Here we are again. Another day, another 'aspects in video games that I love and everybody else hates', wouldn't make a bad YouTube Video template if I had an inch of verbal charisma about me. Or any capture software. Or talent. But alas, I am a writer and so here I write. Sometimes I think about these elements and think 'I must be the stupid one here'. All those professional game critics seem to rant and rave about these things, so maybe I'm the one who can't see the inner truth of a terrible game system. But then I remember how enjoyable mechanics are a subjective topic, and how I should always try to see things from all sides even when others don't. I think this next topic can be a pretty divisive one so I'll ask the reader to keep an equally open mind.
Hey, I heard you like Video Games, so I put a video game in your video game. Or 'minigames' as they are colloquially known as. The term 'minigame' is actually rather broad in it's definition, spanning from side activities, to card games and skill-representative minigames. What do I mean by that? Well, minigames in which the purpose is to simulate the player character undergoing a certain skill such as; picking a lock, hacking a computer or hot-wiring a car. An oddly major point of contention among many video game critics, who have strange ideas about what 'video game pacing' is, even when it comes to an open world hundred-hour RPG. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Let me start with an admission. Even though it's probably obvious by now. I love minigames in video games. Of course, now comes the customary 'When they are implemented correctly...blah blah', but lets be honest- isn't that true with any aspect of a video game or anything in general? I enjoy good movement in a game, and if it sucks then I won't enjoy myself. Am I being obtuse here? Let me settle back into my more formal attitude. So... When I experience a well implemented and executed Video Game minigame, I often find it adds to the immersion and can even be enjoyable. Some minigames were so well made and implemented that they even became their own spin off products; Just look at 'The Witcher's' 'Gwent'. If that's the case, then why do so many people get up in arms over the concept of minigames.
Well, much like with Vercua Salt in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, a bad egg spoils the bunch. I'm not going to sit here and blow smoke up anyone's backside, yes, some games have downright horrible minigames. Assassins Creed makes a habit of needlessly throwing in lockpicking minigames ever since Assassins Creed 3. They are too simple to be a fun challenge and too frustrating to be inconsequential; literally the perfect blend of pointless and perfunctory. Or how about Oblivion's conversation wheel. A gross oversimplification of Morrowind's, equally as bad, stat-based disposition system, into a game mechanic so useless that most forget about it 10 minutes in. But those examples (and others I'm sure) aside, there are plenty of darn good representatives of the feature too; and I don't like judging something by it's worst tendencies.
It'll probably come to the surprise of of no one to learn that The Elder Scrolls is one of my favourite role playing series' of all time. I love the freedom of being immersed into the world at such a one-to-one level that I get to be my main character in everything they do, in a very gamified way of course. I get to live my life in the world of Tamriel, assuming that life is a non-stop adventure. So it makes sense for that life to contain a little bit of lockpicking, there and then. Now, Oblivion drops the ball here again with a needlessly frustrating minigame but Skyrim adopts Bethesda patented lockpick wheel, and that's where I want to focus your attention.
The Skyrim lockpicking minigame, also present in Fallout, is perhaps one of most immersive lockpicking experiences in gaming; if perhaps not the most accurate. That moment when you feel around the lock and test it for a sweet spot, has that perfect touch of deductive reasoning, guesswork and luck all wrapped up into a small, potentially 5 second, minigame. The way how the lock slightly gives way when you are close to the sweet spot eggs you on just that slight bit to keep going. As the difficulty of the lock increases, the sweet spot gets smaller and your lockpick undergoes proportionate tensile stress; forcing you to get more selective with your guesses. In Fallout, Bethesda even coupled this with a perk requirement (Or skill point requirement in the earlier games), meaning that the system isn't entirely skill-based as it is in Skyrim.
At the complete other end of the technological spectrum comes the hacking minigame. Now, hacking has always been a topic that leaves a lot to the imagination. Few people have a truly solid understanding on the mechanics of 'hacking' or what is even really encompassed by the term 'hacking', so developers practically have full artistic licence here. I suppose that means at some point games developers had to sit down an realise that email-phising didn't make for the most exciting gameplay and opted for something a lot more gamey.
The first game that comes to mind is Bethesda's Fallout, again. When choosing to hack a terminal, players are met with strings of letters and symbols with actual words interwoven inside. Each word represents a potential password for the terminal and, as such, are the exact same length. Whenever you pick a word, you lose one of 3 guesses and are told how many letters your word shares with the password. There are also some additional lines about that can restore your guesses or erase a dud hidden in the code too. It's another incredibly simple system that is incredibly diverse. It's almost like solving a crossword in a odd way, only less time consuming.
