To assist myself in the design process of a mechanic, that Id wish to further develop and evalutate - I decided to gather information and flesh out mechanics from a small number of games that I personally deem very interesting, successful. The mechanics from those games could be either successful or not. However, I wish to look into the impact they had on the game and maybe why they were successful or not.

The games that I will look into, are purely based on my personal opinion and could not be considered objective choices in anyway.

The games I will look into:

• Crysis (1st one)
• Driver: San Francisco
• Mirrors Edge
• Snow Runner

Crysis - The Nanosuit

I already spoke about Crysis 1 briefly as a reflection in my blog/diary entry (week 1). As mentioned the nanosuit mechanic (to me) is a core feature of the whole IP series.

I personally prefer the way the nanosuit was handled in the first entry to the series. It was a direct manual control wheel (the options for hot-key short cuts were available) which gave you freedom to use whatever function in any specific situation.

Crysis - Nanosuit control wheel.

Each element on the wheel was very clearly annotated by a corresponding image, most players could grasp subliminally what each one of the elements corresponds too. Alongside was a satisfying sound cue from the nanosuit stating what mode has ''engaged''. Each one of the modes changed a specific statistic of the player characters capabilities (they're all self explanatory). i.e

• Maximum strength would give you an increased amount of strength enabling the player to grab large objects, throw them at a greater distance. Punching and kicking objects or enemy AI would also have an increase in damage. The player would also be able to jump higher.
• Maximum speed would increase the characters both normal walking/jogging and sprinting speed exponentially.
• Maximum armor increases the players shielding and decreases the damage of oncoming attacks
• Cloak would make the player invisible to the enemy, however enemies would notice the character if he walked straight up to them or made objects move/fall.
• The wheel also had a function to access gun attachments, letting the player to enable/disable different elements on the gun at will e.g silencers for stealth or extended magazines etc.