Free Play: Frets On Fire

The game I chose was the game Frets on fire which could basically be considered a cheap version of Guitar Hero only on the computer  and in reflection it's not a bad alternative to the $50 counterparts

Challenge:
The game maintains the same form of challenge as Guitar Hero as where you can select the difficulty except there are only three options easily,medium, or hard one thing to consider when first playing the game is to go to the game options and alter what buttons on your keyboard equal frets in the game.  The main reason I say this is because not only did I not know what the fret and pick keys were but the keys that were the frets were the same as the keys that decrease your brightness leaving me to think that  my mac glitched out.

Replay value:
When it comes to replay value I'm not sure how well this game could stand up cause although this game can be as captivating as GH or  RB the small song library that come with the game just make you wish that you were up at your tv playing the deeper more vibrant song selection on the consoles,rather than playing the poor man's version on the internet. Most of your game play may go into the writing of frets trying them out, and showing them of to your friend who won't care.

Game play
It relies entirely upon it's Guitar hero-esqe gameplay since the story in this game is non-existant Aside from the tutorial stage were you get the basics told to you buy a supposed Norwegian professional guitar player  who's name and ego is longer than this review.He also likes to point out how much you must suck since your having to listen to the tutorial,thanks a lot jerk!

Graphic sound
This is really where it becomes obvious this is a guitar hero rip off from the choice of flame details  Littered through ou the games various menus and the fret board itself. The three songs that come with the library mostly sound catchy but sound like something you'd find in a generic anime. as i was playing the game I found that you were playing the backup guitar tis is fine except that the lead guitar can some times be louder than the back up making it more difficult to play and trowing off your sense of rhythm.

Controls

The game does well to capture sort of controls that GH and Rock Band had. However the keys to press can become confusing but they respond quickly and the game feels relatively smooth and fun. Along with this the game gives you the ability  make any song you have into a frets on fire song this mechanic work ok  But it is up to you to create the notes to hit while the song to play. So depending who you are this game may be a blessing or a curse.

 
Special feature
 The game's main shinning point is that you can play guitar hero or rock band on your computer. Also to go along with it  you can have complete control over the creation of your favorite songs into FOF form which could be with practice a nice little time waster .Other than that the game really doesn't have many more features than that to my knowledge which i find a bit of a let down.

My Own Input
If I were to change certain gameplay elements it would have to be how you import your song choices. Because when I attempted to create my own song   found that it showed me a list, a list I had no knowledge of before and what I got was mr Norwegian man breathing and I had no idea how. what it should have done was cause a separate window to  appear like in itunes to import Songs to your library.This would make creating your own songs much easier.

My conclusion
This game relies strongly on the fact that ou tried this out because of Guitar Hero or Rock Band. But even so this game was enjoyable and maintained the the challenge,gameplay and feel of RB and GH which is a feat of it's own. All and all this game isn't bad but it's not awesome mainly because of it's small library of songs but you still get more than you payed for... which is nothing.

Game Play and Control

Mario galaxy and Mario galaxy 2 are 2 of my favorite games one of the factors that make me enjoy it is it's very responsive and immersive feel of the game. And what i mean by that is when you aim to have your character do and it does it almost exactly as you saw in your head and it does it smoothly quickly and responsively. Especially in a super mario game it's difficult enough in accomplishing the regular task at times yo don't want to be fleeing a disappearing platform and Mario jumps in the opposite direction to his doom but to execute your input to the letter.also the amount of polish that make the game fully immersive for one example say you pull off a ground pound in a sandy area or on a soft squishy cake planet Mario finds himself up to his elbows into the ground.On a final note I would like to add that the levels in which you pull off these great moves are also made to perfectly mix with the highly responsive controls while still remaining challenging.Tjis game like other Mario games has a great feel and is a joy to play.

Chapter Two Book Work

Question 3

Development restrictions can be a game developers nightmare, you have to decide what forms of decisions you should make in order to keep the game development flowing and on time. I will have two examples my first lack of time. It is crucial for a developer to be ambitious but not all ideas can be used in the final cut features might take to long to test or design and must be scraped I have read about several times in several games that had an entire extra section of a game and had to completely a bandon it because of time. For my second example would be issues with intellectual property when you are designing a licensed game  the owner of the intellectual property will have a say in the development this could cause months of development to be quickly flushed down the drain. Or something might need to be added quickly and you'll have to figure out a way to implement it in the game without it sticking out amongst the more polished features.

Introduction to the Game Design Document

From what I learned from the PDF a game design document can be an essential design and creational tool but a financial one as well. A design document can be a great reference tool for what your main goals are for a game.This written or typed document Can also help you stay on track and accomplish what needs to be done with without focusing to hard on something non- essential. What I meant by financial is that it can easily become a tool to maintain your funding  and keep them informed about the progress of the project. The if you're self funded and do not have a specific dead line it may not be as useful still good practice. All and all this  is one of the many practices for a professional game designer.

