Player Perspective

Palling ‘Round with God

Player Perspective

                My comrade Biggs is dead, the vodka is gone and I’m running through the field trying to resurrect my wounded fool of a friend. Now my other chum Wedge decides to move through the holy field, once a palace like field that encompassed all in the area with an aura that shined upon the towers and statues built to worship the relationship between Man and God are now almost rubble, and the shine that once was is replaced with a haze that creeps over the land.

As Wedge approaches his waypoint to report back to his teammates, he looks back to see his path became enshrined in a holy aura. With wide eyes and excitement Wedge sends word that the treasure was just stepped over and that it was time to rally and make a break for the treasure.  Thunder struck the sky and the winds howled, God was near and it was evident he wasn’t just observing. It was a sure bet that God was reigning in the troops to protect the treasure, but it would still be a heavy gamble to try and revive Biggs and make our team whole again. God had commanded and his army obeyed, the field is fresh with monsters and I hesitate to move toward the direction of the treasure without my wounded friend beside me. I shake my oracle ball and ask what I will see in my near future, but all lady luck tells me is that I’m not long for earth. I mutter something about manifest destiny to the useless prophet and toss the ball off the nearest cliff.

Surprised that the fates could piss me off even more, I run out to save my fallen comrade. BAM! An ugly Jabberwocky ambushes me and tries to take off my head with his giant claws but only manages to make contact with my shield and knock me into the broken marble floors of a worn away temple. My back is killing me but my pride is what was really wounded, I play dead and wait for the beast to close in, Jabberwockys are so easy to fool. As soon as he is in range I sweep low with my sword and take his front legs completely off and I scramble ahead trying not to get caught in the fall. Before I have the chance to finish him off, the Jabberwocky cries out an awful shriek that dizzies me. I try to run and continue on to Biggs but I don’t get far before the Jabberwocky reinforcement responded to the cries of his friend, who knows what other monsters heard the call.

 I turn and run up a flight of stairs that don’t lead to anywhere to try and get some high ground; the pain in my ass follows and leaves a trail of burnt dust in his rage for revenge. When the Jabberwocky sees me at the top of the stairs he charges like a bull toward me and I use whatever luck I had left to dodge and let his weight collapse the staircase.

 Biggs cusses at me when I approach him, something about taking my sweet time. I punch him in the mouth as I patch him up, don’t need him to talk just fight. By the time Biggs gained his strength Wedge had already been trolling the aura filled passageway always ready to find the treasure with no risk too great, meaning his comrade’s lives. Wedge continued to run through the field block after block scanning the area sans protocol, until he bit off more than he could chew and a monster big enough to wreck a train blindsided him and threw him into a hard marble wall. Great, even before Biggs’s painkillers kick in Wedge is already out of commission because he can’t follow protocol and check in, always a loose cannon.

Biggs runs ahead of me to cut off the monster’s descent upon Wedge and manages to cause the ground behind him to uproot like a damn earthquake. A light even stronger than the aura permeates the space around the earthquake and blinds everything in sight before Biggs could turn around to see what happened. Thank Bill Cosby! The treasure had been located and fully revealed and the strategy had changed, Biggs wasn’t trying to keep the horde from reaching Wedge, now he was playing king of the hill with the horde yelling at me to get to the treasure while he was still conscious.

We had to leave Wedge as a lost cause not because he would have done the same to us in a heartbeat, but that was protocol when the treasure was uprooted and in jeopardy. Our odds of getting to our fallen comrade and getting the treasure are lower than if we made a break for it with only two men standing, we all knew what had to be done. I understood why as I dominated through the passage to the treasure, The look on Biggs’s face holding back the horde was beyond despair, there were more monsters in all directions getting closer and he couldn’t hold them all off.

