I might have gone a little astray, because my last post didn't pertain to anything that was conspicuously stupid.
So let's talk about Super Street Fighter IV.
OK OK: I love the game. Every now and then I catch myself thinking that fighting games are somehow the one true videogame. Somehow, a game like Street Fighter, with its mind games, its one-on-one head-to-head mano-a-mano nature, and its harsh requirements of physical execution, encapsulates everything I want a game to be. But when Super Street Fighter IV was released as an update to ["Vanilla"] Street Fighter IV, something was horribly, horribly wrong.
The Super Street Fighter IV update introducted two new characters, Juri and Hakan. Like every character in the game, they can execute an uber-powerful Ultra Move, which can only be used after getting slapped around. It therefore functions as a dramatic come-back move. You input the controller motion for a single attack, but what comes out is an theatrically extended thrashing. You are treated to sit back and watch while your character automatically goes through all the (cartoonishly) violent motions.
It so happens that these new characters Juri and Hakan have the most uniquely passive and uneventful Ultra animations in the game. Their two Ultra Moves go the longest time without actually striking the enemy. Juri climbs onto the enemy, the camera zooms in, and she slowly makes an erotic threat for several seconds before beating down her target. Hakan, a cartoonish Turkish oil wrestler, comically spins the enemy's body around his slippery torso like a blazingly fast hula hoop, before launching him smashingly against the wall like a bullet.
Super Street Fighter IV is all about punching and kicking your opponent, but the two flagship characters who are supposed to compel us to buy the game have the most distinctly non-game-like Ultra Moves. By un-game-like, I mean they are exceedingly long and uneventful. The camera literally dwells on them while they do not attack. At these two moments, the game ceases to become a game, and furthermore the game expects you to love it.
Almost every Ultra move in the game becomes tiring after seeing them enough times, because they bring gameplay to a complete halt and they last for so long. As a comparison, Balrog (aka Boxer), who is an old returning character from earlier games, simply charges like a bull and lets out 5 devestating punches in quick succession. The camera never dwells. The player on the receiving end may literally feel like he has been hit. The victim has just enough time to realize he's going to get massively clobbered. He then gets clobbered, and the action quickly resumes.
The way that Juri's and Hakan's ultra moves are passive and movie-like, rather than game-like, is supposed to appeal to gamers and make them want to buy the game. Capcom was trying their damndest to sell this upgrade, which is part of an infamous history of incremental tweaks that are sold for full price, and for some sick reason the ace up their sleeve was to insert two inappropriate movies into the midst of battle. Fighting games at heart are immediate, direct, and demanding, but the flagship ultras of Super Street Fighter IV are the most passive elements in the game.
I see this as closely connected to the trend of game trailers that focus almost exclusively on cinematic cut-scenes that are disconnected from actual gameplay and player-control. The gamer is supposed to ooh and aah about how cinematic and movie-like these cut-scenes are, and then fork over their $60 for the privilege of watching them.
I don't know how to conclude, but this brilliant quote will do:
"Non-interactive scenes in a game are not reward, they are a punishment." -Adam Barenblat
8.20.2010
Running and Jumping All Over the Place
Nels Anderson recently asked why indie darlings are 2D platformers. Almost everything he states in the article (about audiences, etc) is true, but none of it really answers the question in the headline. The question should be split into 2 questions:
The commentators pounced on the first question (more or less lazily), but not the second. Obviously indie darlings are 2d because 2d is cheap and simple to program. Importantly, a 2D format also happens to makes it very easy to include inspired visual art. From this theory you would expect to find upon research that most indie games are 2D, not just darlings, and not just platformers.
Now the reason why they are platformers probably has something to do with the question of why ACTION games are such a dominant genre. And another way of asking the question is: why are darling games action-oriented platformers, rather than sports games, or pure puzzle games, or fighting games, or space shooters? Why do we want to run and jump all over the place?
My answer is that they're platformers because you DO THINGS in a platformer. It's usually limited to jumping, bopping, grabbing, or shooting, but all of these things feel really good! A game filled with charts and graphs, or with a deep intellectual understanding of the diamond trade (as mentioned by Anderson in his article), yes that could be cool, but you probably won't find me playing it. I want action.
