Unreal Tournament 3 (PS3)
Motivation
Players are motivated to play the game due its endless fun factor. Other than moving from level to level in death matches like Quake III, the designers of Unreal Tournament 3 decided to change it up, and have a story mode where the player needs to do a variety of different missions to further the story. Now, granted that all the missions involve killing and there are no real objectives to contribute to the story, except maybe where your character currently is. There is still something fun about uncovering the story. The designers built the game to guide the gamer to make their own choices in terms of which levels to play next. Players get to control a lot in this game, from character customization, game mode, controls, levels and even change rules of the game engine if they wish. That, combined with the great online experience is what motivates players to keep playing the game. One thing that isn't implemented that well is seeing which friends are playing online from within a game. It has its own separate menu outside a game and is difficult to organize friends to play the same game. This sort of thing can really bother a gamer who loves to play online with his friends and even discourage a player or kill motivation to play the game.
Rewards
The visuals in this game are a reward in itself. It is easily one of the best looking games out right now for any gaming system. The environment is highly detailed in complex models, 2k texture mapping and excellent dynamic lighting. In game rewards include finding better weapons and the ability to use them. For beating the game, you can also unlock different races to play with which are also highly customizable. Another rewards a player gets is that his skill greatly increases by the end of the story mode, so that he will have greater advantage in online matches. Although not clear, there is a ranking board for you and your friends to see who has better stats.
Punishments
While picking up weapons and having the ability to use them was a reward the punishment is that if you die, you will have to find those weapons all over again. This encourages the player to maximize their strategy and get good enough to kill more people and die less themselves. This however does not matter in the long run since every level you start with the default weapons and anything you use in the level is localized to the current level. Although not typical of a FPS, it would have been interesting had the designers intended to have a player collect weapons throughout the story, and then lose them if a player were to die.
Feedback
Feedback in Unreal 3 is very dominant. When you are shooting for example, you can see the recoil of your weapon fire. Also, you can see whatever projectile is leaving your gun very clearly, whether it be bullets and shells, or lasers. The animation is very smooth and the models are built to take advantage of this. The cloth simulations are excellent, and it is apparent when moving left, right or jumping. There seem to be sound effects for almost any different move you can pull off in the game. Add to that multi positional sound, and there you have a tool to detect your enemies without seeing them, and this also helps to pull you into the world. The music in this game can only be described as "epic" which is funny since that is also the name of the game studio. There are lots of ambient noises as well, but it depends on the level and setting. You can get lots of feedback when you pickup a new weapon since it will trigger a sound, when it switches. When you're out of ammo, you may hear a few clicks before it switches to the next gun. This way, you never have to keep track of what you have and how much of it, and allows the player to keep his eyes on the target.
Guitar Hero II (360)
Motivation
The objective in this game is to unlock all the songs, characters, and guitars in this game. Secondary objective is to get the highest scores possible. This is where the real fun in the game lies. This game is designed to be fun when played with a friend or group. Unlocking everything in all difficulties is time consuming, but quite easy. The desire to shatter your friend's record is the motivation to play this game over and over again. To make the game more interesting, you can visit different venues, customize characters and choose your own guitars. It feels like you are in a band, at a gig playing a live show. The ability to download new tracks, keeps the game interesting and gives you a new bunch of songs to master and conquer. With design choices like this, the Activision group that made this game were very conscious that they would need to keep the game interesting by updating it through xbox live.
Rewards
The main rewards in this game are unlocking new songs. As you complete a set, you will be asked to play an encore, which will in turn unlock a new set. Additionally, if you do well in a song, the crowd will be cheering for you which can make you feel good. While you do good in a song, you will get points, and a long streak of uninterrupted notes can get you a points multiplier and also star power which will multiply points even more. As you get better, you will be able to play on higher difficulties which again is a reward, since you now possess better timing or hand-eye-coordination than before. When played with another person, you can show off your new skills in a pro-face off. The game is also visually pleasing to look at.
Punishments
Punishments occur during a song. If you start to do badly, your rock meter will begin to drop and once it reaches the lowest, you will fail the song and have to start it from the beginning. If you do poorly in a song, you will not get star power often, or at all. This will minimize your points intake and if you finish the song, you will not have a good star rating and will make you want to play it again to do better. On expert, some songs are nearly impossible to complete because of extremely difficult solos. They can bring your rock meter down very fast, if theres a lot of bad notes hit or missed. Star Power can save you in these situations, but if you've been doing poorly the whole song, you won't have any to rely on.
