Hard Analysis and Understanding Games

Watching several counter-strike tournaments over the past two years has clued me into several different approaches to game analysis. Across both traditional and electronic competition, broadcasts employ a play by play commentator and a color commentator. Play by play is straight forward. The guy makes what occurs on screen palatable to the audience via his gravitas, strong word choice, and levels of excitement. He also has to be gifted in setting up his partner, the color commentator. The color man's job is to give quick insights into the game so that the audience better understands the meta and the decision making of the players.

I've come across two approaches to color commentary in competitive gaming. First is soft analysis, which features superficially descriptive, historical, and subjective insights into a game. A commentator will broadly remark on how a team is approaching the game, how the team has historically played the game, and his interpretation of how this affects the match he is watching now. Narrative, history, and visibility is the key to soft analysis. The commentator in CSGO will mention who is playing what position, how effective he historically is at playing that position, and with that contextual insight hopefully illuminate the current match for the audience. This kind of commentary is good for most people in the audience who have general to moderate interest in the game.

To use an example, here is the color commentator Semmler giving us insight into the Swedish player Olofmeister. At this time, Olof is the greatest player in the world in CSGO. Semmler discusses how historically, Olof's team places him as an entry man onto Cobblestone's B site. He either lurks or is the first man in on the B plateau, as his ability to get the first kill and then storm the site is much better than anyone else in the world.

This reminds me a lot of the way games journalism and analysis is done. The audience gets general insights into the way a game plays. We get descriptors such as the ability to hold two guns, the amount of recoil, guns feeling light or heavy, etc. These are important concepts to note in a game and give the reader a general idea about the game. In fact for many people, that is all they need to know. But that is soft analysis. I don't just want to know how little recoil a gun has, I want the writer to shoot a wall and show me whether there's a spray pattern. I want to know if it's possible to compensate for it consistently or if there's randomness. If possible, I'd even like to know what the hard metrics are for recoil, spread, and friction/acceleration in movement.

To truly understand and critique a game, these values must be explored and understood. For example, if a new game comes out and a character accelerates quickly but slides before coming to a stop, it is not enough to say that movement feels loose or slippery without putting that into the context of the game and even including some values as the game is data mined later.

Hard analysis in competitive gaming contains insights on the hard metrics of a game. This is a bit more difficult to parse out because one cannot describe it using flowery or colorful language. Hard analysis requires enthusiastic levels of knowledge in a subject. In Counter-Strike, that means understanding the amount of time actions in game take, how certain plays affect a team's game economy, and how plays affect the opponent's perception and morale (mind games). This analysis goes beyond the narrative and gets into the actual numeric understanding of a game. To use the example of the hypothetical game that feels loose, a critic with familiarity of harder metrics would focus on the ingame values regarding movement. He would say that the game feels loose because the avatar accelerates quickly but the lack of friction in the world causes him to slide around. He would remark on what this means when taking on enemies and how to approach them given the imprecision of the movement, most likely by discussing whether guns are accurate while moving or if counter-strafing in the opposite direction one is moving in order to quickly stand still allows for higher weapon accuracy.

Here's some hard analysis from a North American CSGO tournament in which the color commentator Launders discusses the weapon buying in the match's second round. The terrorists got a bomb plant the first round but died and the counter-terrorists defused the bomb. So the Ts got $1400 for losing plus 800 for planting the bomb while the CTs got $3500. The Ts are still in a good position overall because they can force buy armor and pistols . The defused bomb plant allows them enough to perform a rush and force the CTs to spend all of their money on a rifle, armor, and grenade buy. A defused bomb plant usually telegraphs to CTs that they must spend a lot of money on the 2nd round in order to play long angles and stop pistol armor rushes. Thus his comment that the CT's buy reflects their anticipation that the Ts will force buy armor pistol.

Hard analysis takes into account not only the overall play, but the minutiae involved in decision making. It looks closely at metrics and the variables behind them to illuminate the game in a much brighter way than soft analysis ever could. Typically it is longer winded and requires someone with great appeal and gravitas to be able to keep an audience interested. Most viral videos of commentators are of excitable play by play commentary during sick plays.