Running, jumping, bopping, and grabbing, are PRIMAL acts for the majority of multi-cellular organisms on our planet. And they are action-packed! So a more interesting question is, why would anyone want to make a game about anything else? (And the answer would have something to do with the uniquely human pursuit of Edification, which would be an interesting study.) Working from this theory, you would expect to find that the preponderance of popular games has these elements, more or less, regardless of whether they are indie, or darlings, or 2d, or platformers.
Scrolling Platformers
I should mention that the only indie darling 2d platformers I really know about are Braid and Limbo. Both happen to be side-scrolling platformers, not just platformers, meaning your point of view moves from left to right as your character moves from left to right. Primitive platformers like Pitfall! and Donkey Kong had a stationary screen and stationary viewpoint while the characters simply moved around the screen. The scrolling nature of modern platformers is an integral part of their appeal.
Scrolling 2d Platformers allow for a *guided* ADVENTURE with a truly "moving" sense of progression, from present areas to unexplored areas. Every instant of a scrolling platformer gives you exploration and discovery, at the same time, which is psychologically stimulating. Or at least, a notable anthropologist here or there has assumed that an innate disposition toward exploration and discovery was an important factor in the spread of the human species across the globe, although I personally consider that to be a romanticized just-so story.
Moving from one area to another can mean progressing from one inspired piece of visual art to another, which is crucial for an "indie darling". In a platformer you literally TRAVERSE the terrain of a design opus. You don't do that in space shooters, where the scenery is usually vacuous space, and you certainly don't traverse terrain for its own sake in a sports games, or a pure puzzle games, or fighting games. In the case of Limbo or Canabalt, the terrain happens to be visionary.
In a "top-down" perspective game or platformer, the only variety in visuals comes from the floor or ground. When you move between different areas, the floor might switch from a grey concrete to brown floor, and the great top-down games like Metal Gear and Zelda managed to present interesting scenery from a quasi-top-down view. But in a side-view platformer, you have an entire visible world that stretches all the way to the horizon, which you can fill with visionary art and otherworldly ambience (see Limbo, Canabalt).
Other Factors
Gravity
2d platformers also assume gravity as a spicy backdrop by default. Every game must have forces that affect you, and rules that constrain you. The force of gravity has dramatic power in a platformer. It's a constant and familiar force that has important consequences for mortal characters. A precipice in any context is exciting, and if you have to enjoy a precipice in 2-dimensions, a side-view is best.
I'm waiting for a good designer to notice the common inextricable mix of gravity, 2d, and side-scrolling, and tear it apart to make something new. You might say that Braid did this, because it let you reverse time and rise back above a deadly pit that you were just pulled into. Bionic Commando also had a unique approach, because rather than letting you simply jump from platform to platform, it gave you a portable grappling hook from which you could swing and leap.
Heritage
An on top of all this, 2D platforms are easy for developers to conceive of because there's so many formative masterpieces that serve as precedents (Mario, Another World, Elevator Action) and that can be irresistible to the intuition during brainstorming. But I think these earlier platformers came into existence because of all the benefits offered by the format, which I laid out above.
Conclusion
Time and money constrains indie games to 2d, and a basic human desire for action (and art) constrains the popular ones to scrolling platformers. The combination of a 2D side-view perspective and the action of platforming can be especially poignant, because the very environment that you walk across and negotiate can be a traditional piece of graphic art. As the allure of 2D platformers changes shifts from violent combat action of shooting a machinegun at anything that appears on the screen to exploring a more deliberate visual aesthetic, as in Braid and Limbo, that's progress.
And if you ever contemplate why we have all these "platforming" games where all you do is run and jump all over the place, remember that our ancestors were tree-dwelling creatures.
1) Why are Indie Darlings 2D?
2) Why are Indie Darlings platformers?
The commentators pounced on the first question (more or less lazily), but not the second. Obviously indie darlings are 2d because 2d is cheap and simple to program. Importantly, a 2D format also happens to makes it very easy to include inspired visual art. From this theory you would expect to find upon research that most indie games are 2D, not just darlings, and not just platformers.
