The game has many different mechanics; it’s not simply running and roaming around a sandbox environment giving you free run of the game. It is however a wonderful 3D environment, allowing players to explore the areas and levels. You do follow missions and the storyline, but it’s not as simple as that.  Players can control the polar bear, Ioerek, who in turn, as you would know if you’d read the books or seen even bits of the movie, can talk. He has limited attack mechanisms but is able to complete combos when being attacked by wolves. You also use a combination of different mechanics to make your way through the game.

Not only do you play as Iorek, but you also control the main character, Lyra. Lyra is a young (I’d say 12 year old) girl who has her daemon, Pan, with her, who can take many different forms. Daemons are a part of a person’s soul, and they will suffer grave loss and depression without their literal other half. Pan is a feret at times, but can change into different forms to help Lyra get around. For example, by allowing her to glide like a hawk across larger gaps, or using the “sloth swing” to reach higher distances.

You can interogate different characters within the game, and deceive them. In order to be successful in this deception, you must complete a series of mini games, the number depending on how hard the deception is to conquer.  In my personal opinion, this adds depth to the game that a lot, most games lack. Instead of simply running around and attacking, you complete the mini games, you must balance and use concentration to walk across thin beams, among many other things. I found the different amount of mechanics used within this game to be fascinating; there’s so much to do.

Overall, this game received poor ratings. Maybe because the movie wasn’t so successful, who knows. But people should definitely try this game out. Not wanting to sound like a game review here, it definitely is better, much better than the reviews and harsh critics gave it. Even if you don’t ultimately like the game, you must appreciate the diversity this game holds, and take into consideration the number of games that don’t have many different activities to complete within the game. A lot of games you simply fight and conquer your enemies. Within this, there is so much more to do, so much more explored within the context of the game.

I applaude Sega for a pretty darn good game in my opinion. May not be the best, no, but I love the use of  these different tactics and mechanics, it has really opened my eyes to a different side of gaming.

This game basically directs players in this sandbox-like environment to complete random mini activities to collect Power Cells. These Power Cells allow Jak & Daxter to progress to the next level. After collecting all the Power Cells in one area, new levels can be unlocked, as well as different activities along the way. It’s like collecting the key to unlock the door; you know what you need to find, but there’s many different ways to achieve that goal.

Personally I believe this game has a fantastic mix of narrative, challenges and rewards, competitiveness and affect on the players. Not only fulfilling one element of game design, this game ticks all the boxes when it comes to an adventurous, interesting game. Players become immersed in trying to find out the mystery of what happened to the final yellow Sage, while trying to get Daxter back into human form. Keira, the Green Sage’s daughter seems to have a little thing for Jak, which is a tactic used to lure in players to the storyline. They are compelled to know, by completion of the game, what happens between the two. My curiosity always gets the better of me when playing, and I’m dying to see what lies around the corner for my characters. When first playing the game I wanted to be the one to complete the levels with a feeling of personal accomplishment (not my cousin), while progressing on in the story to find out what the lurkers (enemies) are hiding, and what they’ve done with all the Sage’s.

Story adds potential for immersion, depth and emotion to games. By having a compelling story within a game allows for motivated gameplay and an understanding of the characters. Effectively, this element for me is what makes a great game. The cutscenes in a game just add more depth to the story, allowing players to get further immersed within. Do players really want to be thrown into a jungle to collect these power cells for no particular reason? That’s what a narrative helps a game to develop, is player motivation for continuing and beginning to play. It’s a fun game exposing players to all sorts of different environments to complete the challenges that lie ahead. With elements of logic, combat and creativity, this game is one for all ages though I’m sure the demographic is middle aged children. Regardless, this game is awesome. I didn’t find the sequels as entertaining, because the environments we were immersed in, weren’t as diverse.

Games rely on a well structured story, inviting the player to engage in interactive and interesting game play. While most people know the adventures of Garfield in comic form, as a video game they could have at least let him wander outside or do something more creative. Playing as Garfield, you are able to complete mini challenges including puzzles in John’s bedroom, however the general objective of the game is to complete the housework, because Garfield is such a lazy fat cat. How is that interesting as a game? There is lack of narrative especially for this particular type of game which could have so much potential. The platform for the game is Playstation 2. The possibilities for such a platform are enormous, yet the game is still cartoon form with limited objectives and environments. The game was hired for one day and taken back the next day.

