The bit before the action is the best bit about games. The little calm moments where you can take the time to think. The action its self should be a product of this, shaped around the decisions you made. All to often you are being very reactionary; hordes of bad things launch themselves at you while you just deal with them. Half Life 2 does it, Call of Duty does it, a million billion games do it to, all to varying degrees of success; and while these certainly have there place I want more of the thinking, the planning, the epic fail after.
It’s no secret here that I’m infatuated with Hitman. Some may think it a wonder that I’m yet to shave my head and tattoo a barcode on the back of my neck (not through lack of pleading to the powers that be I tell you) but it’s all because I can think about what I want to do. I formulate mini plans in my head – “I’ll follow this guy, kill him, steal his uniform, then get into the restricted area”. Some of the times it goes wrong but then a lot of the time it goes right, and I feel clever because of it. In other games I would have just shot the guy, then shot everyone else, but not here. With Hitman you have the time to evaluate options, think of a best way through, wait for the best opportunity, then strike like a bald ninja.
In Far Cry 2 there are gun shops. When you buy a gun an infinite supply of it goes into a warehouse for you to use. Basically from start to end you are kitting out your own personal armoury for your unlimited disposal. What this means is this: You get a mission, you go to your armoury and you shop for guns. “hmm” you ponder “do I need anything silenced?” then wander around your little warehouse and grab a silenced pistol “what about if it all goes to shit though?” You pick up a flamethrower “hmm, but I probably need explosives” you swap the flamethrower for a rocket launcher, grab a silenced MP5 then swap the pistol for an Mac 10, “hmm but what if…”. It’s planning, and yeah, a bit of weapon wankery but its all good. Permutations of what could lie ahead rush through your head as you carefully choose your deathbringers, cherry picking them off the shelves thinking of the chaos each could bring.
Any of the Splinter cells sees you skulking from dark corner to dark corner. Can you take that guy out before the other guy comes back? No? Then you’ll have to take them both out. Maybe you could slip around them though? You could try. The tools are really there to do it with Splinter Cell too; you are optimised for utilising the environment in a ways you can’t really do on the fly – taking out lights, disabling CCTV, firing cameras that can then distract people . You see these opportunities then if you wait until just at the right moment you can use them in a way to render you equal to a ghost if you plan what you’re doing, and splinter cell – through it’s tools and dark corners – lets you do this.
Of course when it comes down to it, most of us gamers are impatient and cocky. We rush or just plain forget to think about what we are doing. When this happens, even for just a second, well that’s when the hilarity of fail comes in. No matter how much you plan at some point you are going to mess it up, and often it will be glorious. A guard walking into the bathroom as you are dragging a naked corpse into a cubical in Hitman; setting fire to an entire farm in Far Cry because you got spotted by a sniper half a mile away on your ’stealth approach’; or having 6 mercenaries come running after you in splinter cell because you may have just ran through a trip wire. The thing is, none of these little moments of chaos would mean anything if it wasn’t for the calm before. Six terrorists firing at you in CoD4 is nothing special – it’s always like that and hell, it isn’t like you could have avoided it. In splinter cell though, it’s unexpected and dam exciting.
I love planning. It’s probably my favourite bit when I’m playing anything that lets me do it. You think about all the variables – how many guys are there, how many ways in, are there any snipers, what’s visibility like? You take it all in then pack them all into this little plan and off you go. It’s exciting, the calm before the storm. Chaos is mere seconds away if it goes wrong, but your plan is solid right? Of course not, the storm comes and it all goes to shit. I want the moments where I sneak around choosing my targets then take them out one by one with my pseudo-cunning plan. I want the moments where I’m crouched in a room, surrounded by people yearning to kill me and thinking “why did I come here with a sniper rifle and a flare gun”. And most importantly, I want the moments where I’m stood thinking “whatever happens in the next couple of minutes – it’s going to be fucking amazing”.
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The upgrade system of the weapons in Hitman is another reason to love it. I mean, if you play it well all you’ll ever need to upgrade is the pistol. If you play it brilliantly then you need no weapons at all. But the fact they give you an M4 and Shotgun to toy around with, in a box to retreat to for the “Oh fuck” moments. The only thing I was sad about in Hitman was the lack of areas to use the sniper rifle, with whatever tall dark corner I got it out in meaning I was instantly spotted :/.
Action games though still twitchy tend to have taken aboard slightly by limiting you to two weapons and a pistol, requiring you to plan what to take. I prefer the farcry 2 method of the unlimited weapon warehouse, so I don’t have to be sad that I had to throw away a really good gun as the situation didn’t call for it.
SWAT 4 is another game which has a heavy planning component. The action exists in bursts of 30 seconds max, and then you repeat the process. Its awesome.
Loved this about Farcry 2 as well. Another recent game I found that does it well is Sins of a Solar Empire. It’s a lot more vanilla RTS than I had hoped, but still allows you to tailor a specialised fleet sufficiently. And the jump lengths can be huge, so you better hope that’s not an enemy’s de facto staging area or you’ll at best come limping home.
Maybe one day they’ll make a Battlestar Galactica game like this.