It's very difficult to break down exactly why a game is compelling through just text. Video Games as a medium are essentially every other medium at the same time. This is a big problem. Because where we might have some success in mediums like music in delineating the fundamental elements that can be used to create any music: Providing a great framework for understanding the thought process behind a work; Such a thing doesn't really happen in games. I guess Video Games tend to lean in most on the visual art side of things, but generally speaking it's even more severe with visual concepts. Visual things are best expressed through just, other visuals. Writing down what something looks like discretely simply isn't worth doing because it's divorced from the actual feeling of it. You'd think it's adding context, but the context required would be seeing the game, and sometimes playing it. Video Games are simply just too involved for mere words to accomplish such a feat, especially arcadey titles for a reason I'll get into later. This is why it can be hard to talk about a game like Sin & Punishment.
Sin & Punishment is one of 3 games Hideyuki Suganami explicitly directed. Treasure's games didn't really have directors-- As such so any one's contribution was seen as equal to others. One of the other games he directed was Alien Soldier, which was mostly his entire project. I think stating this in advance is important to know because this colors the kind of perception you get from what S&P actually is. Suganami and the rest of Treasure were mostly focused on games that let you do what you want; But had very clear constraints and a high pressure environment that forced players to go about it with gusto. I think the opening line for Suganami's column on Grobda in the August 1993 edition of Beep! Mega Drive magazine kinda best sums out their thought process on games: "This is only for those of you who know. Gameplay is all about tactics. The person in charge is the player, and the game is where they test their decision-making abilities for attack and defense."
Like I said earlier, visual concepts are best explained visually. It's kind of a nothing assertion; But what happens with games? You'd need an entire system, a very wordy explanation for us to be operating on even a baseline level for my writing to make sense. Well, it's not all for naught. There's more to games than just gameplay, but I'm musing over this to get to my point of how value is distilled from video games. Treasure comes at it from the angle of player decision making first and foremost, and the interplay between the game's design and the tactics they naturally come to. Sin & Punishment as a game is generally focused on 3D Shooting.
It's more complicated than you initially suspect. In a 1995 interview, Masato Maegawa, president of Treasure went on record stating some of their core design considerations. The one important here is the fact that, the way he saw it, a game's concept shouldn't inherently start with it "being 3D." Unless it's 3Dness is conducive to the scope and key premise of the game, there's no reason it should be 3D. In Sin & Punishment, the main problem that arises is the relation of the reticle and your character's position at the bottom of the screen. Such a thing is possible within 2D constraints, but the added dimension is clearly a main idea here. As bullets fire off in the distance, they aren't 'hitscan.' These bullets physically travel, and objects and enemies often intersect their vectors. Some people think this game's controls are awkward. That's not really true, but I think I understand what they mean. The disjointed aspect of aiming in this way is actually one of the game's main challenges. You aim at a particularly nasty enemy that's far in back, or the boss. But things get in the way, or your attention is drawn elsewhere for a split second which clouds your judgement. There's various subtleties in aiming at a specific inclination, not particularly aiming at anything, to create a wall; Or using the weaker alternative fire, which tracks onto a particular enemy, as a moving anchor for dividing space with constant fire. Even this isn't giving you the full picture though. It's really genius because of how many unique enemy patterns the game throws at you. An insanely dense hour of gameplay that's very introspective about its own 3D nature.
Sin & Punishment is one of 3 games Hideyuki Suganami explicitly directed. Treasure's games didn't really have directors-- As such so any one's contribution was seen as equal to others. One of the other games he directed was Alien Soldier, which was mostly his entire project. I think stating this in advance is important to know because this colors the kind of perception you get from what S&P actually is. Suganami and the rest of Treasure were mostly focused on games that let you do what you want; But had very clear constraints and a high pressure environment that forced players to go about it with gusto. I think the opening line for Suganami's column on Grobda in the August 1993 edition of Beep! Mega Drive magazine kinda best sums out their thought process on games: "This is only for those of you who know. Gameplay is all about tactics. The person in charge is the player, and the game is where they test their decision-making abilities for attack and defense."
Like I said earlier, visual concepts are best explained visually. It's kind of a nothing assertion; But what happens with games? You'd need an entire system, a very wordy explanation for us to be operating on even a baseline level for my writing to make sense. Well, it's not all for naught. There's more to games than just gameplay, but I'm musing over this to get to my point of how value is distilled from video games. Treasure comes at it from the angle of player decision making first and foremost, and the interplay between the game's design and the tactics they naturally come to. Sin & Punishment as a game is generally focused on 3D Shooting.
It's more complicated than you initially suspect. In a 1995 interview, Masato Maegawa, president of Treasure went on record stating some of their core design considerations. The one important here is the fact that, the way he saw it, a game's concept shouldn't inherently start with it "being 3D." Unless it's 3Dness is conducive to the scope and key premise of the game, there's no reason it should be 3D. In Sin & Punishment, the main problem that arises is the relation of the reticle and your character's position at the bottom of the screen. Such a thing is possible within 2D constraints, but the added dimension is clearly a main idea here. As bullets fire off in the distance, they aren't 'hitscan.' These bullets physically travel, and objects and enemies often intersect their vectors. Some people think this game's controls are awkward. That's not really true, but I think I understand what they mean. The disjointed aspect of aiming in this way is actually one of the game's main challenges. You aim at a particularly nasty enemy that's far in back, or the boss. But things get in the way, or your attention is drawn elsewhere for a split second which clouds your judgement. There's various subtleties in aiming at a specific inclination, not particularly aiming at anything, to create a wall; Or using the weaker alternative fire, which tracks onto a particular enemy, as a moving anchor for dividing space with constant fire. Even this isn't giving you the full picture though. It's really genius because of how many unique enemy patterns the game throws at you. An insanely dense hour of gameplay that's very introspective about its own 3D nature.