Assignment 01

Shaiful Amin

Assignment 01- Game Deconstruction

XB1000

Unique Selling Points

Diablo III is an action role-playing video that was developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard is a company itself an American video game developer and publisher founded on February 8^th 1991. What draws the players to play Diablo III is one of the visual art and concepts, the voice actors, the theme, background sound quality were really done fantastic. The game has hack and slash combats, unending loot items and new gameplay experience. The game allows for the player to choose any of the five classes which are Doctor Witch, Barbarian, Wizard, Demon Hunter and Monk, each of them has different abilities and unique style for their battle. Each of the class has its own narrative linear open ended gameplay in order for the player to understand the characters plot and their personal background.

The game does offer a cooperative without any hassle where they can play with any other players regardless of class selection. It can also be played on solo; everyone can progress at their own free time, or groups of friends. There range of difficulty that can be set whatever the player or a group of friends desires; there are 5 difficulties which are Easy, Normal, Nightmare, Hell and Inferno. The game has simple unique intuitive, a tutorial and easy learn to play the game, it’s fun and addictive. Diablo III has 4 Acts as player progresses them in each order in order to unlock the next Act.

Also the Diablo III have other merchandises such as the strategy book, this allows the player to understand the skills and tactics in order to help the players to play well in professionally. There are other promotions such as gaming mice and mat, first of the entire mouse is developed by steel series, it has 7 ergonomically placed mouse buttons, it has excellent mouse speed and its precision, with a long ‘Diablo’ illumination. Diablo has many ways to capture the audience and the media’s attention because of Blizzard is a huge company that owns World of Warcraft, the players from there can also play Diablo III since the players are loyalty to the company, it is most obvious the players  from WOW are willing to buy Diablo III.

Gameplay Mechanics and Dynamics

1.      Gear up

This where user gets to see the characters gears and their stats, each of the gear have their own stats and abilities. There eleven gears which are head, shoulder, bracer, gloves, belt, pants, boots, ring, amulet, primary weapon and secondary. Once player finds gear needs to check on the stats which comes along with that gear such as dexterity, strength, intelligence and vitality. For e.g. take as the demon hunter, this character requires more dexterity because purpose of this character is to avoid the enemies physical attacks, the demon hunters are good at range attacks so therefore dexterity is for required. The players have to be careful of the items that they equip, the only way to know this is to look at the gear stats, if the colour shows green with numbers it means it will additionally benefit the character, however if it’s red it minus then it will be the opposite instead of getting benefits the character will lose some stats.

2.      Inventory and Items

This is the characters inventory, where it allows them to carry their items while they explore the place or city. There are all kinds of items the gears, crafting books, potion and crafting materials. When player kills a mob sometimes they drop items and only player will get to see the item drop if the game was in co-op mode, however if the players drops an item on the floors with near players it will show up on their map.

3.      Stats

Diablo offers a stats system so they keep up to date. The purpose of this is to show the progression and development of their characters such as physical defences, attack speed, critical hit chance, life regeneration and many others. The stats can only be changed if the gears are changed or equipped a different gear. The more number is increased on those stats the more the character gets developed depending on the gears. Sometime players will need to trade stats in order to improve others, so the player can balance their character stats. Another way to improve these stats is change display rather having numbers, they should put bar it makes a lot easier where the players at and visual makes more clear instead of having numbers.

4.      Heads Up Display

This is where all information are for the characters skills and life. The red ball represents the characters life and will show the mobs how much damage inflicts on the character or the life bar can upon characters head. The opposite of that ball is the characters mana. Mana can be reduced if the player uses special attacks, mana can regenerate from player by using primary physical attacks. Each of the characters mana has different design, colour mana system works different way, like Barbarian the only way for this class to get mana is to keep attacking mobs otherwise mana will start reducing. Now for the wizard is different their mana automatically regenerates but only can be reduced if player uses wizard special attacks, so once again mana works different for each class.

Platform Choice and Impacts

Diablo III is currently for PC but Blizzard is developing for the PlayStation 3 and 4 the company should also focus on other console, because not all players will have same console, in benefits for the game will have more community, increased sales figures and capture audience attention. There is other comparison that affects Diablo III, other titles are Torchlight, Dota and other rpg games. The  Diablo III will have an infliction upon other games, Diablo ne

Bibliography

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(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.techspot.com/products/mice/steelseries-diablo-3-mouse.82187/

Dorea2009. (2012, december 18). Ebay. Retrieved from http://compare.ebay.co.uk/like/200769119558?var=lv&ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar&adtype=pla&crdt=0

            Left 4 Dead 2

Introduction

Left 4 dead 2 is a survival horror FPS (first person shooter), it is a single-player and multiplayer and it is developed by Valve Corporation. This game can be played with 4 human playable or computer-controlled survivors against the hordes of infected. Normal infected are controlled by the AI, human players can control up to four special infected player (in versus). The key to this goal of left 4 dead for the survivors is to help and work as a team make it through level to safety.

Game Mechanics and Dynamics

In this section were going to talk about how the gameplay mechanics and dynamics work in Left 4 Dead 2. This game comes with 13 campaigns, each campaign comes with 3 maps and most of others come with 5 maps. There are 4 level difficulties in this game that goes in order:

Easy – This difficulty is the easiest of the four. This mode is recommended for the new players who are not familiar with the gameplay.

Normal – Normal mode is balanced for the player and gameplay, as player progress it gets little difficult in naturally.

