Jedi Knight came out just a year after the original Quake, and was already showing its age upon release. Its development team was wise enough to include support for hardware acceleration and mouse-look controls (complete with a neat if archaic calibration of the axes that allowed for some very sensitive camera movement), but the low- poly count was much harder to mask.

Guarded by a force field -- with a rather obvious power source -- this area leads into a twisting maze of vents that all have a different idea of where the gravity source is located. Confusing, but fun.

Jedi Knight still received very positive reviews, though, and rightfully so. It wasn’t perfect, and hasn’t aged particularly well, but I had a blast with it.

Here are some of the points that stuck out upon replaying it:

— The level design in Jedi Knight is fantastic, and probably its biggest strength. Of course level design was a bit of a different beast back then: areas tended to be much larger with fewer scripted events, the player had an inventory of keys and other usable items that facilitated environmental traversal, platforming puzzles were quite common (although usually disliked), movement was much, much quicker, etc.

Within that framework, though, the levels were a treat.

Despite the game’s low-poly count, its geometry was quite complex and varied. Textures were often repeated, but new ones trickled in periodically and every map had its own unique motif. The player was also constantly operating large-scale machinery that dynamically changed the landscape.

It all made for a nice combination of action, exploration and some occasional head-scratching. The only complaint I had with the levels were the large, industrial looking doors that were virtually indistinguishable from walls. Since these had to be opened with a button press, there were too many instances where the player could easily get stuck simply due to dodgy visuals.

It's actually not as dangerous as it looks, and you can bet there's a secret room underneath...

— In-between level cinematics consisted of live-action actors superimposed over CG backdrops. They were rather silly and pretty low-budget, but did a decent job of conveying the story while showcasing certain visuals that were not possible to render within the game engine.

— The player was able to carry 10 weapons at any one time, and many of them shared the same ammo source. The limited ammo made becoming a Jedi and obtaining a lightsaber all the more rewarding. Visually speaking the lightsaber wasn’t anything fantastic, but it had unlimited power and the added advantage of lighting up dark areas and deflecting smaller enemy shots.

— Jedi powers were earned as the player progressed through the game, and they could be focused on neutral abilities, the light path, or the dark side. The powers themselves were a nice addition to both the singleplayer and the multiplayer, and were sometimes necessary to progress through a level (or at least take a short cut).

Force Pull was a particularly fun one as it allowed you to snatch weapons out of the enemies’ hands or grab healing items from far away.

It's possible to blow up those barrels from this location, but due to wonky ray-tracing so common in older FPS games, my shots hit the wall.

— All the enemies responded to basic in-world physics, even after death, which made for some cool effects like a dead body sliding along the current of a pipeline.

— A lot of the audio was taken straight from the Star Wars movies, including the iconic sound effects and the famous scores by John Williams. These greatly enhanced the atmosphere and helped Jedi Knight stand out from other FPS titles of the era.

A TIE/sa Bomber hounding the player mid-way through the game.

— The way the game’s secret rooms were placed was quite clever as they followed a pattern that went against the common funneling/guiding techniques of level design, e.g., a small nook embedded into the wall just above the entrance to a room was very easy to miss if the player ran right in without looking up and behind.

Enemies were often utilized to help the player spot these locations as they would often be placed in seemingly inaccessible locations, but with enough sleuthing, the player could always discover a way to reach his foes. A tally at the end of each level also informed the player as to whether he missed any secrets.

The impetus to discover the secret areas was very good as well. Not only did these locations often contain health, armour and ammo, but finding all the secrets in a level rewarded the player with extra force powers.

A while ago I was reading up on Starblade, one of the first commercial polygon-based games. What really struck me about the game was just how smooth it was compared to its spiritual successor, Starfox (granted the above links are YouTube videos that don’t accurately reflect framerates, but the differences are still quite noticeable).

It’s an extreme case, but one that nicely demonstrates the importance of rendering speeds.

Despite having animations that consisted of only 2-3 frames, many classic games ran at 60fps. This granularity helped to smooth out movement, including Mario's beloved jump.

