The Multiple Styles of Video Games

The Multiple Styles of Video GameS

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ideo Games are a creative medium with many different styles and genres. One of these styles include Photorealism, a style that tries to replicates the realism of that is our real world. Another one of these styles is Cell Shaded which is on the other spectrum of Video Game style to Photorealism. This style is used for more cartoony games such as Pokemon and Mario. But that is just scratching the surface of Video Games as there are multiple genres that fall into the type of game that a Video Game is, some of these genres are; Adventure, Sport, Action, Puzzle and so many more. In this article, I will discuss some of these styles in three different games.

These Games are:

DOTA 2

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oTA 2, or Defence of The Ancients, is a MOBA, or Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, with and exaggerated are style. This means that the game has a photorealistic presence but some parts of the art style of the game have been exaggerated e.g over muscular avatars. The game itself requires two teams of 5 to kill “creeps�(or minions), towers and each other. There are over 100 avatars that a playing can choose to become. When in this role they must collect gold to spend on items to make their avatar stronger. Each avatar has their own set of 4 abilities. 3 basic abilities and 1 ultimate ability. Each hero has a main attribute out of Strength, Agility and Inteligence that each change the playstyle of each avatar. Strength increases health points, Agility increases attack speed and Intelligence increases the avatars’ mana pool.

Each avatar is assigned one of these attributes as their main and their abilities tend to mold around it. The commnity itself is rather plesent as the game requires you to play as a

team. The community also managed to raise the Prize Fund of the Dota 2 International Tournament to $10 million, the highest prize fund ever in E-Sports history.

Interf ace- The interf ace in Dota 2 cons i sts of a minimap, ab i l iti e s, the p layers’ f ace, the p layers’ i tems and the p layers’ characters’ damage, sp eed, armour, heal th, mana and attri bute s.

The Hero Selection Screen

Some of the i tems aval iab le in Dota 2

R

RUNESCAPE

unescape is an MMORPG(Massivly Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game).

It consists of a cell shaded design with a top down persepective. The game itself(like any MMO or RPG) can be played in many different styles. RuneScape consists of 26 different skills of which 25 can be levelled up to a max of 99 and 1 which can be levelled up to a max of 120. These different skills alow the player to the game in an infinite amount of ways. There are 9 different combat skills in the game giving the players a choice of combat differences that can be aligned to either a Mellee attack style, a Ranged attack style or a Magic attack style. These three styles of attack are part of a combat triangle. Mellee is best against Ranged, Ranged is best against Magic, and Magic is best against Mellee.

The other 17 skills can be levelled up without participating in combat skills what-so-ever and don’t benefit the player during combat. Many players decide to only level up these skills and are refered to by the community as “Skillers”. Those players who only level up the skills of aAttack and Strength to max whilst only leaving the Defence skill at 45 are refered to as “Pures”. The players that only kill the bosses and other creatures in the game are refered to by the community as “PvM’s” or “Player vs Monsters” The main story of the game falls into the games questing system. The story consists of a god who created a balanced world. Many years later, 5 different gods appear and start a war. The first god, who is angered by the war, ends it and banishes the gods away. The player and the quests’ focus on discovering the mysteries of these 6 gods, their followers and how the world has evolved without the gods’ prescense. The game has two different modes: Legacy mode and EoC mod(or Evolution of Combat) Legacy mode has a simple layout with only one tab open at a time. The layout also shows the players’

HP, Prayer points and Summoning points next to the mini map. The mode itself focuses on auto-attack whereas EoC allows players to use abilities. The abilities in EoC also focus around the three different attack types of Mellee, Range and Magic. It also allows the player to have more than one active tab at a time. The mini map appears in the same place as it does in Legacy mode however the HP, Prayer points and Summoning points appear above the ability bar in EoC. Although there is no win condition for RuneScape, there are many acomplishment capes avaliable in the game. There are 26 different capes for getting to the max level in a skill, there is a cape for completeing all quests, a cape for getting to the max level in every skill, 2 capes for completeing an exceptionally hard PvM challange, and the highest and most difficult acomplishment in the game, The Complesionist Cape, a cape for completeing EVERYHTING avaliable in the world of RuneScape. This is very difficult to achieve as the player must have every skill at max level, completed all quests, mini quests, taks, unlocked all music tracks, spells and prayers. The ultimate version of the cape can come trimmed, which requires the player to collect of piece of armour avaliable from 5 different minigames within the game. There are also many other miscellaneous tasks such as killing bosses and creatures. Some people that have played the game for 10 years still have not acquired a Complesionist Cape as it took one person 7 years just to acheive the max level in all skills. RuneScape isn’t about completeing the game, it’s about having fun and playing the game at your own pace.

RuneScape has also won prestigious awards such as the Golden Joystick Award.

The skills tab in EoC mode in RuneScape

Every skill Skill Cape avaliable in RuneScape

The Binding

Of isaac

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he Binding of Isaac is a Cell Shaded game. This means the game has a very cartoonistic art style. The game itself is single player only and is a rouge-like adventure game. The player chooses 1 of 7 seven avatars to play as.

They then start there adventure collecting items, bombs, gold and keys. The player then kills the boss of that floor and continues to the next one. The story of the game is that the player’s mother was told

by God to kill the player. The player’s mother almost succeeds until the player manges to escape. The player then goes on a quest of revenge to kill his mother, her heart, satan, and 3 reincarnation of himself. Although the game allows the player to chose 1 of 7 avatars, they have the same principle style and sound. A crying naked baby in either a wig, a fez, with makeup, an ankle braclet or a headband giving the sense that the character that is Isaac has Multiple Personality Disorder. The game itself contains 13

different endings with the last ending being the “true” ending. Only two of these endings(not including the “true” ending” make sense. The first shows Isaac with a drawing that describes how Isaac’s mother was stopped but God at the last seconds but then shows Isaac’s Mother barging through the door to his room with a knife. The next ending that makes sense is the 12th ending. This shows Isaac switching through his multiple personalities(the avatars shown at the start of the game) before accpeting his fate and locking himself inside of a chest. The game’s items themselves are broken as their are combonations that can make a run of the game go in a matter of seconds and item combonations that stop the player from making any progress. The game characters and items are heavily based on the Bible which may be why that the Story of the game itself if very confusing.

A number of the bosses and enemy characters that appear within the Binding of Isaac