Now, as I covered in the previous section, every action game has some variations on similar mechanics. I'll go over them briefly right now and talk about how you can use some of these to make your game more of what you want it to be.
Every action game features one or two attack buttons, special moves, multiple melee weapons, block and parry, a dodge roll or other evasion mechanic of some kind, and some kind of traversal mechanism.
Of all of the action games I can think of, Ninja Gaiden and Bayonetta are two franchises that seem to get these things right consistently better than other franchises. Ninja Gaiden, in terms of the previously mentioned mechanics, however, falls below Bayonetta in one way, particularly with the special moves: flow.
In Ninja Gaiden, pretty much every character that has been playable has had a special move of some kind. Ryu has had many that I won't go into detail about now, as I already did in a previous post, but Rachel features blood magic that destroys all enemies, Momiji, at least in Sigma 2 and Razor's Edge, features a fire spell that, according to the lore, will only destroy evil, but as far as gameplay is concerned, it just heavily damages a set number of targets, Ayane has probably the most powerful Ninpo in both Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive, that being the Art of the Raging Mountain God, one-shots pretty much every enemy on-screen and also deals significant damage to bosses. And, since she is technically playable in Razor's Edge, even if only in Mission Mode, unless you have that game on Wii U, in which case, she's DLC, Kasumi's Ninpo is called the Art of the Rending Wind, which, if you're more familiar with Dead or Alive lore, you'll probably know it better as the Torn Sky Blast, which is essentially an energy beam attack similar to moves like the Kamehameha, though given hers is colored pink, I guess you could make a better argument for Galick Gun or something.
All of these special moves have one thing in common: long startup times that you are invulnerable during. On the one hand, making you invulnerable during a charge time makes the ability more usable than if you had to charge while enemies could still hit you, which Ninja Gaiden doesn't really need more of, if you ask me. But on the other hand, one could argue that all that means is that the charge time is unavoidable and you just have to sit and wait for it to finish.
The problem is that the Ninpo are not fully usable within the flow of combat without bringing it to a screeching halt. Bayonetta generally handles special moves better by allowing them to function within your core moveset. The biggest examples are her wicked weaves, which are utilized during pause combos, and witch time, which is a time slow that is executed when you perform a dodge at the right time. These are things that make the flow of Bayonetta's moveset work so much better while still giving off the feel that she has quite a lot of supernatural power.
Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 has something like that in the form of the Ultimate Attacks for the Eclipse Scythe and Enma's Fang. Now, in Ninja Gaiden, generally, holding Triangle would have you activate an ultimate attack that would deal massive damage to an enemy you were aimed at with the analog stick. These moves are not only flashy but they deal lots of damage and you are invulnerable while they're active. The cost to this is that most ultimate attacks have charge times but if you've killed some enemies and then charge the ultimate attack, you can gather the essence they leave behind and the charge time basically becomes zero at that point. Doing it that way also makes the attacks stronger and flashier.
That said, though, most of the weapons ultimate attacks are simply fast paced, flashy executions utilized by Ryu's skill. This is where the Eclipse Scythe and Enma's Fang come into play. The Eclipse Scythe has wind effects as part of its nature, and Enma's Fang has fire as a natural ability. Pulling off Ultimate Attacks with these respective weapons will grant you their corresponding special moves as an execution. It's honestly kind of a shame because I feel like these weapons are a nice compromise between the flow of regular melee combat and the power output of the Ninpo. If Team Ninja allowed the player to equip a Ninpo to a particular weapon, and then have that weapon fire that Ninpo as an Ultimate Attack, that might solve the whole issue. But that's a tangent, so let's get back on topic.
That said though, even while I said Ninja Gaiden and Bayonetta nail special moves much more consistently than other franchises, the game that probably does it the best is Devil May Cry 3. Devil May Cry 3 has the attack charging aspects of DMC1, which means that Rebellion, Cerberus, Beowulf, Agni and Rudra, and Nevan all have special move properties built into their movesets.
On top of that, DMC3 also introduced the Style System, and while the Style System was, for the most part, implemented as a way to give Dante moves that he lacked in previous games, namely a parry and block, secondary attack commands, and an improved dodge, there was still some utilization of special move properties in the styles that made them worth while: Royal Guard could be used as a heal and set of armor when you acquire enough power from enemies, trickster has a teleport that can close gaps, as well as air dashes for distances that other movement mechanics can't cover by themselves, Quicksilver stops time with a single button press, and Doppelganger summons a second Dante clone to fight with you.
