ENDLESS FUN IN
THE SANDBOX
SURFACES MAY BE SLIPPERY
WHEN WET. CAREFUL, RICO
BOBBY MILLS-THOMAS
LAST MONTH, OUR COMMENTERS WEREN'T FOND OF SANDBOXES, SAYING THEY CREATED GAMING FATIGUE
AND MADE GAMES TOO MUCH HARD WORK - THIS MONTH, BOBBY MILLS-THOMAS OFFERS THE REBUTTAL.
12
W
ith the advent
of sophisticated development techniques, higher production values and more
substantial
budgets,
games’ limits have
been expanding, both
figuratively and literally. As designers
have been concocting
more outlandish, ambitious concepts (step
forward, No Man’s
Sky) so too have the
worlds these ideas
spawn been getting
larger and more epic
in scope. Invisible walls
are rapidly becoming
a thing of the past; and
one can hardly complain about that.
For a kid growing up
in the late 90s, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina
of Time was mindblowing. Though by today’s
standards it appears
positively primitive, the
thrill of first setting foot
in a fully-rendered 3D
Hyrule Field – and
subsequently
realising that, yes, you can
get over those fences
that usually denoted
boundaries – and galloping towards the distant horizon on Epona
was unparalleled. Up
to that point, the technology to facilitate it
just wasn’t there, so
nothing of that magnitude or scale had really been seen before;
although, credit where
it’s due: the Philips CDi,
with its new-fangled
disc reader, did try
(operative word being
‘try’). It’s easy to see,
then, why Ocarina was
something of a game
changer.
Today, the aftershocks from Nintendo’s
masterpiece are still
felt. Something about
being turned loose in
a vast environment and
basically being told
you can go wherever
you like, within reason,
is inherently enticing;
part of that draw is the
prospect of discovering exactly where the
boundaries lie, and
then trying to get past
them. I for one distinctly recall sinking a
great deal of time into
a doomed attempt to
scale the bizarre mountain range surrounding Springfield in The
Simpsons: Hit and Run.
Point being: telling
the player they have
this lush, detailed
world to explore and
then throwing a couple of skyscrapers or
geographical oddities
in their way to avoid
the embarrassment of
them crossing over into
a grey, unprogrammed
limbo a la Big Rigs:
Over the Road Racing
does, ironically, enhance the experience
all the more, as they’ll
be encouraged to try
all the ‘legal’ things
at their disposal to escape. We’re gamers.
We don’t take no for
an answer.
On the other side
of things, the worlds,
when we’re not trying
to break out of them,
often showcase some
of the industry’s finest
game design. The most
obvious example is the
bewilderingly popular
Grand Theft Auto fran-
chise, which, with its
varied array of vehicles
and note-for-note recreations of real-world
cities to pootle about
in, is the pick of many
as one of the best in the
sandbox genre.
"WE’RE
GAMERS.
WE DON’T
TAKE NO
FOR AN
ANSWER"
What’s great is that
the younger set are catered for as well, with
2013’s brilliant LEGO
City: Undercover for
Wii U replicating a
similar
experience,
with just as big and interesting a world to discover. That’s not to say,
however, that none of
these projects suffer
from overambition; Ubisoft’s much-hyped The
Crew, which went to
all the effort of literally
recreating the entirety
of North America and
then failed to give the
player anything meaningful to actually do
there aside from drive
down roads (you can’t
even get out of the car!)
is an egregious case.
The likes of Minecraft, though, as evidenced by its staggering sales figures, go a
step further by allowing
the player to build their
own sandbox (it amazes me that a franchise
so lucrative has been
built around what is
essentially an unfinished game); and, irrespective of the endless
Creeper merchandise,
if it’s helping to inspire
the Gabe Newells of
tomorrow, it’s difficult
to look on it as anything but a boon.
To quote David Crystal: you can’t freeze a
flowing river. Change
is happening, old-timers. We’re moving forward. Maps are getting bigger, and games
are all the better for it.