Feedback
Feedback is very obvious when playing guitar hero and was designed well to allow that. If you are playing the game correctly, and doing well you will hear the main guitar track, the crowd cheering and periodic guitar slides. Similarly, if you are not doing good, your rock meter will start to go down, the cheers will turn into booing and you will fail. You will also see your star meter flashing blue and growing. Another thing you will see is your points multiplier changing colour and getting intense as it gets higher in number. A meter, will tell you if you are doing well or not. If its in the green, it means you are rocking. If it drops to the red, it's telling you that you are about to fail and that you suck. After the completion or failure of a song, it also provides you with some statistics. Longest note streak, rating out of 5 stars, total points, and a break down of each section of the song in percentages. Outside the game, you will most likely receive feedback from your friends while the congratulate you on your success or mock you for your failure.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Week 2: Game Genre and Formal Elements
Unreal Tournament 3 (PS3)Game Genre
First Person Shooter
Unreal Tournament 3 has many elements to it which make it a great game. First there is the offline single player campaign where you play as a character named reaper, along with his sister, and two other sidekicks. It’s a simple but weak story where you are the last of your kind because somebody wiped everybody else out for some reason. I guess Epic thought this was good enough. I had a hard time paying attention to the story since i spent most of the time trying to skip scenes to get to the action. After a while the story becomes unimportant as you just tend to go level to level wanting to kill things. After all, i assume this is why people buy a game like UT3. This campaign can also be played online as co-op mode which makes the game more fun, knowing that somebody else has to sit through the lame story and cut-scenes. There are some other game modes for both offline and online play such as deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, vehicle capture the flag, warfare and duel. Unreal has always had a large modding community, and Epic has really provided great support and tools to help people tweak the gameplay to their idea of “a better game”. This is achieved using custom characters, maps, or scripts called “mutators” which can alter how the game behaves in any number of ways. A mutator can simply lower the strength of a weapon, or make a player jump twice as high. It can also break game rules that make the game easier for added fun or add new ones that make the game more challenging.
Formal Elements of Games
Players:
This game is designed to have up to 16 characters almost any type of match. Sometimes this only has one human player and all bots, or online can all humans or even a mix of the two. Players don’t have specific roles in this game, but their size and speed can set them apart. This can be an effective strategy online in a team based situation, because the lightest and quickest character may be chosen to capture the enemy flag. There are a variety of player interactions in this game. There is single player versus game, Multiple individual players versus game, player versus player, multilateral competition, cooperative play and also team competition.
Objectives:
Objectives in UT3 are a mix match of the different game modes. There is an overall map which shows a path with all the levels you are supposed to visit. Generally, the order doesn’t matter as more than one map may be unlocked by beating a previous one. Also the order you choose the levels has no effect on the story in any way since the story doesn’t really matter in this game. I suppose the real objective is to beat the game at different difficulties to unlock all the characters for online use.
Procedures:
starting action: When starting the game, the player is asked to login which can be set to auto for convenience. He can then choose instant action for quick match against bots, continue campaign online or offline, or choose a multiplayer game.
progression of actions: The player starts off playing a simple deathmatch style game to get him acclimated to the gameplay. Then newer styles of play are introduced throughout the different levels such as one on one, capture the flag, vehicles, teleporters, new weapons.
special actions: Sometimes the player is able to use a hoverboard on larger maps, other times its vehicles. You can also get a translocater which allows you to shoot an object and where it lands is where you will appear. This teaches the player a new tactic to avoid being shot and surprise the enemy.
resolving actions: Once you’ve beaten the game once, you will unlock something. This says that you’ve beaten the game, try again to unlock more.
Rules: Players will quickly learn through experience what can and cannot be done in Unreal Tournament 3. There are a few things to discover that are really up to the player to use, and is never essential but can give a huge advantage. A player can double jump, teleport, use vehicles and many other options. The main rules are that all players are equal, but they can boost certain specs of their character by getting power ups and special items that make the game more interesting. The game also provides support if it thinks that the player is getting stuck by guiding them using a path of arrows. There is no limit to how many items a player can carry. Some items will wear off in time, others will remain until death. Items that can disappear after time, usually only used by one person at a time so a player must race to get those items to get the upper hand. Weapons have different strengths and firing rates. It would be unfair to have a sniper rifle, the strongest weapon, shoot as fast as a weaker machine gun. The designers also made choices to balance the game in certain modes. For example, when a player is using the hoverboard, he cannot use weapons at the same time and is therefore vulnerable. Similarly, if a player captures an enemy flag, he can bring it back on the hoverboard, but not in a vehicle since that would provide too much protection and speed. The game supports controllers as well as mouse + keyboard. Online, there are servers which allow either one, or both. If you use a controller and join a server that allows both, there is a clear disadvantage there.
