In recent days, I've reflected more on why I prefer certain kinds of games over others. In particular, those that are more mechanics-driven than story-driven. If this sounds familiar, I've probably slipped a bit in here or there in everything else I've written in recent history.
Let's be clear from the get-go: I prefer mechanics over story, primarily for the mastery aspect rather than the experience aspect. Being able to (more or less) flawlessly play a game always appeals to me far more than being able to (more or less) flawlessly watch a game. That's not to put story experiences down, mind you, there are some excellent ones out there; I'm generally more of an interactivity and direct agency guy. If my player or avatar fails, it's because I failed; if things go badly in the game, it's because of something I did, not something that was scripted from twenty pages ago.
But enough words; how about some examples...with more words? Two come to mind immediately:
First: FTL. I've played a lot of this the past few days, and I'm not great at it (but I'm not terrible, either). Yesterday, I had a miraculous run, where eveything fell into place just so, and I "beat" the game for the first time...on "easy". That's not to say my own skill had nothing to do with it, as there's a lot to pay attention to, especially in the last battle.
There's a lot of linearity here, on the game taken as a whole - one start point, one end point, and mostly a straight path from end to end. You can choose which paths in between, but the meat of the experience is managing actions in an efficient and precise order. For example, sequencing your weapons fire to bring down enemy shields and damage critical systems, while juggling your own ship's limited power against enemy fire, drones, and boarders. Do you take out weapons first to save yourself some damage or hit the engines to cut their evasion chances? That's just a small slice of it, but your play style depends heavily on your starting loadout (a fixed selection from a few choices) and what you pick up along the way (entirely random each session).
Suffice it to say, victory from your own skill is much enhanced after a grueling build-up. As if that couldn't be more true for...
Second: Spelunky. I love this game. I also hate it. But mostly, I love it. There's so many little things you can find, exploit, and die from. And a lot of big things, too, but mostly little things. It is a precision platformer and a constant battle of risk versus reward versus stress management. And you have a soft time limit, whereby the difficulty in staying alive is much increased should you hang out in one level for too long.
Again, a fairly linear process - one start, two ends, and mostly straight paths in between. The mixup is all in between, with random level generation, item spawns, and treasure availability. One of the harsher aspects rears its head in the form of instant-death opportunities; no matter how well you play, no matter how far you are, there are always ways to end it without more than a few seconds after a screw-up. You will suffer, and suffer hard, from not paying attention at all times.
To expound upon this further, I spent some time the week before last watching a livestream of Douglas Wilson and Zach Gage (look those two up, it's imperative you know of them) each taking turns doing a Spelunky run or three. Doesn't sound all that exciting, and I'm typically one to rail against the whole "spectator" thing, but it was very interesting all the same. Each of those gentlemen have similar play style overall, but differ in a few aspects like sequencing and aggressiveness of movement. While I watched, I catalogued my own tactics against theirs (mentally, I didn't actually write anything down...yet), and found significant differences.
I won't deny it, I've played a lot of Spelunky; I consider myself to be fairly skilled and knowledgeable, but I still picked up some new strategies and cautions while watching them.
(Anecdotally, after watching the final night of Doug and Zach's stream [also with Andy Hull as a co-streamer!], I went on to crush my own personal best score by a significant margin.)
It's those types of games that really make me excited to be working with the medium. Hitting that very awesome, very tenuous balance - not necessarily between story and mechanics, but between the game itself and either of those two - is a potent experience.
On the story side, there are some games that attain the same level of well-developed balance, to attain mastery of story and understanding. So much so that I replay them for that reason, sometimes immediately after finishing them. That is a story for another time, however. (Ha. Ha ha.)
