LO3 - Reviewing Clash of Clans

Review by Ellis JH Sullivan

Tested on iOS 6,7 and Android Lollipop

There is no denying that Supercell have done well for themselves,  the company has only been around since 2010 and have already made a profit of 378 million pounds in one year (2014)! Well Clash of Clans is undoubtedly one of the main reasons for this success, so much that the game has it's first annual 'ClashCon' just this October.

So I'm going to review Clash of Clans for you, if you've never played the game perhaps I can tempt you and if you have then just see whether you agree with what I have to say.

An essential part of Clash of Clans, or CoC (yes, hilarious), is platform choice. I discovered this after I decided to switch to Android earlier this year after the destruction of my iPhone, basically your account is connected to either Google Play (Android) or Game Center (iPhone) which means that if you do decide to switch then you lose everything. Besides that there is no difference between the two platforms (or at least anything noticeable).

If you do wish to join the CoC army (yes hilarious still...) then you will have to learn patience. Even more so if you are going to switch platforms, it is a strategy game which means you have to be... strategic! Strategy in this games alternates between various players, as it often does and as such there are three types of bases - Farming base, Trophy base and War base. Generally I decided the best option was to use a war base, though as you level up you will most probably find yourself alternating as you prioritise different items. The important thing about this is that other players base layouts will then affect how you play out your attacks and generally I found there are three ways of approaching a base in an attack:

1. Recognising what type of layout that particular player has and carefully planting your troops so you can obtain what you need.
2. Recognising what type of layout that particular player has and carefully planting your troops so you can take what they need (you will probably not make friends this way).
3. Randomly placing your troops everywhere and hoping for the best.

Though I noticed that the third option generally doesn't turn out too successful, there is something oddly satisfying in just going on a mental rampage and planting troops everywhere and until you've become used to the game it seems like the most logical choice.

As for story there isn't really much to go on, there is a little (sort of) story mode where you raid goblin villages. And when you first start the game this becomes incredibly useful because it is the only thing you can do to obtain gold and elixir when your 'shield' is active. When you start to get in to the higher rankings however there is not really any need for it because you're more interested in getting trophies and it isn't so much of a necessity to use your shield (unless you are farming).

LO2 - Mortal Kombat X review comparison

Mortal Kombat X review comparison

Here I'm going to compare two different reviews for Mortal Kombat X (2015), the first one being the Official Xbox Magazine review by Andi Hamilton (Issue 125, June 2015) and the second being the Zero Punctuation review by Ben Croshaw for The Escapist's youtube channel (video below).

The most obvious difference to it is the language used, Zero Punctuation heavily relies on the use of strong language to get his point across though I feel like a lot of his language comes across sarcastically; obviously it is very difficult to use sarcasm in a written format and it is generally appropriate as Xbox magazine is aimed at people of various ages where as Zero Punctuation is clearly aimed at an older audience.

Both Zero Punctuation and the magazine article mention the genre at the very beginning with Hamilton calling it "everyone's second favourite beat-'em-up", this shows another difference in the language as Hamilton begins with a subtle preference for Street Fighter. In the Zero Punctuation video however Croshaw states that "all you [Netherrealm studios] need to do is not have a story mode and we can leave each other alone." Not only is he showing an instant dislike for the games story but he is also showing that he thinks the game is otherwise good.

Neither reviews specify an age rating or who the target audience is, but they do both reference the amount of violence in the game which gives you a strong idea the game has a PEGI 18 rating and is definitely aimed at an older audience.

Though the Zero Punctuation hints at the lack of quality in the very beginning of the video, Hamilton compliments the the narrative on several occasion and takes a particular liking to the game's "almost endless depth",

LO2 - Forza 5 review analysis

Forza 5 

Because the writer uses second person, this makes the reader feel as though the writer is speaking directly towards them which helps get their opinion easily across as well as tempting the reader to agree with their opinion or play the game.

In particular, I like the third paragraph. I like this paragraph because of the language used, the writer is speaking to the target audience in a fairly relaxed (but dramatised) way. 

