i was tasked with playing a portion of ratchet and clank and then wrighting a review/analysis here is the assignment copy and pasted.

Please use the following guidelines for this paper:

First, provide the designers structure for the game (see document in Course Content).

Next analyze the game and write about the following criteria:
Originality of Concept.
Originality of Gameplay.
Quality of visuals and sound.
Comparison to similar titles.
Conclusion: How fun is it and why is it (or isn't it fun)

Games outside of the Games For Review list may be considered, but they must be games the instructors are familiar with and they must be approved in advance.

Ratchet and Clank Future Perfect is a PS3 exclusive title, the game play is based in third person action shooter genre with an art ****that is very cartoony and will undoubtedly be compared to Sly Cooper, Mario or Crash Bandicoot. I played approximately three hours of it and found it to be light on challenge and fun, but with no real drawback, making the game is easy to recommend. The player is tasked with a linear progression and simple AI adversaries. The draw of the game isn't what one would expect when looking at a shooter, you'd think immersive action, compelling story, but what I witnessed in my preview of the title was a game where the reward is in the humor, and the challenge is in the arsenal.

Originality of Concept:

The game is different from pretty much every other third person shooter/action game. Weapons are very ridiculous, often hilarious, AI is very simple and useless, and the humor woven into the whole thing is what pulls the player through the game. The story is very simple, stop bad guys save the universe, and at times (often) irrelevant, but the delivery of that boring story is like that of a good Pixar film your characters and their interactions are diverse and surprisingly entertaining. Humor in games has been tried and often failed. But this game to me shares more with Painkiller, Armed and Dangerous, and Serious Sam than with Mario. Weapons are inventive to say the least(a disco ball weapon!) you start with very traditional weapons(aka boring) and progress towards more rewarding fair as the game progresses. Though as I've mentioned the game only really takes the FPS formula of that proved successful if not fully realized and polished it and made it third person.

Originality of Game play

The Concept and the Game play are pretty closely linked, being a game with humor and action and then having the driving force of the game play also being one of the larger sources of amusement does a pretty good job of integrating everything together. The problem with the game though is that since the AI is so simple the combat is derivative and without a constant flow of new weapons it becomes a grind and not fun, you may use a new weapon two or three times before you bore of it, then default to the plasma pistol or lightning whip. Did I mention that weapons upgrade, well it's not that involved of a process. I really wish that new weapons came at a faster clip or that each one had multiple functions similar to UT or painkiller so that time spent switching weapons in the pause menu was a little less. I found that I felt compelled to stop playing the game after 20-30 minutes simply because a lot of it started feeling like grind. The game as I played it presented no real challenge, no penalty for dying, nothing, humor and curiosity where the only driving forces. Though I can see the inspirations for the gameplay design in this title I must say that it feels unique and well thought out, just a little thin in some spots.

Look and Sound,

While it is a solid game I still found the art and color of Mario galaxy to be far superior, the opener for the game is very visually solid/stunning but then as I progressed it felt less so. The Sound work is uneven. While the voice work, music and sound effect are all top notch and the presentation is good I felt that the mixing could have been better. The sound mixing felt flat, for a big budget ps3 title. The implementation of sound in the game makes the beautiful explosions fall flat on your ear drums. Over all a good job though animations are fun and exaggerated but I still prefer the nuanced animations of TF2. Again a fun and unique spin on the animated look that is starting to pop up more and more the closer to the uncanny valley games get.

Comparison

I found this game to compare to many games from across the board, the childish animated appearance of the game has many comparing it to Mario Galaxy, and Banjo and Kazooie the humor and weapons make it comparable to Serious Sam or Armed and Dangerous. I can't say that this game is revolutionary, but it is a good game. My only real problem is if you take away the interesting weapons the game isn't very compelling at all. It's hard to make the gameplay contingent on only one factor like a weapon and keep it replay able or interesting. With only one element that is compelling and every other game play element simple and second ****the game doesn't hold up well once you've seen its bag of tricks. I didn't finish the game but what I played of it left me feeling that way after the first couple play sessions. And as I mentioned this game made me feel compelled to put it down after 30 minutes but unlike other such games as world in conflict or guitar hero where you play for a little bit and move on I didn't feel any sense of achievement I put the controller down more from boredom than anything else.

Conclusion:

This is a good game and I would recommend it to people who are predisposed to these types of games. But I wouldn't say to my RPG loving roommate, quick go buy it, because really for all the flavor of the game it really has some missed potential. Maybe with stronger puzzle elements, or more developed AI, or more challenging boss battles this would have been one for the books. Instead it is a compilation of game play elements from across gaming history that feel unique only in their compiled state, but separate are only status quo.