With my cousins, we hired the game out for the holidays some years ago. We started playing and actually started laughing at how crappy the game was. We didn’t find anything particularly interesting about it and the graphics though intended to be cartoon form, weren’t aesthetically pleasing to look at. Playstation as a platform has such potential. Yet games like this are still created. This game enters a number of different game design topics, including a lack of narrative, designing (the game) for affect from the player, as well as lack of game design. The effect this game had on us as players made us bored, and not put any real effort into playing the game. After half an hour of wandering around the environment trying to find something interesting to engage our interest, we decided to swap the disc for a game we know we love, Kingdom Hearts. There’s no comparison between the two games. It is crucial that games have a good story line and if they don’t, they must be at least good at drawing the player into the flow of the game. Games like Tetris don’t have any story at all, yet the competitive and logical design of the game gets players hooked every time.

This game doesn’t even engage the player in, it wasn’t fun and didn’t provoke any sort of emotion from the player. At least with other games that are classified as “bad” they may have interesting environments. This game didn’t even have an interesting environment to investigate. They should have included a more dynamic environment and a better rewards system. There wasn’t any motivation to continue playing the game, and there were no independent decisions to be made. It was straight forward things you could do. Despite being able to walk around the environment to do different things, there really isn’t anything to do. I’d give this game a 2 as well!

Where you ask? Well put it this way, there are numerous unlockable locations, rewards and characters. But what exactly does that give you? Personal accomplishment maybe. Players race against the machine or other players in multiplayer mode, in a few different arenas. These are tracks that essentially all look the same, or at least similar. The game itself is so repetitive that we don’t even bother playing it anymore. Usually different courses or tracks have different levels of difficulty to pose some sort of challenge to the players. This game is had a lot of focus on the actual art behind the game, and the physics engines behind the game that create the illusion of the water, waves and the reactions as players take different turns.

But a game has to include more than just pretty graphics. Besides the annoying British accents, nothing personal to anyone British but the woman in this game has an annoying voice that sounds like a drunken Liz Hurley, the game lacks depth. At least in race car games like Need For Speed: Prostreet, you work through a career building up your characters stats, working just like a race car driver would. The simplicity in this game is annoying. Perhaps the designers thought this game could include concepts like designing for affect, which encourages some sort of emotional reaction from players, whether it be having fun, feeling for the characters in the game or immersion in the storyline. This game essentially has no deeper emotion than rousing the competitive nature in people and the prospect of fun. But for me there was no fun as a side effect of playing. It’s too repetitive to really get me immerse in the gameplay. It didn’t take long for me to actually get bored of playing the game.

Splashdown race course

There would eventually be a good victory state within the game when the player successfully completes the levels within the career mode. However I don’t find there to be enough reward for completing the levels, or enough level of challenge. It’s a simple racing game which doesn’t engage my senses. I prefer a game that has a good narrative and game play, something I can really get totally involved in. For me, that game just doesn’t do that. Have fun to any gamers out there who do actually get a kick of this game. I’m happy for you. But this isn’t for me.

However there are some games that detract from this experience of flow, being unable to capture me personally as a player into the state. The flow will keep players attached to the game always wanting more. For example my cousin Patrick, when playing his Nintendo DS, usually whatever game it happens to be, he will get so focused on moving up in levels that if his mother asks him to do something he’ll get cranky and annoyed and end up talking back. It’s almost like he has an addiction to the game; and that’s exactly what flow is like. A loss of track of time and an addiction like existence between you and the game.

Farmville

A game that has a lack of flow, to me personally includes some repetitive casual games, or games that get a player too easily frustrated. Games like that include Farmville which is a game available on Facebook. This game involves players planting crops, receiving presents usually consisting of livestock or fruit trees, and maintaining those trees and livestock. Personally, because these crops take real time to grow, some 4 hours others 4 days, I get easily bored. There’s no creation of flow because there isn’t anything you can do for that amount of time to keep a person occupied. Once you’ve set up your farm with the amount of money you have to start with (selling crops and animals and their produce gives money in return), you then have to wait for them to grow, which takes literally hours.

This concept annoys me. This game is clearly aimed at people who use Facebook so they can play a while, update their Facebook page and then leave to do other things while they “wait” for their crops to develop. The game doesn’t allow time to create a state of flow because you very easily run out of things to actually do within the game. There’s a lack of design involved, surely there should be more interactions with crops and animals; even the application called Happy Aquarium allows you to actually train your fish by completing mini games. Farmville doesn’t; not even mini games or further activities. You move up in rank, which includes a competitive element to the game, while raising money to therefore by more produce which is initially locked until you get to a certain level. You also can help out friends by cleaning up or weeding their farm. But it’s all done with the click of a mouse. There isn’t anything interactive to do other than click around. With a click of your character you move, with a click you harvest. I believe this is a lack of design.

