Understanding Games: Visual Styles and Gameplay. By Victoria Lock
Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition. Gameplay: Interaction model: • Your character can be customised with various outfits and weaponry, which will be used in various present-time cut scenes. • The narrative of the game is quite fixed, although it does have an open world element where you can go back to any areas you have visited previously. • The controller you are using will vibrate if you are hit and with various other actions. • There are various collectibles throughout the world and these can be collected as the player wishes. • It is a single player game and is set in a fictional earth. Rules: • The game has no rules, per say, as it is a single player game which cannot be explicitly hacked via console. Difficulty: • Before you begin a new game, you can choose from Easy, Medium, or Hard difficulty. Game Mechanics: • The inventory is well placed with weapons being selected quickly, and objects able to be picked up quickly too. • To ‘Win’ an objective you must complete it fully. However, it is not usually time specific and you can go do other things while completing any objective. • Scoring is not an issue, although it
Warframe Gameplay: Interaction model: • The players character can be customised in many ways – You can change the character (also known as a warframe), change each individual colour and energy pattern, change the weaponry and its colours. • You can also get sentinels or ‘Kubrow’ (dog like creatures) to accompany you, and you can change the colour of these too. • Mods can be equipped to Warframes, weaponry, sentinels and Kubrow to further customise them, and each of these has decorative pieces which can be bought. • The game is primarily single player and can be played like this, although there is the option to very easily join a ‘squad’ – a group of 4 people total, who all do the same missions and get the same rewards. This requires and online connection and can quickly change for single to multiplayer and vice versa. • The narrative of the game is very free, there are main quests which the player can participate in, yet they are not compulsory, except for the first basic ones which introduce the player to everything. • The game is set in a futuristic version of our universe, which is populated by four predominant races, the Corpus, the Grineer, the Infested, and the Tenno, you play as the Tenno, and fight the Corpus Infested and Grineer in various missions. There are alternate versions of these three races, called Corrupted, and these are found in a place called the Void – only accessible to those who have keys. • Rewards can include Keys to the void, weaponry, Tenno parts, mods, resources (for building) and Prime parts (which are variants of Tenno and weaponry, and usually have higher stats than their regular counterparts. Rules: • The game has a basic set of rules within the community, which include being respectful and no hacking the game. • The game itself has no rules overall, but there are specific things which do have a set of rules.
does tell you how much of certain things you have completed and your overall game completion. Balanced: • When you pick the difficulty at the start, this sets the bar for enemies and therefore means that they will be appropriately hard to defeat. Addiction: • It can be addictive if you wish to complete the game 100%
For instance, the ‘Recruiting’ and ‘Trading’ chats have no spam rules, and the Trading itself has rules which include being fair and stating what you can trade to other players. Difficulty: • The game has the same difficulty for every player, although different Worlds have different enemy levels, which obviously require higher level Warframe and weaponry to defeat. For example, Earth’s enemies have a difficulty of 1-10 (with the boss being level 25) whereas Ceres and Pluto’s enemies have levels ranging from 3147. • This can go up though, for instance, if you are in a Survival mission and get to a certain time, enemies can go up in level quickly. For example in a Void Survival, enemies can start at level 10 at the beginning and 1 hour into the survival they can be level 70. Game mechanics: • The game’s inventory is rather large, and can hold a lot of items. It is sorted into different categories, however if you wish to enlarge the Warframe, weaponry or sentinel inventory you will have to pay in game currency called Platinum. • Scoring is not really a necessity to know, unless you are within a syndicate, which means at the end of every mission you will gain or lose respect depending on the syndicate you have joined. • The win condition for each mission is to complete the given objective(s) and the reach extraction (if you are in a team this means getting all of the players to extraction) after which, you will get a summary of your XP gain, and resources, mods or warframe/weaponry collected. Balanced: • The game is balanced well, as you do not unlock the higher level planets, until you have defeated the boss of the previous planet in the sequence. • The rewards from higher level planets appear to be better than those of low levels planets, and therefore is balanced in that right too. Addiction: • Depending on whether you like the game or not, can make it addicting. • You gain daily rewards which get better the more days you log in consecutively. • There are rarer rewards which you can get the more you play.
Visual Styles: Explainations Abstract:
Cel Shaded:
Abstract games are created when developers do not want their game to resemble real life. Characters and backgrounds are often random and will include aspects which are not common or physically possible. Games which are abstract include Limbo, Lemma, and Minecraft (Below).
Cel Shaded games include brighter colours, and often bold outlines. This can create comic book looks, and give a more ‘game’ like feel. Games with Cel shading include Mirror’s Edge (Below), Borderlands (Franchise)
PhotoRealistic: PhotoRealistic games aim to look as close to reall life as possible. This means that all characters and backgrounds are textered to look as close to real life as possible. Examples of this are Tomb Raider (below), Assassin’s Creed (Franchise)
Exaggerated: Exaggerated games often resemble photorealistic games, yet will often have features which are exaggerated and do not resemble real life. Examples of this are Yandere Simulator, Pokemon and Tekken (Below).
Abstract:
Minecraft is a game in which you live in a world full of blocks and monsters, all of these have a square like shape are are very pixilated. The style allows the game to have a very non photorealistic view, although it has details which allow the player to identify and connect with the game. This is very different to Limbo, which is a very dark game. It’s graphical design means that you do not see the detail of the game, and you cannot easily identify objects and enemies. Limbo provides an atmospheric aura mainly due to the graphics.
Exaggerated:
The Tekken Franchise is Exaggerated due to it’s unrealistic character design, although some do resemble living creatures and areas. This means that the player can become absorbed in the game, yet still play the game in a way that would not be phsyically possible due to designs and moves when fighting. Yandere Simulator, however is exaggerated due to the design use of Manga. This means that the characters and areas take on more of a cartoon/Anime feel and therefore allows for more customisation and in-game design aspects.
PhotoRealistic:
Tomb Raider is photo-realistic due to the designers attempt to create the game in as much physical detail as possible. This means that the in-game world looks largely like that of the real world, and contains aspects that you would find in the real world, such as detailed areas and weaponry which corresponds to it’s real life counterparts. The Assassin’s Creed Franchise focus’ on being photorealistic as it creates a deeper sense of immersion. This means that, even though it is set in different time periods, the player feels as though they are there and are a part of the world. This means that the game is modelled after real places, unlike Tomb Raider, and allows the player to view locations that they would not have been able to other wise.
Cel Shaded:
Borderlands is a game which is on the extreme side of the Cel Shading spectrum. this allows the develpers to be more free with the creation of Mobs, weaponry and Characters. This also means that the Player can have more freedom and the world looks more cartoonish. Mirrors Edge is only slightly Cel Shaded, which allows the player to feel like they are part of a different world. This also allows the Developer to create characters and worlds which differ from the physical world.