The rhythm of the game.

In a recent post on kotaku, Kirk Hamilton explains about the importance of rhythm in video- games. He writes about the feeling of the thing - how heavy rhythms can convey physical weight, how we can stretch and bend time. But I fear, that in focusing on the qualia of the experience, he is missing the point entirely.

Music is a unique form of communication. Music has a beat. Music is a forward thinking sport, where you learn to plan a head, and at the same time take in the unique experiences of the now. Music is in fact cognition, and precognition.

By utilizing this simple concept, the rhythm and beat, and implementing it into your video- game, you can endow the players with precognition. Or in other words; allow them to plan ahead.

Assassin's Creed. Also check out the video. 

A few games do this expertly. Assassin's Creed's combat is highly rhythmical. For every ring of the sword, you are to press the attack button in order to progress with smoothness and grace. The result, if done correctly, is a musical attack - parry - attack system that reades something like; ping - ping - ping - duck - shoosh - (...) - ping.
Also the Prince of Persia trilogy on playstaiton 2 utilised rhythm, but to even greater effect. There your fingers became a methodical tune of clicks, with pre- learned bars and well rehearsed notes. The battles became intense, and just difficult enough that you felt like taking a break after the longer ones. The bosses had new patterns, a bit like a new song.

Having a base rhythm to something as mentally tasking as combating many capable enemies at ones, allows the developers to teach ever more complex patterns upon an easy fundament. And while each new enemies require a new part of a dynamic pattern, these are easily incorporated into the existing skill set of the player, because they are based on the same rhythm as the other enemies.

In the comment section, someone put down the observations to a natural tendency towards pattern- recognition. But rhythms are rhythms, and sure, there are patterns, but these patterns have a distinct shape: the are rhythmical

Prince of Persia traversal. Also check out the video

One of the most mindful games, with respect to the rhythmical flow of action, was the latest installment of the Prince of Persia series on the PS3. There was very little combat in the game, but the rhythmical aspects of it were transfered also into the transversal of the environment in soothing ways. Springing from boards and running on walls were all initiated with a single button click. These were always combined in new interesting and beautiful ways, but the rhythm of the game made sure that we were not surprised into falling into our deaths, but could with little effort move gracefully along the landscape.

Rhythm is not a prerequisite for a good game, but can help lighten the workload on the mind, and free up cognitive power for doing more interesting things. Maybe this concept is transferable to outside the gaming space. I'm sure we'll find plenty of it if we have a look.

For a better understanding of the combat of Assassin's Creed, and the running of Prince of Persia, I suggest you have a look at the videos. Links can be found under each image.
The images I personally stole from IGN, and the videos are respectively from "PringlesForAidan" and "PTNvideos".