The reason DMC3 has the best special moves is because of how they're implemented. Charging attacks, for example, with Rebellion's Drive attack, is a good way to fire long range attacks for higher damage than any of the guns and it's still a special move because it utilizes Dante's demonic energy, at least considering that Rebellion glows with red electricity as you're charging Drive. But, even if you don't like the special moves of the weapons, the styles give you an alternative that are simply single button commands or executed within their own contexts, making them much better.
You'll notice that, in my mechanics list, some action game mechanics that you recognize from games you've played may be absent from that list. The reason for that is because, generally, that list is indicative of mechanics that are in every action game, not necessarily mechanics you've seen before. For example, hard lock-on is a mechanic that everybody associates with the action genre but not every game has it. Ninja Gaiden, for example, has a soft lock-on, and while I won't argue its merits, I can at least say that Ninja Gaiden is pretty well designed around this. Often times the move list in Ninja Gaiden is extensive enough that, even without a hard lock-on that would allow a back input, it rarely ever impacts the depth and complexity of the series too much.
Two other notable mechanics that seem to be exclusive to Ninja Gaiden are Executions and what Team Ninja refers to as "Steel-to-Bone." Executions, in Ninja Gaiden, specifically 2 and its re-releases are moves you can perform on an enemy that has lost one of their limbs, usually an arm or leg, then hit triangle to instant-kill them. DMC4 had something like this in the form of Nero's Devil Bringer but I think Ninja Gaiden handled it better because it was a context sensitive action attached to every character's strong attack, rather than being something specific to Nero's properties. Ninja Gaiden and its re-releases had something like this, where you could press triangle on an enemy that was on the ground and Ryu would perform an execution. However, it's much more understated, Ryu simply stabs the enemy and they die. The executions in 2, however, were a lot crunchier and had a lot more weight to them, as though you were dominating an enemy that was in way over their head. And, given that Ryu is known as the super ninja, I think that impression is what they were going for.
The Steel-to-Bone mechanic is something else entirely. It still required the Triangle button and it replaced executions in Ninja Gaiden 3 and Razor's Edge. But, this time, rather than being something that puts a wounded enemy out of their misery, it's a mechanic that is used more for crowd control to defeat large enemy waves.
In the OG release of Ninja Gaiden 3, I thought the Steel-to-Bone mechanic was just a way to make the game more cinematic since, in that experience, cutting was tough and some enemies would even fight back if you didn't press fast enough. However, after playing Razor's Edge, I've actually come to realize that the Steel -to-Bone mechanic simply suffered from the 30 FPS framerate that the original release had. The reason I say this is because Ryu cuts a lot easier in Razor's Edge, no contest with anything, and it's much easier to kill lots of enemies with it if you go from one enemy to the next with this one mechanic.
The reason I speculate it's because of the framerate, though, is because of the climbing mechanic: in Ninja Gaiden 3, you had to jump at a wall and then alternate the shoulder button to climb up the wall using Kunai. In 3, the climibing was somewhat unresponsive and you had to press and hold the button for Ryu to go up and sometimes he would go down on a press that you had already held. In Razor's Edge, though, the climbing is so fast that I actually caught the attention of guards that were supposed to be stealth killed by accident. Considering 3 Razor's Edge runs at 60 FPS while 3 OG runs at 30, I think this is largely the reason for that and the Steel-to-Bone mechanic. The mechanic itself isn't actually bad, it was just introduced in a game that made it look a lot less appealing than it actually is.
If you want to implement a hard lock-on, you can, that'll give you a few extra directional inputs to work with.
Live weapon-swapping is also something a number of different games struggle with. Devil May Cry 3 handled it well, with only two melee and firearm weapons on at a time, and you cycled them with different buttons, which made it easier for you to get to the weapon you needed, provided you had it equipped. Ninja Gaiden has a weapon swapping menu which is pretty slow and not perfect but at least it allows you to swap weapons without hassle. Metal Gear Rising and Bayonetta suffer from an inability to swap weapons mid-combo. I think this may very well be the reason why a lot of action games tend to have two button inputs for attacking but DMC only has 1. Since Devil May Cry allows you to swap weapons mid-combo, what the input list says you can do with a weapon are not your only options in a fight. In Ninja Gaiden, Metal Gear Rising, and Bayonetta, they are.
These games generally make up for it by allowing the basic weapon you start with to be good against all enemies, but even so it reduced depth somewhat.
