Delightful Dashes: Moving Fast Never
Felt Better
Perspectives
Video games
are about motion. Across genres, across aesthetics, and across gameplay not many
things are shared. Movement is something that’s been at the core of video games
since their onset. Video games are about manipulating motion and using it to
your advantage.
Just take a
look back at some early games. Pong
is ostensibly only about motion, as
two players manipulate the way a square bounces back and forth across a screen.
Galaga and Space Invaders were all about anticipating enemy movement while
understanding your own. Tetris is a
beautiful series of precise motions, a balance between time management and
finesse. Motion is the vehicle by which games bring interactivity to the
player.
Each genre
engineers motion to suit gameplay demands. For some, it’s simple ups and downs
along a straight path. Others it is 360-degree rotation on a 2D plane. As games
moved into 3D movement evolved. Motion now wasn’t constrained by up-down-left-right, it could span the gamut of x-y-z axis
coordinates. In building towards the level of sophistication required to master
3D movement, a concomitant rethinking of 2D motion occurred. Game developers
sought to reimagine what movement along a 2D plane could mean for the player.
New titles didn’t just focus on new worlds or narratives; they also focused on
revolutionizing the way games handled.
From an
early age I have been drawn to action games. I’ve enjoyed a variety of them for a
variety of reasons, but one thing that has stayed consistent is how much I
enjoy their movement. Quick, skillful combat requires mobility to match. For
older action games like Ninja Gaiden
or Castlevania, your options were
often limited to jumps and good character placement. Over time a wealth of new
options were added: like sprinting, blocking, dodging and warping. The mechanic
that’s stuck with me the most, however, is dashing.
Dashes are
a great solution to a common action game problem—how do you keep motion fluid
during (and outside of) combat? A dash can get you from one place to another in
a fraction of the time it would take to walk. A dash can also act as a split
second, and skill intensive, system to avoid enemy attacks. There is something
fundamentally game-y about dashes, too, which endears them to me. Like the
double jump before them, dashes are something that comfortably exist outside of
reality. Sure, someone could sprint a short distance in the real world but that
wouldn’t truly recapitulate an action game dash. Some of my favorite dashes are
inhumanly fast. Often, dash
systems are titrated to a perfect level in which they both empower the player
and add a skill ceiling for those looking to conquer the game’s hardest
challenges. To put it succinctly: I love dashes.
This summer
I played a trio of action games that got me thinking about dashes. Stories: The Path of Destinies, Furi, and Hyper Light Drifter are totally different games that share one common
element—fantastic dash moves. In each game the player is given the tools to zip
around the map, making each experience fast and fluid. In wanting to spotlight
those dashes here I began to think back to other satisfying dashes in games
I’ve played recently. So if you will pardon me the indulgence, let’s look at
five awesome feats of speed.
Stories: The Path of Destinies
Though you
don’t start the game with it unlocked, Stories:
The Path of Destinies does a great job at pushing the player towards unlocking
dashes quickly. Dashes are predominantly for facilitating combat. One press of
a button quickly closes the gap between player and monster, which is essential
for maintaining your combo meter. Dashes can be powered up to travel further,
faster, and deal damage to enemies as you collide with them. Outside of
combat, dashing towards the next encounter is nice but the three dash in a row
limit lessens their impact. Still, what’s not to love about a fox zipping
around at lightning speed?
Furi
Furi is a game that took me by complete
surprise. Not only does its ‘boss rush only’ design work, it is a game that
packs in a lot of complex mechanics. The mechanic I adored, as I am sure you
have already guessed, was its dash. Furi’s
dashes are fast. Really fast. They teleport the player in a blink of an eye.
Dashes are integral to your success in Furi.
They are used to dodge enemy attacks, quickly move to exposed boss flanks, and
in the game’s bullet hell-like sequences. What I enjoyed the most about the
dashes was just how much control Furi
gave the player over them. Quickly tapping the dash button moved the player in
the desired direction. The button could be held down too, holding your
character in place until the button was released. This would increase the distance
covered. As
I wrote in my review, this added a whole new layer of skill and precision
that made Furi great.
Hyper Light Drifter
Hyper Light Drifter is one hell of a game. I promise to
review it here soon. The game features yet another great dash. Your
scarf-donning silent hero faces a decaying world, sword in hand and ready to
move. Similar to the two above games, your dash is so satisfyingly fast. Point
in a direction and boom, you’re at your destination. Dashing is unsurprisingly
essential, serving the dual purpose of dodging enemy attacks and navigating its
open and secret-filled world. Hyper Light
Drifter also features a fantastic modification to the dash by allowing
players to chain an unlimited number of them together, given you perfectly time your button presses. I still need to complete the 800
chain dash challenge, but man did I love Hyper
Light Drifter’s movement.
Transistor
Cut from
the same cloth as the above games, my
third favorite game of 2014 featured some fantastic dashes. Transistor’s mix of real-time and
turn-based combat gave dashing a new layer, making it critical for positioning
above all else. What I remember loving was incorporating dashes into combos and
then watching them play out in real time.
Bloodborne
If you
haven’t, you can read me rave about Bloodborne's dashes in
my review. If not, just watch this gif. Perhaps it was its juxtaposition
against its much slower Souls forbearers,
but moving around in Bloodborne felt
supremely satisfying. Bloodborne
proved you can add hyper fast mobility to deeply thoughtful Souls combat system and still get a
fantastic end result.
Games like
the ones I’ve featured above just go to show that dashes are an integral, and
fun, part of gaming. Moving fast has never felt better.
