As I'm sure everyone is aware, today is Sunday! Which means that my first proper week as an MA student is coming to an end. It's been an exciting week and I thought I'd make a blog post to reflect on whats happened. I'm also going to be talking about something new that I'm going to be doing called "Spontaneous Sunday!", more on this later.
Week Recap
So on Wednesday we had our first proper session, which was a couple of hours long and involved an intro to the course from tutors Josh and Jim. We were given the assignment to create a blog and make a post with an introduction to our skills, aspirations and plan for the year to come. I quickly set about doing this and had it done a couple of days later. It was definitely a useful exercise as it got me thinking about my strengths and how to put my skills to good use over the coming year.
On Friday, we had a morning lecture that gave an overview of the module that we'll be doing from now until December. It's a research module that involves us looking into an aspect of our field of study and writing 1500 words about it. I've decided that I'm going to look into how atmosphere & immersion are created in games through the use of environment art, audio, lighting, graphics and so on, so I'll be starting my research into these areas very soon.
On Friday afternoon we had a 2 hour session which involved an open discussion about everybody's ideas of what they're going to study. After each idea, the group weighed in with their thoughts and suggestions. This was one of the most rewarding experiences of the week for me. My peers are definitely deep thinkers when it comes to game design and hearing everyone's contributions in an open discussion was great - it's refreshing to be back in the games studio and amongst fellow designers and like-minded people!
Introducing... "Spontaneous Sunday!"
This year I have vowed to play as many new games as possible in an effort to broaden my mind and inspire myself. To this end, I've decided that every Sunday I'm going to play a few hours of a game that I have never played before and then make a blog post on my thoughts, what I like and dislike and any design lessons that I take from it.
The first title to get the Spontaneous Sunday treatment is Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China (2015, Climax Studios / Ubisoft, Xbox One).
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| The game's front end. |
"Assassin's Creed Chronicles is a series of video games in the Assassin's Creed franchise. The series consists of three games developed by Climax Studios, to be published by Ubisoft. The games feature new protagonists and a design that is new to the franchise, a 2.5D world inspired by traditional brush paintings. The first entry is China released on April 21, 2015, on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One."
- Wikipedia on the Assassin's Creed Chronicles series
What do I expect from the game?
I didn't know a lot about this game before playing it. I vaguely recalled hearing that it's a console port of a mobile game but later found out that wasn't correct - the game was released to PC, PS4 and Xbox One in April 2015. Of course, I expected it to feature Chinese themes and culture due to the setting and name of the game. I knew that it was a 2.5D game and I was interested to see how the AC franchise translated into 2.5D. I expected it to be a slightly more "arty" and less realistic art style. I also expected it to be more puzzle based that the mainstream, 3D Assassin's Creed titles.
First Impressions - What did I think of the game in it's first few minutes?
Upon launching the game, the pre-front-end splash screen showed the Unreal Engine logo. I wasn't aware that it was made in Unreal and this interested me because it is my engine of choice. I later discovered it was made in UE3 and not UE4 - this means it is probably going to be one of the last games to be made in UE3 as UE4 was already out when the game was released in April 2015.
The front-end was instantly familiar as it was similar to the other more mainstream Assassin's Creed titles. I started a new game and read a short prologue. The game is set in 16th Century China, a setting and era that I've never seen before in a game. The intro cutscene was brilliant. The cutscenes in the game are still images in a classic oriental art style, with voiceover on top of it and it works very well - I was instantly impressed by this and it reminded me of the Three Brothers story scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
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| The intro cutscene. |
What do I like about the game, what does it do well?
The art style instantly appealed to me. All the textures are hand painted and the models are low-poly. We were encouraged to hand-paint textures in my BA course so I liked the textures in the game. The game features a female protagonist named Shao Jun. It's the first Assassin's Creed game that I have played that features a female hero. The developers approach the characters gender well in terms of mechanics - Shao Jun is more acrobatic and stealthy than the male characters of other AC games and this is reflected in how she moves and attacks. She has a "shoe blade", I weapon that I think is very unique. The assassination animations are great - one features Shao Jun getting the enemy in an arm-lock then driving the shoe blade into his head. This was brutal, unique and unexpected in a very good way.
The developers did a very good job of transferring the classic, well known Assassin's Creed free-running/acrobatic movement style into 2.5D, and it works better than I expected it to. In fact, all the classic AC mechanics are there including eagle vision, hiding spots and distraction techniques and they all work very well. The dev's must have put a lot of thought into how to pull it off and I admire their work. Animus Shards also return as a way of encouraging exploration. Everything feels familiar in terms of mechanics, but the setting, the well-designed protagonist, and the game being 2.5D keeps the game refreshing.
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| Eagle Vision features in the game and is well implemented. |
Each short section of a level gives the player a bronze, silver or gold rating depending on their performance. This does a good job of giving the player feedback on how they are doing and positively reinforcing success while also adding replay value to the game in an un-intrusive way. The game also does a good job of encouraging the player to be stealthy - which is essentially the crux of the AC series - by making it quite difficult to come back from being detected. Once a guard engages you in combat you can sustain very few hits before being defeated. This plays into the idea of the assassin being better in stealth than full-on combat.
What don't I like about the game?
I think that the game's art style is great, but the environments could benefit from a slightly more varied colour palette - there's a lot of beige, brown and washed-out red. I also noticed that the level design quite often relies heavily on killing or evading guards and there is a lack of puzzles - I can't remember playing a section that was purely puzzle and featured no guards. When there was puzzle elements, such as using a throwing knife to cute a rope and lower a drawbridge, it was enjoyable, but these moments were few and infrequent.
Final Thoughts
A 2.5D AC game struck me as an interesting concept and it was very interesting to play and to see how it was all done. The setting and character are unique and interesting. Overall it's an enjoyable and attractive game and the mechanics are nicely implemented, despite them essentially being originally designed for 3D games.
Playing the game got me thinking about the differences between 3D and 2D games and the nuances of adapting the same mechanic to fit both. This must have taken some serious design skill.
That concludes the first Spontaneous Sunday!
One last thing...
The cherry on top of an already good week came in the form of the release of LEGO Dimensions year 2 content. I worked as a QA tester on this game during my 4 months at Tt Fusion over the Summer and I feature in the credits!
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| My name in the credits of LEGO Dimensions year 2 content. |
That's all for now!
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