Game video

 Heres our videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR-Rfb8m9_A

Board Game (Pirate Peril)

Pirates Revenge Rules

The goal of the game is to reach the treasure space at the center of the board for three turns

Players: up to 4

Contents:Board, 4 Pirate player pieces, 2 dice

How to play: Each player starts at one corner of the board each player takes a turn and rolls the dice and moves that number of spaces 

Each player has the ability to kill the other players 

when you die in the game you still take turns if you roll a 12 you can return to the game

High concept (rough)

Working Title: Mech Card Game

A fully customizable card came that involves strategy and allows players collect and construct decks to crush their friends. The Mech Card Game allows a player to build and customize his own mech to fight one or more opponents.  This game is made to be easy to pick up and have a newcomer pick up strategy and create a deck that is both fresh and affective.

Gameplay basics

I.             This game can be played with two or more players.  The concept of the game is to create a robot warrior of his choosing and battle against his opponents.  The strategy comes into play with the types of cards, which can allow the player to strategize differently to win a game.

There are four types of cards:

·      Offensive cards: Which consist of mainly weapons to attack the other opponent.  These cards will generally be equipped to a player’s mech

·      Defensive cards: Which consist of armor and deterrents from opponents’ attacks.  These cards are also equipped to a player’s mech

·      Environmental cards: These are universal cards that create a dynamic setting, and have different effects on all players currently playing.  As such, the cards have a variety of effects for a certain amount of time.

·      Utility cards: These consist of cards that have a wider range of effects when being equipped to a player’s mech.  An example of this effect is cards that can affect a mech’s “speed” or a players’ amount to play more cards before the end of his turn.

The characteristics of these cards can vary between:

·      Amount of “time” it takes to equip the card

·      The “size” of the card, which comes into player when equipping a mech)

·      Miscellaneous special effect

·      Amount of attack/defense points.

·      Durability/Entropy before the weapon is destroyed.

II.             Before the beginning of the game, a player creates a 60-card deck, 10 of which consist of environmental cards.  These cards are shuffled into the other player(s) environmental cards.  The card from the top of that stack is revealed before anyone starts his turn.

A player draws 5 cards after shuffling his deck.  It is up to the players to decide how a person goes first, i.e. drawing straws or flipping a coin.

The player then has five spaces to equip his mech:

·      2 Offensive spaces

·      2 defensive spaces

·      1 Utility space

·      1 Universal space, which can be an extra Offensive, Defensive or Universal card, however this space is limited and only certain cards can be placed in this position.

A player starts with 100 hit points and 5 units of time.  It takes 5 units of time to attack one opponent.

The game is won when opponents’ hit points reach zero or less.

Conclusion
The Mech Card Game can offer a casual and/or complicated environment that when being played can customize and strategize the game experience as well as spend time creating his deck for future games.

Being that this is a card game, there is a pretty high learning curve, especially for those who come cold to the card game genre in general.  Being compared to other games, this can be considered simple in this genre.  Ultimately the production of this game should be focused on an Occam’s Razor mentality where there is no need for over complication but still allowing the creation of cards that have a high amount of customizability.

Chapter 1 Book work

I chose to answer question number 1 since I am a huge fan of the zelda series

Though several mechanics of The Legend Of Zelda have been improved altered or change throughout it's various installments it's main core mechanics have stayed the same. The solid concrete base mechanics that this series sits on like the foundation of a stable house has been that some bad guy has caused trouble and you need to collect special items to help defeat said monster and accomplish tasks. However how one reaches this goal has changed a lot especially when the francise made the jump into 3 dimensions. For an example your main character's sword attack in the first game was a simple forward stab  same as in the second except that you could then acquire more sword technique like like the downward or upward stab. The attack then changed to a swiping maneuver that made defecting a large number of enemies and it was then possible to attack enemies form a safer angle.From there into 3D the mechanic of swiping your sword became integrated with dodging, strafing, blocking, as well as implementing other items in combat. This jump also led to a mechanic known as targeting allowing maneuvering as well as battling in 3d space much easier. Since then changes to the mechanics has small,aside from the new control implementation on the wii.

Nathans Review of Okami and Comparison Between Versions

Hello readers today I will do my review of one of my favorite games Okami

Okami is a game heavily based upon feudal japan.
You play as the sun god Okami Amaterasu who takes the form of a wolf and run about the huge and expansive world of Nippon Japan, killing demons and Purifying the land as you go. Now I personally believe that this one of the most creative and fun games i have ever played.
For those who do not know the game was originally on the PS2, the game was then ported to the Wii because of thousands of comments say how its gameplay would fit better on the Wii. After experiencing both platforms I would have to disagree, the PS2 was much better.

