When it comes to video games, gameplay is at the core of the experience. I feel like that's a controversial statement when it shouldn't be. Story, characters, visuals, sound design, and things like that are not the core reason you or I play video games. They may be contributing factors, depending on who you are, but those are things you can go to other entertainment media for. Things like anime, comic books, movies, novels, manga, and TV and Web shows can give you all of those things in varying degrees just as well as and, in some cases, better than any video game ever could. Gameplay, mechanics, interactivity, and affecting a simulated world with your own actions are something that is unique to video games that you can't get in any other medium, no matter how hard those other media may try in some cases.
Because of this, a genre of video games, more often than not, is much more dependent on the mechanics you use to interact with the world with rather than any story or character development. Examples including versus fighting games, where you fight an opponent one-on-one using a variety of skills and techniques at your disposal, puzzle games, games where you have to solve brain problems in order to complete it, adventure games, games that you explore a world in, etc. That's what makes the Action genre of video games different from the action genre of other media: other media feature action, but in video games, you're directly involved in the action.
So, what does it take to make an action game? Well, I've looked around and I've found a few different basics that we need to cover before we can get into the real meat of the action genre. First and foremost, is the controls and the control layout.
For the purposes of this discussion, I will be referring to 3-D Action games. Games like Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising, Mad World, No More Heroes, God of War, and other lesser known or less relevant games in the genre. I won't be talking too much about 2-D action games, just because I haven't played that many, but several of the concepts should be applicable nonetheless, if a 2-D action game is something you wish to make instead of a 3-D game.
The most important thing to get right above all else in an action game, and arguably any other game, is the button layout. People like me, for example, tend to lean toward the "Ninja Gaiden" way of mapping out buttons, where X is Jump, Square is your Primary Melee Attack, Triangle is your Secondary Melee Attack, Circle is the long range attack, L1 is block, R1 is the Hard Lock-On (assuming the game in question has one, as Ninja Gaiden technically doesn't), and L2 and R2 have game-specific properties.
The way this would transfer over to Devil May Cry 3, if I had the option, would be Square is the Devil Arm attack, Triangle is the Styles, Circle is the Guns, R1 is the Lock-On, L1 to go into Devil Trigger, L2 would cycle Devil Arms, R2 would cycle Firearms, and the d-pad equips their corresponding styles. The problem with DMC3, in this case, however, is that that's not how the button layout is mapped: in DMC3 Square is the guns, Triangle is the Devil Arms, and Circle is the Styles.
I have adapted to DMC3 and 4's button mapping over the years and, now, I can play Devil May Cry 4 without any hassle in the buttons, although it does have rebindable inputs, so that's a thing. Just as well there are many other people out there who prefer Devil May Cry's button mapping much more than Ninja Gaiden's.
Because everybody is so different in what they prefer in terms of button layout, there isn't really one universal control scheme that everybody will be happy with. That said, though, there is a very simple, easy, and elegant way to solve this issue, and if you've been reading up until this point, I've already stated it in passing: rebindable inputs.
By allowing the player to rebind their controller inputs the way they like, you bypass a lot of the issue with pleasing everybody in this regard. Is this necessary? Depends on how you look at it. For some people, rebindable inputs are necessary for every game either because of physical disabilities or because of the way mechanics are generally mapped out that some people just can't adapt to for whatever reason. On the other end of the spectrum, you have some people who believe that it's not necessary and that everybody should just learn to adapt to whatever button layout they are given. Many, however, like me, will fall somewhere in the middle where rebindable inputs are really only necessary on a case-by-case basis where inputs are sometimes to our liking and sometimes not.
If rebindable inputs are in the game, then as a developer, you simply set the inputs that you in particular enjoy, and then ship the game with those options within. This is especially important to keep in mind because some games have suffered from terrible control layouts and the way controls interface with mechanics. The most prominent examples I've seen of controls getting in the way of the experience are The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Star Fox Zero.
These two games suffer from unique though conceptually similar problems: controls that are based much more on gimmicks than solid performance. Skyward Sword had problems with responsiveness because of how it handled certain controls. The most obvious example is the sword combat, where you can swing in eight directions and stab, rather than the one-to-one controller mapping that was promised. Whether you expected Nintendo to keep their word on that or not is not only irrelevant because it doesn't change what was said and done but it's also unhelpful to the conversation because it's an attempt to cover up the issue: namely that Skyward Sword's controls simply do not function, at least not all the time.
Due to the way the sword strikes were implemented, certain awkward swings will be read as one sword strike or another close to it. Because of this, and the way the controller was mapped in general, the only way enemies become more difficult is by giving them more ways to block attacks.
Star Fox Zero, on the other hand, made use of the tablet and TV by having the Tablet's screen show you the view from within the cock pit while the TV showed you where you were in relation to your enemies and oncoming attacks. This creates a problem with getting all the information: you want to look at the TV so you can see oncoming threats and navigate the area but you also want to look at the tablet so you can properly aim at enemies and see where you're shooting.
If either of these games had a way to alter the way the controls interact with the game, these issues would've been seriously diminished.