Dupreeh! and Hiko are you kidding me? are two historic soundbites in the same round in CSGO

https://youtu.be/SCqsIwF085U?t=7

So what does this mean for game's criticism? Games journalism is like play by play commentary. It focuses merely on the general, what is going on and how does it look with varying amounts of emotion and purple prose thrown in for good measure. Every so often there is some soft analysis, but given the kinds of people writing it generally focuses on the narrative or some quick dimly lit illuminations of a game's mechanics before complaining about representation of genders or races in games. These topics are heated and quickly pull in clicks from the divisiveness they cause.

These kinds of pieces don't have to go anywhere. In fact, given their popularity, I'd advise continuing to use them. Compare the abysmally low level of engagement in the comments section of a Polygon feature or investigative piece to a review of a AAA game, a Destiny article, or a clickbait opinion piece about sexism? In fact the only features with over 100 comments on Polygon are about sexism in games. The most profitable pieces, regardless of their triviality, should remain on sites. That way more niche and serious pieces which provide less in the way of money but more in the way of actual journalism and criticism can continue to exist.

As a competitive gaming spectator, I love those exciting moments punctuated by affable commentators. As a gaming enthusiast, I read gaming news nearly every day. But video games need people who understand the core of the game. They need an analyst to really illuminate the game by making boring numbers and minutiae sound exciting. The hard metrics of a game influence everything: how fast an avatar can move, much damage a weapon can do, and how a stats system works. All these parts of a game influence the overall way a game works. Having someone who understands this is important to games overall. I want people to enjoy games, but more importantly, I want more people to feel like they understand them.

Dark Souls 3 Has Changed the Series: Compromise and the Spirit of Souls

Erik Kain wrote on how Dark Souls 3 achieved the highest selling launch in the series and exploded in popularity without making changes or compromising the experience. He writes:

            "It’s grown in popularity without changing, too, which is important. Rather than ratchet     down the difficulty of the game’s combat, or make its lore less obscure, From Software has continued to dish out a challenging experience. I would argue that the success of Dark Souls III is not in spite of its difficulty, but precisely because the experience has remained uncompromising. We gamers have not been tempted by an easy mode, and no easy mode was necessary to broaden the game’s appeal.

            To me, this simply underscores and enforces my previous position: the Souls games, and whatever else From Software devises, do not need to bend or compromise to widen their appeal to a gaming demographic that doesn’t appreciate them. Not because they should be or the 'elites' but because they are obviously games that a growing audience can appreciate."

Kain is right about the essence of Souls. Dark Souls 3 remains old school difficult and its lore is still obscure. But the game has changed the Souls experience in many subtle and complicated ways overall. Changes in the health system, quest dialogue, the stats system, the knight starting class, and boss fights illustrate how the series has shifted from a slower methodical game to a fast incredibly demanding assault.

I. Health

Dark Souls 3 has a much less masochistic health system than its predecessors. In Demon's Souls, the player starts in body form and has 100% health. If he dies, he goes to soul form and has 50% health. The player can regain 100% health by killing a boss, a successful invasion, or using a rare consumable item called the Stone of Ephemeral Eyes. Alternatively the player can lock their health at 75% in soul form by locating and equipping the Cling Ring. The ring is in the first area of the game but can be easily missed, thus requiring the player to advance through the game with 50% health or playing very cautiously when body form is achieved in order not to have his health halved again.

Since Demon's Souls, From Software has experimented to make the health system better and less brutalizing. Dark Souls had no health penalty on death which was much too easy. Dark Souls II had the player lose 10% of his health each death until he reached 50% fully hollowed form. To regain human form, he could use a rare consumable called the Human Effigy or a successfully invade and kill someone to regain human form. If the player ran out of Effigies, he could go to the Shrine of Amana in a late game area to regain human form. Like Demon's Souls, the player could make sure their health didn't drop below 50% by wearing the Ring of Binding. It was located in the first area of the game but could be easily passed by. Bloodborne once again cut health penalties on death and tried to make up that by having incredibly hard hitting and fast bosses, unlike bosses in Demon's Souls which were generally slow, lumbering tank and spank bosses at the end of incredibly long and difficult levels.