Before I go any further, I want to define depth and what I mean by it. Depth is the number of meaningful decisions that can be made within the mechanics of a given title. In DMC3, when you hit the first attack button to perform the first attack with your weapon, you had a few options: either hold the input to do a charge attack, hold the analog stick forward to perform a leaping or dashing attack, hold the stick back for a launcher or extra combo, pick a different button input for a different attack, or change the weapon you're using entirely. That's five total choices you are given every single frame. DMC3 runs at 60 fps, which means that you're given 300 total options in combat per second.
Obviously that's a generous figure, and doesn't account for the actual animations playing out or getting hit in the middle of combat, but nonetheless that's a decent number of options for you to pick from in the middle of gameplay.
That said, depth and complexity are not really the same thing. Complexity is having a large number of different mechanics whereas depth is the number of meaningful decisions you can make with the available mechanics.
The best way to explain the difference of depth versus complexity is a good 2-D Platformer versus a really unbalanced Fighting game. In a good 2D Platformer, like say, Super Mario Bros, you can run, jump, and duck. Three mechanics, pretty simple. However, your jump height is determined by the speed you are running: if you're doing a little trot, it will be a short jump, but if you're running, the jump height will be significantly greater. That's depth with simplicity.
Now, let's look at the unbalanced fighting game. Let's say, in this fighting game, the character you're playing as has 25 different moves. But, of those moves, only 2 are actually useful. That means that while there are a lot of different techniques you can use, you're really only ever going to use those two because those two are the only ones that are useful. In essence, the game is complex but for the number of mechanics it has, it's actually quite shallow.
This is one thing that Devil May Cry pretty much nailed in its first outing. Although Devil May Cry is not by any means the best action game out there, what is so great about Devil May Cry is that the games that exceeded it did so by expanding upon the mechanics that Devil May Cry had. An example is juggling and aerial combat. A lot of better action games feature aerial combat but there's not really a whole lot of point in having aerial combat if you can't juggle.
Bayonetta actually has a problem in this regard, particularly Bayonetta 2. Bayonetta 2 has about half a dozen trillion combos but very few of them are actually able to do anything that the optional purchasable moves can't. Ninja Gaiden also suffered from this problem, because it had a large move-list for each weapon, but apart from the Izuna Drop Variants, and the context sensitive stuff like executions, steel-to-bone, and ultimate attacks, you'd may as well just hammer the Square and Triangle buttons over and over again until your enemies die.
Ninja Gaiden, however, can be admonished somewhat because of its soft lock-on preventing certain moves from being usable outside of standard combos. Bayonetta, to my understanding, has a hard lock-on, which diminishes that reasoning somewhat.
Something that some action games do as well, that not every game does, and you don't necessarily have to do, is multiple playable characters. Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden do that fairly consistently, with each franchise housing around five or six different playable characters. Devil May Cry has Dante, Nero, Trish, Lady, Vergil, and Lucia, most of whom are present in DMC4SE, and the Ninja Gaiden re-releases have some combination of Ryu, Rachel, Momiji, Ayane, and Kasumi.
Bayonetta gets away with only having her as the playable character, which is fine, considering she's a good playable character to begin with, and Metal Gear Rising has three, Raiden, Sam, and Blade Wolf but Sam and Blade Wolf are only available in that game's DLC campaigns, so if you don't want them, they're entirely optional.
If you're going to have multiple playable characters, I recommend you only make the use of one of those playable characters mandatory. Or, to put it another way, the campaign should be possible to complete with only one of the playable characters that is available in the game. DMC3SE did this well, including Vergil as an optional surprise for DMC fans after completing the campaign with Dante. Metal Gear Rising also works in this regard, because the other characters, Jet-Stream Sam and Blade Wolf are DLC and therefore only available to the ones who actually want them. Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge handled this pretty well, where, of the four playable characters, Ryu, Ayane, Momiji, and Kasumi, if you played on PS3, like I did, you'll get Momiji and Kasumi on the disc and they will only be playable in chapter challenge. It might have been beneficial for Ayane to be optional as well, but the way she's handled is fine because she gets her own levels and enemies.
DMC4 handled this pretty poorly, by making Nero the main character, then switching to Dante half-way through while offering him no levels or bosses unique to him, barring the Savior, anyway. Now, to be fair, the developers of DMC4 did have their budget cancelled half-way through and the game is pretty well put together, considering it's only half a game. But, if I were working on that team when the budget was cancelled, and I had to think of a way to salvage the experience, I would've cut Dante from the playable story and made him an optional character for those people who beat the game as Nero, similar to Vergil in DMC3SE.