GAMEPLAY
The gameplay is one of the many places that this game shines brighter than a supper nova. For the most part the controls function like most action/adventure/puzzle/platformer. But the games main mechanic is downright creative, being a god you have powers over the earth. To use these powers you have the ability to pause the game and paint the paused screen with a magical ink brush as if the world is a clean piece of canvas. What this does depends on what you painted. For example : say you are fighting a monster , you have several ways to defeat him,you could defeat him the old action game way and hit him till he falls down OR you could pause the game Paint a line on him and unpause the game causing the enemy to be sliced in half, or you could even paint circle with a line in it to create a bomb  and blow the demon into the upper stratosphere. The mechanic is fun creative and very satisfying to use

 GRAPHICS
The visual style of the game is based upon the woodcut painting style of the 1700's in japan. I have to say that this art style fit the games main mechanic perfectly, and isn't shy with the use of color. All the characters you meet are somewhat cartoony,quirky, and unique, each with their own defining feature. the landscapes are huge and out right beautiful. This game can be so beautiful that there was a specific scene  that (much to my discontent ) Brought my dad near to tears because how gorgeous it was. COMPARISON: The PS2 version had some what duller colors than the Wii, the Wii also has widescreen, something that the last generation console can't do. But the Wii is lacking a specific paper filter that contributed to the visual style,Wii Wins this round.

SOUND

The games sound track is outstanding and perfectly fits the setting of the game. The soundtrack really has that traditional japanese feel with instrumental choice of drums, flutes, and warrior shouts in the background  during intense battles. Averagely the songs are mellow, and very atmospheric so it is beautiful but they're not tunes that will stick in your head not to say that there aren't frenzied and fast paced tunes that really get you in the mood to play. All characters communicate to you through text and speak in a sort of gibberish, and at most times it works but there are a few characters that sound annoying if you listen to them for to long unfortunately one of those characters is your sidekick, the the most talkative character in the game, and it gets annoying pretty quick!    

Examples

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igSmbu_E3M4

ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2Q2Cn5n0ig

STORY

Like almost every part of this game it heavily dipped in te japanese theme the story itself harbors several monsters and characters from japanese myths and legends Such as the terrible 8 headed serpent Orochi. The game starts as a narrator describes a myth that occurred 100 years before the beginning of the story describing a village tormented by a monster that was eventually defeated by a warrior and a white wolf 

though the wolf died at the end of the battle the white wolf actually turned out to be the sun god Amatarasu in the form of the  . The village enjoyed 100 years of peace until one day the monster is revived and threatens to throw the world into darkness. The wolf god is then revived and with its sidekick a glowing bug named Issun set off to purify the land, Defeat Evil, and reacquire Amaterasu's lost powers.

LEARNING CURVE

This game is filled with various bosses and puzzles that will give you some moderate challenge. More often than not, solutions to puzzles are often telegraphed by either suggestive camera views or your little bug sidekick  talking to you stating the obvious and having the vague solution to the puzzle in red font never leaving you completely stuck, it's less about knowing what to do and actually doing it. I actually found the combat more challenging, the game scores you on your battles how much you got hit and the time it took to win the fight at the end of the game depending on how well you did you get extras. So you experiment with new weapon combinations or new brush techniques to make the fight end faster. So all in all the difficulty keeps you moderately challenged throughout the game.

CONTROL SCHEME

COMPARISON: This is actually the greatest difference between the two platforms In the  PS2 the paint brush moves at a somewhat slow pace compared to some of the fast pace fighting gameplay, but the game almost always recognizes what you drew, the Wii it's the opposite the motion sensing Wiimote makes the painting much quicker to pull off, but at times it can be very difficult for it to register what you want it to do this is inexcusable especially since this gameplay was the main reason the game was ported in the first place and it could have been done so much better. The controls of the camera also differ in the  PS2 the camera is controlled  by the second analog stick wich for the most part works, but in the wii version you  have no control of the camera unless you pause the game to pull off a brush stroke and move the analog stick for the most part this isn't a problem but it can lead to some awkward camera views. Dodging and attacking while buttons on the PS2 correspond to either shaking the wiimote or numchuck  the dodging is unreliable in the wii version but not essential to beat the game.Attack wise the main difference you'll see is that you'll select different weapons from the PS2 because of how the control sceme works.

CONCLUSION

Controls aside this game is a testament to originality and creativity in video games and regardless of platforms This game will make a nice addition to your Wii or PS2 library 

This game gets 5 howls into the moon light out of 5