An essential part to any video game is what info the player is actually made aware of, usually through obvious visual and audio clues. Aside from that, the most common source of relaying information to the player is through the UI or "user interface". This interface takes many forms, from telling the player about their inventory with bright visuals and obvious numbers, or being relatively nonexistent for atmospheric affect. Knowing how to make use of this interface is what provides many well-composed games with an extra level of polish and professionalism. To illustrate this point, I will take two examples of UIs, each with different styles, purposes, and overall affect, and explain how they ultimately achieve the same goal. The first example presented here is a screenshot from the game Super Metroid, a sci-fi 2D platformer published by Nintendo in 1994. This particular entry in the series not only paved the way for UI design in future Metroid games, but also has many great examples of interface design still used by many Metroidvanias to this day. The main feature available to the player is the very noticeable items sitting at the top, which can be cycled through with the press of a button to access various weapons and features. This quick swap means that there is no need to open a menu in order to swap weapons, and a variety of attacks can be preformed mid-combat. Aside from this, the health bar sits in the top-left corner, which is a staple feature of almost all UI designs across all games. The mini-map also sits in the top-right corner, which displays adjacent rooms to the player, and are viewable at all times. This map can be opened into a world map in a separate menu, which, gives the player access to a much wider area to survey. All in all, this particular UI serves all of it's purposes extraordinarily well, and still presents the needed information despite its age. My second example is from the game Bloodborne, a gothic horror action RPG published by From Software in 2015. Bloodborne, as a game, follows a very particular formula that the From Software team has become well known for over the past decade. Now in terms of UI, it also follows many common formulas, mainly the health bar in the top-left corner, and the boss health bar in a noticeable location. Items are now instead placed right below the health bar, enough to the point that they cycled through and accessed. The currency is also managed in the top-right corner this time around. The main goal of the UI in this particular game is to provide the player with the information they need, all the while staying small and minimal in order to give the player a wide field of view, as mobility and situational awareness are essential in From Software games, which are typically notorious for being exceptionally difficult. This goal is achieved to great affect, as the small UI gives the player a wide area of view, and leaves them more space to focus on the horrific environments that the game wants you to pay attention to. My third and final example comes from Enter the Gungeon, a bullet-hell roguelike published by Dodge Roll in 2016. Being a bullet-hell, a game such as this is typically going to have a very full screen, which the developers accommodated for in their UI design. They did this by pushing all of the essential information against the sides of the screen, which leaves plenty of open space for combat to occur. These essential items are still brightly colored however, in order to leave them readily available for the player. Besides this, all of the essential items remain, from player health, to boss health and active weapons, which can be cycled with a button press. As seen in these various examples, every game has something to gain with UI design, whether it be to improve upon player experience, or to add to the game's overall environment. Using these principles of design can in turn greatly improve a game's overall polish and appeal to the player, and we can easily see how developers have been aware of this for some time. Hence why all designs follow the essential formula, all the while being true to themselves and their creative vision.
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I believe it's been a bit since I've done a proper game review, so I've decided to start again with a game that I recently completed. Metroid Dread. The Metroid series has gone without a mainline entry in its 2D series for almost 20 years, making Dread the 5th entry in the main series. Mind you, this is a game series that saw its first release back in 1986. Typically overshadowed my Nintendo's much larger IPs like Mario and Zelda, Metroid has been at the back end of company projects for some time now. Regardless, MercurySteam, the developers of the previous Metroid game, Metroid Fusion (back in 2002) were called back for the production of Metroid 5. And due to the slow nature of Metroid games, the game took about 15 years to develop. Boy, I didn't even know how much I desperately needed this, seeing as I'm an enormous fan of Metroidvanias. Gameplay/Experience This particular entry in Samus' adventure was developed by MercuryStream, a development company located in Madrid, Spain. Seeing as this entry was made by a group outside of Nintendo's usual Japanese production teams, various aspects of the game can be drawn in comparison to MercurySteam's other works. Mainly, movement is key. Everything about Dread aims to be Metroid, but faster. And this mission is achieved to great affect, as Samus moves smoother than ever, and has a number of extra movement abilities to boot. From short dashes to double jumps, slides, wall crawling, and grappling hooks, it's immediately clear that the objective is to give the player as much freedom of movement as possible. All the while, enemies are a good bit faster in order to counter the player's newfound speed. At the same time, many of the key Metroid aspects remain in place, such as the unique health system, various power suits, and even a few bosses. Now on the topic of environmental design, Dread excels in all categories. From lush forests to cold laboratories, the game has no shortage of unique environments and enemies to go along with them. The graphical capabilities of the Switch are what ultimately make all of this possible as well, which is exactly why the developers decided to wait until the newest console was out in order to wrap up production. And boy does it deliver. I have only 1 complaint in the end, and it's that the game itself is a bit on the shorter side, only taking me about 8 hours to complete. And this is in comparison to my time spent completing Super Metroid, which sits around 12 hours. (I'm not a speedrurner ok)
Art Direction/Audio Dread has quickly taken on a different style than that of its predecessors, which is already evident in its overhaul in environmental design. Aside from that, it now fully embraces the decision by Metroid developers to put everything in 3D, technically making this the first original mainline Metroid game to modeled entirely in 3D. While the game may ultimately be a 2D platformer, the 3D models still give everything a sense of weight and depth, further immersing Samus in the strange world she finds herself on. Audio on the other hand takes a clear shift over to darker/more foreboding tones. Most, if not all of the area soundtracks in the game, are very low volume, further emphasizing the overall danger of the mission. I would akin most of the soundtrack to almost robotic humming, very reminiscent of the mechanical threat that Samus is faced with at all times. At the same time, Dread's remakes of songs from previous games also serve as a gut punch of nostalgia for returning fans. (Thank you for Brinstar Depths) Stability/Performance In the 12 hours that I spent on Metroid Dread (1 playthrough, all items), I never ran into a single issue, which is really all I have to say about it. It ran beautifully the entire time, and now that I think about it, never experienced a single drop in frame rate. Verdict Metroid Dread has been nothing but an absolute thrill from start to finish, and while on the short side, I still found myself dumbfounded by the level of care taken to the original Metroid formula, all the while reviving it into something completely new. I can guarantee that I will be back to tackle this game in both its hard mode, and perhaps even attempt to speed run it should I find the time. 9/10 EMMI Image Source: https://attackofthefanboy.com/guides/metroid-dread-how-to-defeat-the-emmi-robots/
All other images are personal screenshots |
AuthorI have a passion for creating things, and hopefully one day those things will be video games. You can check over on this blog if you wish to see any updates on my work or other subjects. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools.
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