Depth, Mastery, and Vanquish

This is Game Maker's Tookit, I'm Mark Brown. PlatinumGames makes beat 'em ups. Feisty, fast-paced 3D action games like Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising, and The Wonderful 101. But one game in Platinum's library sticks out. Well, two, but ignore that weird DS game Infinite Space for now. I'm talking about Vanquish. It's made by Resident Evil 4 designer Shinji Mikami and it is... a cover based shooter. That's a genre that moves at a very different pace to a brawler, and at first glance Vanquish looks like it has more in common with Gears of War than Bayonetta.

But, here's my argument - Vanquish is as much a Platinum game as Metal Gear Rising and MadWorld because what makes this studio's games so legendary has nothing to do with punching and kicking and slashing - it's about depth, and mastery. So, action games are great because they can be played on different levels. At level one, you have the learners. Novice players can simply mash buttons, brute force combat encounters, and have only the loosest grasp on the game's systems, but they'll still have fun. They might get crappy scores, they might die a few times, and they might look a bit awkward when they play, but it's still a good time.

Platinum designs its games for those who play on easy mode and never scratch the surface of the game, with producer Atsushi Inaba saying "it's important for those players to have the best experience", and that by ignoring those novice players "you run a risk of becoming niche". In Vanquish, the shooter equivalent of button bashing is playing the game like a cover shooter. And you can: you can hunker behind a wall and take pot shots at enemies. And you can treat Sam Gideon's bonkers rocket slide as a roadie run to quickly get between bits of cover.

And while new players might use the slow-mo AR Mode here and there, it's too risky to overuse. You have to make yourself vulnerable to activate it, and running out of power makes you overheat. Which sucks. At level two, learners become players. Here, you start to realise that the game has depth. To me, in this context, depth is about the player's ability to get more out of a basic set of mechanics through their combination, or through good timing, or with smart positioning. This lets them make interesting decisions, and allows them to express themselves.

This doesn't come from the game layering on new mechanics or unlocking new stuff. That's breadth. Platinum Games have depth from a very simple set of mechanics. The most obvious way to do this in a beat 'em up is through combos - Bayonetta can punch and kick but pressing those two buttons in a certain order, sometimes with a slight pause between inputs, leads to new and more powerful attacks. And mechanics can be more useful if used with the right timing - you can enter blade mode at any time in Metal Gear Rising but use it when your meter's full and the enemy is injured and you can perform a spine-snatching Zandatsu move.

In Vanquish you need good timing to unleash AR Mode during rolls and jumps. And you can combine this slow-mo state with rocket sliding, or combine a rocket slide with melee. You should think about positioning, too, and use your rocket slide to get behind a group of foes. As you use more of your powers, you have to worry more about your suit's engines which heat up when you slide or use AR mode. You'll need to think about how you'll retreat to safety after dealing out damage, meaning you're constantly shifting tempo between attack and defence, and working on the knife's edge of overheating.

Now you're no longer brute-forcing each encounter, but thinking through each step you'll take. You see each of Sam Gideon's abilities not as individual things but moves that be combined and chained for devastating effect. And you just use cover as a brief respite. At level three, players become masters. There's even more depth to be found in these games, with techniques and strategies not even discussed in the game's tutorial.

In Bayonetta, for example, high level players will use a manic finger-flailing move called dodge offset where they can dodge during a combo, so they don't break their score streak. In Vanquish, expert players will stumble upon things like boost-dodging. Because the rocket slide doesn't start to overheat your suit for the first split second, if you immediately cancel that into a dodge you can cover enormous amounts of ground, practically invulnerable the entire time, without ever overheating.

You can speed up your reload by flicking back and forth between a gun during the reload animation. Or speed up the shot on a slow gun like the rocket launcher by switching to that gun while shooting another one. You can distract enemies by tossing a cigarette, and shoot grenades in mid-air while in slow-mo for massive splash damage. These techniques are still just advanced applications of the mechanics that you've had the entire time - you just need knowledge, timing, dexterity, and skill to pull them off.

The challenges in the main game will encourage you to explore that second level of depth. In Vanquish you'll face enemies with weak points on their back, so you'll need to combine rocket sliding, slow-mo, and retreat to take them down effectively. And you'll want to shoot rockets out of the air in AR mode, and slide under the legs of giant boss monsters. Masters, however, need to look a bit harder to test their skills. That generally involves super tough difficulty settings like Vanquish's God Hard mode, expert challenges, and - the most important part of all - the scoring system.

And this is what lets Vanquish down. The scoring systems in Platinum Games are complex but readable, and help you understand the advanced strategies you'll need to get a higher score. The score in Vanquish is simplistic, but few understand exactly what gives you a better number. It's something to do with enemies killed, head shots, time taken, and amount of cover used. And while Platinum usually express your ability clearly with a grade or a medal, Vanquish just gives you a number with no context.

But beyond these rewards, Platinum fans master these games for a more intrinsic reason: the ability to look and feel awesome when you play. The difference between a novice and an expert Vanquish player is plain to see. Platinum's games can be intimidating for new players. When Hideki Kamiya says the entire first playthrough of The Wonderful 101 "is something like a tutorial," and that "the real game begins the second time through," it can make their games seem cold and standoffish.

But the crazy animations and ridiculous set pieces mean even novice players will have a good time. And the added depth - derived from the smart application of the base mechanics, and encouraged by a scoring system - means that those who put in the time to learn or master the game are rewarded greatly. And the point of focusing on Vanquish in this video is to show that this stuff is not just for brawlers. Letting the player express themselves with a bunch of interlocking moves works in a shooter, too.

And other genres: you can play Project Gotham as just another racer but there's depth to be found in doing special manoeuvres which grant you kudos points. And in Tony Hawk's, only a master can combine grab tricks, reverts, manuals, flip tricks, and grinds into one mega combo. Plus, depth may be the key to a long-lasting multiplayer game. These games have to be approachable to new players, but a high skill ceiling means advanced players can enjoy playing for years.

You can see this in any fighting game worth its salt, the knockabout football gem Rocket League, and even Call of Duty. I've been playing Call of Duty online for years but I only just realised that you can speed up your reload by hitting sprint half-way through the animation to skip it, and get yourself back into the fight. That might seem like an exploit or a bug, but it speaks volumes that the developers have never removed it. Because it requires good timing and dexterity, and because there's a risk that you'll do it too early and cancel the animation before you've even reloaded, it feels more like an advanced strategy.

And this is the sort of thing that gives games depth, and allows for mastery. So it doesn't matter if you're doing air-combos and dodge offsets, or rocket slides and reload cancels, depth can be found in any game where players can express themselves, or make interesting decisions, or play with more style and speed by discovering more advanced applications of the game's main mechanics. What you end up with is a game where the more you put in, the more you get out.

Thanks so much for watching. Sometimes I want to live in the parallel universe where Vanquish was a mega hit and all shooters now had this level of depth and opportunity for mastery. But, here we are. Let me know what games you have tried to master in the comments below, and don't forget to like the video and subscribe. Game Maker's Toolkit is funded exclusively by its fans, including these uber awesome top-tier supporters.