The Abstract Exponent enjoys video games. We are unapologetic.
The vast majority of games suck. Terribly. This hurts our feelings, but we are aware that mediocrity has reigned in the field of design for many years, if not millenia.
This page is where we announce which games we will post about, and why.
This game offers the most realistic modern combat game to date. Specifically, online team play, gives you the opportunity to feel what combat is really like. The way your body rocks from side to side when you walk and run, the way each gun has different recoil, the way the ground shakes when someone calls in an airstrike, this game is immersive. And, although in mission play you may be able to get shot a hundred times and keep healing, in online play this just doesn’t happen. You learn quickly not to run blindly around corners or out into the open. You learn what it means to work in a squad, how weak a single soldier is on a battlefield. This game is at it’s best when you lay in wait for the enemy, mines setup, your signature jammed to the overhead unmanned vehicle, until they fall into your trap. Creativity is rewarded and this keeps us coming back.
This game is extreme. There can be thousands of units on the battlefield and you get complete control. You can also set them all to autopilot. The maps are huge. It’s the most intense real time strategy game ever created. This is an ambitious design and we want to know what makes it tick.
Controlling a civilization from cavemen to space flight is a lot of work, but Sid Meier’s interface design takes the edge off. This game, especially it’s realtime multiplayer features, offer amazing possibilities for strategy exploration that could extend to the real world.
Very few games offer you the chance to do the dry strategic stuff and then go do the fun grunt work, and this game is one of them. Not only that, but you get to be a gunner on a ship, a submariner and a pilot. Then you can team up online to fight large battles and develop specialties. What makes this work so well? How did they devise this interface?
This game is the only game to get the highest rating from Zero Punctuation. Enough said. (see links on right for link to Zero Punctuation)
This game has yet to be released, but the Abstract Exponent can hardly wait. The ‘Xenomorph’ is the scariest creature ever designed, while the Colonial Marine arsenal from James Cameron’s ‘Aliens’ are the coolest weapons ever designed. Not only that, but this game will be squad based, like Ghost Recon, meaning you can switch between each member in the squad. How will they make it work?
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The Abstract Exponent is going to confine our studies to these games for now, but this list will change over time as more excellent games are released.