{"id":4848,"date":"2009-09-04T17:18:48","date_gmt":"2009-09-04T21:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=4848"},"modified":"2010-05-12T08:44:40","modified_gmt":"2010-05-12T13:44:40","slug":"experienced-points-long-live-2d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=4848","title":{"rendered":"Experienced Points: Long Live 2D"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/articles\/view\/columns\/experienced-points\/6489-Experienced-Points-Long-Live-2D\">This one is on my longing to see more elegant 2D games<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Below is some blather that didn&#8217;t fit in the article:<\/p>\n<p>Velvet Assassin is the perfect example of the &#8220;hard to learn, easy to master&#8221;.  Well, it&#8217;s not really <strong>hard<\/strong> to learn, but there are a lot of gameplay elements.  You&#8217;re a swiss army knife, but there&#8217;s usually only one proper tool for the job.  Gameplay consists of choosing that tool and using it.  This is very different from (say) Mario, where you have one verb (jump) that can be used to accomplish many different things.  It&#8217;s also different from a game like Thief, where the game presents you with a single obstacle but gives you a half dozen tools for the job:<\/p>\n<p>A guard, standing in the open on a tile floor in a lit room:<\/p>\n<p>1) Make a sound to lure him away and then sneak by.<br \/>\n2) Use a regular arrow to kill him.<br \/>\n3) Find another route.<br \/>\n4) Use water arrow to put out a light, and when he goes to investigate or re-light it, sneak by<br \/>\n5) Use a moss arrow to soften the floor, then sneak behind him and bop on head<br \/>\n6) If you&#8217;re an idiot, swordfight him.<\/p>\n<p>Super Mario has one tool used in a half dozen ways. Thief gives you a half dozen tools and lets you weigh the trade-offs in using each of them.  Velvet Assassin gives you six different things to do, and then makes you choose (or sometimes guess) the one and only tool that works on the given obstacle.  Velvet Assassin is a three-dimensional game with one dimensional gameplay. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This one is on my longing to see more elegant 2D games. Below is some blather that didn&#8217;t fit in the article: Velvet Assassin is the perfect example of the &#8220;hard to learn, easy to master&#8221;. Well, it&#8217;s not really hard to learn, but there are a lot of gameplay elements. You&#8217;re a swiss army [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-column"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4848\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}