The phrase "Superficially speaking", shows us that the writer has a particular admiration for the way the game looks rather than how it plays. Which he then goes on to explain is because of the detail the individual cars have, this both enforces his opinion and entices the reader.

IGN Forza review

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LO1- Game Analysis: Crash Team Racing

Crash Team Racing

Tested on Playstation 2

88/100 - Metacritic

Genre

Crash Team Racing, or CTR, is a kart racing game. This game was in essence exactly the same as the Super Mario Kart series, but with the Mario team swapped with the characters from the Crash Bandicoot series.

Narrative + Gameplay

In the game's Adventure mode an evil villain called 'Nitros Oxide' claims he is the fastest racer in the galaxy and declares that he will turn the world in to a giant parking lot if he is not beaten in a game of 'Survival of the fastest'. Then the player must collect trophies and various other items before facing Nitros Oxide in a one-on-one match.

The other 4 modes are Time Trial, Arcade, Versus and Battle. All of which the character begins with a selection of eight characters, however through playing the game the player is able to earn rewards and upgrades which help them to unlock new characters.

Throughout all the modes the player's character is in a go-kart and must try and win the race. The player can collect power ups and weapons from the ? marked crates around the maps, the player can also obtain power ups from the ''Fruit Crates'' also scattered around the maps which also increase the players speed. The player can use these weapons on the other players using the analog sticks and buttons to help them advance in the race.

Characters

Like Sonic, though perhaps not to the same level, Crash Bandicoot is a well recognised franchise. So this of course also showcases typical characters of the franchise including Crash, Doctor Neo Cortex and Coco, Crash's younger sister, to name a few. On top of this are twelve more playable characters.

In Adventure Mode the main antagonist is Nitros Oxide, but the game also has four other bosses called Ripper Roo, Papu Papu, Komodo Joe and Pinstripe Potoroo as well as a clone of Crash simply named 'Fake Crash'. When the Adventure Mode is completed, all of these characters become playable in the other modes.

Target Audience

The ERSB gave this game an E rating meaning it is suitable for everyone. And whilst I agree that it is suitable for everyone I think the game is aimed at younger children because of it's comical approach. The game is also very simple to play and the unbelievably cheesy names to characters I think just make it better for younger children.

Image courtesy of EmuParadise.com

LO1- Game Analysis: Sonic Dash

Sonic Dash

Tested on Nokia Lumia 520, Windows Phone

69/100 - Metacritic

Genre

Sonic Dash, like most Sonic games, is a platform. However, unlike most Sonic Games this is an endless runner platform game. This essentially means that the player moves forward through what is a theoretically endless game world. This sub-genre of platformers was popularised by 'Temple Run' in 2011 with it's successor becoming the world's fastest spreading mobile game in 2013.

Narrative + Gameplay

In Sonic Dash, the player moves forward collecting rings and avoiding obstacles. The aim of the game is to get as far as possible without dying, using the rings the player can then buy upgrades and new characters to help them get further in the game. Something which I found quite innovative in the game were the boss battles which you don't find in a lot of other endless runners, however these boss battles don't seem to work very well with the Windows software and made the game incredibly slow.

Characters

Because Sonic is such a well known character and game franchise before you even download the game you expect some familiar faces. Of course the titular character is included, in fact the 'gotta go fast' hedgehog is (as expected) the first character you play as and then through earning upgrades you can also purchase the other playable characters which includes: Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Shadow, Blaze, Silver, Rouge and Cream.

Target Audience

The PEGI rating for Sonic Dash is 3+. However, because Sonic is such a well recognised character he is likely to be played by people of any age. And so I think the game is directed to just be generally 'family friendly', because of the characters long tenure he can be a character who is suitable for children but still has likability for adults to.