Dark Souls 3 found a great compromise that was difficult without being masochistic like Demon's Souls, easy like Dark Souls 1, or tedious like Dark Souls 2. Defeating a boss and using the rare consumable Ember items allowed a player to have 100% health. Dying immediately reduces the player's health to 75%. The DS3 system is difficult and punishing without going overboard. The lack of needing a ring to maintain 75% health frees up a whole ring slot that was taken up in Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 2. While the player in DaS2 had 4 ring slots available, DeS only allowed for 2 slots, so losing body form was a massive game penalty. Although there was no health penalty in Dark Souls 1, equipping the Ring of Favor and Protection increased one's health and if removed, it broke. The ring shackled most melee builds in order to equip better armor and have more health, endurance, and equip load. Dark Souls 3 does away with this by providing a challenge with its health system without cutting off depth of customization. No rings shackle the player and the health system is difficult without being masochistic. Bosses can be defeated with 75% health and if need be, the player can use an Ember to have 100% health.

II. Quest Dialogue

NPCs in Dark Souls 3 repeat key locations in their quest dialogue infinitely. Leonhard repeats the location of Rosaria's Fingers if one asks him. Contrast that with the Crestfallen Warrior in Dark Souls who will only repeat himself once regarding the location of the two Bells of Awakening before he tells the player to leave. Given that Dark Souls 3 is more linear like Demon's Souls, the player doesn't need to have repeated directions given that he can easily memorize and come upon different covenants. Memorizing quest information with little repetition has been a reality since Dark Souls 1. But if a player does not pay attention, they're going to look up the information regardless, so allowing NPCs to repeat themselves explicitly is not the greatest sin.

Given how difficult and obscure meeting Kaathe was in Dark Souls 1 to join the red invasion covenant the Darkwraiths, its in the best interest of the game to make the directions to play multiplayer simpler so more people can play online faster. Most people will not jump into the abyss and fight the 4 Kings before placing the Lord Vessel with Frampt on their first try. Dark Souls' quest to find Frampt makes for opaque and interesting lore that one uncovers on multiple playthroughs. But overall it hampers newer and less skilled players from being able to join in on multiplayer.

Despite the repeating quest dialogue, Dark Souls 3 continues the trend of having little direction to solve some quests. When coming on Irythyll, if the player does not have the doll item, he cannot enter the new area. There is a wall holding back the player telling him that he needs a doll to pass through. The player now knows what he needs but does not know where it is. This is very similar to Dark Souls 1 yellow fog walls. They said, "Sealed by the Great Lord's power" but did not say what item was needed to unlock them. Those function more as a band aid to keep the player from exploring late game areas and herd him towards the Lord Vessel item. But they are similar enough and show that DS3 keeps the series a bit opaque concerning quests. This allows for some good backtracking in the linear and dense levels with plenty to explore.

III. Stats and the Knight Starting Class

The biggest change in Souls overall has been the stat system. Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1, and Bloodborne had a very basic system. To optimize PvE encounters, the player needed to first level Endurance and their primary attack stat to dodge more, attack more, equip better armor, and hit harder. This gave the player more useful survivability from dodging and armor rather than leveling Vitality (health) which the player didn't really need to level until after the 2nd or 3rd boss. My favorite adage from a veteran Souls player went something like "Level up endurance over vitality early on. You need to be able to dodge and attack more. If you're getting hit a lot to the point where you need more health then you suck."

Dark Souls 2 introduced a much more deep and difficult stat system. It separated equip load from Endurance and placed it in the Vitality stat while Vigor influenced one's health. Dark Souls 3 adopted this system with a few new tweaks. Now players have more decisions to make regarding stat choices. Does the player want to dodge more, hit harder, wear better armor, or have more health? If the player wants to branch out to any casting then he now has to dump stats into Attunement to raise his spell slots and Focus Points as well as the primary spell stat, such as Intelligence or Faith. Now the system is more deep, allowing for more ways for the player to express his intention towards what kind of build he wants as well as pushing him to play multiple times to try out more than just basic melee builds.