Resources: include health, weapons, armor, time, power ups and items. A player has infinite lives and a default of 100 health and can be increased to 150 by picking up small health packs. Additionally, a player can get armor which will add even more protection. There is also megahealth which will for about half a minute before it goes back to it’s place in the level. There is also a time limit in the game where the player must complete objectives before the clock reaches zero. However, after this point if there is no clear winner, the game goes into overtime until somebody gets a higher score. Timing also plays a role in how often a powerup or item takes to respawn. If they were to reappear instantly, a player could stay there and keep his health up.There are several different weapons to choose from. The weaker ones tend to have a faster rate of fire and are easier to come by. Strong weapons such as the sniper rifle will generally be located in one part of the map and can be picked up once by everybody. Accuracy and reloading times are also a huge factor in the weapons. Other items that cause more damage to players will last around half a minute, but can be used by only one player at a time. The player also gets to use vehicles, hoverboard, translocator and jump pads. Another resource is the geometry of the level itself. Many map designs allow for quick cover during reloading or for hiding.
Conflict: Conflict arises when you try to stay alive while killing as many opponents as you can, since they’re trying to do the same. Using a mix of strategy and skill, a player must know where all items are, how and when to use them to be able to get a good kill to death ratio. This will help him reach the score limit and win faster. In vehicle capture the flag, by not allowing transporting the flag in the vehicle, the game forces the player to use other methods of getting the flag back to his base.
Boundaries: The main boundaries in this game are usually the arena, playing field or an agreement such as snipers only where no other guns will be allowed. Armour can only be upgraded to a certain limit, weapons have a limit on max ammo.
Outcome: The end of a level doesn’t show a player much about their progress. It displays number of deaths and number of kills and a score. It would be nice to know hit percentage, and where the shots landed. For example: headhots, body, etc. There is nothing interesting here. Your character doesn't upgrade in any way, if anything its the player that gets better.
Avoid dominant strategies
This game limits the amount of ammo per weapon the player uses and forces them to switch to a different gun until more ammo can be picked up. The easiest way to kill people is to find a good place to camp and shoot people that pass by where they are weak, in the head. Killing campers is easy, since they don't move around much. Getting constantly shot with a sniper rifle will teach them to move around. Player strategy is what make them harder to kill than others. Some people like to jump a lot, which make the difficult to shoot with conventional guns. If a rocket launcher is used, you can predict where the person is going to land and a well placed shot will teach them to not jump around in the future.
Reward
There aren’t any rewards for killing enemies other than getting another point added to the score. It would be cool if the player could pickup all the items that the enemy drops when he dies but that just isn’t so. A player would also be more likely to play the game again, if there were specific accuracies or times to achieve to unlock a better character.
Overall progression
The game is designed to be played at all levels to start with and the intensity can be cranked up by having the bots do unhuman techniques which makes the game seem impossible sometimes. And if that becomes too easy, you can increase the number of bots in the game. The game is really quite intuitive and allows for instant action without lengthy tutorials. You get to know the strategies people like to use very quickly and makes you a much better player in a short period. The great thing about the game is although there are no checkpoints, the character will respawn with exactly the same number of points when he gets killed. This saves frustration on the player’s end.
Guitar Hero II (360)Game Genre
Rhythm/Music
Guitar Hero II is a popular rhythm based game where a player uses a guitar like controller with 5 coloured buttons which don’t always respond as well as we’d like. The point of the game is to play through the songs and completing them without failing and trying to get the highest score possible.
Formal Elements of Games
Players: This is either a single or dual player game. With either configuration, the players are able to play through the song list as a competition, or as a cooperation with joint points. The player earns more songs by playing through the game in single player “story mode”. Single player is more than enough to take turns playing with a friend to beat the game.
Objectives: The objective is to unlock and play through all the songs trying to get the highest score possible on the highest difficulty by making use of the system rules. Secondary objectives include earning more money by playing good shows. You can do that by making less mistakes during a song. Another objective is to get a perfect song. Using the money, you can buy more guitars and different outfits for your characters.