So, once you've got your rebindable inputs, next is the mechanics you want to implement. This one is a bit trickier because every game is different, and even among the same genre, there are many, many different ways mechanics are handled, both in terms of what's present and absent, and the way these mechanics are utilized in-game.
Pretty much every action game has the following things to a certain degree: one or two attack buttons, a block and/or dodge button, multiple weapons that can be swapped out in some way, and special moves.
I went into more detail on this in my comparison of Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden, so I won't cover those to the same degree here, but Ninja Gaiden generally had every single one of these mechanics: two attack buttons, a primary and secondary, a block button, a dodge roll, multiple weapons with a weapon-swapping menu, and special moves in the form of Ninpo.
Devil May Cry (3 and 4, anyway) had a single attack button dedicated to melee strikes, a single button dedicated to firearms, and a single button for styles, and here's where things get interesting. The styles consisted of a dodge dash (in the form of Trickster) when you didn't want to use the dodge roll, a secondary melee attack command (in the form of Swordmaster), a block and parry mechanic (Royal Guard), and a secondary attack for firearms (Gunslinger). In Devil May Cry 1, the styles were not a thing, which meant that you got one attack button, one firearm button, a dodge roll that was admittedly pretty clunky for me to use, and the only weapons that were not in Resident Evil at some point were Alastor and Ifrit. Also the Sword of Sparda but anyway, the Styles mechanic meant that the Circle button in DMC3 could be any of the things you wanted it to be, namely a secondary attack for melee or firearm weapons, a block and parry, a dodge roll, or one of two special moves (Doppelganger and Quicksilver, respectively). The limitation in Devil May Cry 3 in this regard was that you could only have one style equipped at a time and could only swap in menus or in-game shops, which meant that while Dante had every mechanic available to him in that game that Ryu has had since day 1, a good majority of it was locked away until you decided you wanted to swap.
Devil May Cry 4 was better about it with Nero and Dante, in the sense that Nero was made to have a default moveset that seemed to be a mixture of different styles, making him more akin to a Ninja Gaiden character in that regard, and Dante could cycle through all of his styles at any time, which meant that Dante could finally keep up with Nero and Ryu. The lack of Doppelganger and Quicksilver meant that Dante had fewer special moves overall but Devil Trigger somewhat made up for it.
The problem Ninja Gaiden always had with the special moves, I.E. Ninpo, was that they had a charge time and you couldn't attack until it was fired, which broke up the flow. The benefit was that you were invulnerable while charging but all that meant was that your charge time couldn't be interrupted by enemy attacks, which is better but not quite up to the standard that Bayonetta set with flow in terms of special moves.
Bayonetta incorporated her special moves, in the form of wicked weaves, into her combos in the form of pauses. Namely, if you paused in between inputs, the next input would be a wicked weave attack that would either nuke an enemy, break guards, or both. Bayonetta also had an ability called Witch Time, which slowed time around her whenever you perfectly timed a dodge to avoid an attack. In Bayonetta one, the duration of the time slow is extended the more you attack but this was removed in Bayo 2 for some reason.
While Bayonetta generally handles special moves better than DMC and Ninja Gaiden (at least if we're not accounting for mods, which is a topic for another day), the Bayonetta games still had problems of their own in terms of skill capacity and depth. Even if we ignore the PS3 port of Bayo 1, which Platinum games admitted was an after-thought (roll credits), Bayo 1 and 2 were not perfect. Far from bad but could still be improved.
The biggest issue is the Megaton Quick Time Events, which are basically just cutscenes with minimal inputs for massive damage. They were basically just button mashing sequences that looked pretty but required no skill to pull off. By comparison, Nero's Devil Bringer in DMC4 had similarly canned animations which were a smaller part of a larger moveset that were not mandatory, were only usable if you had an opening, and could also be used in tandem with grabs that could deal damage, throw enemies, and use enemies as shields, not to mention the fact that Nero's canned animations would have different effects in terms of whether or not Red Queen was revved or if you had Devil Trigger on, which in some cases you could alter during the animations.
Another problem, specifically with Bayo 2, is that, while there are a shit-ton of combos, most of their effects were rather similar to each other and varied very little in terms of "What does this do other than a certain amount of damage?" This meant that you could pretty much mash either of the two attack buttons, with pauses at various intervals, to deal damage and nuke enemies. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance had a similar problem with combo depth, in the sense that both just amount to mashing different buttons and, in both cases, there's no way of knowing which combos are the best. However, both games are similar in the regard that, the plus side to this is that the combos look fluid and satisfying to pull off no matter what buttons you hit.
Ninja Gaiden was similar in this regard. It had a number of combos per weapon but the only combos that were worth learning about and practicing to perfection were the Izuna Drop variants which were always some variation on Square, Triangle, three Squares, then Triangle again. Other than that, you could generally get by with button mashing, the Flying Swallow, Executions in 2, and the Steel-to-Bone mechanic in Razor's Edge.
That said, though, this does bring up an interesting issue: depth versus complexity. Depth being the number of meaningful decisions you can make with a single set of mechanics, and complexity being the overall number of mechanics you need to learn.