Advanced – This mode is for experienced player. It also requires high level of competence and care. If the player is not careful, it can make hard for your team as things can get tough. Especially friendly fire it has more chances of taking serious damage to other player.

Expert – This is the most difficulty of the four. In this mode standing still is an almost guaranteed way to be killed. Moving on may help little but need to be extra precaution. The player must be prepared, ready and anticipate anything.

Horde – Group of zombies will try to take the player down. The four survivors’ must be careful what they do or move about in certain areas.  Take example at a metal detector, if a player walks through, it will attract the zombies and will try to attack the survivors.

Special infected

The Special infected are more mutated and they are stronger than the regular infected. Each generally has a unique ability that a survivor cannot face alone, making challenging and it is based on teamwork testers in this game. But will going into depth about these special infected what they are and what they do:

Boomer – its advantages by vomiting at the survivors it temporarily blinds them and it draws regular infected to attack them. But the disadvantages at distance he is not much of a threat and very vulnerable.

Smoker – The smoker is more of an ambush type that can strangle the survivors with its long tongue. Advantages The Smoker can drag the player with this tongue towards himself if the survivors are far distance. But the disadvantage once the infected have captured with his tongue he remains stationary cannot move from that position.

Hunter – The Hunter is very fast and has ability to jump wall to wall. Additionally he can pounce and pin down one of the survivors. The maximum damage can do up to 25 pounce damage depending how high he lands onto the survivors. The higher he pounces the more damage hunter will do, that is the huge advantage for the hunter to deal with survivors. Disadvantage when the Hunter crouches down in ready to pounce, it growls, which gives the enemy position away to the survivors.

Charger – The Charger’s main attack is charging forward and bash into one of the survivors. If the attack is successful, the charger will grab and carry a survivor while knocking down the other survivors if they are in his path. The charger secondary attack which melee does a quite bit of damage and can easily take out the survivors if they are on low health but it does give the advantages for the charger. The only disadvantages is once the Charger charges it can only charge toward that direction and if he misses it takes time to reload his charge before attack again.

 Jockey - Jockey is very small infected it can attack the survivors by clinging on survivors head and literally riding while attacking. One of the advantage is that jockey can ride survivors into the dangerous situation for e.g. like near to the witch. The only disadvantages is Jockey can easily get killed because it has low health and can be killed in mid-air if the survivors melee right time

Spitter – She has the ability to spit a green ball acid from long distances, which hitting the ground and expand into big puddle and damage any survivors who crosses it. Advantage of spitter  as I mentioned earlier she can spit far distance. The second if hunter pounces and spit upon that survivor at the same time, will deal massive damage. Disadvantage is spit ball takes time to recharge.

Witch – The Witch appears few times in per campaign, they also be in random place. She is the second boss which is not playable and it is one of the disadvantage. However if the survivor makes contact with the witch by shooting her, going near her, Witch can incapacitate one of the survivors who ever startled the Witch.

Tank - The Tank is first boss and can be playable. He is the strongest of all special infected; he can run fast, smash or move huge objects out of the way. Tank does have large amount of health and players will able to play with the tank. Disadvantage is Tank has rage meter, what it means tank must keep the pressure on the survivors by attacking however if not the meter will reduce and player will lose the control of playing the tank.

In Left 4 Dead 2 there are 7 modes of gameplay user can play here are the modes below:

Single Player – Single player is an offline campaign game with AI controlled teammates

Campaign – campaign can be played with single player or co-op up to 4 players in campaign

Mutation – Mutation is set modified games and is replaced by new a mutation by each week following on the blog-post every Friday.

Realism – realism mode recommended for experienced players, realism campaign follows normal campaign in terms but make things harder for the survivors and it is bound by realism rules. Here are the examples:

·         The survivors will not have any outline and it will be required to stick with the team or you can easily get separated by your team

·         Beware of the witch, as in realism she can kill a single survivor with one hit

·         Common infected take more damage and body shots are less effective

·         Survivors will have to examine the rooms properly items will not glow so therefore you must search the room carefully

Versus – Each versus consist 2 turn. One team play as survivors and other team play as special infected. When the turn ends the team switch sides. Whichever the team gets most point that team will play as survivor next round.

Realism Versus – It is same as versus but it has slightly changed the realism rules, same rules as realism mode but you will be playing against human players.

Survival – Each survival match starts with their own setup time, allowing the players to scour the map for useful items. The team takes turn playing the survivors and the goal is to beat others team’s survival time.

Achievements - There are 69 achievements, half of them can be unlocked playing through single player and other half can be unlocked playing in multiplayer

                                         Graphic User Interface (GUI)

1.)    As you can see in first person (FPS) view, player can see other survivors are attacking group of infected.

2.)    The green bar you see it’s your health bar (you get health from 100 hp at start)

3.)    On right middle of middle of the interface can see the equipment’s the player will have

4.)     The last you have picture icon so you can tell who are the players playing the characters.

                                        

                                

                                 Weapons and Ammo

Ammunition piles (known as Ammo) can be found in safe rooms and they are scattered somewhere else throughout the game. The Tier 3 weapons like Grenade launcher and M60 are not resupplied. 

In this picture we can see lots of weapons but they are different class of weapons. Like Tier 1 Its just basic standard weapons, Tier 2 is more of advanced weapon and has faster fire rate than Tier 1. Tiers 3 are powerful weapons and they are limited ammo and cannot be resupplied.