Friday, October 30, 2015

Homework #6

Game I liked: Kingdom Hearts

Tetrad

  • Story - Kingdom Hearts is very story centered. It's story starts of simply, with childhood friends trying to leave their island home. Their lives are thrown into chaos when shadow creatures invade their home and thus the adventure begins. The game keeps the story in the forefront by keeping the player on a somewhat constrained track and having cutscenes between parts of each level. This encourages the player to continue the game to uncover more of the story.
  • Mechanics - The game is third person and combat oriented. In addition to the main character you have two companions who you can control to a lesser extent by adjusting the basics of their AI, such as making them conserve their abilities for emergencies or just going all out from the beginning. The gameplay is very smooth and simple, with most of the fighting revolving around only one or two buttons, making it easy to learn initially and somewhat difficult to master.
  • Tech - The game originally came out on the PlayStation 2 and utilized its technology with the group combat as well as the detailed graphics of the cutscenes.
  • Art - The aesthetic of the game is based around the forces of light fighting the forces of evil. The protagonists are dressed in bright interesting colors while the enemies for the most part have dull, dark appearances.
  • Critiques - One critique I have is that if you wanted you could go through most of the game button mashing. The game is mostly concerned with the story of the game but it would be nice if they made the combat more interesting and difficult, which they eventually did in the later games.
Balance

As you go through the game the enemies get steadily stronger and more varied. This is balanced by the player being able to level up and upgrade the characters and their equipment.

Interest Curve

I think the game has a good interest curve. It is made up of a series of peaks (cutscenes, boss fights) and lulls (fighting through lower level enemies/grinding).

Emergent Properties

The game's story line was based around going to different worlds to stop the darkness, and had completely different level and enemy designs for every world you visit. This is the first game I remember having that much variation throughout the game.

Game I didn't like: Clash  of Clans

Tetrad


  • Story - Clash of Clans doesn't have much of a story, essentially the only goal of the game is to have a bigger and stronger clan than everybody else.
  • Mechanics - The games mechanics are very simple. Most of the mechanics revolve around gathering resources from your various components of your town by clicking on them. Other than that, most of the time is spent waiting for these resources to become available. The "Clash" portion of the game is the most exciting part of the game, but still rather boring as you send in troops to fight other clans.
  • Tech - The technology CoC is designed for is the mobile platform. It does do a good job of being a mobile game, meaning that it is pretty low intensity for the phones and does not use much battery.
  • Art - The art the game is nice looking, but nothing to rave about
  • Critiques - Adding more to the game besides waiting for resources and then using those resources slowly could boost the game's playability. Perhaps some types of minigames using skill to possibly increase the output of resources would be cool.
Balance

The game is moderately balanced, generally only matching you with players/clans of similar status as you, but at a certain point there is a massive dropoff from long standing powerful clans and the clans of more new or casual players.

Interest Curve

The interest curve reaches a peak very early, as the tutorial is fairly fast paced and interesting, but it quickly drops off as you level up and must begin waiting longer and longer for payouts, and has a tough time reaching another peak.

Emergent Properties

This game was one of the first games that I can remember that really encouraged playing with friends through the mobile platform, which many games now use.

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