Empty space spaces
Playing through Halo 3 (2007, 360) in co-op really immerses me in the things that Halo does best. At their worst the Halo games represent the utter tedium of the FPS genre to me – trudging through endless regular battles. But in co-op one is encouraged to continually experiment, to find a different way of approaching the problem than a partner, and to be able to take a risk safe in the knowledge that a partner can soak up the pressure of your own mistakes.
The architecture is the thing. I hesitate to call it level design, because Halo levels seem to be painted in very broad strokes. This battle in this space, a period of rest, and then a battle in a different space. The replay feature allows players to watch their own battles from a free camera view, and this gives a great opportunity to just appreciate the worlds that have been built here. The design of the environments is coherent in ways that you could never notice actually playing the game – it has integrity in every hidden corner, as if slavishly devoted to its world rather than its players.
Look at a virtual space and you can just tell it is Halo. Clean lines, built from peculiar oblique geometry, at once coherently formed but never square. Repetitious in ways that build familiarity – turn each corner and you just kind of know what the space you are in is all about. It won’t frustrate or surprise you – it’s a function of the combat that is designed to take place within it. It doesn’t quite make sense – it’s too empty to be genuinely alive. Like Tron. It takes place within a game – I don’t think players ever quite buy into the idea that they are taking part in a story.
It’s not quite science fiction, it’s combat space.