Of course no one ever complains about games being too smooth, but the debate of 30fps vs. 60fps continues to pop up. What’s more, the 60fps side keeps losing ground, often to the argument that humans can’t really detect more than 30 frames in a single second.

And that is completely untrue.

It’s an inherently flawed statement as humans are not digital machines. The human brain is always on, always receiving input. Light hits our eyes as a wave, and the information it carries is almost instantly transmitted to the Visual Cortex. The brain analyzes this data, focusing on changes brought on by motion and fluctuations in intensity. Displacement is interpolated via motion blur and identical input is discarded to avoid extraneous processing.

The “decoded” image is further analyzed by various parts of the brain, but the overall process — as complex as it is — is quite fast and versatile. Much faster than 30fps. Faster than 60fps, in fact.

So where does the myth of 30fps come from? Well, film and TV for the most part, but the framerates of those media are not analogous to those of videogames. Others have written extensively about the topic, so I won’t go too deep into it. What I’d like to talk about, though, is why high framerates are important to games.

The Unreal Tournament series has been known for letting its players set very high FPS benchmarks.

As a preface, different titles obviously have different requirements, and some suffer more from a low FPS than others. Also, the reasons for Insomniac’s decision to move away from their 60fps standard were completely understandable, if a little painful to accept.

With that said, here’s why I think high framerates are important:

1). Granularity

The framerate of a game is usually directly tied to the processing of its logic. As a result, action games that run at 30fps cannot have the same granularity of movement as those that run at 60fps. This might not matter much for turn-based strategy titles, but it makes an awful lot of shmups technically impossible to do at lower framerates.

2). Input Lag

Games are inherently an interactive medium, and as such the response times for input need to be virtually instant. On the hardware side this is rarely an issue, but a stuttering framerate can reduce the response times and greatly detract from the overall experience (especially in “twitch” titles).

3). Consistency

30fps isn’t bad, but what most people fail to realize is that it’s often the “ceiling” measurement, i.e., the best case scenario. Unlike TV and film, games are dynamic, and the processing required to render any given scene can fluctuate quite significantly. As a result, 30fps games actually tend to run at a rate of 20-30fps. These sort of inconsistencies can be very difficult to avoid, but they’re much less noticeable with higher benchmarks.

Motion blur at its finest.

4). Motion Blur

Motion blur is the biggest reason TV and film get away with smaller framerates. The phenomenon of motion blur relies on the human brain’s ability to stitch together a series of blurred images into a single, smooth animation. Until fairly recently, games had absolutely no motion blurring, and even these days it doesn’t have quite the same effect. The reason for this is that post-process blurring is not always accurate, and in many cases purposely exaggerated to create a distinctive visual effect.

To properly accommodate for all these factors, a high framerate is a must. And when it’s there, it creates a certain synchronization between the player and the game; a smooth flow that more developers should strive to achieve.

The "electro" anomaly frying a random soldier in Pripyat.

It’s also very much a hardcore game that’s difficult to play because of its mechanics and its dreary atmosphere. Still, there’s a lot of interesting stuff here:

• The setting is unique, combining the post-apocalyptic vibe of the Chernobyl disaster with clandestine military research and various supernatural phenomena. It’s all about irradiated areas filled with broken concrete, rusty chunks of metal, mutated beasts, and burlap-clad bands of scavengers fighting each other and the Russian government.


Camping in with the boys.

• A lot of the non-vital voice work is in Ukrainian, adding to the game’s authenticity.
• There are more audio and visual effects in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. than any other game of its kind. The beeps of Geiger counters, menacing discharges of anomalies, muting effects of Brain Scorchers, wispy echos of phantom enemies, etc. accompany shimmering heat-distortions, static filters, the draining and bleeding of colour, camera shaking and FOV manipulations. A lot of similar effects have been used in other titles, but not with the same level of diversity and intensity. Also, because these effects are often tied to individual objects/creatures/phenomena, they end up feeling a lot more organic. They’re not used exclusively in cutscenes, and they can “stack,” creating very unnerving situations where they’re used silmutaneously.
• RPG elements are quite prevalent, and the whole game is based on a quest system. Some of these quests are unique or even tied into the story, while others simply repeat throughout the game.
• The player has a grid-based inventory with a weight limit dictating how much he can carry.


