Trigger Happy
to start with, you must use them to your best advantage, in the situations where they will be most effective. That is strategic timing. The fact that destroying things earns you more points, and at certain scores you win another smart bomb or an extra life, makes a correct calculation even more potentially rewarding. As Martin Amis puts it: “The score is actually part of the game, and the shape of many a ticklish gamble is determined by whether your score is, say, 20,980 or 29,980.”
Strategic timing is also required by the beautifully balanced beat-’em-up game Bushido Blade 2. Unlike most of its genre, this game incorporates one-hit kills: understandably, a well-aimed sledgehammer blow to your opponent’s head will result in a pretty shower of blood and his instantaneous collapse. Two-player bouts of this game, then, are great fun because there is so much tension involved, and strategy determines which of three stances you hold your weapon in, and where in the three-dimensional arena you choose to fight. Strategic timing is also needed in more seriousminded driving games such as F1 World Grand Prix 2, where you must decide when to pull in your tired car for a pit- stop. And strategic timing is obviously crucial in the genre of God games or process toys, where fast
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