So myfascinationwith the flawed game of too human has lead to a granderanalyzationof flawed game design in general, and right now i'm attacking the hype monster and how it alters the perspective of reviewers. So many people considered halo3 and GTA4 to be the pinnacle of game design in the last 12 months, well yesterday i was playing GTA4, i've not yet beaten it so i haven't reviewed it consider this a rant on the game and it's over hype. 90 percent of critiques gave GTA4 a perfect review, i must say that though it does so many things that no other game has done most of the innovations are not gameplay centric, but ratherirrelevantto the actual play of the game. probably the most fantastic aspect of the game for me is the world the game world and its people feel so alive this game feels like a perfect evolution of the concepts explored in the oblivionpersistentworld with so many AI around you doing their own thing, you'll see people working on their cars, robbing cars, packing cars, hanging outcommittingcrimes, fighting swearing observing theirenvironment,observing you. The AI can grab onto stuff, i had a cop grab onto my driver sider door handle and keep holding on as i dragged him around,untili rubbed him off on a light pole. i had a gangster jump onto a landingpontoonof my helicopter, and hang on as i flew around till i shook him off after a few minutes and he fell to his death. this is all immersive, but at the end of the day the missions are in many ways more derivative than in the last game, the shooting and cover mechanics are nice but still stink, and don't work properly most of the time. the story is stillpredominantlylinear, this game doesn't even tell a compelling narrative most of the time you are a grunt working for a jerk who eventually you kill, and all the nice people you meet back stab you so you kill them too. somehow niko keeps gettingfresh-startsas he flees enemies and that means you move to a new island and start organized crimeunder someoneelse. for how compelling he is supposed to be as a character he is actually very derivative of every other organized crime game/movie/book. he's a guy who never really considered a 8-5 job he's not someone forced of cornered and trapped in crime. Niko is just a loyal criminal he is loyal to his job and his family. I don't feel like the driving is very complex since all cars drive essentially the same but with different degrees of excelleration, momentum and handling tweaks, you never feel like one car is a a front wheel drive car vs. rear wheel drive, vs. low end gearing or high end gearing. So i guess my problem with GTA 4 is just that for a perfect score i feel like the gameplay would be a little more with the times, instead GTA 4's gameplay is essentially the same as last time, with a semi branching story line that is not verysurprisingor compelling so far. Halo 3 was even worse for me, it felt like a b shooter, with slightly (not good enough) improved graphics, story that wasn'tsurprisingbut rather a rehash of the first game. and the supposed perfect online was crippled by a verynaivemutli player server concept that ultimately fails andsimultaneouslybreaks the game play. every game must strive to berelevant,adding forge to halo 3 doesn't justify the 60 dollars because the game isn't moving out of halo 1's shadow or even comparable to other releases of the day, orange box, bioshock, COD 4, all went leaps and bounds past every other game of there genres while halo 3 wasn't perfectlynostalgiclike painkiller, orcompetentlycomparative to it's peers. And that is where GTA 4 fails as well, though the world the sand box it creates is fantastic but the tools you are given are car jacked from other games and they look like they got damaged in the process, the cover system issuccessfullythe worst to ever come out, the auto aiming only seems relevant because character outlines and lighting make people often invisible, mean while the level design for story driven gunfight sequences is really bad and emphasizes theshortcomingsof the gunplay mechanics. enough ranting i know i've officiallysaidthe same thing a dozen different ways, I guessI'mjust a bit jaded and that games must really be unique or push in acertaindirection to get my attention.

so i was playing ninja gaiden 2 and wondering to myself, what should a sequel be. i think that a good sequel depends not only on how much time has passed since the original, but also what has happened in the genre, many developers wonder how to make fans happy, look at blizzard, star craft 2 is a great example, blizzard want to keep star craft 2 just like star craft one but with a visual update, this may be made more difficult by how much rts's have changed since star craft, mainly in the interface. after playing sup com or company of heroes, homeworld 2 or world in conflict, its hard to go back to the archaic control scheme that it seems blizzard is keeping to appease some korean tourney players. but then i look at games like diablo where the genre really peaked with diablo 2 and nothing has surpassed it yet, so for diablo 3 to be just a face lift and a new story might be just what we gamers/consumers want or expect. i haven't beat ninja gaiden 2 yet but i'm about half way through and i have to say that it is a vastly improved sequel, the combat (that was already the best in the industry) is twice as good thanks to finishing kills and more fantastic perfectly balanced weapons(the bosses over all are also much better, i've only had issue with three of the bosses) though i wish ninja gaiden had been a little more perfect it is all i could ask for as a fan of the original. lets hope it stays this good.

So i was gonna go to sleep at nine because i was so exausted, i was in a housemates room with some friends and they spotted a "mouse" well my response is get a splatter trap(traditional rat trap) and some peanut butter. so i leave to get the tools and i hear, "no it's a chip monk" well i hate chip monks, they are so much more destructive on so many levels, i turn around to see this thing for myself as i head back to the room, i hear" no wait its a baby squirrel, a flying squirrel" now my interest is peaked, i love squirrels. so i hurry over to see that it was rather a sugar glider, so with some distress we capture the little guy, now i have a sugar glider, i live in michigan currently, and this is not a native species, looks like someone lost a pet. i would advertise lost s ugar glider around the neighborhood, but these things are expensive and i feel like anyone who knows about them would claim them as their own. so today i have a sugar glider in my pocket. funny how the night turns out isn't it.

