Through the Lens: Video Games - Game Design Theory - page 100

hard to solve the problem of button mashing, if you actually realize what
a failure in game design it is.
One solution is to have attacks have an element of commitment: for
instance, building in a delay after a punch is thrown. If you miss, you're
left vulnerable for a few seconds. Another very easy solution is to elimi-
nate combos . You might think it's illegal to make a brawler that doesn't
have the punch-punch-knee combo, but it's not. If anything, it should be
illegal to add that combo to any more games. These combos add almost
nothing to the actual possibility space of the game and are only there for
thematic reasons. They should be ditched.

3D Third-Person Action

Examples: God of War , Devil May Cry , Dynasty Warriors , X-Men Leg-
ends , Tomb Raider

Of course, that side-scrolling brawler stuff doesn't look anything like a
movie, so it's mostly a thing of the past these days. Now, the camera is
placed behind the main character, but other than that the gameplay is
largely the same: get close to enemies, and mash buttons to kill them.
One becomes good at the game by memorizing AI patterns, monster
spawn positions, and level geometry.
Usually, 3D third-person action games have the player using a melee
weapon, but there are some exceptions, such as Tomb Raider . However,
I still classify Tomb Raider in this category because the gameplay is es-
sentially the same as God of War : your weapon simply has more reach
since it's a pistol instead of a fiery god-whip.
Third-person action games are the modern extension of the brawler,
and so they share some of the same problems. The 3D feature brings a
lot of new possibilities, though—most of them problems in disguise. For
that reason, and because of the sheer magnitude of popular 3D third-
person action video games being produced, they get their own genre.

Camera Buttons
As I said at the beginning of the chapter, if your game has camera but-
tons, you've failed. And almost all 3D third-person action games have
camera buttons. What this means for players is that every once in a while
(or in extreme cases, frequently), they have to stop playing and take mea-
sures to correct the camera angle. Let's do away with this.
How different would the gameplay of God of War be, if it were totally
top-down? Or if perhaps it had a three-quarters-perspective view, as in
Diablo or Final Fantasy Tactics ? Tragic as it is, the gameplay of God of
War is 2D.