In order to offset more difficult stat decisions in Dark souls 3, Endurance and dodging as a whole has become very easy. With the Knight class in DS3, historically the noob starting class as it has high health and very good armor, a player can roll 7 times in a row before needing to let one's stamina regenerate. The player can also panic roll very easily in DS3. The character model takes half a step before endurance regenerates enough to allow the player to roll again as long as he spams the roll button. The armor has incredibly good poise and defense and does not make the player fat roll. In fact, the knight armor is some of the best armor in the game for the 50-70% equip load threshold. The difference between an above 50% and below 50% roll is negligible making the knight armor great for tanky medium characters. Giving Knight armor to a player right when they start out is rather easy.

The Knight Class in Dark Souls 1 offered many more penalties to the player. The armor causes the player to fat roll wherein the player slowly recovers from a roll after his invincibility frames end. The only way to wield a weapon without fat rolling is to remove all but the leg armor, exposing the player to more damage. Most importantly panic rolling is not easy in Dark Souls 1. The player takes a step and a half before being able to dodge roll again, leaving the player open to attacks.

IV. Bosses

Although these two cases make Dark Souls 1 appear to be the more difficult game, comparing the two knight classes without discussing them in the context of the game is incredibly misleading. The fight against the Asylum Demon and Iudex Gundyr, opening fights as well as design archetypes for their respective games, contextualize how the changes in the starting classes work in their games and illustrates how Souls has changed overall.

The Asylum Demon is slow and lumbering, generally attacking once with a long wind up that the player can easily dodge if they're patient. The player must only wait for the boss to attack before dodging and then attacking the boss about 3 times. Gundyr on the other hand attacks furiously. His windup is much faster off his first attack and he usually combos into a 2nd much slower move in order to throw off the player's expectations. The player must dodge twice before attacking and can only get off 1 or 2 attacks before having to dodge again.

Dark Souls 3 is a much faster beast wherein bosses attack quickly, combo, and are open to very few attacks. In order to offset this faster design, the class with the great starting armor and high health does not fat roll and can dodge 7 times in a row along with easy panic rolling. Dark Souls 3 makes dodging much easier and less punishing, thus easier, in order to offset how much more difficult the bosses are in general.

V. Compromise and the Spirit of Souls

Dark Souls 3 has changed the series and made it a bit easier. Quest dialogue is repeated, the stat system is deeper, and the game has become faster overall. Along with these changes, masochism surrounding the health system has been completely excised from the final game allowing for a game with little potential for hitting obnoxious hurdles. To say that the series has "remained uncompromising" simply is not true. It's filled with compromises, tweaks, and subtle changes as From Software played with the mechanics they created to provide a sublime and challenging experience without unnecessary brutality. Making players only lose 75% of their health without needing to take up a ring slot and being able to roll 7 times is easier. But it allows for more challenge than misery when fighting the more aggressive and quick bosses that Dark Souls 3 offers. What has remained uncompromising is the attention to the spirit of the series. That's where I agree with Eric Kain. There still is no easy mode and the series retains feeling like arcade hard Souls. When nearly every boss in Dark Souls 3 reminds me of fighting the False King in Demon's Souls, I know that the series has closed on a wonderful note.

Mediocre Gunplay in Fallout 4's Wasteland

Fallout began as a computer RPG for the first two entries before laying dormant. Bethesda purchased the rights to the series and modernized the third entry into a first person RPG with shooting elements in 2008 during the explosion of the FPS genre in the gaming market. Fallout 4 marks a transition from its numbered predecessor's core into a game that caters even more to the dominant genre in the market.

Bethesda has fashioned Fallout 4 into an FPS with RPG elements, inverting the formula. Gone is the need to select perks and skills that specialize a build around one's primary stats. A perk locked behind a primary stat requirement no longer necessitates a 2nd playthrough or a hefty investment of caps to purchase said primary stat. Players can now acquire them with the skill points gained every level up, allowing players to easily overcome all limitations given enough time.

