My friend Max and I have been playing Mass Effect 2 on the 360. Though not quite what I expected, it is an interesting mix of action and role-playing and, in many ways, a smoother experience than its prequel.

Unfortunately, there is one thing about it that has gotten to me: the powers screen and the B button. It may not sound like much, but I have been jumping out of the powers screen and into a mission prematurely every time—even after realizing what it is I’m doing wrong. To me, the powers are very important; knowing that I’ve gone in with less than the best Shockwave available to me is aggravating. Worse yet, I get into that situation because of a silly interface oversight.

Powerless to stop it

In the case of Mass Effect 2‘s pre-mission setup, the player must first choose two party members, equip them with weapons, and, lastly, upgrade their powers. In most of these screens, the B button is used to go back a step. In the weapons screens, B backs out of screens in which the player equips a certain party member with weapons to a screen in which she can then select a different party member to equip. To change weapons or check what each member will carry into a mission, the player needs to use the B button several times to navigate the weapons screens.

In the powers screen, however, the B button does not move between party members. Unlike the weapons screens that precede it, in the powers screen the left and right triggers are used to switch party members. Since the player has just come from a set of screens in which the B button is used to navigate between details and party members (and, perhaps, because she is somewhat distracted by the task of spending upgrade points on powers), it is not unreasonable that she press B to switch to the next party member and spend its upgrade points.

Unfortunately, B doesn’t work that way in the powers screen, and instead exits the party setup screens and begins the mission. From there, the player has to load the pre-mission auto-save and redo her party setup, or play through the mission without the benefit of having spent her hard-earned upgrade points.¹

This kind of error is known as a slip: intending to do something but performing the wrong action. In this case, the player intends to switch characters or go back, but presses the button that exits the powers screen instead. Slips often happen when someone acts automatically, doing what she is used to doing in a certain context.

The previous setup screens, and Xbox UI convention, cause the player to expect that the B button will go back, not advance. Even though the function of each of the buttons is stated on the screen, the player’s expectations and habits are so strong that, even if she bothers to read them, she may go ahead and press the wrong button anyway.

B consistent

This kind of error could have been avoided. The screens could have used a consistent arrangement and means of navigation. If every screen worked the same way, the player wouldn’t get caught expecting one thing but executing another.

For example, powers setup could have been designed to use the same multi-screen design as the weapons setup: one screen listing the party members, each of which leads to a screen with details of that specific member’s powers; B to go back. Alternatively, it would’ve been possible to have the Start button advance, and B go back², on every screen.

I don’t mean to take away from Mass Effect 2: it’s a pretty good game, and has improved on its predecessor. Overall, its interface is simpler and easier to use than it was in Mass Effect. The game’s design, generally, seems to be much more consistent and comfortable to play. It’s just a shame that this problem made it into the final release.

Dead Space aims to be scary. Its creators went to great lengths to create a spooky atmosphere, to make the player feel tense and, at moments, panicked. Its play, characters, environments, sounds, and user interface are designed to support such feelings.

Unfortunately, some aspects of the game undermine its scariness. Particularly, its way of providing the player with ammo and its storage system spoil opportunities to make the player feel desperate. Dead Space tries to convince the player that items are scarce, but does not deliver on the threat. Instead, it keeps the player well supplied and safe from making meaningful choices about what she carries. Monsters aren’t so scary when the player has a full clip.

Ammo, ammo everywhere

Early in Dead Space, tutorials and tips encourage the player to conserve ammunition. This advice is not useful: there is a lot of ammo in the game world. The player doesn’t need be too careful, as she can expect to find ammunition throughout the environment in boxes, lockers, and corpses.

Not only that, the player can expect to find exactly the kind of ammo she needs. There is a system that monitors the player’s inventory and sprinkles just what she needs a few rooms ahead of her. If she’s carrying the line gun, she’ll find more line racks. When the player drops or sells the line gun, line racks are nowhere to be found.

As it is, the player is not made to worry about being careful with her shooting. Firing at monsters’ weak spots is more a matter of efficiency than of conservation. Ammunition isn’t valued as highly as it would be if it were harder to come across.

The adaptive system could have been tuned to keep the player just barely capable of surviving: spawning ammo only when the player’s supply is very low. When the player is well-enough equipped, perhaps it could spawn ammunition for weapons the player does not carry, or lock some boxes and lockers.¹

Storage is too safe

Vending machines in Dead Space provide access to a personal storage space. Since ammo is abundant and storage available, the player is not likely to ever have to trade-off, say, four shots of the line gun for more stasis energy: the line racks can be kept for a rainy day. The decision to carry, drop, or sell an item can be put off by storing the item for later use.