Now the reason why they are platformers probably has something to do with the question of why ACTION games are such a dominant genre. And another way of asking the question is: why are darling games action-oriented platformers, rather than sports games, or pure puzzle games, or fighting games, or space shooters? Why do we want to run and jump all over the place?
My answer is that they're platformers because you DO THINGS in a platformer. It's usually limited to jumping, bopping, grabbing, or shooting, but all of these things feel really good! A game filled with charts and graphs, or with a deep intellectual understanding of the diamond trade (as mentioned by Anderson in his article), yes that could be cool, but you probably won't find me playing it. I want action.
Running, jumping, bopping, and grabbing, are PRIMAL acts for the majority of multi-cellular organisms on our planet. And they are action-packed! So a more interesting question is, why would anyone want to make a game about anything else? (And the answer would have something to do with the uniquely human pursuit of Edification, which would be an interesting study.) Working from this theory, you would expect to find that the preponderance of popular games has these elements, more or less, regardless of whether they are indie, or darlings, or 2d, or platformers.
Scrolling Platformers
I should mention that the only indie darling 2d platformers I really know about are Braid and Limbo. Both happen to be side-scrolling platformers, not just platformers, meaning your point of view moves from left to right as your character moves from left to right. Primitive platformers like Pitfall! and Donkey Kong had a stationary screen and stationary viewpoint while the characters simply moved around the screen. The scrolling nature of modern platformers is an integral part of their appeal.
Scrolling 2d Platformers allow for a *guided* ADVENTURE with a truly "moving" sense of progression, from present areas to unexplored areas. Every instant of a scrolling platformer gives you exploration and discovery, at the same time, which is psychologically stimulating. Or at least, a notable anthropologist here or there has assumed that an innate disposition toward exploration and discovery was an important factor in the spread of the human species across the globe, although I personally consider that to be a romanticized just-so story.
Moving from one area to another can mean progressing from one inspired piece of visual art to another, which is crucial for an "indie darling". In a platformer you literally TRAVERSE the terrain of a design opus. You don't do that in space shooters, where the scenery is usually vacuous space, and you certainly don't traverse terrain for its own sake in a sports games, or a pure puzzle games, or fighting games. In the case of Limbo or Canabalt, the terrain happens to be visionary.
In a "top-down" perspective game or platformer, the only variety in visuals comes from the floor or ground. When you move between different areas, the floor might switch from a grey concrete to brown floor, and the great top-down games like Metal Gear and Zelda managed to present interesting scenery from a quasi-top-down view. But in a side-view platformer, you have an entire visible world that stretches all the way to the horizon, which you can fill with visionary art and otherworldly ambience (see Limbo, Canabalt).
Other Factors
Gravity
2d platformers also assume gravity as a spicy backdrop by default. Every game must have forces that affect you, and rules that constrain you. The force of gravity has dramatic power in a platformer. It's a constant and familiar force that has important consequences for mortal characters. A precipice in any context is exciting, and if you have to enjoy a precipice in 2-dimensions, a side-view is best.
I'm waiting for a good designer to notice the common inextricable mix of gravity, 2d, and side-scrolling, and tear it apart to make something new. You might say that Braid did this, because it let you reverse time and rise back above a deadly pit that you were just pulled into. Bionic Commando also had a unique approach, because rather than letting you simply jump from platform to platform, it gave you a portable grappling hook from which you could swing and leap.
Heritage
An on top of all this, 2D platforms are easy for developers to conceive of because there's so many formative masterpieces that serve as precedents (Mario, Another World, Elevator Action) and that can be irresistible to the intuition during brainstorming. But I think these earlier platformers came into existence because of all the benefits offered by the format, which I laid out above.
Conclusion
Time and money constrains indie games to 2d, and a basic human desire for action (and art) constrains the popular ones to scrolling platformers. The combination of a 2D side-view perspective and the action of platforming can be especially poignant, because the very environment that you walk across and negotiate can be a traditional piece of graphic art. As the allure of 2D platformers changes shifts from violent combat action of shooting a machinegun at anything that appears on the screen to exploring a more deliberate visual aesthetic, as in Braid and Limbo, that's progress.