Depth over complexity is something that Devil May Cry 3 largely excelled at over every other game in the genre, which is one of the reasons it's widely considered the best in the genre. Even not factoring in Swordmaster or Gunslinger, your two attack buttons, for devil arms and firearms respectively, gave you some options in terms of the basic sword Rebellion and the twin pistols Ebony and Ivory.
In DMC3, when you were locked-on to a target you could mash the button to get a basic attack, pause to get an extended combo, push the analog stick forward while attacking to perform stinger, mash immediately after stinger to perform a rapid stab attack, you could pull the analog stick back while attacking to launch enemies into the air, and if you held the attack button when you did that, you would rise with them. All of that with a single button and the analog stick.
This is something that should be taken into account when designing depth for an action game: different numbers of button combinations to result in different desired effects. This is not the same as a button masher, where you simply press one button over and over again to perform the same combo to beat enemies, like God of War.
One other thing to note that I think a lot of Action game fans are aware of that a lot of developers are still getting wrong to this day is that action games thrive on their combat. This means a few things. Firstly, it means that the more enjoyable a combat system is, the more a player is likely to play it and replay over and over again. This is why structure, pacing, and even story to a certain extent, are not that important to Action games.
Now, it would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that story can enhance an action game to greater heights than the mechanics can by themselves. At the risk of sounding redundant, a popular example of a great boss in action games is Vergil in Devil May Cry 3. But why is Vergil so beloved among the fans? Well, for one thing, Vergil was a boss that was designed to have a playable character moveset, which made him challenging because, especially on the higher difficulties, Vergil would be capable of beating you because he does what you do but better. But what elevated him for many was his role in the story and how that set him up as a rival to Dante, the playable protagonist. If DMC3 didn't have a story and the bosses, like Vergil, were restricted to opening cinematics in the form of cutscenes just before the fight starts, like in Dark Souls, Vergil may have been slightly less well received. Or, alternatively, he could've been better received.
What makes Dark Souls so enjoyable to me, in particular, is that the lore is so dense with details and filled with mysterious circumstances that can be theorized about all day long until you're blue in the face. It was relatively light on the story, and the combat wasn't that good but the lore is what makes Dark Souls enjoyable on some level.
While it is true that Vergil was handled very well in DMC3 and he and the series in general deserve more credit than some gaming publications want to give it, it would be quite possible that Vergil's impact would've been diminished greatly if his characterization were still present but altered into something different. DmC: Devil May Cry proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
What's also worth noting is that, if Devil May Cry did take the Soulsborne route of keeping characterization within optional sections that allowed the combat to shine when you just wanted to fight, it might have been the best of both worlds. The in depth and complex fighting system that many people can get into while also having the intrigue, and sometimes, speculation-worthy characters and events of Dark Souls.
I'm not necessarily saying that Hideki Kamiya or Hideaki Itsuno would've been able to pull this off either way, I'm just saying that Vergil was a good enough boss by himself that contextualizing him in the story was not quite as necessary as some tend to believe. There are other ways to handle characterization that are just as effective without being quite as intrusive.
That said, action games also thrive on replayability. This is what I meant when I said that structure, pacing, and narrative are not as important to the action genre. If an action game is as good as Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, or Bayonetta, more than likely, you're going to want to replay it over and over again, even though the story is really only beneficial on a first playthrough.
TurboButton stated in his video on Structure and Pacing that, no matter how good your combat system is, if it's just a straight gauntlet of enemies, it'll get tiresome. And one person made a pretty good point, so I'll summarize it for those of you who haven't seen that video. Basically, structure and pacing are really only important for games that are story focused because those games are only expecting one playthrough. But, games that are looking for heavy replayability, do not need the downtime that a narrative-focused game would need because, after the wonder of the story is gone and you're going in for that second or third, or hundredth playthrough, the downtime that consists of running from place to place, doing puzzles, or platforming, will only be aggravating.
To end that, here's a quote from the actual comment: "If I'm getting sick of the gameplay, I'll just stop playing." Meaning that, even if your game is a straight gauntlet of enemies, nothing's stopping the player from just putting the game down and coming back to it later when they're more refreshed.
The focus on narrative has also caused some other issues in action focused games. Specifically walking sections. These are a form of downtime where the player is restricted to walking while having narrative stuff happen around the character. They're tolerable the first time when you want to watch the story unfold, but on repeat playthroughs, it destroys the flow of gameplay for largely the same reason that other forms of downtime do.
Bayonetta's down-time was well executed in the sense that it was just long sections that you could speed through as a panther if you really want to just get straight to the action. But, if your game has a heavy emphasis on just having fun with the combat, narrative and downtime are probably better left on the cutting room floor.
So to end this first introduction to the series, let's recap some of the do's and don'ts that I highlighted during this article:
Do's:
- Rebindable Inputs
- Consider what the player can do with a single small set of mechanics
- Add complexity later when you feel you can design around it
Don'ts:
- Walking Sections
- Quick Time Events
Optionals:
- Story, pacing, and structure, or at least a heavy emphasis on them
- Downtime for first-time runs
That pretty much covers the basics. Next time, we'll be covering mechanics on a deeper level and how you could differentiate your game from the games currently in existence. I hope you'll join me then, thanks for reading.
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