Instead of encouraging pack rats, Dead Space should make the most of the tension that “comes from managing very limited resources.” If the player has a lot of items, she should be made to decide which are most important. This will make managing her inventory meaningful, and create a better sense of being alone, of getting by with the skin of her teeth (and the few medikits in her inventory).

Dead Space‘s in-game interface has gotten a lot of attention. No doubt, the holographic displays look slick, and the way they’re presented in the game world does a lot to make them feel like a part of it, less artificial.¹ But it’s the fact that the interface does not interrupt the game that makes it worth mention. The fear and vulnerability central to Dead Space isn’t ever trumped by the needs of the UI—and critics noticed. Rarely has the unobtrusiveness of an interface been so acclaimed.

Not pausing the game while the player fiddles with her inventory is not new (it’s a design choice used similarly before—System Shock 2—and since—Demon’s Souls), but Dead Space pulls it off particularly well. Thoughtful design compensates, in part, for the lack of pauses and the limited time the player has to keep track of her stuff. By sorting, organizing, and keeping the inventory simple, the interface reduces the amount of attention the player needs to spend on it, leaving her to explore, shoot off limbs, and be scared.

See-through and sorted to be useful

In Dead Space, the player is often assaulted or surprised by monsters. The in-game interface takes up three quarters of the screen, but is semi-transparent so the player can still see advancing zombies while she heals, reads, or orients herself.

Once the zombies hit, the player will need to heal herself or refill her air tanks, but may not have the time or ability to run away from a fight to a safe place. There are buttons that allow certain items to be used without going through the inventory (using small medkits or reloading weapons), but sometimes the player needs to use an item in her inventory quickly, in the action.

To help her out, items in the inventory are sorted by their usefulness in frantic play situations: medkits are first, then air canisters, then stasis packs (fuel for the slow-mo ability), then ammunition. Within each type, items are sorted by size: larger medkits come first. When the player is running low on HP or oxygen, the items to alleviate her distress are the ones the fewest button presses away. She can restore as much HP as possible with as few presses as possible.

Small, separated, and simple

Even when not under pressure, the player’s tasks are not needlessly complicated. The interface remains simple and interruptible, not ruining or allowing escape from any surprises.

Items occupy a single inventory slot, no matter their size in the world. There is never a need to rearrange things in order to fit in another item—no inventory Tetris. The player either has space or she doesn’t.

Fortunately for her, things such as weapons, power nodes, or quest-specific items are stored and presented separately from cheaper, fungible things like medkits. This ensures she has space for key items, reduces the chance that she will discard expensive weapons accidentally, and keeps them out of the way of the stuff she is likely to use or drop from the inventory.²

Without the need to move items around, and without needing to take much care to avoid messing things up, the inventory interface is pared down to the bare necessities. The player can, and need, only ever do two things with an item: use it or drop it. (When at a store, she can buy a new item; when at storage, move or sell one she already has.)

The holographic UI in Dead Space makes things fast and easy, intruding as little as possible on the game’s intense atmosphere. It looks cool, fits the fiction, and it supports the player’s tasks and the aesthetic goals of the game: mainly, being scary.

Of the many key activities in Mass Effect—shooting, driving, bumpin’ uglies—talking to others was the most satisfying. Though not something with much marketing appeal, dialogue is one of Mass Effect‘s most effective game mechanics. It is easy to use, produces natural-sounding dialogue, and adds a sense of discovery to conversations. It was what I enjoyed most, and, despite a few faults, something I would like to see in other games.

The dialogue wheel is easy to use

The dialogue wheel is an efficient means of presenting and selecting dialogue options. It is a variation of a pie menu: options are arranged in equal distance around the player’s cursor. Any one option is as close to the cursor as any other; the player need only pick a direction to highlight an option. This maps options to a gamepad’s analog stick directly: the direction in which the player takes a conversation is the one she takes with her thumbs on the stick.

In traditional list-based menus, some options require the player to move the cursor farther than others. Lists also place options along the same dimension, which makes it more likely that the player will overshoot the option she wants, selecting the wrong one or spending time correcting herself.

Conversations flow

Mass Effect‘s designers also made it simple for the player to decide on an option. Firstly, the options are short and quick to read. Secondly, the position of dialogue options is meaningful: options along the right half of the wheel advance the conversation, along the left, they are more exploratory; nice-guy, neutral, and aggressive options are along top, middle, and bottom respectively. The player need not read all the options, only the options relevant to her. This helps conversations to move at a natural pace because the player does not spend much time reading and deciding.

