Mark. Immersive games

""Early last year, despite disliking most racing games, I found Burnout Paradise to be incredibly enjoyable. It’s arcade style and forgiving controls made flying through the streets of Paradise City exhilarating.

Just recently I got to try GRID and Project Gotham Racing 4 at my friends house. I also bought WipEout HD off of PSN. After playing PGR4 for a while I ended up frustrated and kind of bored. Something about it failed to engage me. Even after plowing through levels on a motorcycle weaving in between cars the game seemed to lack something.


After switching to GRID I was immediately impressed by the games look and couldn’t help but burst out laughing after making my first turn at 200 mph only to slam into a wall and explode. I was also very pleasantly surprised to then learn about the games rewind feature, just like in Prince of Persia or Braid, you can rewind your car to a safe spot before your crash. However, after an hour or so with GRID I had become increasingly irritated with trying to take turns at high speeds. If I tried to slow down, I’d make the turn at a crawl. If I tried to maintain some speed and slide through it, I’d end up in the dirt or slammed up against the wall. Any time I found the perfect medium for a turn I found I couldn’t replicate it. Every turn required a similar trial and error process that was no less easy than the last. I simply could not get a feeling for the game.

That or I just suck at it and didn’t want to spend the time getting good. Shut up Aaron, I know you’re reading this. ;)


Later that week I decided to pick up WipEout for the PS3. It is only 20 bucks, and GameFly was taking forever to ship me my next game. Also, it looked startlingly like F-Zero GX for the GameCube and I loved that game. Right away I started having fun, the game looked great, had tight controls and where and how to make a turn was instantly intuitive. My only complaint was the game didn’t seem fast enough, but after a quick bout online in the fastest speed class I changed my mind.

I knew why I preferred Burnout and WipEout to GRID and PGR4. I’ve always preferred the more arcade style racing games to the realistic ones. This led me to wonder if this applied to other genres.

As far as shooters go, two good games to compare are Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas. I love both those games, but the over the top violence in Gears is satisfying and hilarious. It’s also cartoony enough to not be vomit inducing. Rainbow Six on the other hand required a bit more thought before even firing your gun. You have to balance your gear between protection and mobility, pick your gun from many options, decide which two additional items you want to bring along, and finally what upgrades you want to put onto everything. RSV is very satisfying once you get your character tailored the way you like, but it is an inherently different experience than Gears.


Another comparison is Oblivion versus Fable 2. Oblivion is a great immersive game that, while I did enjoy, was a bit overwhelming. The sheer amount of things you were responsible for in that game was a bit too much, not to mention the leveling system felt more detrimental each time you “dinged” than helpful. Fable 2 on the other hand was much more cutesy. The world was big and fun to explore like Oblivion, but the barriers to entry were much lower. The game also had a great sense of humor.

One last genre I thought about is the sandbox genre. One of my favorite games of 2007 was Crackdown. The entire world felt like a playground for you to romp around in. The story in it was basically an excuse to give you people to mow down. The world was huge and colorful and housed some of the coolest looking explosions I’ve ever seen. Compare this to GTA4 and you’ll quickly see a huge difference. The world of Liberty City is dark and brown, the story is depressing, and even though you have a huge sandbox to mess around in, the character development doesn’t lend itself so nicely to murderous rampages.


After thinking about other genres it seems being realistic only seems to deter me from racing games. Despite what I said about Rainbow Six Vegas, Oblivion, and GTA4, I still loved all three of those games. GRID and PGR4 I couldn’t even play after an hour with each. I think the main difference is while the stylized games are more fun for me; I look for more than just fun out of most genres I play. GTA4 has an excellent story and Oblivion has one of the most immersive worlds I’ve ever played in. Racing games on the other hand rarely even try to offer anything else than a good time. """

Video game producers are trying to create games that are as immersive as possible therefor creating an alternative universe.

The down side to this is that some people forget what is reality. Some of the games today are blamed for youngsters attitude and violent natures but that is probably more due to personal problems and past more than the games them selves. For some the games are probably a form of escape, a way to forget about their problems and relax. Alot of these games often have influences from real life, some are even contain real events that were happening while the game was being create.