An RPG should be judged primarily by how its stats system allows the player to express his intention in the shaping of his character and the overall game world. A shooter should be judged on how good it feels and how well it allows the player to use the mechanics to express his intention. Thus Fallout 4's lean stat system and its more robust shooting require critiquing the game on its gun play primarily. The critique covers two important contexts: Fallout 4 compared to its Bethesda predecessor and Fallout 4 in the broad context of shooters.

I. The Vulgarity of Fallout 3

Gamebryo is a twisted and stiff engine and the version Fallout 3 uses is particularly bad. At release, players enjoyed the smoothness of the CoD 4 era Infinity Ward 3 (IW3) engine and HL2: Episode 2's Source engine. One can immediately see how much of a step back F3 is in this context. It features rather abysmal movement, polish, and feedback.

Concerning movement, the acceleration is very high and there is little friction. The movement causes overcommitting to peeks around corners as the player slides then comes to a sudden stop. This slippery and stiff movement feels abysmal compared to the smoothness of the IW3 and Source engines. Even the slippery GoldSource engine found in Half-Life 1 is superior given its use of counter-strafing to come to a complete standstill.

Recoil animations in Fallout 3 are slow and floaty when firing both pistols and rifles. Reloading is a rigid unpleasant animation. SMGs in particular lack any sort of recoil animation when fired, giving off only a slight shake. Guns in CoD 4 have quick powerful feeling recoil. Aiming down sight and firing an AK-74u in the CoD 4 competitive promod is immensely satisfying. The gun chatters loudly as the model's recoil start up animations jump up before violently being reset. The quick 90 degree bounce of the Deagle in CoD 4 along with the blindingly fast backward patter of the smg in HL2 provide great feedback for players. Fallout 3 lacks this polish.

Fallout 3's guns feel bad not only because of the animations, but also because of the lack of screen shake, a visceral cinematic effect. CoD 4 and HL2 also lack screen shake, but they have so much polish on their animations that they otherwise don't need it. Fallout 3 could have kept it's poor animations and benefited greatly from screen shake. One of the few guns with screen shake in Fallout 3 is the minigun. It's slight, but keeps the gun feeling more visceral when fired. Firing the glock and smg in Half-Life 1 is a visceral affair. The game's speed, high movement accuracy, and screen shake all provide for sublime gun play. This kind of polish could have easily improved Fallout 3.

II. Shallow AI

As any game with shooting elements, the point is to dispatch enemies quickly while taking as little damage as possible. The dominant strategy in F3 is to dispatch enemies while backpedaling or to turn corners to escape an enemy's line of sight. Crouching is only used to sneak and get criticals as there is very little cover that can effectively be used throughout the game. Occasionally there are cars or desks that can be used, but the only instance cover is tremendously useful is when taking pot shots at enemies from the tops of hill and then crouching behind said hills to reload.

If one's build is effectively optimized, Time to Kill (TTK) is very low in F3. Headshots in VATs do tons of damage. Two or three enemies can be dispatched before having to reload a clip, pushing players to be frugal with their effective, scarce, and expensive ammo. Only elite enemies such as the game's super mutants take multiple clips to dispatch.

Stimpaks in F3 heal immediately which makes the moment to moment decision making not matter as much. A player can gamble taking reckless shots at powerful enemies in the open because he can heal himself immediately. An example would be quick risky peeking from around a corner. Even worse, one can backpedal with unscoped bolt rifles and take quick headshots as enemies barrel at you. Thus the primary strategy is not to minimize damage as much as one should, but to shoot as much as one can, as the player can instantly heal during a gun fight.

III. The 7 Year Quest for Polish

Fallout 4's polish and gun fights are much less vulgar than its predecessor. F4's gun play features much more dynamic game feel. The scope in, reload, and recoil all have weight and complexity compared to the floaty and simple animations in F3. F4 contains feedback aplenty every time guns are fired compared to the relatively few guns that had any sort of fleshed out game feel in its predecessor. The 10mm Pistol has a visceral recoil animation that quickly pounces back when fired. The mild to moderate screen shake when firing smgs, pistols, and rifles provide great feedback during the longer gun fights of F4. Its game feel is flashier overall and provides for a more fun and polished experience.

