Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Twitch
    Game on Aus
    • News
      What’s coming to PlayStation Plus in June 2023?

      What’s coming to PlayStation Plus in June 2023?

      June 1, 2023

      IT’S JUNE! — and that means two things: it is officially the rainy season & it’s time for the next…

      ANZPL Split 1 2023 Trophy

      ANZPL Split 1 2023 LAN Finals: Champions Crowned

      May 30, 2023

      This is it. The ANZPL Split 1 2023 LAN Finals. Who would win the Lower Final and make it to the Grand Final to face the Skorpions?

      Company of Heroes 3 Xbox console give-away

      Company of Heroes 3 Xbox console give-away

      May 30, 2023

      TODAY’S release of the Company of Heroes 3 Console Edition released on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, FiveStarGames…

      Assassin’s Creed: Mirage details emerge

      Assassin’s Creed: Mirage details emerge

      May 25, 2023

      AT the PlayStation Showcase this morning there was a few moments of excitement for me, one of them being the…

      PlayStation ’23 Showcase report

      PlayStation ’23 Showcase report

      May 25, 2023

      PlayStation went ahead with its PlayStation Showcase earlier this morning and kicked off the old E3-style season presentation of a…

      View All
    • Reviews
      Crucial T700 – The SSD powerhouse!

      Crucial T700 – The SSD powerhouse!

      September 6, 2023

      The Crucial T700 sets a new standard in performance when it comes to Consumer Grade SSDs, pushing speeds faster than…

      Hyper Karting and Hyper VR street signage

      Hyper Karting & Reality Hyper Amazing!

      June 7, 2023

      I recently visited Hyper Karting, a go-kart and VR centre in Sydney. As well as the go-karts, I was very keen to experience Hyper Reality.

      Company of Heroes 3 (Console Edition) – Tactical Brilliance

      Company of Heroes 3 (Console Edition) – Tactical Brilliance

      June 5, 2023

      Company of Heroes 3 marks the highly anticipated return of the critically acclaimed real-time strategy franchise to consoles. Developed by…

      Diablo 4 Review – A Dark and Thrilling Return to Glory

      Diablo 4 Review – A Dark and Thrilling Return to Glory

      May 31, 2023

      Diablo 4 is the long-awaited continuation of the iconic action role-playing game series developed by Blizzard Entertainment. I had the…

      Alienware AW510K Low-Profile RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review

      Alienware AW510K Low-Profile RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review

      May 25, 2023

      When I reviewed the Alienware AW720M Tri-Mode Wireless Gaming Mouse at the start of the year, I came away intrigued…

      View All
    • Podcasts
      Nuts & Bolts Ep 84 Hero Card

      Nuts & Bolts Ep 84: What Is The LCS Doing?

      June 3, 2023

      The World Of Tanks ANZPL LAN Finals have decided the Split 1 champions. Jim takes us through the action! Lots…

      Nuts & Bolts Ep 83 Hero Card

      Nuts & Bolts Ep 83: Let’s Get Down To Business

      May 20, 2023

      There’s lots to cover this week. Join Mercury and Jim as the World Of Thanks ANZPL heads towards their LAN…

      The Weekly Show Ep 279 Hero Card

      The Weekly Show Ep 279: Tech Issues: The Show

      May 19, 2023

      Doomcutie joins Stormie and Jim as they talk through mods, leaks and so much more! Plus our Bloody Good Game Of The Week thanks to Aussie Broadband.

      Nuts & Bolts Ep 82 Hero Card

      Nuts & Bolts Ep 82: We Missed You!

      May 13, 2023

      It’s been a couple of weeks so Jim and Mercury catch up to talk all things Dreamhack Melbourne. Plus Snoop…

      The Weekly Show Ep 278 Hero Card

      The Weekly Show Ep 278: Look Who Just Drops In

      May 12, 2023

      Doomcutie joins Stormie and Jim as they talk through mods, leaks and so much more! Plus our Bloody Good Game Of The Week thanks to Aussie Broadband.

      View All
    • Categories
      • BY PLATFORM
        • Playstation
        • Xbox
        • Nintendo
        • PC
        • Mobile
        • VR
        • Retro
      • BY GENRE
        • Action
        • Action-Adventure
        • Battle Royale
        • Fighting
        • FPS
        • Horror Games
        • RPG
        • Simulation
        • Sports
        • MMORPG
        • MOBA
        • Platformer
        • Strategy
        • Survival
        • Indie
      • GOA ESSENTIALS
        • Esports
        • Conventions
        • Tabletop
        • Hardware
        • Funny
        • Streaming
        • Win
        • Podcast
        • Video
    • More
      • About Us
      • Contact Us
    Game on Aus
    Home » Zulu After Dark: There Will Be Opinions (On Features Games Need)
    Zulu After Dark: There Will Be Opinions (On Features Games Need)
    FEATURE

    Zulu After Dark: There Will Be Opinions (On Features Games Need)

    Royce WilsonBy Royce WilsonApril 23, 2021
    Share
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email

    NOT everything we do at GOA is reviews, news, tournaments, competitions, or having an awesome podcast.