One of the freaky mutants that roam the countryside.

• All the weapons and armour types degrade with use.
• The game mostly consists of large, sprawling areas that are occupied by groups of AI driven entities. Packs of blind dogs roam the countryside while groups of marauding bandits engage in sporadic firefights. Exploration of these areas is non-linear, and their atmosphere is enhanced with randomized weather effects.
• Underground areas serve as the game’s “dungeons,” and are a drastic contrast to the rest of the game. They’re very claustrophobic and rely on lightsourced entities and the player’s flashlight and night vision for illumination. The encounters in these locations are also very deliberate and revolve around bizarre mutations and supernatural phenomena. This focus has the added effect of making an encounter with a cloaked Bloodsucker all the more enervating when it first happens above ground and in the middle of the day.


Industrial decay, a common theme in the game.

• Anomalies are localized areas of altered physics that manifest themselves in various harmful ways, e.g., electric shocks, crushing gravity fields, whirlwind vortices, etc. Anomalies make a lot of noise and create a static visual effects whenever the player gets near, but it’s still fairly easy to run into them. They can be used in combat against enemies, though, and they often house artifacts. The player also has an unlimited supply of metal bolts that can be thrown into anomalies in order to discharge them.
• Artifacts are small, irradiated objects that take on the effects of the anomalies that house them. Up to five can be equipped at any one time, and they can bestow various bonuses on the player such as resistance to electricity, increased health, protection from radiation, etc.
• 

  You can actually explore some of those apartments.

  The ALife component of the game’s engine continuously processes thousands of entities. This results in something of a simulated world where the player is a participant and not the sole focus. My first taste of this was when early on in the game I snuck out south to raid a military checkpoint. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite powerful enough to do that just yet, so I hightailed it back to the starting camp. Some soldier followed me, but I figured they’d give up after a while. Once I got back, I took on a quest and went to a different area. Eventually, though, I began to get messages that my various missions were failing! I didn’t know what was going on, so I went back to the camp just in time to witness the army dismantling my outgunned quest-givers.

• “Stashes” are hidden around the zones and serve as the game’s treasure chests. Oddly enough, though, they’re empty until you acquire information on their locations (which is usually done by killing their owners).
• The combat is executed very well, relying on constant stop-and-drop movement (which can be very difficult when the player is overburdened and can’t sprint) and proper use of weapons. Enemies are very smart and constantly maneuver to outflank you, and a single headshot is enough to kill just about anyone. The ballistics model is also fantastic resulting in bullets that can actually ricochet around the environment.
  

  The underground sections can be really creepy.

• The damage models are split into: burn, electrical shock, explosive, impact, rupture (causes bleeding) and chemical burn. The player also has to keep an eye on other stats such as: vitality, mental health, endurance, hunger and radiation.
• A Nokia-style PDA is the interface to the whole game and is capable of displaying maps that resemble satellite photos and support smooth zooming.
• The finale of the game takes place in a surreal, small-scale rendition of Chernobyl. It’s fairly accurate and filled with ruined apartment buildings and desolate school yards — a stark contrast to the ram-shack harrier towns, military outposts and wilderness areas that comprise the rest of the zones.
• There are multiple endings to the game, and most of them are utterly sadistic.
• Alcohol cures radiation. Seriously.

An ink-splattered bench in The Unfinished Swan.

It’s definitely an interesting concept, especially since the game uses no shading/lighting to speak of. Watching the demo video, though, I couldn’t help but think that it’d benefit from some movement options and effects akin to Mirror’s Edge. Nothing too crazy, mind you — there’s no reason to put in guards and guns — but something to add to the game’s exploration aspect.

Granted this is mostly a tech demo at this point, so this strictly a speculative opinion. Still, DICE is taking their title in a more streamlined and abstract direction with downloadable content; The Unfinished Swan already has that vibe, now I think it just needs some extra gameplay to accompany the rest of the package.