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.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey sits in an interesting position wherein, it is so very similar to it’s older brother, Assassin’s Creed Origins. So many of the screens, systems, and mechanics are inherited nearly exactly, and so it serves as a fun comparison to look at what parts of it’s UI it decided to change, and why. So hey, let’s do that!
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 MoreOctopath Traveler is a game that clearly takes a large amount of inspiration from JRPGs of yore, but the question is, when we’re dealing with a genre that historically has stuck to very menu-heavy, straightofrward interfaces, how does this translate into a modern game's UI/UX experience? Let’s take a look at Octopath Traveler, and see how it fares.
World of Warcraft and I go way back- all the way to 2006 in fact. And while it's been several years now since I actively played, Blizzard still manages to pull me back for every new expansion, and the upcoming Battle for Azeroth is no exception. A new expansion means setting up my UI again for the umpteenth time, so I wanted to use this as a chance to walk through how and why I make all the UI decisions I do.
What'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
