Homework 11: Game Design

Two great games I have played

1. Banjo-Kazooie

   This game was developed by Rare for the Nintendo 64 and released on June 29, 1998. This game follows the story of the title characters Banjo and Kazooie as they try to stop the evil plans of Gruntilda. The game features nine nonlinear levels where the player must complete a number of challenges like solving puzzles, jumping over obstacles, gathering objects, and defeating opponents.  The reason why I love this game so much is because it required a lot of puzzle solving strategy while still including an element of fighting.  The game also had amazing graphics and sound for its time.  This provided a pleasurable gaming experience.  The controls were simple and the idea of catching music notes and golden puzzle piece items was very pleasing and satisfying. This gave the game perfect balance in my mind.

2. Half-Life

   This is a first-person shooter game that also has a place in my heart.  It's developed by Valve in 1998 (same as Banjo-Kazooie) and was revolutionary for the time. The player assumes the role of Dr. Gordon Freeman, who must fight his way out of a secret research facility after a teleportation experiment goes wrong. This game does an amazing job of balancing the fighting of enemies and critical thinking puzzles.  It blends those two elements together to create an amazing gaming experience that is very aesthetic. The gaming mechanics involving the user input and the virtual interface is very simple and clear to understand right away. The controls are so simple yet the game is so much fun to play because it feels like you're watching a movie at the same time.


Two bad games I have played

1. Elite Dangerous

   I barely played this game at all because it was in VR and made me completely sick.  It involves flying around in space shooting down other spacecraft, and when you're in VR flying around when you're really just sitting still is a recipe for disaster.  On top of that, the virtual interface was very difficult to understand along with the controls.  Even though there are people who are lucky enough to not get motion sick as easily who like the game, it doesn't have the best reviews online.  What was worse was that HTC wasn't willing to give me store credit after trying to return the game which was unfortunate.  An all around bad experience.

2. The Sims

   Although this game was very novel, I was never a fan. I got bored too easily with it. There wasn't enough action or complexity for me to stay enthusiastic about it. So the experience was not what I was looking for or expecting. I was more of a fan of Sim City which is at a larger scale and has more complexity associated with it. I wanted to control armies, not a family.  So for these reasons, I did not play this game for long.