    Some of the team – particularly me – have Opinions™ on things that we’d like to be able share, discuss, pontificate upon, or even just shout into an empty, uncaring void, and where better to do it than in an editorial piece?

    Hello, I’m Royce “Zulu” Wilson, GOA’s Technology and Features Editor, and this is Zulu After Dark, a sometimes treat where I invite you to come on a journey with me as I write about various aspects of gaming, pop culture and whatever else I feel like at the time.

    In keeping with the name, these will be timed to drop late in the evening Australian time – and also because “Zulu Sometime Around Morning Tea” is a cumbersome name that lacks a certain panache.

    Anyway, for the first Zulu After Dark, I’m tackling a pretty straightforward topic – namely, “Features that video games should have but generally don’t”. So, without further ado, let’s get into it…

    Zulu After Dark: There Will Be Opinions (On Features Games Need)
    “Wait, so I’m here and the next objective is there on that totally different part of the map, and for some reason this hairbrush is marked as an ‘essential quest item’ and I can’t remember which of these potions does what…”

    “PREVIOUSLY, ON…”

    One of the downsides to being a grown-up with grown-up responsibilities is that it means not being able to devote dozens of hours at a stretch to whatever game you’d really like to be devoting dozens of hours at a stretch to.

    Who among us has not put aside a massive open-world RPG due to work/family/life getting in the way, and come back to it several months later with no idea what the hell you’re supposed to be doing?

    I’m not just talking about the “Sitting on your horse at a camp in the middle of nowhere asking yourself ‘What am I doing here???’” sense, I’m also including “Having completely forgotten what the controls are” and “Wait, so who is the bad guy in this again?”

    It would be great if a game detects you haven’t played it for a while and says “Would you like a quick refresher on the story so far and the controls?”

    Why yes, computer game, I would love that – and so would pretty much anyone else with adult responsibilities, too.

    Zulu After Dark: There Will Be Opinions (On Features Games Need)
    “Wow, those sales figures from last quarter are looking really… wait, was that the sound of D.Va’s ult being deployed?”

    BOSS MODE

    No, not the Knife Party song (although it is an awesome song and really should be in a high profile game).

    Far, far back in the prehistoric era of gaming, when screens were monochrome, disks were floppy, and hard drives could barely hold MS-DOS, games used to have what was known as “Boss Mode” or “Boss Key” – whereby you could instantly bring up an innocuous screen that looked like accounting software or Lorem Ipsum text or something that, to anyone who wasn’t right in front of it, looked like Actual Work Stuff and not computer games.

    Nowadays, playing computer games at work is generally regarded as A Career Limiting Move, so what we need is something less “avoid the boss” and more focussed on parents, children and non-gaming partners.

    Promised your other half you’d take the rubbish out after you’d finished the Important Work Stuff, but you’re actually getting in a cheeky round of Rainbow Six: Siege? Quick, press the Boss Mode key and the screen becomes an Excel (or more likely OpenOffice) spreadsheet that will help maintain the ruse that you are, in fact working and not effecting a breach with Buck’s Master Key.

    Playing Hitman Trilogy and your small kids come in asking if you can make them dinner? Rather than expose them to Agent 47 dunny-flushing a bioweapon engineer to death, press the Boss Mode key and presto, it’s work-like Lorem Ipsum text to the rescue.

    Yes, I know Alt-Tabbing is a thing now, but if you’re anything like me then alt-tabbing away from your game is liable to randomly bring up anything from “the review I’m writing” to “A Forgotten Weapons video” to “A wristwatch subreddit picture thread” to “Hilarious memes that would be hard to explain to anyone who doesn’t get the context” to “A Wikipedia page on rail transport in Malaysia”, when really you need a quick and easy guaranteed ‘safe’ screen to come up.

    Just like in some sort of mode, which could be used when a metaphorical boss is around.

    Zulu After Dark: There Will Be Opinions (On Features Games Need)
    Do you really need a tutorial on how to unload a phased plasma rifle in the 40w range into a Hell Baron? We both know you don’t (although the jump-dashing mechanics for the puzzles are a different matter).

    TUTORIALS WHICH DON’T ASSUME YOU’VE NEVER SEEN A COMPUTER BEFORE

    Real talk, folks: Every RTS and FPS game made in the last 20 years has more or less the same controls. We don’t need to spend an hour or two in every game being reminded that WASD is movement and C is crouch, left mouse for shoot gun and right mouse button for aim in an FPS.

