RPG designers should play Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts.

[Kaanyrvhok]

That game has a level of genius which I’ll get to in a sec. I probably wouldn’t have given it a try if I wasn’t part of a focus group that played it before release and I didn’t have a 6 year old who fell in love with the demo. I was burned out from playing it so I didn’t even let my son try the demo until months after the release. My task was to give a detailed report on the games difficulty. I told Rare that if I wrote more than a paragraph it would be long of wind. The game isn’t too easy or difficult and the difficulty isn’t meant to be judged it’s meant to be savored. It’s the least of the games worries.

The genius is how the game focuses on solving mini games with a creative vehicle creation then processeds to make a fool out of you. It’s pitiable that most of the sub 75 (scores) reviews came from people longing for another 3D platformer. The game has a leaderboard for every minigame and you can download the video of the top ten scores. That’s where the game shines while some of the best scores are the result of cheap exploits; some are the work of ingenious contraptions, some pure player ability like racing, some uncommon sense and some with just good common sense. Of coarse you cant see these videos until you completed the mini game. For example in one mini game you have to help Klungo the dull witted Rhino fellow cook an egg. He tells you that you can cook it over there and points to a Volcano. The camera even pans to the Volcano. Ok so that’s easy you build a fast copter fly and fly it for a quick dip to cook it and bring it back. Ok so I did it no problem well in time to get the a trophy which is the best of the three awards you can get. I made it in a 1:01. After that I checked the leader boards and the best times were in between 5 and 6 seconds. What?!?!

Ok so I watched the video and the number one time was of a guy who created a giant torch to cook the egg with. Here I am listening to this dumb ass Rhino telling me to cook the egg in a volcano when I could have just cooked the egg right there. Some of the videos are honestly amazing. In one minigame you have to throw balls into a giant hoop. 12 balls will get you a trophy. The record was a 1000! Someone managed to pull the hoop down build a ramp where the balls drop after they respond and have the balls roll into the hoop wisely staying in building mode which freezes the time. Even in my best mini game where I almost I almost cracked the top 200 I made a fool of myself. In this mini game you have to knock 10 nuts off the leaves of a giant plant. My son was playing and right away I knew this would be a job for the SuckNBlow which is a contraption that does just that suck and blow. Now I’m not a homophobic fellow. I wish every man outside of my family and non-gay friends were gay to be honest but the thought of having a gay son gives me the willies but how else do you tell someone to suck and blow the nuts off? The jurys out on his little brother but I know my son isn’t gay so maybe that’s why it wasn’t registering in his data box. He gave me the controller and I had those nuts off in 27 secs landing me the 360th best time. I gave it another go and made 212. You can normally score a trophy outside of the top 25K so 212 is like top 99%but again its for sucking and blowing nuts.

With just three rewards for success the mini game don’t take advantage of the huge gradation between being number one in the world and not being able to beat them. That’s to be expected. There are about 100 of these mini-games giving each more than 3 awards would be going beyond the call of duty. There isnt much variety in the mini games but they have a ton of range and there are many ways to solve them. The range is what really sticks out as something that RPG devs should consider. Some RPGs offer choice, some offer quality choices, and some results/ consequence etc but few offer a potential range of outcomes. Even with RPGs that have racing as a mini game like KOTOR there is no middle ground its either success or failure.

MMO designers should really take note. One way to add some differential to characters is award based on a curve. Stats for stats.

 

[Arcanoix]

 

[Emotional Vampire]

You disappointed me, Kaanyrvhok.

 

[Coyote]

Reminds me of Scribblenauts, a DS game which I played a bit while staying with some friends during the holidays. In it, you type in the name of things you want to appear on the screen and they appear in the gameworld, allowing you to use them to solve puzzles. From balloons to frying pans to elephants to atom bombs to helicopters, you name it, you can drop it in the gameworld and interact with it (with some exceptions, like "kid-unfriendly" items - mostly drugs and sex objects - most proper nouns, and trademarked items). I remember at one point dropping Cthulhu and God in the world and having them duke it out (God won). There are usually very obvious ways of solving puzzles, but the game rewards you for speed and thinking out of the box (using objects you haven't used before and solving puzzles with as few objects as possible).

The main thing I'd like to see other developers draw from such games is that by increasing the interactivity of objects in the gameworld, you can encourage multiple solutions to quests/puzzles without explicitly programming them and even emergent solutions that the devs themselves never considered. (Thing along the lines of what that one Oblivion dev said about a simple amulet retrieval quest having hundreds of potential solutions thanks to Radiant AI and the economy and interactivity of the gameworld... except true instead of overblown hype.) The game would have to be designed from the beginning with such a goal in mind, however, and would probably have to forego the focus on graphics so common today and use a very simplistic style of graphics/animations to be able to encompass all the potential interactions.