Platforms

Sonic Dash is currently available on iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

Image courtesy of Sega.com

LO1- Game Analysis: Vanquish

Vanquish

Tested on Xbox 360

84/100 - Metacritic

Genre

Vanquish is another shooter, but this one is in the third person which makes it a third-person shooter (great isn't it?). But the great thing about this game is that it is very innovative in the genre. It brings some 'beat 'em up' elements to the game, is very fast paced and has a 'sliding-boost' mechanic which, I think, is an excellent addition to the game.

Narrative + Gameplay

Vanquish is set in the far future where you play as Sam Gideon. He is an agent of DARPA, who is given a mechanical suit called the Augmented Reaction Suit (ARS). DARPA decide to send Sam on a classified mission to save Dr. Candide. This is when DARPA decide is the perfect time to test the ARS is suit which is fitted with jet boosters and various other equipment, but most interestingly it makes time slow down when the player takes a lot of damage. This not only makes it more difficult to become more damaged, but it's a cool element which fits strangely well in to the gameplay. This isn't only done when sustaining damage however, the sliding boost enables the player to slide to cover in bullet time.

Another cool element to the gameplay is the 'BLADE' which is a weapon that can replicate any existing weapon.This is another really cool addition because the weapons in Vanquish are quite unique, I particularly liked the disc launcher because it is essentially like shooting a saw blade at people and you can use it in melee attacks also. This meant that I found myself spending a lot of time, perhaps too much time, in the tutorial mode just using the sliding-boost just to shoot discs at blank walls, which demonstrates how cool these two elements combined really are as well as hinting at the fact that I need a better social life.

Characters

As mentioned before, you play as Sam Gideon, we don't actually learn much about his character besides that he is a researcher for DARPA. But, one of the first things you will notice when playing the game is the ARS (which also features on the front cover). Because it is incredibly detailed for a relatively small game.

Other characters include Dr. Candide, a scientist who is working on the O'Neill Cyllinder space station when it is attacked; Colonel Burns, a war veteran who is put in charge of a specialized task force of marine veterans called the bravo company; and Elena Ivanova, Elena is essentially Sam's guide and support throughout the game.

Target Audience

Vanquish has a BBFC rating of 15, and I think the game is actually supposed to be aimed at older teenagers. The game is action packed and though I do think that it's sometimes complex gameplay would appeal to a slightly older audiences. The comical approach a lot of the characters take seems to appeal to a slightly younger teen audience.

Platforms

Vanquish is currently available on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360

Image courtesy of segabits.com

LO1- Game Analysis: Destiny

Destiny

Tested on Playstation 4

76/100 - Metacritic

This is my analysis of the game Destiny, the information compiled in this analysis is taken from testing the game myself and doing some research in to the gam.

Destiny is a first-person shooter, which is made obvious by the typical conventions of a first person shooter. It is in a first-person perspective and you shoot things, it couldn't really be a more straightforward genre. To some extent the game is also an MMO (Massive multiplayer online), in fact you can't even play the game if you are not connected to the internet. And though you are not required to interact with other players, you often share an online server. However, Bungie (the producers) themselves call the game a 'shared world shooter', which doesn't really matter because it still means the same thing.  

In Destiny you play as a 'guardian' who is defending the last city of earth from various alien races. You are also attempting to revive the celestial being called 'The Traveller' which is supposedly keeping the city alive. As the campaign is only short (approximately 10 hours long), the game is centered more around cooperative play. And the cooperative play is great; With three worlds and a moon to choose from, the playfield is pretty big. But 'turn back' do seem to be lurking around each and every corner. 

The first thing you do in Destiny is choose a class, here you have three choices which are Hunter Warlock and Titan After choosing your class you choose your character type, this is again between three choices which are Humans, The Awoken (blue humans) and Exo (robot humans). And here is where I feel the game falls short because it has massive potential to give separate and more individualised stories to these character types and it just doesn't. However, if the campaign doesn't bore you the first time around then it does give you a secondary and tertiary opportunity to conquer the game with a different character type.