Procedures:
starting action: You must start by making a band. This is done by setting a band name. This will effectively act as your save profile. Then you choose your difficulty, character, and a guitar. Then you start off at the first venue with 5 songs available. You must beat 4/5 songs to get the encore song.
progression of actions: After completion of those songs you will unlock the next set of songs and must do the same thing, only these songs will be slightly harder.
special actions: When your star power meter is high enough, you can tilt the guitar up and the points will become worth more momentarily. When the meter runs out, the points system returns to normal. You can also use a whammy bar for an effect but it also helps to fill the star power meter up faster. The game allows for special techniques where not all notes are needed to be strummed, this helps immensely on fast songs.
resolving actions: You can either pass or fail a song. If you fail, you must start the song over again. If you pass, you will see your score and an optional display of the hit percentage at each section of the song so you know where to improve.
Rules: The system keeps track of the number of notes hit. If you keep a streak going, you will start to multiply your points by a number. The multiplier will double each time. This allows for 8 times the score. If you miss a note, you will lose the streak and multiplier and have to build it up again. The more streaks you can keep, the easier your star power meter will recharge. This allows for the special action of making points worth more. This can save you if you are doing badly in a section and are about to fail. If you hit too many bad notes in a row, you will fail the song. The system gives feedback by playing the regular guitar track while playing correct notes with periodical messages such as “great!” or “you rock!”. If you start at a higher difficulty, you cannot earn money by playing easier ones, so it is best to start at easy.
Resources: You get an infinite number of tries, but each try must be from the beginning of the song. There is a health, which is the rock meter. If you hit good notes, the health meter will stay up or go up if its low. If you hit bad notes, the meter will go down. It is much easier to get the meter down than it is to get it back up. As a result of getting note streaks, you will get power ups known as star power which when used make points worth more and can save you from failing a song.
Conflict: The main conflict is the person’s own ability which limits his success in the game. Sometimes the controller does not respond to the player’s input which results in frustration. Some songs are no longer original and have an added solo just for the game which is there like an obstacle to make you fail, this is highly annoying as well. Some songs are thrown on the game designed to be nearly impossible to get perfect, but still beatable.
Boundaries: Boundaries in this game are well defined. There is a fretboard with 5 columns of notes. Once they’re off screen, they’re gone. You can’t really go anywhere, and you must play what is shown on screen, nothing else.
Outcome: Money is earned for each song played. If you play a song flawlessly, you will earn more money. Similarily, if you suck, then the crowd will boo you and you will have to pay the venue for damaged properties and such. Songs will also get a rating out of 5 and a score to beat. If you get perfect, you will get a gold star.
Avoid dominant strategies
In multiplayer, you may get matched up with an expert level player and you might be a beginner. To avoid him totally destroying you, you have the option of choosing different levels of difficulty each. Of course, the expert player could just as easily choose an easy difficulty and beat you anyway, but this player would be next to you and you are free to do to him as you please.
Reward
Rewards in this game include more songs and characters to unlock. High scores and ratings, and bragging rights. On Xbox 360 you can also get gamer achievement points which can get you extra downloadable songs if you have enough points. This is incentive enough to beat the game multiple times on all the difficulties to try to get as many points as you can.
Overall progression
Guitar Hero II is a really easy game to pick up and play. From song one to the bonus content, the game will only leave you wanting more songs to play. It will be hard for some to get the coordination and timing down right, which is all part of the challenge. This game never gets old when played with a friend. You can try to top each others’ scores for hours on end. Believe it or not, it becomes a test of endurance after a certain point when you play an entire set and then are faced with the encore of playing “Freebird”, a nearly 10 minute long song. Although very simple in design, this is a challenging, highly addictive and entertaining game.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Week 1: MDA Framework
Unreal Tournament 3 (PS3)Fantasy - The game is set in a fantasy world where there exist not only humans, but several other races from different worlds. Equally, the places you visit in the game are from a fantasy world often containing a futuristic wasteland, ancient ruins or dead planet like conditions. Using the power of the PS3, unreal is able to simulate a truly believable environment where the player experiences reality.
Narrative - As an FPS you wouldn't expect an elaborate story from a game like this, however in recent years these sorts of games have been accompanied by a single player campaign mode where you still get the classic death match style maps with simple objectives. Unreal takes it a few steps further by keeping you guessing all the time. You're not only required to destroy the other person or team, you often have numerous other objectives such as sabotaging the other team's power source, or a capture-the-flag type mission.
Challenge - The challenge in current FPS games, is that they are very fast paced, and you have to keep up in order to survive in the game. Quick response, precision, strong strategies and patience are needed to complete some of the levels of challenge this game imposes on a player.