Surely there could have been the involvement of some sort of game, or movement from a character, even allowing players to water their crop, but something else. Despite all this, the game is hugely successful on Facebook. This is probably because they aim at the people who don’t want to actually buy a game; it’s free, and there. People check their Facebook accounts everyday, and can also check their crops quickly. It seems more a game that you don’t need to really immerse yourself in. To me that’s just boring. The effect it had on me personally is that I never had any motivation to load the interface to play the game after my first few turns. I accept a few gifts from friends, I plant them, gather my crop and then think what do I do now? I like games that really get you involved in the story, emotionally engage the players. There is no story to this game; it’s a simple casual game that seems to have millions hooked. I’d rather invest my time into something exciting and fun, something where I can either immerse myself into the predetermined story, or where I can devise my own story myself. I’m a creative soul, it’s why I’m doing game design, I get bored easily. This game doesn’t help me in anyway, except that I get people telling me to fix my farm because all my plants are dead. People play this and have the nerve to ask me why on earth do I play the Sims? That’s where I’m baffled by people’s logic. But if you’re a Farmville fan, don’t be disheartened. If I were to create this game, you can count on the fact I’d make it more interactive and interesting.

The problem I have with this concept, while it works fabulously on the computer; rapidly clicking to cage the bears while cursing as one eats your chickens, with the iPod despite rapid taps on the screen it doesn’t register the taps as easily. Usually when a bear appears, especially when there are more than one, all your hard earned money will disappear as they devour your produce. This can be beyond annoying and frustrating. The issue I have with this game is the obvious lack of play testing involved within the iPhone/iPod version of this game. 

 Glitches are revealed so often within games, that it’s not funny; however this is usually with more complex platform or high performance PC games. It has taken years to perfect those games to ridding them of all the bugs would be an incredulously difficult task to do. I would however, expect smaller casual games such as Farm Frenzy 2, to have sufficient testing. On the other hand though, these companies are probably creating many, many games at the same time. Because the game does not cost as much to produce, and that these companies wouldn’t have as much time to invest insufficient play-testing, it’s hard to depict which stance to take. While the company should bother to invest in their games however they may not have the capacity to do that.

With issues like this within a game it creates a really negative effect on the player. I for one know it’s annoying as hell when you know you’re doing the right mechanism within the game, yet it isn’t reacting the way it has to, and you end up having to restart your level within the game. Surely there’s other games like this, especially ones involving the new (ish) touch screen technology, that don’t respond the way that they ought to. As a designer I know I will check as much as possible before releasing a game. Most if not all the people involved in games companies do play games, so we all understand how annoying it can be.

 The boundaries of this game including only being able to run the opposite direction within the width of the actually screen (enforcing cooperation), as well as the obvious things like only being able to navigate around the designated environment. Players are able to go wherever they want within this game play environment, however there really is only the story and narrative to follow, allowing for a more structured game play as opposed to free will and player decisions. Generally games similar to this, games based on movies, have a very strict narrative to follow.

 They can elaborate on certain parts of the story to enhance and extend game play, but generally players already know what the main elements of the game will be. In order to create a fun, surprising and enjoyable experience in games like this, it is up to the designers to actually allow the player to immerse in the game.  By allowing this creative game play, which now many games also have, allows a different element of video games, incorporating an element that was previously only known to physical games like board games and sporting activities.  I found this aspect to be fun and exciting; the game has left a lasting impression on me and I would recommend it to anyone who wanted to try something a little different. The experience was so enjoyable because I was working together with my cousins as opposed to competing against them.

Reed and Johnny taking on an enemy

Most games that are move-based adaptations usually are made poorly, and quickly in order to be released before the movie, and while some movies take anywhere from a few months to a year, games can take many years to successfully make. The team are forced to work on a very rushed deadline, with strict deadlines. This makes it difficult for the game to actually reach the desired potential, especially if it’s a really great story. Fortunately this game has represented the movie successfully, adding more than just a good story into the mix. The teamwork design has really added a new aspect to games I had never really anticipated before.

Kate Archer, oh the fabulous graphics!

 Regardless of that though, as with Alone in the Dark also, I don’t believe they invested enough time in the play testing of this game. You get to certain parts in the game and get absolutely stuck. We spent years walking around this one level, and couldn’t get out of it, go back, it was like a dead end.

