Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Playability and Addiction Elements in Three Games

The three games I have decided to review for playability and addiction element are: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, The Darkness, and Grand Theft Auto IV.

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The first game I will discuss is Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The main reason I play this game continuity is the online play / environment. It’s nice to step out of my body after a long day at the office, being on your best behavior, to talking smack and kicking the shit out of someone who things there better then you! I have (not that I’m proud of this) 28 days, 13 hours and 47 minutes invested in my top online account. I am also ranked 287th in the world with a top level prestige (gold cross), this game also sold 3,000,000 copies, so to be ranked in the top 500 is a accomplishment I am proud of.

The other two main reasons I play this game religiously is graphics and realism. The graphics created for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare are top of the line. They are some of the best I feel, for any next generation console. The realism portrayed in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare online are by far the most realistic I have ever played. Its kind of funny, now when I see movies or military TV shows I’m like, “look, it’s a silenced MP5 with an ACOG scope”. Before playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, I never really knew anything about guns or weapons in general, but now I can almost name what type of gun is being used by the sound or how it looks.

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The second game I will review is The Darkness. This game lacks in multiple areas, but the largest area I identified is its linear approach to game play. There is only one way to play through this game and beat it. They do give you upgrades but only to help you complete the game as directed. The other two areas I noticed were graphics and game environment. The graphics are choppy at best, when you kill your enemy by ripping there heart out, sometimes you have no idea if you killed them or not, because most of the time you are forced to use your demons to kill, a major game mechanic, and a weak one at that.

The environment is 100% played in darkness, hence the name “The Darkness”, this make the play extremely dark and very hard to play! One of the mechanics used to try and help this problem is also a failed attempt. The “heat sensor vision” is like seeing the world threw the eyes of your attached demons. As stated earlier there is a good chance you are going to run into the enemy you are stalking or be seen by them and this will make it much harder to sneak up on them.

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The third and final game I will discuss the playability factor on is GTA IV. One of the reasons I have GTA IV is because of its sandbox style game play. This allows you to have as much freedom as you decided to use. There are hundreds of side missions you can decide to complete if you chose to, if not, the main story line is not effected either way. Another factor related to its playability is the online play. Rockstar did a great job in the design of the online element piece. There are over eight online modes that can be played with tones of customization options also, making online that much more fun. The final addiction element I’ll discuss is one of the larger mechanics GTA IV has worked on is it’s driving element. This is a much more specific topic that I personally find interesting and that others may not. Any car you decide to steal, buy or win have there own physics set associated with them, making different car brands more fun, hard, fast, slow, handle better, corner better, etc… increasing the need to spend more time trying to find and master all of the car types.

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