This week, I was joined by Alex who is a friend of mine to discuss strategy games and the implementation of Meta-Game Design and tactical gameplay.
We started off with introductions and talking about some of Alex’s favorite games which includes XCOM Enemy Unknown which was our first point of discussion. We talked about how tactical elements and Meta-Game Design have started to appear in more and more titles, such as Call of Duty, League of Legends and so on, and why they work so well to draw you in.
Next we talked about the game Evolve which is the spiritual sequel to our favorite co-op game Left 4 Dead and why it’s not working both from a design point of view and meta-game . From there we went back to talking more about Meta-Game Design and looking at tactical games like Disgaea, Tactics Ogre and so on.
And then it was time for everybody’s favorite topic: Dark Souls, as we talked about the series and how they let the player personalize their way through thanks to the leveling and weapon system. After that we returned to the strategy side of the discussion, talking about the differences between a tactical game vs. a strategic game.
We spent some time on the Total War series as this is another one of Alex’s favorites; I asked him about what has made the series so polarizing among fans and why some games are considered better than the others despite having similar designs.
To wrap things up, we talked about a variety of topics including Early Access, re-reviewing games, promoting games and so on. No podcast notes this week as there really isn’t anything to link to.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS
