www.RamblingAboutGames.com is a place for me to share my in-depth analysis of the games I play. In particular, I want to focus on breaking down why specific parts of a game do or do not work, and try to generate productive takeaways from every game I talk about.
Since WoW’s launch in 2004, players have been able to customize just about any part of their UI, and in the years since, the community support that has emerged has been incredible. Not many games face this kind of customization support, and it has come with a lot of ups and downs over the years. So let's talk about where we’ve come from, and where things are going.
Read MoreRPGs have had random battles for as long as any of us can remember, and while how we handle them has changed a lot as the industry grows, every system has their own strengths and weaknesses. In this post, I examine what some of those are, as well as looking at why Pokemon Sword & Shield’s system is just so great.
Read MoreMMos have been using the idea of level scaling for a while, to help make their content relevant to more people for longer. But Final Fantasy 14’s take on this system comes with a few issues that make things a bit of a pain for low level players.
Read MoreMobile games get a pretty bad rap these day. People tend to look at them as exploitative, and only designed around making money. In a lot of cases they aren’t even wrong. They aren’t entirely wrong either, but the truth is that in reality, there is a lot more than that that goes into making a successful mobile game. I’ve always felt that there are a lot of concepts that, if applied smartly, could add a lot of value to a game.. So let’s look at just how Smash Ultimate does exactly that.
Read MoreIncremental games have always kind of fascinated me. Even before the genre really existed, I always thought it was really interesting whenever a game would allow you to continue making progress while offline, or not actively engaging with it. I’ve played a lot of games in this genre over the years, and they all have wildly varying designs and success levels, so I thought I would take a look at some of the titles that I know best, and try and pick out what sets the successful ones apart from the pack.
Read MoreThe concept of “the fundamentals” is present in probably any area of life that one can get good at. You can think of them as the core skills that fall into that “easy to learn, hard to master” area, and for the most part, they are skills that just kind of come with experience. In Bloodborne, “the fundamentals” are front and center, and as it turns out, that’s a really good thing…
Read MoreWhat's impressive about Bloodborne’s health system is that, despite making just a few small changes from the previous souls games, they manage to have a pretty big impact on the way the player approaches the rest of the game.
So, lets take a look at just how From Software achieved this…
Read MoreWhen God of War (2018) came out it set the gaming community ablaze, and as it sat at a 98 on Metacritic, I was convinced that maybe there was something worth looking at here. As it turns out, God of War 2018 is really good video game. The thing that most impressed me was that, I felt pulled into the game world in a way that most games never achieve.
So, I thought I’d take a look at how they achieved this…
Read MoreIf there is one absolute truth about my taste in games, it's that I love a good skill tree. I've always felt like a properly implemented skill system just adds so much depth to a game, and this can manifest in a huge number of ways. So when I learned that Assassin's Creed Origins was going to have a skill tree, I was pretty interested to see where it was going to go. Unfortunately, it’s was a bit of a disappointment…
Read MoreGames like Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy 5, and Bravely Default share a very similar class system with Blue Dragon. What I found to be especially interesting though, is that Blue Dragon's version felt like a notable step up from the others - not because it did anything especially crazy to the formula, but simply because of some small tweaks to alleviate the pain points in said formula…
Read MoreHi, I like stuff
