So clearly there is something more important than merely being “fun”. This is where story comes in. A good story can actually add to the gameplay. Brutal Legend is a perfect example of how story and game design can work together. When Tim Schafer started the project he had two goals in mind. The first was to make a strategy game like Herzog Zwei while also creating a game about the fantasy world of heavy metal and a roadie gone back through time. The game’s unique setting and gameplay is not only a product of an excellent and talented designer, but the intent of providing a compelling narrative. As a result, many other games seem bland in contrast with the sheer imagination and unique style of Brutal Legend.

Simultaneously, Super Nintendo RPG Chrono Trigger was a game whose design and narrative had a symbiotic nature. The idea of time travel resulted in a number of quests that changed the world, such as destroying a monster in a desert and leaving your robot friend behind to farm the land so that a forest could grow four-hundred years later. Of course, retrieving him was a mere five-second jump through time, but going back allowed you to see him still farming the land. Simultaneously, there were a few options available for completing the game by either jumping right to the final boss or taking on an entire time-crossing fortress beforehand. This is nothing to say of the New Game Plus, a game design choice that allowed for a number of memorable endings based on when in the story you chose to beat the game. None of these possibilities would have existed without the game being about time travel.

Anyone that’s read anything by me in the past knows that I regard Too Human as a sort of whipping boy of the “journalistic” games industry. This is because the game is not bad. No it’s not great, but neither was Assassin’s Creed. Each game was plagued with problems. For Ubisoft’s title it was primarily repetition, annoying beggars, drunkards and crazy paranoid soldiers. For Silicon Knights it was a camera with down syndrome, voice actors with down syndrome, a writer with down syndrome and levels that..were generally ok, actually, if only way too long.

Each title also sought to be innovative in their own right. With Assassin’s Creed it was how the player interacted with the world around them, and God dammit was it awesome. It may not have been enough to save it from some scathing reviews (Electronic Gaming Monthly gave it a 58/100 and GamesTM gave it a 4/10), but the game at least tried something new to relative success.

I started to wish the map in Darksiders had every item location marked by default, or could be unlocked, but I realized that eliminated all the fun. No matter how you tried to implement it, revealing the item locations would either make it too easy or would invalidate the feeling of accomplishment. Sure having a compass in a dungeon, such as those in the Zelda games, is fine enough. You don’t want to have to revisit the dungeon over and over, so seeing all the items before you fight the boss is convenient. Yet the overworld map is supposed to be a place of discovery. Allowing players to purchase a map or earn one somehow makes finding the rest of the items too easy.

Of course, the solution isn’t to reveal the item locations. Finding the items isn’t the part that’s boring. When a player can discover half to most of the items in the game then they’ve got something to be proud of. It’s one of the most thrilling aspects of Zelda, Darksiders, Metroid and Shadow Complex. No one wants to know the locations until they’ve explored everywhere they can imagine and want a little bit of help for those last few pesky buggers that refuse to show themselves. The frustration and cursing occurs when you look up a FAQ or strategy guide digging for the last locations, but unable to remember which items you have and have not found.

Are you a thief if you purchase a used game? Legally no. That game was once purchased and owned by another gamer who agreed with the GameStop corporation to swap ownership for a sum of currency. GameStop then swapped that ownership with you. There’s nothing illegal about it.

Yet the games industry treats such brick and mortar shops as if they are mafia dens. They are able to keep operating out of sheer strength and clever chicanery rather than proper and legal means, or so we are to believe. Yet considering each disc is limited to a $5 mark up, and consoles even less than 10% their full-price, the only way you can sell video games and stay in business for more than a week is to either sell used product or a large number of other items of interest. This is why stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart are able to get by without dealing in used stock. Everything else they sell has enough mark-up on it that they can easily turn a profit while recouping losses spent on employees, utilities and space.