual cut-scenes are done with in-game effects.
     To counteract this blah-ness, they made all major characters much more detailed than the environment.  Also, all major points in the game force you to be in a limited area.  For the people who would rather skip ahead to the action, they put many interesting objects to look at and interact with in the meantime.  This is much like playing minesweeper while a video loads.
      One of the big features of Half-Life 2 is the physics engine.  All objects have mass in the game, and velocity during interaction.  Mass * Velocity = Force.  Force, in this game, equals damage.  The game is fairly, and I use that term lightly here, realistic in how these objects react with everything around them.  But still, for the beginning of the game, the reality of the physics system is apparent, but not really something important.
     Then you get the Gravity Gun, or Zero-Point Energy Manipulator, which allows you to use the laws of physics as a weapon.  You will find yourself spending hours picking up and throwing anything you can get your hands on, from trashcans to cement blocks.  Everything becomes a weapon.  This feature alone makes the game fun for hours.
     The bad parts of the games design are really its lack of variety.  Every brick, every saw blade, every face that isn't a main character looks exactly like every other one.  Cars come in different colors, but not styles.  It really dims down what is a fun game.  Another game by valve, Left for Dead, takes variety and puts sprinkles on it, just for taste.  Then again, with such an intense game as Half-Life, a lot of variety would make the game laggy and slow.
     I look forward to the sequels (especially launching more things).