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Trigger Happy
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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