HomeFeatures
What’s better: funicular fights or elaborate corridor architecture?Vote now!
Vote now!
Last time, you decided thatthrowing knives are better than active reload. I enjoyed the spirited discussion over which throwing knives are good and which are bad. I can’t help but feel active reload didn’t get a fair shake because so few games do it outside Gears Of War, but the results are science and we must continue. This week, I suppose our choices are both about architecture, but in very different ways. What’s better: funicular fights or elaborate corridor architecture?
Funicular fights
Funiculars might be all over video games but they’re rare in reality, so it’s an exciting mechanism to encounter. Big, loud, chunky, wonky. Thrilling in a way no regular left ever is. Feels like stepping into Akira. They can be fun places for a fight, too.
Early inHalf-Life, at the time when it still feels more like a horror game than a first-person shooter, Gordon Freeman must ride a funicular into the depths ofBlack Mesa. And a torrent of headcrabs slide down the shaft after him. It is an exciting moment, riding this giant machine. It can be a funny moment, watching headcrabs whoosh past over the edge and down into a water pit. It can be a horrifying moment, discovering they can use that split-second of contact to leap at your face. It can be a terrible moment, panicking and slipping over the edge yourself and discovering that water hides a giant industrial grinder. It can be a chancy moment, trying to slide down the ramp on the safe side without going so early that you hit the bottom at a painful speed. A lot of possiblities in this funicular fun. Very good.
Elaborate corridor architecture
Dead Space PC Review - An Excellent Remake Of A Horror ClassicDead Space cannot abide a simple corridorWatch on YouTube
Dead Space PC Review - An Excellent Remake Of A Horror Classic
In my telling of video game history history, elaborate corridor architecture exploded around the time of Half-Life andQuake2, especially in their mod scene. Better tools, fancier game engines, and ever-faster graphics cards meant 3D games could do a lot more than boxy spaces. And boy howdy, people wanted to! I remember reading (and following) many mapping tutorials which chided straightforward corridors as bad to play without cover and, worst of all, boring to look at.
But which is better?
Love a fancy corridor, me. They’re excessive and garish and unrealistic and absolute health & safety nightmares, and I adore them. But which do you think, reader dear?