On top of that, the dialogue wheel appears a moment before the final line of dialogue is spoken. The player can begin deciding among dialogue options while the current piece of dialogue is ending, making it less likely that there will be dead time between utterances. The dialogue seems to be written in a way such that information relevant to the player’s objectives comes early on; what she hears when the wheel appears is not important, so she can be a little distracted by the new dialogue options.

The combination of ease of use, well-placed and well-timed presentation of options, and good writing make conversations seem much more natural than they do in other games while reducing the burden of reading and picking options.

Dialogue is about discovery

Natural dialogue that is easy to participate in is quite an achievement, but what I found fun about it was the sense of discovery. The terse dialogue options in Mass Effect are quick to read, but only suggestive. It isn’t until the player selects one that she can know exactly what it was.

For the most part, dialogue in other adventure games can only be discovered by the player if it is spoken by non-player characters: the player knows what her character is going to say because she picked the lines already. In effect, her half of the dialogue is repetition.

There some exceptions: Sam & Max Hit the Road and Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People use icons to represent dialogue options. These, as with the short options in Mass Effect, suggest a response instead of showing it outright. When the player selects one, she has some idea of what her character will say, but not exactly what.

Not knowing exactly what will be said adds freshness to the player character’s half of the dialogue, and creates a sense of exploration.

Unfortunately, this method risks betraying the player’s intentions: ambiguous or poorly written dialogue options can cause the player character to say something the player didn’t want. The position of dialogue options in Mass Effect adds information that can help a player know whether an option is along the Paragon or Renegade path, but that does not necessarily map to the character’s tone or discretion. Another problem occurs when options do not seem different enough from one another, making decisions more difficult or feel as if the writers and designers are forcing the player to follow a particular path. Such problems are less likely to occur when dialogue options are presented verbatim.

Mirror’s Edge, which I played through recently, provided me a patchy experience. It was sometimes thrilling, sometimes aggravating. In ways, Mirror’s Edge is its own worst enemy.

The most common actions of the game, running, climbing, and jumping, were great. The experience of free running through a modern city was sensational, in both senses of the word. I felt a rush when I managed to escape a dozen armed guards by running through an office building, vaulting over desks, then leaping out of a window onto another building’s roof.

There was a fluidity about doing these things, as if I were really pulling off something acrobatic. The lack of explicit health and speed meters and the presence of my character’s body—my hands would grab ledges, my fingers would push against walls, and when I looked down, I could see my feet, all while my character panted and gasped from exerting herself—reinforced my feeling of being in those places, of being a physical actor in that world.

When I carried out some clever combination of jumping and climbing to reach a distant catwalk, I felt as if I’d accomplished something. Sure, I was only pressing buttons on a gamepad, I was only following the paths created and allowed by the designers¹, but it was exciting, rewarding. In those moments, Mirror’s Edge was excellent.

Falling flat

In those moments, it was excellent—but not throughout. For each amazing run there were a half-dozen difficult obstacles or gaps that would bring the game to a sudden halt. For each puzzle there would be a frustrating fight sequence that required several playthroughs to memorize, optimize, and then, with luck, overcome. Flow turned to frustration as I was shot or plummeted to my death over and over and over again.

I know I’m not the best game player in the world (probably fourth- or fifth-best), so I expected to die a few times. Trouble was, I often didn’t feel responsible for my deaths. The obstacles, be they large gaps or police, appeared out of nowhere and took many attempts to get past. It felt unfair² and sudden. I had been running along well until I had to stop and fight through a dozen SWAT troops awkwardly, or have them shoot me to bits while I searched for that one way out. It was as if the designers were stuffing in infuriating play to break apart the thrill of parkour—exactly what is most enjoyable and original.

Story problems

I saw similarly harsh shifts in the way the game’s story was told. Some story sequences occurred in the game world and were told to me in the game, from my first-person perspective. These were okay. The majority, however, were presented in animated sequences that looked different from the world I was running through. The first-person, 3D, textured game world in which I could act would become a third-person, 2D, flat cartoon story world where I could do nothing but watch. The plot was divorced from game in perspective, presentation, and style, and these differences underscored just how irrelevant the story was to what I was doing in the game.

Faith, the character I played as, would visit places and interact with characters in the cutscenes that I never would truly interact with in the game. It was as if the storytellers were working on another game, parallel to the one I was playing, sometimes pulling me out of my body and making me watch the Erin eSurance commercials they’d made.