With God’s army on my back I haul ass to the treasure, but instead get introduced to a one-winged angel knocking me off the uprooted land. I wake up and it’s begun to storm and my reaction is to stop the dagger from being inserted into my face, I must have slept through the boring parts. Lady luck must have changed sides as I maneuver my leg to the angel’s side and use the leverage to kick him off of me. The rain picks up and we stand up and face each other, round two reminds me too much of Lethal Weapon so I shake it off and taunt my opponent by calling him a traitor(Satan). The angel laughs and lunges at me with his wing, the wind speed causing me to lose balance and gives the angel a chance to slice open my side. The blood stains the wet ground and the angel is laughing at me again but I’m laughing harder, at God. Lightning cracks and the one-winged beast falls to pieces, his head rolls toward me and gives me a confused look while I wipe the blood off of my sword.

 I hear Biggs cry out as I limp up the torn earth to the treasure, which makes me fight even harder to stay awake. I don’t know if it’s the blood loss or the treasure, but the closer I get makes everything surrounding the treasure fadeout of view. I approach the treasure and start to grab the orb that is hovering above the ground. When I hold the orb in my hand it glows and the glowing covers my body and heals my wounds, before I can reach for my victory cigar my body tingles and I am transported to the heavens. Looks like Heavens got a brand new God…now where do I hide this orb?

High Concept

Palling ‘Round with God is a 4 player epic adventure of three heroes who are looking for the all-powerful, radiating orb of infinite shenanigan wisdom…which is covered up by gold coins and $20 bills in a steamer trunk hidden somewhere in the world.  The one lucky buck that gets to play God must defend the treasure at all costs.  Sadly, it’s all that’s left worth saving.  The housing market’s crap nowadays.  Television hasn’t been good since 1959.  And your son hates you.  He had the nerve to stay in bed all day on his birthday last year just to spite you and your festive holiday party plans.  Screw ‘em.  You’re the boss.  Your t-shirt says so.  You guide gloomy buffer angels, dirty devil demon crawlers, and a mega-giant of massive meanness to stop a trio of bumbling schmucks from getting your stash.  The three searchers are lost in a vague world.  Slowly proceeding over an empty landscape where untold riches (actually just about $8,020.17) or fierce tooth-to-toe battles await just around the corner.  Movements are direct and the mission is clear.  Steal God’s thunder fund.  Memory and luck will reward the patient, but be careful of your teammates in this quest.  They can choose to revive a fallen comrade as they lay bruised and confused on the path ahead or they can take an extra long step over the carnage, give a thumbs up sign, smile, and keep on looking for that confounded treasure box thing.  And always remember, far, far above - God’s watching it all.  Reveling in the squabbles and near misses with the loot.  One of the heroes walks mere centimeters away from the loot?  Should God have said anything?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  It’s up to God.  But remember, as the result of an old football injury, he can’t move the heavy treasure after initially putting it down.  It’s there forever.  And once it’s discovered - the great big gig’s up.  It’s been fun palling ‘round with you, God, but I’ve got to go!  (fade-up distant angry thunder, wait for electricity to go ou----

Shenanigans!

2 Hours with a crappy camera and what do we do? Make a epic video, enjoy.
 VIDEO LINK

Free Play

Last Scenario

Assignment: download a free game from the site given by teacher, and review it. Well the first thoughts in my head were…well, negative. I told Jon next to me that it’s probably going to be some crappy flash games that we’ll get bored of in 5 minutes.  I’m eating my words now. Browsing through the site a RPG looking picture caught my eye. I downloaded it and gave it a whorl and boy was I impressed.

            Last Scenario is a basic RPG, you start in a small town as a no one and find out that you’re important from some random stranger, and you go off on an adventure and all hell break loose in the world, and guess what? “WHAT!” you’re the only one who can save the world! What’s new?

            -Challenge

The game is on the difficult side once it picks up, like a lot of RPGs out there. You start off killing wolves, and in no time you’re fighting bosses that you are spamming healing potion on yourself to stay alive. All in all it’s a good balance of difficulty and fun level, the challenge is there to keep the game from being mindlessly boring but it’s not diehard to the point that you want to go punch a wall or whatever you do when you rage.