    It’s even more frustrating on console games, because you literally have two thumbsticks and eight buttons to work with, two of which are triggers and will invariably be “Aim gun” and “fire gun”, or the suitable equivalent in the game.

    Unless your game is Red Dead Redemption II or something equally complex, or you are committing the unutterable heresy of having a non-standard keybinding and no options for the user to customise it, you don’t need to walk us through how to crouch to get underneath fallen logs or use the mousewheel to change weapons. We’ve got it, and we’ve had it for quite some time.

    That doesn’t mean you should go the whole other direction and not bother with a tutorial at all, but keep the focus on stuff that’s different to every other game – or maybe have an optional “So, you’ve never played a video game before…” tutorial for that absolute first-timer.

    Obviously if you’ve got some incredibly intricate and complex simulation game like Transport Fever 2 then a tutorial is a must, but for straightforward action-type games, less time stating the obvious and more time letting us enjoy the world you’ve created is a good thing and lets us get into the action faster. And even if it doesn’t, at least it’ll spare us from being constantly reminded that the right trigger button on our controllers is the one to mag-dump an assault rifle into the baddies.

    Royce Wilson is GOA’s Technology & Features Editor and posts on Twitter as @RoyceWilsonAU, unless you disagree with him – in which case he isn’t on social media at all and you must be thinking of someone else.

    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
    Previous ArticleOutplay Entertainment Premiers Episodic Thriller Mystery Match Village
    Next Article Neymar Jr Has Kicked Things Off In Fortnite

    Related Posts

    Diablo 4 Review – A Dark and Thrilling Return to Glory
    ACTION May 31, 2023

    Diablo 4 Review – A Dark and Thrilling Return to Glory

    Diablo 4 is the long-awaited continuation of the iconic action role-playing game series developed by Blizzard Entertainment. I had the…

    Planet of Lana Review – A Captivating Journey of Beauty and Emotion
    ACTION-ADVENTURE May 24, 2023

    Planet of Lana Review – A Captivating Journey of Beauty and Emotion

    In a gaming landscape filled with blockbuster action titles and adrenaline-fueled adventures, Planet of Lana emerges as a breath of…

    Subscribe

    Get the latest creative news from FooBar about art, design and business.

    Ads

    Categories
    • ACTION
    • ACTION-ADVENTURE
    • APPLE
    • BATTLE ROYALE
    • CLOUD GAMING
    • CONVENTIONS
    • DLC
    • ESPORTS
    • Events
    • FEATURE
    • FIGHTING
    • FPS
    • FUNNY
    • GAMING HARDWARE
    • GAMING NEWS
    • GAMING REVIEWS
    • GIFT GUIDE
    • GOA
    • GOA PODCAST
    • HORROR GAMES
    • INDIE GAMING
    • Industry
    • MMORPG
    • MOBA
    • MOBILE
    • NINTENDO
    • Open-World
    • OPINION
    • PC
    • PLATFORMER
    • PLAYSTATION
    • Press Release
    • PREVIEW
    • RACING
    • RETRO
    • RPG
    • SIMULATION
    • SPORTS
    • STRATEGY
    • STREAMING
    • SUBSCRIPTION GAMES SERVICE UPDATES
    • SURVIVAL
    • TABLETOP GAMING
    • TECH
    • VIDEO
    • VR
    • XBOX
    Related Article
    Crucial T700 – The SSD powerhouse!
    GAMING REVIEWS

    Crucial T700 – The SSD powerhouse!

    September 6, 2023Zak BearmanBy Zak Bearman

    The Crucial T700 sets a new standard in performance when it comes to Consumer Grade SSDs, pushing speeds faster than many other NVME PCI-E…

    Crucial Memory and DDR5: Unleashing Epic Experiences!
    GAMING HARDWARE

    Crucial Memory and DDR5: Unleashing Epic Experiences!

    July 13, 2023Zak BearmanBy Zak Bearman

    Our friends at Crucial offered us an opportunity to review some of their Pro series memory! Me being the avid gamer and hardware savant…

    Hyper Karting and Hyper VR street signage
    GAMING REVIEWS

    Hyper Karting & Reality Hyper Amazing!

    June 7, 2023Darren 'Str8JaktJim' MacneallBy Darren 'Str8JaktJim' Macneall

    I recently visited Hyper Karting, a go-kart and VR centre in Sydney. As well as the go-karts, I was very keen to experience Hyper Reality.

    Game on Australia Logo

    Game On Aus is an Australian games publication working across written, video and podcast, and supported by an ever-growing community of content creators and fans!

    Copyright GameOnAus 2023. Privacy Policy. Website by Digital Hitmen

    CONTENT
    • News
    • Gaming Reviews
    • Podcast
    • Tech
    • Indie
    ABOUT GOA
    • About Us
    • Contact

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.