What confuses me further is that the game’s designers created this contrast purposefully. In an interview for Gamasutra, the game’s producer said,

We think it’s really cool the way you get glimpses of Faith in the game world: You see her in reflections, you see her in shadow, and I think that gives a really nice feel to the game. Obviously, in the storytelling we do, you see Faith, but we actually show her in a different way, so it’s 2D, more cartoon animation.

If glimpsing the character in the world gives the player a “nice feel,” why change that when telling the story?

We wanted people to take notice; we wanted people to look at the story, and understand the story, because that’s very important to us. We feel that you have a much stronger experience if you understand why, as you progress, and things change, and there are twists and turns.

It’s odd that they would want to point out how apart the story and game are. Rather than have it occur in the world of the player, as a consequence of the player’s actions, they set apart to be looked at and considered on its own. In my experience, the story did not motivate or reward me, it just filled the gaps in time and setting between levels.

An empty world

Though Mirror’s Edge communicated the sense of running across rooftops in a big city, I felt that the universe (characters, factions, history) in which it is set was not well established. The buildings are realized beautifully, but the city is not: there are almost no pedestrians and cars. The police are present on screen, but there’s no sense of the malicious surveillance and evil government that is to be behind them. I was told that times were rough, the the city had changed, but I spent the game running on shiny white rooftops or swinging from chrome flagpoles in a chic mall: it didn’t look so bad to me, just a little empty. Characters were introduced and suddenly of critical importance or killed off. Faith was supposed to be a member of a covert group of messengers, but I was only told who they were and what I did for them, I never did it myself—not that it mattered, as I was trying to clear the name of my sister, not save the city. (I ended up doing both!)

I think the game could’ve done with halving its cast, simplifying its plot, and showing (not merely telling) me who I was and why the city was so bad. A few early missions in which I would have had to have acted as a rebel messenger (perhaps take messages to political prisoners, or move a rebel’s supply of medicine of supplies from one cache to another) would likely have helped establish Faith, her world, and her cause. The game sped past this sort of tone-setting, motivational stuff, as if it assumed I was already aware of (and on board with) what my character did and why. In the game, I was a Person of Great Consequence without earning it, before I had a chance to understand how that was different from being Faith, parkour messenger.³ I was chased out of tutorial by gun-toting policemen, with only the narrator in my ear to explain why I thought it worth risking my life to go save some guy called Robert Pope.

Mirror-world Thief

I enjoyed Mirror’s Edge nonetheless because of the quality of the free running, wall climbing, and leaping shone through the frustration and story. Which brings me to Looking Glass’s Thief: The Dark Project.

Mirror’s Edge and Thief have a lot in common. They are both played from a first-person perspective, both are unusual in that they (arguably) don’t require the player to fight—they discourage the player from entering combat by make it difficult and close. Both take place, for the most part, in cities populated with few civilians, but many armed, semi-competent guards. Both convey the bulk of their narrative through animated, stylized cutscenes that come between missions. Lastly, Mirror’s Edge and Thief alike in that, despite identifying many shortcomings, despite being angered by the game for creating situations in which I failed again and again and again, I liked both games. I stopped playing out of frustration several times, I didn’t care much about the characters, but I genuinely enjoyed hiding from guards in Thief and jumping from rooftop to rooftop in Mirror’s Edge. Their mechanics—the verbs players use to describe their actions in the game—are what redeemed them⁴.

The nature of these mechanics (slow sneaking in Thief, speedy acrobatics in Mirror’s Edge), and the contexts in which players carry them out (Thief‘s dark, early industrial, somewhat medieval setting; the sunny, modern, near-future city in Mirror’s Edge) are almost entirely contrary, but, in essence, the games are alike: they both make it fun to get from point A to point B, without fighting (too much), by taking advantage of the environment and the player character’s skills.

So it is that I feel, as do many others, that the designers could improve Mirror’s Edge by admitting that the game is an exciting platformer and encourage players to run, climb, and jump over stuff, instead of hampering them with awkward combat or forcing things into a complicated and irrelevant story.

Thief: The Dark Project came under similar criticism for having players fight through zombie-filled catacombs rather than stick to sneaking. Its developers understood this, and, in the sequel, Thief II: The Metal Age, created a world challenged the player to do what made Thief unique and exciting: break in, sneak around, and steal stuff.

Likewise, the developers of Mirror’s Edge are now selling a set of environments designed to the strengths of the game.⁵ This makes me think that I would play through a sequel to Mirror’s Edge. The core of Mirror’s Edge is great, its faults are remediable, and its creators seem to know what they are.