And if you ever contemplate why we have all these "platforming" games where all you do is run and jump all over the place, remember that our ancestors were tree-dwelling creatures.
Games Aren't Narratives
Darby McDevitt at GamaSutra says:
I'm with McDevitt. Games don't do narrative well. But wait, there's good news! Games do other things well, which I'll get to in a minute.
I want to go even one step further than him: there is no good reason why the point should even be considered contentious. Almost all the Characterization, Dialog, Plot, Drama, and Acting I've ever seen in games has been on the same level of quality as the script of an old porno or sci-fi B-movie. The dialog is as bad as a porno, and it's just as pointless. Games are an inferior medium for narrative, compared to books or film. The only reason that what McDevitt said is contentious is because modern technology has allowed game developers to become wannabe filmmakers, film being the dominant and most glamorous and most omnipotent art form currently in existence, whereas earlier game technology had no chance whatsoever of even remotely mimicking anything cinematic. Sadly many players actually *like* the wannabe-movie games.
Movies and books are superior for delivering narrative, because that's all they are. Games are superior for *doing things* and *having experiences* in a cool environment that is governed by particular rules. Games engage our motor systems, our tactical planning, our reflex system, and our feelings of "play" and power and capability.. They also happen to be a prime medium for great visual and aural ambience-- for aesthetic treats-- though this is hardly ever exploited in any remarkable way, simply because artistic talent and vision is such a precious and limited resource. Anyway, a game lets you jump off of a skyscraper and live, or repel a battalion of crazed stalinists. Movies and words don't.
Imagine the best game ever, given current technology, and imagine for a moment that it is universally undisputed that it is the Best Game Ever. Let's say, just for the heck of it, that it involves your character doing a lot of running/jumping/grabbing, all of which appear in many popular games, and all of which are primordial and inherently exciting actions shared by almost every living organism on earth. Imagine that every kid on your block is going around saying "THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER!", and you play it, and you actually agree with them. Now imagine that it happens to have amazing dialog and acting, and a great story. My point and my contention is that if you removed all the amazing dialog, acting, and story-- just cut it out completely-- it wouldn't change anybody's reaction to the game, unless they are some kind of dim-wit who was actually bored by the game itself to begin with. A good game is enhanced by great narrative/cinematic elements, but it is so rare and so uncommon for those things to be done well that it really shouldn't even be encouraged. For me: Geometry Wars, Outrun 2, Street Fighter, Limbo, and Quake 2 MULTIPLAYER are what I would call benchmarks for "pure games" because they are outstanding and have no baloney; Modern Warfare and Super Metroid are rare examples of great games that masterfully, rather than crappily, incorporate narrative elements (like "words") that you read or hear.)
Enough with meaning. I *want* more of a focus on fun, not meaning. I want more of a focus not just on fun, but on the SPIRIT of fun. The spirit of fun is CHEERFUL. I'm sick of chainsaws and blood, and I'm sick of that being such a popular idea of "fun". I'm sick of cringe-inducing dialog lines that are supposed to have some profound relevance to society, or politics, or warfare. I like explosions, but I'm sick of deadly interpersonal violence. Maybe I'm straying from the point, which is that games are an inferior medium for "narrative", and furthermore that most developers are amateurs when it comes to narrative.
Within an interactive medium, my freedom and choices should not be constrained by some developer's half-baked amateurish script or vague recollections of high school english class. They should only be constrained by the rules of the game, and by the constraints of a well-crafted environment. If a developer is really good at "meaning" than he or she should be making movies, writing books, or serving as a well-paid consultant to a talented game designer.
"The needs of gameplay impose harsh demands on writers that must be heeded -- demands that novelists and filmmakers can ignore -- and create a bottleneck that forces redundancy. [...] It is a contentious point, but I strongly believe the claim that games are primarily about what the player does, and not necessarily the story or theme."
I'm with McDevitt. Games don't do narrative well. But wait, there's good news! Games do other things well, which I'll get to in a minute.
