Action Game Genres

For the purposes of discussion, the "action game" genre can be further divided into two sub-genres: those with shooting and those without. These sub-genres can be further divided, but at this point we would start to get into technology based distinctions ”that is, the divisions are dependent on the technology used to present the game. For example, some people consider that the first-person shooter (FPS) is a genre in its own right. We can see this point of view, and it is a valid one under some circumstances. However, the key skill used in a FPS is reaction-based, and hence we'll be approaching all games that rely on reaction times as their key playing hook as a single genre . This is not as useless as it may seem. The fundamental patterns of action games ”whether 2D, 3D, shooting, or non-shooting ”are the same, no matter what the presentation layer.

So, given that we could argue that any distinctions within the action genre are pretty much arbitrary, we'll bravely soldier on with our basic division into shooters and non-shooters. Characteristically (and rather stereotypically) shooter games tend to appeal more to the male demographic, and non-shooters tend (although much more loosely) to appeal to female gamers more. (Consider that Pac-Man was one of the first wildly successful games to have a roughly equal male/female player split. However, it's clear that this is not the only factor ” Centipede , a game that certainly involved violence, was also fairly successful with females.)

Dividing the genre into shooters and non-shooters is useful, but it's still not quite fine-grained enough to be able to discuss the genre fully. The elements and rules can, for the most part, still be applied to just the two divisions, but there are certain issues that need to be covered in specific areas. Let's look at each of these divisions in a little more detail, and cover some of the types of game that are included in each of the divisions.

Almost all action games use a number of common elements that are covered in this chapter, such as lives , reaction tests , and hand-eye coordination tests . Many of them also use the levels , waves , and power-up design elements. Less common nowadays, but originally very common (possibly due to hardware limitations), is the single-screen element.

We will be discussing all of these elements later in the chapter. Before we do that, we will examine each of our initial genre divisions in turn , starting with the shooters.

Shooters

Shooters make up the majority of action games. Shooter games (despite their designation) don't always involve explicit shooting, but they do focus on violence as a major game mechanic . Shooters generally ”but not always ”focus on the actions of the avatar using some sort of weapon. Usually, this weapon is a gun, or some other long-range weapon. A smaller portion of these makes use of local effect weapons, as in the case of fighting games, ranging from games such as the Street Fighter series to the modern tour de force of Dead or Alive 3 . Screens from both are shown in Figure 9.1.

Figure 9.1. Fighting games.

Usually, this particular class of game presents a similar interface, showing both fighters onscreen at once. Even if a fighting game is portrayed in 3D, the main playing region is the vertical 2D plane defined by drawing a straight line between the two fighters. Thus, almost without exception, the "3D" fighting game is still played in a 2D sense, no matter how much eye candy is thrown your way. Of course, 3D isn't the main area of innovation in fighting games, although the added realism it can provide is certainly worthwhile. For the most part, the area of innovation in fighting games is in the realism of the characters , (including their interactions with each other and their reactions to injury ), and the methods used to control the fighters ” especially when considering how to handle special moves and combos . The main elements found within fighting games are variants of rock-paper-scissors (to handle the outcomes of playing certain moves against another) and the combo move .

Of course, the majority of games involving violence are actually "shooters." There are two broad classes that we will consider here: first-person shooters (FPS) such as Quake III , Unreal Tournament , and Return to Castle Wolfenstein , and 2D shooters such as R-Type , Space Tripper , Commando , Gauntlet Legends , Space Invaders , Robotron , Defender , Uridium , and Centipede . Even though this list of games seems to include many that are not similar to the others, they all share the common attributes of an avatar, one or more ranged weapons, and a varying number of enemies. Each of the games take place in an arena designed to require a strategic use of the weapon(s) and of any other tools that the player's avatar may be provided with. Figures 9.2 to 9.5 show a selection of these games.

Figure 9.2. Gauntlet and Gauntlet Legends .

Figure 9.5. Uridium and Space Tripper .

The reason that this particular range of 2D games has been chosen is that the gameplay has been enduring enough to have inspired modern updates. This implies that these games have some admirable qualities that we would do well to emulate. Of course, not all the updated versions have succeeded in capturing the gameplay of their parents as well as the designer might hope; in other cases, however, the gameplay matches or exceeds the original.

The original versions of the games were all completely 2D, because they were all written way before the hardware to support advanced 3D graphics had even been conceived of. With so little hardware power, the focus couldn't really be on the graphics or flashy effects, so all the focus went into the gameplay. Fortunately, the developers of the updated versions realized this, and for the most part, they succeeded in the difficult task of preserving the gameplay while updating the appearance to keep up with modern standards.

