Okay, I think we've all been in this kind of a situation before. We're playing a fun game, but there's a lull in the action. Maybe you're waiting for an event to happen. Maybe you're hanging about in a town. The game has a pretty neat soundtrack, and so you start moving your character or doing some attacks to the notes of the song playing the background.
Don't quite get what I mean?
Here's a snippet of Red Scarlet's 100% Super Metroid speed run.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u22LpT-ocVU
Start watching around 4:10 and notice what she's doing while she's waiting for the spikes to eventually fall apart.
She starts playing a little rhythm game.
Now, I find myself doing this quite often in games, and every time I do it, I think "Why haven't designers capitalized on this instinct?" Now of course, yes, rhythm games are quite common. But why haven't rhythm games been integrated into other genres?
Example, start with a DMC-esque action game. Make attacks fairly instantaneous. Now, create an attack/combo system where your damage multiples if you time your attacks to the beat of some music. Essentially, you perform a very simple rhythm game to add punch to your attacks!
Or how about a music-based RPG? Instead of merely choosing spells and abilities from a menu, what if you chose an attack, did a simple rhythm game, and then the effectiveness of that ability is based off of the accuracy of your rhythm?
I think you get what I'm saying here. Why haven't developers experimented more with using rhythm as a gameplay mechanic in a bigger game, rather than building games focused solely on music? Patapon is the only game I can think of that's done something like this.
Don't quite get what I mean?
Here's a snippet of Red Scarlet's 100% Super Metroid speed run.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u22LpT-ocVU
Start watching around 4:10 and notice what she's doing while she's waiting for the spikes to eventually fall apart.
She starts playing a little rhythm game.
Now, I find myself doing this quite often in games, and every time I do it, I think "Why haven't designers capitalized on this instinct?" Now of course, yes, rhythm games are quite common. But why haven't rhythm games been integrated into other genres?
Example, start with a DMC-esque action game. Make attacks fairly instantaneous. Now, create an attack/combo system where your damage multiples if you time your attacks to the beat of some music. Essentially, you perform a very simple rhythm game to add punch to your attacks!
Or how about a music-based RPG? Instead of merely choosing spells and abilities from a menu, what if you chose an attack, did a simple rhythm game, and then the effectiveness of that ability is based off of the accuracy of your rhythm?
I think you get what I'm saying here. Why haven't developers experimented more with using rhythm as a gameplay mechanic in a bigger game, rather than building games focused solely on music? Patapon is the only game I can think of that's done something like this.