I want to go even one step further than him: there is no good reason why the point should even be considered contentious. Almost all the Characterization, Dialog, Plot, Drama, and Acting I've ever seen in games has been on the same level of quality as the script of an old porno or sci-fi B-movie. The dialog is as bad as a porno, and it's just as pointless. Games are an inferior medium for narrative, compared to books or film. The only reason that what McDevitt said is contentious is because modern technology has allowed game developers to become wannabe filmmakers, film being the dominant and most glamorous and most omnipotent art form currently in existence, whereas earlier game technology had no chance whatsoever of even remotely mimicking anything cinematic. Sadly many players actually *like* the wannabe-movie games.
Movies and books are superior for delivering narrative, because that's all they are. Games are superior for *doing things* and *having experiences* in a cool environment that is governed by particular rules. Games engage our motor systems, our tactical planning, our reflex system, and our feelings of "play" and power and capability.. They also happen to be a prime medium for great visual and aural ambience-- for aesthetic treats-- though this is hardly ever exploited in any remarkable way, simply because artistic talent and vision is such a precious and limited resource. Anyway, a game lets you jump off of a skyscraper and live, or repel a battalion of crazed stalinists. Movies and words don't.
Imagine the best game ever, given current technology, and imagine for a moment that it is universally undisputed that it is the Best Game Ever. Let's say, just for the heck of it, that it involves your character doing a lot of running/jumping/grabbing, all of which appear in many popular games, and all of which are primordial and inherently exciting actions shared by almost every living organism on earth. Imagine that every kid on your block is going around saying "THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER!", and you play it, and you actually agree with them. Now imagine that it happens to have amazing dialog and acting, and a great story. My point and my contention is that if you removed all the amazing dialog, acting, and story-- just cut it out completely-- it wouldn't change anybody's reaction to the game, unless they are some kind of dim-wit who was actually bored by the game itself to begin with. A good game is enhanced by great narrative/cinematic elements, but it is so rare and so uncommon for those things to be done well that it really shouldn't even be encouraged. For me: Geometry Wars, Outrun 2, Street Fighter, Limbo, and Quake 2 MULTIPLAYER are what I would call benchmarks for "pure games" because they are outstanding and have no baloney; Modern Warfare and Super Metroid are rare examples of great games that masterfully, rather than crappily, incorporate narrative elements (like "words") that you read or hear.)
Enough with meaning. I *want* more of a focus on fun, not meaning. I want more of a focus not just on fun, but on the SPIRIT of fun. The spirit of fun is CHEERFUL. I'm sick of chainsaws and blood, and I'm sick of that being such a popular idea of "fun". I'm sick of cringe-inducing dialog lines that are supposed to have some profound relevance to society, or politics, or warfare. I like explosions, but I'm sick of deadly interpersonal violence. Maybe I'm straying from the point, which is that games are an inferior medium for "narrative", and furthermore that most developers are amateurs when it comes to narrative.
Within an interactive medium, my freedom and choices should not be constrained by some developer's half-baked amateurish script or vague recollections of high school english class. They should only be constrained by the rules of the game, and by the constraints of a well-crafted environment. If a developer is really good at "meaning" than he or she should be making movies, writing books, or serving as a well-paid consultant to a talented game designer.
2.18.2010
Batman's Decrypter, or: Pressing Buttons is Fun!
The decryption gadget in Batman: Arkham Asylum is a glorious little nugget of excellent game design.
In the game, you pull out Batman's handheld decryptor gadget when you want to disable an electric forcefield that has obstructed your progress. More specifically, you use the gadget to short-circuit the control panel that controls the forcefield. The decryptor itself looks roughly like a cellular phone, but the important thing is that it presents a kind of mini-game to the player.
Imagine that you walk into a room with two old fasioned clocks. The clocks will open up the door to a secret passage, but you have to set each clock's hour hand to the correct hour to trigger the door. The mini-game is hard to explain, but it's kind of like that, except the hour hands on the clocks are replaced by two analog sticks underneath your thumbs, which happen to move within the confines of a circular edge.