The original Gauntlet was one of the first games that provided the option for cooperative multi-play (see Figure 9.2). Each player could take on one of four avatars (Warrior, Wizard, Valkyrie, and Elf), and adventure through an (almost) endless series of dungeons, searching for treasure and food. This game introduced (more or less) many of the common action game elements we will be discussing later, such as the locked door and key , monster generators , team play , and dungeon exit .

There have been many updates for the classic Gauntlet , starting with the immediate sequel, Gauntlet II . Some have been more successful than others. The most recent of these updates, Gauntlet Legends , brings the graphics and environment up to date, adding a backstory and some extra features, but still manages to maintain the core of the old game mechanic.

Similarly, the original Robotron 2084 was a classic game when it was released into arcades back in 1982 (see Figure 9.3). The sole object of this game was to defend the last human family against wave upon wave of killing machines bent on their destruction. Another notable feature was the ability to shoot independently of the direction in which the avatar was moving. This was controlled by a second joystick.

Figure 9.3. Robotron 2084 and Robotron X .

The strength of the Robotron gameplay meant that for many years , updates just didn't happen. In fact, you can still get pixel-perfect versions of Robotron 2084 for the PC, Gameboy Advance, and other consoles. The first updated version (that we know of) was more of a tribute to the original Robotron than an update ” Super Smash TV , based around a TV show where the contestants battled hordes of attackers in single-screen arenas.

The first "official" update of this game, Robotron X , heralded the start of the "retro-gaming" fad, and updated the graphics to 3D. The gameplay (apart from a few extra bonus levels) was barely touched, but the shift to 3D negatively impacted the playability.

The advantage of the original Robotron was that all the action could be viewed onscreen at one time (using the single-screen design element). The 3D update, with its swooping camera, often obscured parts of the playing area. This meant that occasionally you would be killed by an enemy that suddenly appeared from an off-camera region ”an impossibility in the original game. This detracts from the playability because it is not the player's fault that he cannot see offscreen . In the original Robotron , if the player died, it was his fault ”all the information was there to be interpreted, so he had no excuses if he failed to react to the situation quickly enough to avoid the danger.

Centipede is yet another classic arcade game from the early days (see Figure 9.4). This game is often lauded as an example of near-perfect gameplay. The elements of the game are set up in such a way as to balance out perfectly and exhibit many interesting emergent properties. The player has to make informed choices about when and how to clear the mushrooms ”too many, and the centipede has an easier time reaching you and is harder to hit; too few, and more enemies appear to add more mushrooms.

Figure 9.4. Centipede and Centipede 3D .

Hasbro, flushed with the success of their Frogger remake, which sold millions of copies, decided to try again with a new remake. The remake of Centipede added 3D graphics, and a story. Unfortunately, something was lost during the process, and the gameplay suffered as a consequence. Even the inclusion of a pseudo-3D version of the original arcade game failed to save this attempt at retro-chic. One of the keys behind the playability of the original Centipede (and, in fact, a consistent theme running through all successful action games) was that the player did not have to think in order to interpret what was on the screen. It was easy, and took place at a subconscious level: The centipede is one color, mushrooms are another color, and spiders are yet another color. Unfortunately, this use of color to provide information was lost in the update, where the emphasis was on the graphics appearing realistically textured and interesting. Unfortunately, that meant that the players' subconscious had to work that much harder to be able to determine what was happening onscreen. Combine this with the shift from a 2D fixed play-field to a fully scrolling 3D world, and it becomes fairly easy to understand why this update failed to maintain the standards set by the original.

As shown in Figure 9.5, the space shooter is one of the oldest styles of games. From the venerable Space Invaders through to modern masterpieces such as Space Tripper , this has been a class of game that is consistently popular. One of the fondly remembered classic games from the days of 8-bit computers is Uridium , a game that puts the player in a Manta assault craft on a one-man attack run against a fleet of enemy space stations . As the Manta flies from left to right, waves of aliens and missiles launched from the stations converge on the player. The space stations were huge, spanning several screen-widths, and so the player had to be aware of what was happening not only on the visible screen he could see, but also in the much larger region that he could not. This was a mechanic lifted straight from Williams' Defender , although Uridium is played from a top-down view, not a side view. This class of game requires extremely good reflexes on the part of the player, and additionally, the ability to form a mental model of what was happening outside the bounds of the screen. There are two main classes of scrolling shooter ”those with fixed scrolling, where the screen would continuously scroll in one direction such as Irem's R-Type , and those with variable scrolling, where the player had some degree of control over the scroll direction.