Strategy and positioning is marginally more complex in 4. When an enemy takes cover, one can flank it, reload, or use a stimpak which now heal over time. To be very clear, having enemies use cover and intermittently peer out from behind is slightly less basic than having an enemy run right at you. The AI is still incredibly stupid as you only have to wait for it to expose itself before firing. Furthermore the vulgarity of the Gamebryo engine still exists. The issue of landscape and cover not being accurately mapped in the game is still is an incredibly annoying issue. A massive super mutant can be exposed while taking cover behind a concrete divider or lamppost and be untouchable because the hitbox for the cover is much larger than the rendered in game object visually clues us in on. This problem is most egregious when it comes to some railings on metal walkways and catwalks. The gaps in some of these railings still cannot be shot through with guns. Not all cover has this issue, but it still is much too common.

Time-to-kill is longer as enemies weave in and out of cover. F3 contained enemies walking and running in straight lines to the player as they pulled the trigger. They never used cover and would get stunned and flinch about erratically when the player landed a critical headshot. F4's crits also stun enemies, but their animations are much easier to capitalize upon without VATs. Overall F4's animations are better and are much more dynamic. The longer gun fights are more complex than the quick firing and backpedaling in F3. Enemies approach the player, take positions of varying distances, and respond to the player. Having some enemies take pot shots from the high ground while other enemies fire from cover and more shoot from medium and close range allows for more marginally more dynamic gameplay.

Although more polished, I think players are stuck on the fact that the shooting is much better than Fallout 3 without examining how it stacks up in shooters in general. F4 has elevated itself into the ranks of other mediocre console shooters. The closest comparison I can find for Fallout 4 is Destiny, a game with similar engagements. Enemies will either charge or take cover and periodically peek out. This kind of shooting meta is simple, especially considering the intelligence of AI in other games like F.E.A.R. from 2005. In F.E.A.R., enemies would flank, use cover, team up, retreat, use grenades, bunch up, disperse, all anticipating and reacting to the enemies position and movement. Games where enemies boringly hide and peek constantly are thoroughly regressive and cannot stack up to even ancient games like DOOM.

The worst part of being a game in the same vein as Destiny is that guns in Fallout 4 feel a bit worse. Bungie understands polish. Guns feel good to use as they have moderate but manageable recoil and have powerful animations for both recoil and reloading. When fired, even while aimed down sight, there is notable screen shake. This kind of cinematic effect has been a mainstay for Bungie since the assault rifle in Halo 1. But comparing the polish of Destiny to Fallout 4 shows a clear winner. Fallout 4 contains guns that jump in a much weightier and quicker fashion than before. They lack the poor and floaty animations found in Fallout 3. But an annoying aspect is how the gun's recoil obscures the enemy. I think the developers did this to compensate for the only minor screen shake the guns have. Instead of shaking the screen more in a console game, the guns bounce more, unfortunately obscuring targets until the animation resets.

Lastly as a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player and a former Call of Duty player, shooters with aim down sights and no spray patterns are down right regressive and has been so since its inception as a mechanic in the early 2000s. Spray patterns allow players to compensate recoil skillfully. As a player gets better, he can hit enemies from farther away more accurately. It excises not only hip fire's wide random sprays forcing players to shoot enemies up close but also ADS' movement penalty slowing down engagements to a crawl. I can excuse ADS in an RPG with shooting elements, but not in a shooter with RPG elements.

To conclude, Fallout 4 succeeds in much the same way as Destiny. Guns have polish and feel good while enemies utilize cover and peek out occasionally. And just like Destiny, it is a mediocre affair, made worse by Gamebryo issues and the poor execution of some animation elements. The poor mapping of the environment behind which enemies take cover can make the shooting occasionally frustrating and the way the guns recoil and obscure the target make gun fights fairly annoying. As a shooter, Fallout 4 is much less stiff, containing smoother and satisfying movement as well as gunplay. But the inclusion of ADS as well as dumb AI confines it within the mediocrity of modern shooters.