            -Replay Value

I haven’t beaten the game yet, well because it’s a RPG they’re REALLY REALY long most of the time. I’m a couple hours in and I’m still going. So in the case replay value in unknown but the game so far shows potential to be replay ability.

            -Story/Gameplay

The story like I said in the intro has nothing much to it, seen and heard it ALL before. But I honor the attempt to build conflict and problem in the protagonists’ life. The gameplay is what really what sold it to me. It reminded e of FF3 (Jap ver) A LOT. Some people might see that as a bad thing like they copied or something, I say no that’s a great thing. FF3 really set the RPG genre off, with its turn based play style and why fix something that’s not broken?

            -Presentation

The graphic are nice on the eyes. Nothing over the top but nothing so crappy you lose sight in your eyes. The graphics are hand drawn, and done very well. When walking around town and in world map they used a sprite to represent your party, but when battling the hand drawing characters are excellent. The music, like the gameplay, is a kick back to the FF3 days. The music changed depending of the setting, and it was appropriate for the setting also. The first town has a nice rhythmic feel to it, but when I entered the capital prestigious music started to play.

            -Verdict

All in all I’ll be playing this game well after this assignment is over. It’s a great RPG and it long also. It being free just makes it all that much better. The only thing I would change is that I can’t save anywhere, which is a pain when I have to go mid play and can’t seem to find a save stone. But other than that I really enjoyed it and I give it a 7/10 rating

Chapter Two Book Work

FF13 – Minecraft – Gears Of War

                Between these 3 games, they hit most of the spectrum of game design elements. To start off Final Fantasy 13 was a major graphics pusher, I know that’s weird sounding how I put it; but bottom like FF13 pushed graphics beyond what everybody knew. Everyone played a game were they had a beautiful cutscene then it went back to in-game graphics and kind of killed the moment, and the player said “I wish the in-game looked that good” Well that’s what FF13 did. Gameplay wise the linear story kind of killed it for a lot, not much freedom in it but a great game none the less.

                Minecraft was a game to focus purely on game play and addictiveness. I’m not going to take too much time on this since I reviewed it on my blog, but I will say that I am still playing it to date.

                Finally Gear of War, EPIC studios in known for their Unreal Engine; and they put it to use themselves. I put gears of wars under the “technology” aspect of game design elements, EPIC pushed there engine and still are. They produced a great title using their own engine to promote its power and showed that they can make great games, on top of a great engine.

Gameplay & Controls

Game play & Controls

                When I pick up a game, I usually don’t open the little guide they give you and study the controls. I pick up the controller, throw the game in, and start playing. Controls need to be second nature to me; for it to feel right. I want to pick up the controller and push buttons that I expect to do what I want them to do - and they do it. This Tuesday I picked up Halo: Reach. I rushed home and threw the game in my Xbox. I watch the opening cinematic and start up the campaign. As the cadence end and I’m given control of my Spartan, I’m immediately prompted to look around and get use to the camera controls. They throw me off the helicopter and I’m on foot. My instincts kick in, left joy stick is to move, right one to look. The trigger is to fire my weapon and X is to reload, all of these are impulse nothing more. That is what good controls are made of. The controls are of impulse and second nature; I don’t sit forever fiddling with the controls to figure them out. The buttons that I expect to do one thing; do that one thing.

Introduction to the Game Design Document

            Game Design documents can determine a game’s outcome, thus being one of the most important aspects of the design process. It takes the confusion out of the design process, it takes the “was it like this or that” “NO it was like that I swear!” out of the board room. The document is able to help guild the whole team on the right path, shows the intentions of the game. In a big team of designers you would most defiantly need a Game Design document in my opinion. It would be very difficult to keep everyone constantly up-to-date. When someone repeats themselves, it means it’s important what they’re trying to get across. And in this article the author repeats “It’s not a step by step guide, it’s a reference to what the designers want.”  So I’ll be keeping that in my mind.