The counter argument to that is going to be "Well, not as many people were going to like it if Dante's not the main character." And my counter to that, is that Dante was not the main character in DMC4 regardless. He never was. Clearly, from the way the game is structured, Nero was the focal point for the plot and gameplay and, because of that, I'm willing to bet that far too much focus was put onto Nero in the story and gameplay for them to cut him by the time their budget was cancelled. Relegating Dante to optional content would've been far easier from a design perspective and would've also lifted off the complaint that the game "makes you play it twice" since Dante would be entirely optional in that circumstance. Of course not everybody would've taken too kindly to Nero being the only mandatory character. But at the same time, DMC4 got some major backlash initially for introducing Nero as the playable character even though Dante was playable as well. So I don't think making this concession to cut down on budget and time, and possibly even fixing the game, would've harmed the game's initial credibility from what we know it already was. I'm just saying, from a design perspective, if Dante was going to play through all the same levels and bosses regardless, they may as well have made him entirely optional out of the gate to ensure that the "half a game" criticism couldn't be leveled as easily.
That could very well have also motivated Capcom more easily toward making DMC5 instead of DmC: DMC.
Now, there's one last thing I want to talk about before we end this part, and that is the unique gameplay mechanic, the one thing that'll keep people coming back to your game over all the others. Now, I will be fair and point out that this is more relevant than it used to be since there are so many action games out there that you would probably need a unique mechanic of some kind to keep your game alive and well in this market where we have Devil May Cry, Team Ninja, and Platinum games.
So let's go over a few unique mechanics or mechanical systems that have been made just to give you an idea of what you're up against. Devil May Cry 3 has the style system, where every character's style does something different. Bayonetta has Witch Time, where a perfectly timed dodge will slow down time to the point that you can wail on your enemies and kill them relatively quickly. Ninja Gaiden 2 had the executions. Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge has Steel-to-Bone. Metal Gear Rising has two actually: the parry system where every time you parry, you go into blade mode to cut up what you want, and the Zandatsu, where you cut open your opponent and rip out their spines to recover your health. It also had blade mode by itself, which is also something going for it.
Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden, in their first outings, didn't really feature all that much in the way of unique mechanics. But in the former case, that didn't matter at the time because it was the only thing of its type on release, and in the latter case, it still featured a fun mechanic of its own. That said, the first DMC had the style meter and Devil Trigger gauge which fill as you fight and mix up your moves. Of course there was also slash-cancelling, dodge-cancelling, and enemy step, but at that time, it was uncertain whether that stuff was intentional or just bugs that didn't get worked out, considering that the enemies weren't really designed with those things in mind.
Ninja Gaiden featured the Ultimate Attacks, and gathering essence to power it up and reduce charge time makes the ultimate attacks even more worth it in terms of elements of strategy.
So, before we wrap up, let's go over what we covered, and the do's and don'ts of action games, in terms of mechanics, depth, and complexity.
Do's:
- At minimum, you want the following mechanics present in some regard: a block and parry, one or two attack buttons, special moves, and some traversal mechanic.
- After you've got those, you want to decide what additional mechanics you want that you think are right for your game.
- Hard Lock-On is recommended but not required. While many insult the notion of Soft Lock-On, if you can design your game around it and polish it to perfection, like Ninja Gaiden does, it shouldn't be too much of an issue. Hard Lock-On is preferred in most cases, even if only to stay focused on the action and to have additional directional inputs but if you don't want it, that's your choice.
- Special moves are best placed in areas where they can be utilized within the game's combo list and set of mechanics. Witch Time, Wicked Weaves, Blade Mode, Zandatsu, the Ultimates for Enma's Fang and the Eclipse Scythe, and the Styles and certain moves from Devil May Cry 3 are worth looking into if you want to do some research for inspiration.
- If you're going to have multiple playable characters, make sure only one of them is mandatory. And that doesn't necessarily mean make all these characters and then choose for the player which character they have to play with. You could also set it up in a way that the player chooses at the beginning what character they want to play with and, if they want to switch, they can, but they don't have to. The major point here, is that the game should be completable using only one character, and then the others can be bonuses.
Don'ts:
- If you're working on a game with more than one playable character, do not make more than one mandatory to beat the game, unless you have the budget, resources, and time to build unique enemies and levels for each character involved. If you run out of money at some point in development, and all the characters are finished but you only have a certain number of enemies and levels, render all except one character optional and have the story revolve around whichever character is chosen.
- Keep Special Moves with reducible charge times so that they don't break up the flow too much, or at least don't completely separate the special moves from the core mechanics the way Ninpo usually are in Ninja Gaiden.
And that about covers it for now. Next time we'll be talking about World Building, Linearity vs. Open Worlds, and Traversal Mechanics in depth, so I hope you'll join me then. Thanks for reading.
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