Well, i know i last talked about retro games, but i had a hankering for a new title so i went and bought three new games, i picked up ninja gaiden, battlefield bad company, and too human. now i know that none of these will be considered gaming classics, but i wanted something different and each of them has something unique to that game, you can probably guess what makes battle field and ninja gaiden appealing but why buy too human after the bland reviiews and what not, well i did it because i had wanted to play it ever since i heard about it. and because i was a fan of that developers work from back on the game cube(eternal darknes, twin snakes) well yesterday i didn't do much besides play too human and i'd like to summerize my feelings about it. i feel that this games developement was drastically effected by the epic lawsuit. the game feels six months shy of greatness in my mind. firstly let me explain this game plays like a rpg with devil may cry controls meaning the combat doesn't quite have the same kinetic feel of say ninja gaiden or devil may cry. the games presentation is often uneven, one second it's fantastic while the next it's horrible, the one thing i've consistently loved is the art design. it is fabulous. for all it's weaakness this game is still fun and unique so i do hope for the sequel and that it be better in every way. i'll right my review when i finish it. i must say that the original combination of gameplay and art design themes makes up for some of the shortfalls

so over the summer i picked up a few classic rpg games to diversify my gaming experience, i now have bauldur's gate 1&2 with both expansion packs, and icewind dale 1&2 (and expansions) and temple of elemental evil, plus diablo 1 and 2. lets see how some of these games have aged i bought most of them in the bargain bin or in giant collections. for cheap. here's to hoping.

today i was playing a little counter-strike source before class and really enjoying the perfectly balanced gameplay with tight controls, and simple but deep design. counterstrike, and day of defeat, and team fortress and UT and Quake are all fantastic timeless games, the gameplay doesn't drastically differ iteration to iteration and the fun is always there, they are examples of games you can keep coming back too. the broewser based version of quake three launching this year will breath new life into that game, and i can't wait to hear what valve plans to do in the multi player spacein the future, a portal mp game perhaps?

part of what keeps those online games playable is the fact that nothing has really changed in the last decade for interface in that genre so that you can go back and play counter strike 1.5 or source and the only difference is visuals. you can no longer say this of the rts space, games like company of heroes, supreme commander and world in conflict have forever changed the standhard of rts interface and gameplay, finaly realizing the potential of that gameplay type. problem is that most other big devs, like EA and blizzard are still pumping out the old type of game, with fixed cameras and clumbsy controls and no queing to help with the tedious micro management. after playing sup com and WIC i can't tolerate the interface for the previously timeless star craft or warcraft 3. i only hope that blizzard and ea(c&c) start embracing standards of the times rather than selling to a obscure korean professional gamer who love hotkeys and watching a novice struggle with micro management

so i was on campus using my eee for internet and i could barely connect to this website then when i clicked on my blog it crashed the browser, i restarted my computer but the lag and instability persisted, i got home and i tried my desktop using a different provider than the school and a different connection(DSL) and i get the same results. this website is running like a fat kid through deep mud, what gives?

so i was playing call of duty last night and i have to say that ove these last two months my eyes have been opened. the game is the greatest case of window dressing it's a hairs breth away from being timeless but simple short falls ruin the game for me.

first problem:

spawn point placement, and spawn deaths.

spawn point placement is a classic short fall in MP game design, many games have fixed this with spawning immunity or special spawn point placement, or advance spawn point placement ai, or spawn in areas. somehow it feels like 9 times out of ten in COD 4 they forgot about this, not only does this cascade other short falls like uneven level design, or circular design or spawn in flanks, it just frustrates the team deathmatch. this simple short fall really rears its head once you play more compititavely. this basic shortfall shows that this is the first time infinity ward has taken multiplayer seriously

second problem

choppers and air strikes

really the only problem i have with these is tied into my original problem with spawn points, once one team starts winning the other team just starts spawning and dieing, thanks mainly to the choppers and air strikes, i've died four times in a row upon spawn thanks to these two momentum building power ups. agian facilitating the short sighted design of the multi player.

so i hope that it doesn't sound like i don't like the game, cause i do. it's just that i find it a few simple mistakes away from deserving the game of the year status it was awarded. i have high hopes for COD 5 becuase tryach is much better at multi player than infinity ward in the past, just look at united offense and call of duty 3

so i'm taking a game design class and this will become my online game journal/ blog and my teacher will be reading my excentric blog posts. so if you wonder why i've tamed my self this is why, ok, talk to you guys agian soon.