Anyway, the mini-game has four important elements that are crafted so well that I think they illustrate great game design in general:
1. Control
You must physically move your thumbs around on your two analog sticks, somewhat like trying to tune two different radio tuner knobs at the same time, until the two positions of the sticks harmonize with each other. Once they do, the security terminal blows-out, the force-field gate disappears, and you continue on your journey unobstructed. You can think of each force-field as having a "code" in the form of two clocks: for example, 1 o'clock and 6 o'clock. When you move your left thumb-stick to the 1 o'clock position, while holding your right thumb at the 6 o'clock position, a kind of "resonance" is produced by the decryptor which blows out the electronic security panel.
Every security lock has a different combination of frequencies (or clock positions, if you want to call them that, although there's much finer resolution than the 12 notches of a clock), so you have to play the mini-game anew whenever you encounter an electric forcefield. You must twiddle your thumbs, as if fiddling with two radio tuners, in order to arrive at the right combination of the two sticks. And you must hold the correct combination of positions for about a second or two, meaning you often have to do "fine-tuning" as you get closer to your goal. Sometimes you must do this fiddling in a hurry, because poison gas is filling the room or a bomb is about to go off, or what have you. Wonderful.
2. Graphical Feedback
As you move each stick closer to the correct position to blow the lock, a graphical oscilloscope-ish gives you graphical feedback about whether you are getting closer or further from the correct position. The waves displayed on the gadget's screen move frantically when you approach the harmony of the two stick positions. If your two stick positions are completely wrong, the waves on the scope barely move at all, and you know it. It's somewhat like being told "hotter!" or "colder!" when play that game where you search for a hidden object with your eyes closed.
Aside from moving more quickly or slowly, the waves on the retro-looking oscilloscope change in color from brown to green as you get closer to the solution. (And then back to brown again as you accidentally slip past the right position, and try to fine-tune.)
3. Audible Feedback
Sound effects also clue you in to your progress. As you get closer to the correct position (for the given electronic lock that you are trying to decrypt), a delightful whirly/whistley sound gets louder and more highly-pitched. If you get close to the correct position, but lose it again by continuing to move your thumbs, the warbling/radio-like sound effect gets lower and more dull.
The entire mini-game is highly tangible, highly visible, and highly audible. For that reason it's a prime example of good game design, and of what video games are supposed to be all about.
The icing on the cake is when you successfully blow the lock. The terminal blows up in a small shower of smoke and loud sparks. I love it. You get so much feedback about the effort you're putting in, and about how close you are to overloading the lock, and about how DEAD that lock is once you beat it.
Some other icing on the cake is that you literally see Batman's own thumbs mimic your own movements, because your physical controller very closely resembles the fictional decryptor depicted in the game.
Pressing buttons is fun! Turning knobs is fun! And these actions actually mesh with something important that's happening in the game world. It's phenomenal.
The Sad Counter-Example
I have a completely opposite example, of a terribly implemented game nugget, and it comes from Modern Warfare 2, which otherwise does everything so well. In Modern Warfare 2, you sometimes have to place explosives on a door in order to blast it open and attack the enemies inside. What you do is go up to the door, then press a single button on your controller. That single button press initiates a rather long sequence of completely discrete actions: your character pulls out some explosives, then places them on the door, then steps backward a little bit (to avoid the upcoming explosion), then detonates the explosive, then returns to the newly opened doorway so he can start shooting.
Rather than immersing the player with meaningful and relevant button-presses (for placing the bomb, and then detonating it), the game basically plays a short movie for you while your character does all the work. In Batman, the player does all the work, and Batman mimics it onscreen.
Everybody knows it's fun to plant an explosive in a game, and then press down on a button to make it blow-up at the exact moment of your slightest whim. So I don't know what went wrong with Modern Warfare 2.
In the game, you pull out Batman's handheld decryptor gadget when you want to disable an electric forcefield that has obstructed your progress. More specifically, you use the gadget to short-circuit the control panel that controls the forcefield. The decryptor itself looks roughly like a cellular phone, but the important thing is that it presents a kind of mini-game to the player.