The game does also feature lots of non-playable characters, most notably your 'Ghost'. This is a small flying robot who comes from the traveller to bring you to life at the beginning of the game. It also works as a sort of control panel, allowing you to see your objectives, ride the 'sparrow' and various other little helpful actions. Another notable character is 'The Speaker' who represents the Traveler, he's essentially there to say "Thanks" at the end of the mission but he is important in terms of developing the narrative. Besides these two characters there are various others which are either part of the game's narrative or own shops and other helpful stalls in the city.

Another important part of Destiny is DLC (downloadable content), this essentially means that if you were not quite satisfied with the campaign and got bored of the cooperative play then you can pay more money for the game you already bought. So far three DLC packs have been released; The Dark Below, House of Wolves and The Taken King. The latter was particularly praised for changing the core-gameplay which was done to mark 'Year two' of the games lifecycle. Platforms Destiny is currently available on both the Playstation 3 and 4, and on the Xbox 360 and Xbox One. 

To develop the Destiny, Bungie decided to create a new proprietary engine called the 'Tiger Engine' which was made to replace the 'blam! engine' used for the Halo franchise. This information can be found here http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022106/Lessons-from-the-Core-Engine.
Destiny is well known for the excellent level of detail of everything in the world, though the game may not have the most excellent story players will find an enormous amount of enjoyment just from exploring the various worlds. For the graphics in Destiny, Bungie used Donya Labs' Simplygon tool. Simplygon themselves say that they are the "leading solution for automatic optimization of 3-D game content and Level of Detial creation", as anyone would when promoting their own product, but it becomes evident that this is true 5 minutes in to playing the game.
The PEGI rating for my game is 16, and I think this is possibly the lowest end of its target audience. I think the game is more aimed at people in their mid-20's. This is because of the fact that Bungie were most well known for creating the Halo series (now a billion dollar franchise). And as this began in 2001, Halo's core audience are likely to be in this age range and as the game employs many of the same core elements such as an AI companion, FPS, large key object, angelic type music etc. It is likely that they are bringing in a similar, if not the same, audience.

Destiny is currently available on both the Playstation 3 and 4, and is also available on the Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Image courtesy of Dualshockers.com

LO1- Game Analysis: Clash of Clans

Clash of Clans

Tested on iPhone 4S, iOS
74/100 - Metacritic

Here I shall be analysing the game Clash of Clans, from testing the game and using some research I have put this information together to describe how it effects the overall gaming experience

Clash of Clans is a strategy game developed (and published) by Supercell a game company from Finland. In the game the player is required to carefully think about its attacks and defences in order to earn trophies and advance in the game.

In Clash Of Clans you play as a clan leader who must build and upgrade his base by collection Gold, Elixir, Gems and Dark Elixir. There is also a campaign mode where the player can raid goblin villages to collect more treasures.

The main character in this game is actually the player itself, therefore there are no specific characteristics for the main character.

Other characters in Clash Of Clans, or troops, are separated into 5 categories; Tiers 1-3, Dark Barracks Troops and Heroes.Troops in tier 1-3 are bought using elixir, the rest are purchased with dark elixir. Unlike other troops, the two heroes (Barbarian King and  Archer Queen) only have to be purchased once. They can protect the base or help during attacks and they do not die.

It's difficult to say which game engine has been used to develop the game, however it was most likely made by Visa Forsten. Forsten is the companies lead programmer and has written 3d engines for 10 different platforms.

Despite their elusive engine, Supercell have cited that their game's graphics were produced in 3ds Max, Photoshop and Flash. They also stated that the code is written in Objective-C and C++.

The game has a PEGI rating of 3+, but I think the game is aimed more towards teenagers and young adults. Though the game uses cartoon type characters, I think that young children would struggle with the strategic thinking needed to succeed in the game.

Clash of Clans is currently available on all versions of iOS and Android.

Image taken from Forbes.com

LO1 - Sumo Digital business report

Sumo Digital

The company's official website

Company structure

Sumo was founded in 2003, the company has 3 co-founders. At the top is Carl Caver who is also the company’s CEO, their second co-founder and COO is Paul Porter who discovered the game business in 1998 when he wrote Predator 2 for the Comador-64, the other co-founder is Darren Mills who is also Sumo’s art director and later became the director of Sumo India. Darren Mills was previously the lead artist for Gremlin Interactive in1995 before becoming the Studio Art Director at Infogrames Sheffield House.

