I’ve been trying to spend more time playing games lately. Although I develop all kinds of software, making games is my favorite pastime. In an effort to better understand the games all of my friends talk about I’m setting aside time during each week to play through them. As I work through each game I try to pick it apart and understand both the gameplay mechanic designs and the psychological shaping enforced by each game.

I’m not a big FPS person. Once I purchased my XBox 360 I knew it was only a matter of time before friends berated me for not playing MW2 and Halo. In my opinion, these latest franchise iterations appeared to lack any depth. However, I didn’t give them a fair chance and wrote them off because I didn’t hear any valid reason from people to play them, in my opinion.

That changed about a month or two back. I had been in full-on hermit mode for a whole and decided it was time to hang out with people more frequently. I was given a free copy of Halo Reach and used that opportunity to invite a friend over once a week to play some online multiplayer. As the gaming session rolled by I became more acquainted with each map and started to develop strategies that would favor me as the victor in battle.

I’ve played the first and third Halo game and found myself very, very dissapointed with the strategic depth both in single player and especially with online play. I’m accustomed to a game where there are many variables, which have been finely balanced, that a winning strategy takes days of trial, error, and well-thought out practice to develop. Halo seemed to be 100% about learning the map and mastering each weapon respectively. Once you had that down, there was nothing else to worry about.

Halo Reach changed that for me. As my familiarity with the maps increased my strategies still needed to be changed on a steady basis. This is due entirely to the class system in Reach. No longer does it matter entirely that power weapons are being controlled; if an opponent is properly using a class skill that overpowers your own then you are forced to change strategy.

Reach accomplishes this in a way that offers a low barrier of entry for players to have fun. Getting shot a few times while investigating a map doesn’t deal a lot of punishment, since everyone can stand several blows before death and your shield regenerates rapidly. Reach is the kind of games where I can hold a conversation with the people sitting in the same room, but still dominate in game.

In stark contrast to both of those points stands Modern Warfare 2. This was a game I purchased for the sake of a friend of mine. He claimed it was the end-all-be-all FPS of our time. With that purchase I played through the short but enjoyable campaign. I never even thought about touching the online mode until a month later. At that point, said friend visited my apartment for non-gaming reasons and while I was assisting him in computer related issues he booted up MW2.

He was baffled that I hadn’t even started multiplayer, and informed me that it was 75% of the game’s worth. I watched him play a few rounds and didn’t really see anything different about this game. Later that night I tried it for myself.

Two hours later I was ready to trade this game in for Katamari Damacy on PS2, or something else I’m searching for to add to the collection. It was the least fun experience I’ve had in gaming in quite some time. What was frustrating was that I had a solid handle on the controls, yet was still getting destroyed in game. My worst record was 0-18 in a single game. At the end of two hours I wasn’t doing much better.

One rule I have is that a game that doesn’t give you any direction to progress is poorly designed (see the No Twinkie Database for many, many more quips). MW2 fit this unfortunate bill. Two hours in and nothing seemed to tell me how I could get around my constant failure. I am also a firm believer that one should never watch online videos or read WIKI/forums in order to enjoy a game. If that’s a requirement, then the game is poorly designed.

Sitting on the couch pondering the distance an XBox 360 disc could be hurled, I had a breakthrough. I flipped through the classes available  as a starting player and saw that one carried a device similar to a rocket launcher. In many other games from my past, that wonderful n00b tube had been my entry into victory. Rocket launchers tend to give players that are bad at a game enough of a random victory to provide incentive to continue playing, MW2 was no exception to this.

As I got a handle on blasting away enemies I found myself more naturally crawling around the game maps. No longer did I dash nonchalantly around and get picked off by snipers, but I blitzed through hectic firefights and cleared rooms one by one, dashing across small gaps to avoid stray rounds taking me down.

Around hour four the largest difference in this gameplay experience hit me. Reach is much more about having a light-hearted good time. MW2 is largely a battle of thought. You need to choose the very customizable loadout of your class very carefully depending on both the map and the loadouts of the opposing team. Being able to adjust quickly in a battle also hooks a higher victory rate. This experience was much harder to break into than Reach was, but as time went on I found it far more rewarding. Reach was a nice repetitive time sink, MW2 felt like a compelling and fun mental workout.

Both games serve a purpose in my collection, but they are very different experiences. Reach is for times when I need to gives other people I’m with some quality attention, and MW2 is a game for my own pleasure and game time. This post talks a lot more about the non-gameplay element specific thought that went into my gameplay experiences, but that’s because I’ve seen enough MW2 vs. Reach posts to last a lifetime that cover the technical differences. If Reach is a quick pickup game, like playing cards, then MW2 is a battle of Settlers of Catan.