Imagine that you walk into a room with two old fasioned clocks. The clocks will open up the door to a secret passage, but you have to set each clock's hour hand to the correct hour to trigger the door. The mini-game is hard to explain, but it's kind of like that, except the hour hands on the clocks are replaced by two analog sticks underneath your thumbs, which happen to move within the confines of a circular edge.
Anyway, the mini-game has four important elements that are crafted so well that I think they illustrate great game design in general:
1. Control
You must physically move your thumbs around on your two analog sticks, somewhat like trying to tune two different radio tuner knobs at the same time, until the two positions of the sticks harmonize with each other. Once they do, the security terminal blows-out, the force-field gate disappears, and you continue on your journey unobstructed. You can think of each force-field as having a "code" in the form of two clocks: for example, 1 o'clock and 6 o'clock. When you move your left thumb-stick to the 1 o'clock position, while holding your right thumb at the 6 o'clock position, a kind of "resonance" is produced by the decryptor which blows out the electronic security panel.
Every security lock has a different combination of frequencies (or clock positions, if you want to call them that, although there's much finer resolution than the 12 notches of a clock), so you have to play the mini-game anew whenever you encounter an electric forcefield. You must twiddle your thumbs, as if fiddling with two radio tuners, in order to arrive at the right combination of the two sticks. And you must hold the correct combination of positions for about a second or two, meaning you often have to do "fine-tuning" as you get closer to your goal. Sometimes you must do this fiddling in a hurry, because poison gas is filling the room or a bomb is about to go off, or what have you. Wonderful.
2. Graphical Feedback
As you move each stick closer to the correct position to blow the lock, a graphical oscilloscope-ish gives you graphical feedback about whether you are getting closer or further from the correct position. The waves displayed on the gadget's screen move frantically when you approach the harmony of the two stick positions. If your two stick positions are completely wrong, the waves on the scope barely move at all, and you know it. It's somewhat like being told "hotter!" or "colder!" when play that game where you search for a hidden object with your eyes closed.
Aside from moving more quickly or slowly, the waves on the retro-looking oscilloscope change in color from brown to green as you get closer to the solution. (And then back to brown again as you accidentally slip past the right position, and try to fine-tune.)
3. Audible Feedback
Sound effects also clue you in to your progress. As you get closer to the correct position (for the given electronic lock that you are trying to decrypt), a delightful whirly/whistley sound gets louder and more highly-pitched. If you get close to the correct position, but lose it again by continuing to move your thumbs, the warbling/radio-like sound effect gets lower and more dull.
The entire mini-game is highly tangible, highly visible, and highly audible. For that reason it's a prime example of good game design, and of what video games are supposed to be all about.
The icing on the cake is when you successfully blow the lock. The terminal blows up in a small shower of smoke and loud sparks. I love it. You get so much feedback about the effort you're putting in, and about how close you are to overloading the lock, and about how DEAD that lock is once you beat it.
Some other icing on the cake is that you literally see Batman's own thumbs mimic your own movements, because your physical controller very closely resembles the fictional decryptor depicted in the game.
Pressing buttons is fun! Turning knobs is fun! And these actions actually mesh with something important that's happening in the game world. It's phenomenal.
The Sad Counter-Example
I have a completely opposite example, of a terribly implemented game nugget, and it comes from Modern Warfare 2, which otherwise does everything so well. In Modern Warfare 2, you sometimes have to place explosives on a door in order to blast it open and attack the enemies inside. What you do is go up to the door, then press a single button on your controller. That single button press initiates a rather long sequence of completely discrete actions: your character pulls out some explosives, then places them on the door, then steps backward a little bit (to avoid the upcoming explosion), then detonates the explosive, then returns to the newly opened doorway so he can start shooting.
Rather than immersing the player with meaningful and relevant button-presses (for placing the bomb, and then detonating it), the game basically plays a short movie for you while your character does all the work. In Batman, the player does all the work, and Batman mimics it onscreen.
Everybody knows it's fun to plant an explosive in a game, and then press down on a button to make it blow-up at the exact moment of your slightest whim. So I don't know what went wrong with Modern Warfare 2.
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