Fellowship - Unreal 3 also has a great online multi-player system where you can not only play the campaign mode with other people, but you can do the simple free for all or even team matches as well as several other co-op type levels. Now you no longer have to rely on a predictable team of bots at your side, but you have real people who can work much more closely with a single goal. This changes the nature of the game-play and transforms it into a much more life-like experience. Add to that the ability to talk to each other via voice chat and messages and you have a solid team experience.
Mechanics & Dynamics
The game is consistent with other first person shooters utilizing the WASD configuration for movement and mouse for aiming/firing. There are a couple races to choose from at first, and there are more to unlock later in the game or through cheats. What's different and cool is that every weapon has a secondary fire. This usually results in a charged shot, slower but stronger. On weapons such as the sniper rifle, the secondary button acts as the scope for zooming which is pretty standard. There are also power-ups such as shields, health and ammo packs as well as weapons that when stepped over will be equipped if better than what the player is currently using. This can be annoying if you're in the middle of a fight as the character would momentarily stop shooting. Thankfully they've allowed the option to disable this.
One feature that was new to me was that the game did not force you to respawn after a death which is something that annoyed me with other FPS games where you cannot pause. For example in Counter-Strike:Source, if i had a phone call, i would have to exit the server or my character would keep respawning and lose points. Another good implementation was a hoverboard for larger maps since it makes it much faster to get around. The hoverboard also allows you to latch onto moving vehicles with a tow cable. The spacebar acts as jump, and it allows you to press it twice at your desired timing and this lets the player change direction in mid-air confusing the other players while dodging shots.
Visuals and sounds in the game are all high definition, which for me was a minor problem since everything looks so real. Playing on a standard display will be a challenge since all the textures and dynamic lighting are so convincing that you can't always see your opponent until he's firing at you. The sound is multi-positional which help immensely in determining the direction from where your opponent is firing from.
Guitar Hero II (360)
Sensation - This game is designed to please the ears and eyes. The constant stream of fretboard flying towards you leaves you with warped vision once you look away from the screen. This can't be great for your eyes, but it is kind of a cool feeling the first time. The music of course is a sensation itself where if the game is played correctly is pleasing to listen to but when wrong notes are hit it produces unharmonious noise.
Fantasy - Guitar Hero allows many to play out the fantasy of being able to play guitar, or being a rock star. Completing harder difficulties and songs gives the illusion that the player is actually playing music and have real musical skill.
Challenge - The challenge in this game is to have impeccable timing and precision so that you can keep a streak of notes going to earn maximum points. A player's lack of coordination or timing is the biggest challenge to overcome. Other times the game is ridiculously hard and expects you to execute a flurry of notes that are far apart on the controller but close in timing or weird combinations.
Discovery - For those with no musical background, this is diving into the realm of playing an instrument at its most basic level. Although you don't need to learn an instrument, you still must get comfortable enough of looking at the screen knowing that your hands will guide themselves to the correct buttons.
Expression - Guitar Hero's controller lets the player express himself by stylizing how he plays. One way to do this is to use the whammy bar to give vibrato to an otherwise lifeless note. This allows every player to play the song in their own way whichever is most comfortable to them.
Mechanics & Dynamics
The basic rules of the game are to press the 5 colored buttons on the controller corresponding to what is shown on the screen, while hitting the pick attack button to make the note ring. Much like real guitar, if notes are next to each other, the game allows you to do a "pull-off" which lets you press multiple notes with just a pick attack on the first note. This technique helps with faster sections. After you hit a note, you must hold it as long as its shown on screen or you will lose the note streak and it counts as a mistake. As the difficulty of the game increases, you will be introduced to "chords" or multi button combinations.
The addition of the 5th colored button will appear in a harder difficulty, and this confuses people since they have to shift their hand position or stretch to hit it. The game will give you feedback by playing the guitar track if you are doing well. If you hit incorrect notes, the game will produce bad guitar noises and the guitar track will stop playing. Also, you will see a rock meter on the right that tells you how well you are doing. If a player misses too many notes, the meter will start to go down, and in the case that it goes to its lowest point the crowd will boo you off stage and you lose.
If you are able to keep a streak of correct notes going, the game will start to multiply the worth of each note. The maximum multiplier you can have is 8x. As a result of correct notes, you can also have whats called star power. This makes notes worth more and is good to be used if your rock meter is running low and are about to lose. If you have an 8x multiplier and use star power, you can max out the rate of points coming in.
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