Re-playability

Had another great gaming night.  It was great because my friend and I finally completed a particularly difficult Co-op mission in Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2 called "Snatch and Grab".

This mission was difficult because you never really know what's coming at you next.  The map is set in an airplane graveyard affording more than ample cover for you and your opponents.  Add to this the most difficult opponent known as the Juggernaut.  Juggernauts are enemy combat soldiers who are outfitted in a explosive and small arms fire resistant suit that can literally absorb rockets.  They look like a cross between the Michelin Man and an astronaut.  

They annoy me to no end...

Mostly because you have to go up against them usually with weapons that aren't up to the task.  The analogy of bringing a knife to a gun fight comes to mind. 
We had been trying to beat this map for months and always got close but never seemed to be able to close the deal because one of these bulging annoyances always showed up just when we thought the worst was over.
For months we had got within sight of the endgame but always got cut down by one of the bulbous baddies leaving us pounding our fists on the desk and falling back to weak praise about lesser victories during the exercise.  Nothing but victory over this blasted map would bring real satisfaction, however.  We were determined to win.

Last Friday night we did it!  My friend suggested an alternate tactic and I enthusiastically agreed.  So we employed this tactic and found it was working quite well.  We got closer to victory than ever before but still lost.  Undeterred we tried again, once more into the breach as they say...

WE WON!  Hooray for us!  That moment was so satisfying and worth the effort.  Right there is the very definition of replayability.  This game kept beating us but kept our interest so that we'd keep trying.  Every loss to that point still had great moments and kept us coming back for more instead of leaving us disgruntled and murmuring obscenities. 

I've played games that I've literally given up on after less than an hour.  It's why I like demos.  If it's something I'll get a few months out of without breaking any furniture then I'll make the purchase.  If it's just an endless string of boring puzzles or  weird control sequences I'm done with it in 5 minutes.  I want immersion, I want to feel like I'm participating in something.  That's what games are for.  They're a window into another perspective or even another reality that would be otherwise impossible to experience.  In the process you may even learn something. 

Now to some what I'm about to say may sound hollow but bear with me, there's a point here...
Since I've been playing games like Call of Duty and Battlefield 1942, I've gained more appreciation for those who had to experience the real thing.  In games like those, the concept of war isn't as abstract as just blowing things up for points or map control.  In these games you have to deal with overwhelming numbers of opposition, badly functioning weapons and all the challenges of less than accommodating locations such as the jungles of Vietnam or the shooting gallery of Omaha beach.  In trying and often failing to undertake these virtual missions it gave me more of a sense of the hopelessness and ultimately determination to succeed. 

There's a lesson there; more than just the old "If somethings worth having it's worth working for".  To win at these games there has to be a sense of how the real thing works.  Look in any of the credits and you'll see plenty of military advisers and scholarly types who lent their experiences to the creation of the game. 

It's that attention to detail and thoughtfulness of design that makes these games valuable beyond just the initial pass through the single player campaigns.  It's kept my friend and I playing games like these long after the buzz has subsided over them.  It doesn't just have to be FPS games either. We often play flatout 2 in the Stunt mode tournament and have great fun with it.  That game is about 5 years old now but we still play it on a regular basis because it still holds our interest.  In some games you can figure out the formula for success and just ignore the rest and easily win every time.  That doesn't apply in Flatout 2 as repeatability is offset by factors beyond your control.  There's a randomness to every game situation that keeps the game interesting.  You won't win by driving a certain line on the track or repeating a controller sequence.  My friend is actually better at this game than I am but can still be surprised when a sure win is suddenly snatched away by a variable that was unaccounted for. 

There's the key to a good game, replayability.  Long after the shrink wrap has been tossed away a good game will keep our interest and offer something new or unexpected.  This is why I'm not a fan of pure multi-player online games.  After a while they get stale and aside from maps and game resources there's little that makes it interesting.  Games like that eventually become training grounds for groups of players who organize themselves into "clans" making the underlying game itself less appealing to new players.  There's an almost mechanical vibe to such gaming that ruins the experience.  When gaming is just about who is best on their keyboard or game controller I usually take a pass.  If I'm going to invest my time in something it better test more than just my reflexes.