Square Enix's 'Deus Ex: Human Revolution', on the other hand, goes for a much more flashy system. In their hacking, players are greeted with a sort of virtual-chessboard that you have to tactically move across. They are tasked with 'capturing' nodes in order to reach an exit node and break into the system. It's the kind of minigame that is nightmare to explain but so very simple once you get your hands on it. I've heard many critics leverage that fact in order to misconstrue the whole system as a confusing mess but I have to say that this couldn't be further from the truth. 'Human Revolution's' hacking is surprising intuitive and elegant, painting the illusion of being some expert hacking machine whilst only really giving players a little strategic minigame.
With the cyclical nature of life it was inevitable I would up at Gwent again. Gwent is a pretty interesting little card game when it comes to the world of The Witcher, in that it is both an in-universe game that it is simultaneously non-canonical. Unless I missed a darn good reason why half of the printed cards of the game hold the likeness of Geralt and his friends. But I digress, Gwent is a fantastic little side activity that the character is able to partake in whenever they are taking a break from skinning monsters.
Okay, so this is kind of cheating, but I have to give some attention to the classics. Yes, you could argue that there is nothing particularly unique about the many gambling games in Red Dead Redemption, but it doesn't make the games themselves any less fun. There's something wholesome about spending your cowboy days under the night sky playing dominoes or down in Thieves Landing playing Liars Dice. Poker does sort of get lost in translation when your job is to bluff a computer but blackjack remains delightful for me. I'm not going to go into the rules of classic gambling games, not the right kind of blog, but I will say that it's always nice to partake in gambling without any of the real world consequences. (Thank you; Video Games.)
That isn't the only game to focus on gambling however. Fallout: New Vegas, predictably, has a selection of all the best gambling games to choose from too. Poker, Blackjack, One-armed bandits, and roulette tables all await The Courier in the land of sin. New Vegas does add a mini game of it's own to the mix, however. A relatively slow placed card game called: Caravan which benefits from the same card-collectathon appeal that Gwent does. In Caravan, the player has to build a 'caravan' of mostly sequential cards that value between 20 and 27. Some of your cards can be used to mess up opponents caravans and your turn can be used to scrap a caravan and start again. Once you have 3 complete caravan's you win the game. This time I will admit that the game and it's rules can be somewhat obtuse if the player doesn't take the time to learn, but it is another fun distraction in the world of Fallout once you do.
This last part is definitely cheating, but I stand by my choice. 'Minigame' is, after all, a term used to denote a small game, within a larger game, who's goals do not aid the completion of the major game in a significant way. At least that's how I'm choosing to define the term in order to justify this part. Because, you see, racing is a minigame in a way. Okay, hear me out. Of course, there are games that are dedicated to racing like 'Project Gotham racing' or the 'Forza' franchise; but what about those games that aren't dedicated to the racing art form. Like Sleeping Dogs, Watch Dogs 2 or Grand Theft Auto. These are just games with decently, rudimentary driving mechanics that work well when dedicated to a racing minigame.
Of course some these games implement their racing better than others. Rockstar have been doing driving mechanics since the year dot, so it makes since that their racing would be the superior offering out of all my examples. But Watch Dogs 2 has surprising weighty cars that are fun to zip through San Francisco in and Sleeping Dogs almost feels like it stole it's driving from a completely different game in how solid it feels. No real rules to wrap your head around either, get from point A to point B without killing anyone. Simple and fun.
I've covered a vast array of minigames here, from the simulative to the integrated. All of the one's I have chosen have similar traits that I believe are indicative to a good minigame. They are intuitive yet deep. Easy to pick up but hard to master. Something like that doesn't just happen by accident, it takes care and ingenuity to plan and execute on in a way that perfectly fits into your game without feeling like a useless tack on. Not every game manages to pull it off; Mass Effect 2's hacking minigame (and most hacking minigames as a matter of fact) is dull and repetitive, Mafia 2's lockpicking is frustrating, and all of Oblivion's minigames suck. But in the end it comes down to whether the creators take the time to envision a worthy addition to their game mechanics or not.
Minigames are one of those things that people find it easy to rally against in their entirety. "They just distract from the game" they argue "They're wastes of time", which I find a moot argument in an entertainment form created for the purpose of wasting time. On a more serious note, Video games offer a strange take on 'pacing' that isn't shared by any other medium. As an active participant within that world, the pace of the story can often be dependant on you expending the effort to drive the story forward. A good minigame doesn't get in the way of that, but rather is there as an activity to partake in, in those moments when you aren't constantly pushing for that credits screen. For that reason I don't believe that 'minigames' should be scaled down in the future (Like they have been in many recent games) but just have more effort and resources devoted to, in order to create something that we readily sacrifice our time to instead of one that feels like it's leeching from our time.
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