The Evolution of Game Mechanics
Game
mechanics have undergone somewhat of a renaissance over the past decade. It’s almost crazy to think that a game like
Dino Crisis 2 was once classified as a third-person shooter. Games
have always been defined by their mechanics; it’s what determines their genre. Fifteen
years ago there was no separation between shooters, but now we have first-person
shooters, third-person shooters, over-the-shoulder shooters and rail shooters. The
scope for defining games has increased dramatically in recent years due to the
extensive evolution of game mechanics.
First, let’s
look at shooters. Back in the Doom days, you couldn’t strafe (I’ll give the
youngsters this sentence to go find their socks that just flew off) and your
gun was at a fixed position and you couldn’t even aim up or down. You also held
enough weapons to kit out a small army and your progression through the game
was akin to hunting for keys and defeating large numbers of enemies. Compare
this to a modern shooter where you can strafe, your weapons are limited far more severely
and you progress through the game as the narrative unfolds. Platformers are
another good example, thinking back to the Sonic era where everything was about
speedy progression though controlled levels. Now when you look at a game like
Ratchet and Clank, the leap forward between the two is astounding when you
consider that they classified under the same genre.
