Everybody wants to be different. The same is familiar, the same is boring. So we change clothes, put on makeup, cut the hair – whatever is necessary to be different.

In a way, the principle applies to software too – it’s safe but boring to be the same, yet another me-too product. Thus we try to be different, if only a bit, in order to be “special”.

But it’s nevertheless a risk – if your app is too special, it will take a lot of time adjusting too. Some might not even figure out what it is about. We have to be the similar, yet different.

It’s all about the balance. There is no recipe on how to maintain this balance, regardless of countless examples where the balance was bad, just OK or simply perfect. It’s up to you.

Here’s an example where a game developer got things just right while tweaking unbelievably small aspect of the gameplay. I’m talking about the Xbox game Black.

Black is a first person shooter (FPS) and one of the last few to come out for the Xbox (not the 360, the old one). It behaves pretty much like most of the other FPSs out there – conventional weapons, conventional locations, story that does not matter, simple goal (destroy everything and everyone)… The graphics are great, but so were the graphics of many other FPSs out there.

Still, Black is a great game, one of the greatest shooters I’ve played on a PC or a console. What is it that makes it special, besides the fact that it’s made by Criterion Games, the company that has proved to know how to design fun games (they are behind the Burnout arcade racing series)?

If I had to pick one term, it would be – particle effects. The only other exceptional thing is, for the lack of better term, destructability of the environment. So, while you’re fighting hundreds of enemies per level, usually you’ll be firing thousands of bullets that would break wooden planks into shards, shatter glass windows and other glass surfaces, smash wooden palettes, you’ll even be able to destroy weaker walls. The sparks will fly into air when you hit a metallic surface of any kind, the trucks, cars and other flammable objects will burst into flames, destroying everything in their radius.

This game is pure mayhem. There’s nothing else, though – just gunfight after gunfight. But boy is it fun. This is the only game that I’ve been playing for the second time on a harder difficulty level (it does “help” that the game is quite short).

There are other advantages like completely transparent level loading: you’ll never find yourself staring for seconds at “game loading” even though some of the levels are huge. Just as well there are disadvantages like automatic save – the game saves progress, but only at a few hand-picked checkpoints inside a particular level. If you have to abort the game for whatever reason while the level is in progress, next time you’ll start from the beginning of the level (argh!).

But in the end, it’s the particle effects plus destruction of the environment that makes this game special. It’s amazing how this changes the atmosphere and immersion effect so much that it defines the game.