Once the game was restarted and we worked out way up to that level again, it was easy to find what we’d missed. But whether it was a bug or just a lack of play testing the first time we went through that level we were utterly stuck. So the preassumed lack of playtesting really annoyed me. Things like this really affect the player interaction with the game, and it definitely affected the player interaction from my perspective. The effect it had on me was that it made me annoyed and I honestly hadn’t played it in years because of that.

However as I progressed for the second time through the game, I came across another level that, despite getting through it, I realised it wasn’t particularly obvious what the objective was, or what was interact-able within the set of the game. This comes down to not only play testing, but design behind the game as well. I really appreciate and understand the time it takes to produce a game now, because we the consumers really want these games to be fun, challenging yet not so difficult that we give up. It needs to be engaging and exciting, yet not too easy. Play testing is so critical, and I’m glad I realised that.

Aside from the movement, this game is pretty good and scary, regardless of the fact we are still, after so many years stuck on the game, to the point where my mum has restarted it to try and pick up clues we may have missed. However, no such luck. You get to a point in the game where there is a dead end, unless of course you follow one of the many walkthroughs found scattered all around the internet. If you were just left relying on your own ability you may have trouble discovering the missing pieces to the game; perhaps they only play-tested particular aspects of the game, not all levels.

Aline watch out for those zombies..

Play-testing is so crucial to the design of a good game. With so much effort involved in creating the actual game, if the game itself isn’t tested properly then sales and popularity won’t reflect the effort required to construct the game. That almosts results in a wasted effort, which is something all game designers would aim to avoid. If the game was thoroughly tested properly, then perhaps there would be some sort of hidden clues or objectives around to change either the difficultly of the game, or to help those who are suddenly feeling clueless for to what to do next. All in all though, the game is not one of my favourites because of how easy it is to get stuck half way through the game. After so long, there isn’t really any motivation to actually continue playing the game as solve it, though I’m sure if I gave it a crack these days it would be much easier. Who knows! I do know that the impact it had on me playing the game made me give up because I had to backtrack all my steps throughout the game to try and figure out where I went wrong. Again and again, this was frustrating while getting no where. I’m all for great challenges but when you’re at a dead end, where can you turn?

Designing for affect is an aspect the Sims definitely covers, as long as you have a good imagination. You can create characters, make them turn evil masterminds, or have a loving family; either way, point being is that you will create an attachment with those characters you have created.  That’s an aspect that the creators of the Sims know that draws players back time and time again. They know they have good game design; they are selling millions of games every year. It’s something specific about the design process that really gets to me. The fact that they deliberately didn’t include items within the base game, things that players were expecting in the game, really annoyed me.

While it is also for marketing purposes so they can exploit the fans and create more expansions therefore making more money, I think it’s a pretty low decision with all the potential the game has. They can include things like a snowboarding holiday, surf boards, hot tubs. There are so many different items that could be potential made into an expansion pack that they do not need to cut back on other items in order to successfully sell games. However now I have a better understanding of the game design process, I appreciate why the game is $100, and why each stuff pack contains furniture. A lot of people complain about how expensive games are, yet they have no idea what happens behind the scenes as to what goes into making the game.

The rendering and physical creation of the objects, including the meshes and poly counts behind the actual items can be astounding with a game as detailed as The Sims 3; the items that were created in The Sims 2 were created using a different style therefore items cannot merely be transferred between the games. This could be a reason why there were less items involved in the base game. The new environment and neighbourhood has been set up with more challenges and actual activities to do around the town. You can go fishing on the beach outside your house, or discovering rock pools around the cliffs. The exploration aspect to the game obviously had preference over including an huge amount of objects in order to get the game shipped on time; the game was already pushed back 6 months which was long enough. If they can then put less into the base game, while working harder on other items which will further be improved for future expansions, then ultimately it is a bonus for the consumer. They can make the items that didn’t make the base game as best as they can be. Despite making me slightly annoyed, the effect that this had on me was the fact it made me want the expansions right away. It doesn’t matter how much they cost, I’m dying to expand my little 3D world to the fullest potential it can muster. I am excited for further EP’s, effectively fulfilling EA’s objective to ring in future business.

By not including some of the most basic items that were part of the base game for The Sims 2, it made me not able to design the houses exactly the way I wanted. I will await further expansions that will expose us Simmers to the intentional world created by EA. The Sims games are (almost) nothing without their expansions, so EA are determined to keep us wanting more by supplying us with each game little by little. For the record, the first Expansion Pack for The Sims 3 is due out for release in November. Gameplay for The Sims has been revolutionised forever.