1. The Protagonist Is Immune
I'm sorry, well not really, but i consider this a HUGE cop out. I get that if a player had to reload a save every single time someone bites them then the game might be considered to difficult. But hang on, that's not quite right, zombie games are supposed to difficult, and besides, Dying Light did something like this, you're character gets bit and you have to take some kind of medicine to hold off the virus. But it could be done better, Dying Light never made it into a ticking clock element, it ended only effecting you specifically in story, and no where else... Anyways, moving on...
2. Crafting Systems
I can't help but feel like some zombie games are taking this too far. Not Dead Rising though, Dead Rising is meant to be insane with that kind of stuff, but when you can duct tape a battery to a weapon and give it Lightning Powers!!!, then you might not be on the right side of realism. I know, i know, a game filled with zombies, do you really expect realism when it's talking about raising the dead? Well, if you're a game with the tone of Dead Island or Dying Light, then you probably don't want to have weapons like this...
3. Escort Quests
Escort quests can be bad enough in regular games, but in zombie ones, especially in ones like Dead Rising and Dead Island where zombies start to show up all over the place, it gets tiring if controller breaking frustrating. Or mouse breaking, sorry, think i just gave away the fact that i'm mainly a console gamer. Now, this problem can be avoided and often is if the A.I. isn't...
But sadly when the A.I. is faulty, escort quests become hell, or hell on earth. One way to fix this is a simple command to just get them to hide someplace or actually get in the car. Yeah, this ones hardly to deal with, and i think a better title for this section might be Poorly Handled Escort Quests.
4. Zombie Variety
I get zombies might be a bit over used, but the variations of zombies have become a little cliche, and honestly, i don't care to much about seeing the new zombie types. I'm waiting for someone to do zombies well first. Zombies are supposed to be slow moving, can only die when the head is destroyed, transmit the virus through bites, and are only truly a threat in tight spaces or in large numbers. But i rarely see that, instead zombies have to mutate nowadays, and you know what, that would've made more sense when zombies were caused by radiation (as in Night Of The Living Dead) not when they are created by a virus. Viruses mutate, sure, but they usually only mutate to a form people wont be immune to, not a form that changes their hosts shape. And some of the zombie types are even hackneyed at this point, that's how over used zombies are, now even their mutations are getting old. There always seems to be the spitter, the exploder, the sprinter, the tough mother****er, and the psycho du jour. Although, Dead I sland, explain this to me, how is it that a small island have so many psychos in straight jackets running around? I get you could have a mental ward or something, but even so, i'm pretty a straight jacket doesn't make you muscle bound, if anything it does the opposite, it's just weird, and if your trying to have a dark and somber tone it just doesn't make sense.
5. How To Ramp Up Difficulty
This ties in to almost every one of my previous points really. Everything for weapon crafting, to zombie variety, to protagonist immunity boils down to one thing, game difficulty, and if this is how developers are doing it, then they're doing it all wrong. It's simple really, okay, probably not the coding, but at least the design and rule set. You want to make your game difficult? Make zombies only truly go down if they're burnt alive or take a bullet (or other object) to the head. To make it fair, bullets are one hit kills if it hits them in the head, and only certain weapons that would naturally be weaker than an axe or a sledgehammer might potentially take maybe 2 or 3 whacks to kill a zombie with. To make sure there's no confusion, give weaker weapons a "light weapon" category and one hit kill weapons "heavy weapons" for melee based weapons that is. Another idea is to not make the character immune, Dying Light avoided that, but also don't do what Dying Light did get rid of xp because we acted too fast to remember that the zombies in red jackets explode. Instead maybe give us an option to reload the save or instead revive ourselves with some of our xp, or just force us to reload. Another option is to avoid certain weapon crafting and make it take some actual time and effort to make a weapon with lightning powers, or just make it only electrify enemies, but make it realistic if that's the tone of the rest of it, but if you're like Dead Rising, then go nuts. Heck, here's a rather unexplored concept, want to ramp up difficulty, don't make variations of zombified humans, maybe instead do zombified animals, i mean those could be scary as hell, especially when they first turn.
Well, i could go on longer, but at that point i'd be better off making a whole new post for. Anyways, i have no idea what i'm doing next week, but until then...
That's All For Now...
No comments:
Post a Comment