Below the co-founders is Ash Bennett, technical director. His career also began at Gremlin Graphics in 1989 where he was writing various games for the C64, though he later progressed on to writing games for the NES, PC engine, SNES and becoming a lead programmer for ‘Loaded’ on PS1 before finally leaving in 1996. Next to Ash Bennett is their Creative Director, Sean Millard who has been designing video games since 1993, he also worked for Gremlin/Infogrames in 1999 and became Sumo’s Creative Director in 2011. Their development directors include Gary Edwards who began programming for Gremlin in 1996, their second Development Director is Steven Zalud who has been working in the games industry since 1995 and their third Development Director is Gary Moore who has worked with companies such as Eidos and Psygnosis since 1997.Below all their directors are their general staff which includes around 260 people.

Platform Technology

Sumo have covered a wide range of platforms including but not exclusive to Xbox, PlayStation portable, Windows, Nintendo DS, and Mac OS. More recently they have been mainly involved with the flagship consoles of Xbox and PlayStation but they have also developed some iOS and Android based games including ‘Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed’.  Covering such a wide range of platforms is beneficial to a company because everyone has a preferred platform and therefore they are able to reach a wider audience which of course increases the company’s profit.

Game Types

As stated on the home page of Sumo’s website, they create “everything from driving games to platformers,” which is clear when looking at their Gaming Archive. In the company’s early years they developed various racing games (namely Sega’s OutRun for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox), they also were the main developer for the majority of the ‘Virtua Tennis’ series. Over the years they have developed various puzzle and point-and click adventures as well as more sports/ fitness games. In 2011, Sony asked Sumo to develop the third instalment of the puzzle-platformer game ‘Little Big Planet’ which was released in 2014, as well as developing a cross controller pack for ‘Little Big Planet 2’. Also in 2014, they began assisting a range of developers on ‘Disney Infinity 3.0’ which is an Action-Adventure type sandbox. It is also described as a ‘toys to life’ game which is an arising genre in the games industry, ‘toys to life’ is described as a billion dollar market yet has existed for less than five years so it is a highly profitable market for an independent company such as Sumo digital to be a part of. Sumo are currently assisting developers on Microsoft’s ‘Crackdown 3’ set to be released in the second quarter of 2016, the critically acclaimed series’ previous instalment was released six years ago so this is likely to be another profitable game for Sumo Digital.

Multi-Platform

A variety of Sumo Digital’s games are available on multiple-platforms, this is multi-platform. In recent years, multi-platform has become more and more frequent within the gaming industry. This is because of technological convergence, technological convergence is when different technologies perform similar tasks; in the gaming industry this means platforms are able to support the same games. This is again highly beneficial, in terms of profit, to Sumo because it means they are able to reach a wider audience. There are of course some boundaries. For example, you are not likely to find ‘Xbox Fitness’ in the Google Play Store. This is simply because mobile devices are yet to have the technological capabilities require for this game. In order to reach certain platforms, such as iOS or Android, additional development must be done for a game which supports these platforms. When developing ‘Sonic & All-stars racing transformed’ in 2012 this is exactly what Sumo did, and in 2014 the iOS/Android versions of the game were released.

Regulatory Bodies

In the UK, publishers are not obliged to submit a game for classification. However, many publishers may find it difficult to sell their games. Sumo is not a publisher so they do not decide whether it requires a classification or not and in most cases will just be instructed what the certificate should be. Since 2010, PEGI has provided the primary classification system for most publishers. The majority of Sumo’s games are aimed towards family or child audiences, their most common PEGI rating is in fact a 12+. Their most recent exception is ‘Crackdown 3’ which is rated PEGI 18.

Development Software

Development software is a program which enables Sumo to program, test, and fix bugs when creating and maintaining their games.