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The Intrigue of Gameplay That’s Faster

Game Freak, the developer of the smash series, understood that with melee, they needed to do something that would capture and hold the attention of the gamer.

And speeding up the gameplay was a strategic move, because when we have games that are able to move at much faster speeds and paces, it feels pretty empowering in a way.

You feel unrestricted better yet.

You think of slower games where the movements feel very antiquated and you feel stuck to what your gaming environment is.

It just reminds you of the retro gaming that took lead in the 80s to mid 90s.

There’s fun ones there, but it just was felt more like a dinosaur compared to games that showed how much fun they could be when they’re sped up and go at the same pace that we would want our internet (for example) and anything else that would be a digital asset.

Speed always complements products that’s presented digitally.

I can think of games where once speed became a factor, it changed the difficulty of playing it.

One that stuck out to me was the Naruto Ultimate Ninja series.

Even if you go back to Clash of Ninja on the GameCube, that’s where I 1st played it too.

It was something that felt really slow, so a lot of the fights felt easier too.

Even Dragon Ball Z Budokai, that was a slow game to kind of start off, but it ended up getting faster to their credit as well.

Once the game started speeding up, things got much more skill-based.

You had to be really skilled in being able to do more than just spam buttons, especially when you’re in a fully locked in, fast paced environment, everything is going much quicker.

You have to be aware of what you’re seeing on the screen and be able to keep up more too.

It’s challenging yourself in an area that a lot of people really value.

The game developers that understood this really were learning how to tug at the strings of what brings joy to people naturally.

In another way, it’s almost like when you decide to go bowling. It’s like doing it without your bumpers.

You can slip off and something can go wrong and then it just ends up messing up the entire game.

Even another good example for a game that this could apply with is The Mario Kart series.

Those games were ones where when you start going up in CC value, that’s when you can end up drifting in the wrong direction and mess up your entire race just because of that.

That’s actually probably one of the best examples of where speed changes the entire experience of the game you’re playing.

Games are more fun when the skills to succeed don’t come easy

Games are more fun when the skills to succeed don’t come easy. It makes a difficult game actually more rewarding.

It’s because you understand it took effort that was challenging in order to achieve success.

You can tell the difference between a challenge and just something where you’re getting punished in because it’s within your reach.

There’s a chance you can win.

Whatever you’re doing, you can see where that light at the end of the tunnel is. You’re just not there yet.

It’s a sweet spot in a way when you think of where the separation between being good and getting good are.

If you’re in route somewhere, it’s helpful to see where you’re going, when your next turn is going to be and all the different steps that go into reaching whatever that final point is.

And having a high skill ceiling changes the way you approach your improvement because you end up having to be more methodical in that way.

You end up having to strategize ways on getting better. It’s micromanagement on a fun level.

I started realizing games had deeper layers once I started getting into RPG games and things where you had to customize your player.

Those games felt like you control the outcome of how your player ended the game.

It might have been 1st with the Pokemon games for the Game Boy, but I was really getting heavier into it once I started getting into a few of the Sonic GameCube games and probably the most relevant would be with Kingdom Hearts.

But that was where I started getting an idea of I don’t have to do things the status quo, how the game would suggest I do things.

I can customize my own, whether it’s a weapon, whether it’s my own stats or anything else that I wanted to build up for my character.

And it was even the same with a few of the basketball games.

I used to play the NBA street volume games and I had my own created player.

I’d have fun building up the stats for handles and stuff like that.

But realizing that you control what areas you improve in, and you decide what skills you want to improve is another empowering feeling because you feel like you were the captain of your own sail in that way.

You control the outcome of each game because you got better in the area that you cared about.