Usually the degree of control was limited. Common configurations included horizontal, vertical, 4-way, 8-way, and multi-way scrolling. For players to be able to form the mental model required for successful play, a different technique is required for each of these types. The fixed scrolling games relied more often than not on memory. As well as reaction-time challenges, they also used memory challenges. A player learned the game as she played; if she got killed in a particular spot once, then she would learn the pattern of enemies for the next time around and hopefully wouldn't suffer the same fate. This was also used (although not to the same all-encompassing extent) in the variably scrolling games. In most cases, it certainly did the player no harm to remember the rough order of enemy attack, but the gameplay was not centered on that as a core mechanism. Instead, this class of game often provided players with a mini-map that displayed the game world in miniature , giving them an idea of what to expect to appear next on the edge of their screens. Space Tripper , from PomPom (www.pompom.org.uk), is a modern update of the archetypal scrolling shooter using 3D graphics and focuses on the core gameplay of the genre. Similar in concept to Uridium , it succeeds by using the 3D graphics solely as a presentation method. The actual game makes little use of the third dimension ”except occasionally for dramatic effect ”and remains, for the most part, a 2D game. This is what makes it so effective ”the developers have not succumbed to the temptation to make 3D an important part of the gameplay. For this style of fast-action game, it's hard enough maneuvering in 2D ”to do so in 3D would be an order of magnitude more difficult.

Figure 9.6 shows two examples of the logical extension of the 2D shooter ”the 3D FPS. This is the ultimate expression of the shooter side of the genre. Fully 3D FPS games are an entirely different animal from their 2D ancestors . For a start, they are bound by hardware limitations to a much greater extent than 2D games. This can be clearly seen from the early 3D FPS games such as Battlezone , where there were no more than two or three enemies at one time. Even more recent games, such as Quake III , have comparatively few enemies present. Of course, this is not just due to hardware issues (which will become much less of an issue over the next few years). It's also due to perspective issues. The player can only interpret and handle so much information at one time, and shifting the perspective to full 3D complicates this. This will be explained in more detail in the later section on game perspectives.

Figure 9.6. Battlezone and Quake III .

Non-Shooters

Many games ”particularly in the early years of the industry before commercial pressures intervened to the levels they have today ”were non-violent. This proliferation of non-violent games with strange themes is often likened to the early days of the movie industry, where creativity was the highest driving force, before the big money moved in.

Today, most games seem to be aimed at the typical male 25-35 demographic, but there are still notable exceptions. As we've already stated, the non-violent games seem to appeal more to the female demographic. One of the reasons for this, we feel, is that by removing the easy option of violence, the designer has to think a little bit harder about how to provide the gameplay hooks.

Notable "non-shooter" action games include Marble Madness , Lode Runner , Pac-Man , Chuckie Egg , the Mario games, Q*Bert , Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2 , Pong , Donkey Kong , and Frogger . All these games have the same non-violence motif running through them (although the latter two are arguable). The primary reason for this is because the games were (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the game) designed to be appealing to children, particularly in the case of the Mario series of games.

Frogger , shown in Figure 9.7, was originally a highly successful arcade game released back in 1981. The aim of the game was to get the world's only non-swimming frog family across a busy road and a logging river infested with crocodiles and fickle turtles . From these humble beginnings sprang one of the most successful series of remakes of all time. Hasbro's remake of Frogger (also shown in Figure 9.7) sold millions of copies, and was a mainstay of the software charts for many months after release. Interestingly enough, the developers focused on keeping the gameplay virtually unchanged, and just updated the presentation, increasing the variety of the levels available to the player. Frogger 2 , released several years later, introduced a more structured game, while still remaining faithful to the core gameplay of the original.

Figure 9.7. Frogger and Frogger 3D .

Of course, the phenomenal success of the Frogger remake caused a scramble for licenses for further remakes, which the publishers viewed as a license to print money. Consequently, there have been a number of ill-advised and hastily conceived remakes released onto the market. Pac-Man was one of the most successful games of its generation. Obviously, it could not escape being remade. One of the (many) remakes was Pac-Man: Adventures in Time . This update brought new additions to the game, including a story and a set of themed levels. Unfortunately, much in the same way as with Centipede , these additions diminished rather than added to the gameplay. However, Pac-Man World 2 on the Gamecube is an excellent use of the license.

Another phenomenally successful game was Q*Bert , initially released in 1982. This game placed a strange orange character on a pyramid of cubes, who was then chased by enemies including a cascade of balls and an evil snake named Coily. The object of the game was to change all the cubes to a target color by landing on them one or more times. The remake (shown on the right in Figure 9.8) followed the familiar pattern of adding a story and updating the presentation. Fortunately, due to the quasi-3D appearance of the original game, the gameplay translated well to the update, and the story doesn't affect the gameplay negatively, aside from minor issues caused by the entire playing area not being visible on the screen at one time.

Figure 9.8. Q*Bert and Q*Bert 3D .