Ultimate Chicken Horse 🏆🐔🐴

Posted on January 25, 2018 by Stanley

Introduction

Ultimate Chicken Horse is a multiplayer party platformer developed and published by Clever Endeavour Games. In this game, players assume the role of one of many farm animals, and their goal is to score points by building a platform level one piece at a time, and race each other to a red flag at the end of the level.

There are many different objects for players to place in the platform level, ranging from simple blocks to deadly traps. While these objects are meant to challenge their opponents, players must also ensure that they themselves are able to maneuver about their own constructs.

Personally, I found this game to be very entertaining because the placement and orientation of the objects provided to the players can generate many interesting challenges and dimensions to the game. Oftentimes, players are “forced” to cooperate in the way they place their objects, in order for the level to be clearable (even if it is ridiculously difficult to achieve). Also, it’s just funny to see your friends go hysterical when they die to the nonsensical levels created by everyone.

Let’s take a look at 4 of the lenses that can be found in Ultimate Chicken Horse.

The Lens of Goals

The score board shown at the end of every round.

The primary goal of Ultimate Chicken Horse is very clear and simple: the player must score the most number of points against all other players. Points can be earned through several means, usually by reaching the red flag or successfully causing other players to succumb to a trap. A player wins when he either reaches the set number of points, or have the most number of points at the end of the game.

Unless everyone keeps dying (not to any traps) and never makes it to the red flag, it is always possible for a player to win the game. Winning in this game gives the player a sense of accomplishment, especially so when the level is seemingly ridiculous or near impossible to be cleared. Which brings us to the next lens…

The Lens of Obstacle

With friends like these, what could possibly go wrong…?

With an array of deadly traps and annoyances, there are many objects which can make the primary goal difficult to achieve. What’s worse is that these objects are placed by other players (uh, friends) who are out to make your life a living hell. As the game progresses, more and more objects are introduced to the level and oftentimes this result in a messy and dangerous landscape. Even your own objects can cause problems to yourself!

Nevertheless, it is almost always possible for players to find a solution to reach their goal, be it through using bombs to clear hazards or discovering alternative paths to the red flag. And this leads us to the next lens…

The Lens of Problem Solving

Players can take advantages of the objects given to them to solve problems they face.

As expected, allowing all players to add objects to the level generates a flurry of problems for one to solve. In general, one would ask: “How on earth am I going to get to the goal with so many things in my way?”

The very same objects that cause these problems can actually help players solve these problems. With strategic placing and a bit of lateral thinking, players can manipulate an object selected at the start of every round in order to solve problems they encounter.

Now, on to our final lens…

The Lens of Friendship

Wow, really? Would a game that allows us to make friends go through so much hardship just to reach a red flag actually help keep friendships?

Having played Ultimate Chicken Horse for hours end with my friends in the same room, I can safely assure you that this is a game that makes you want to play it with your friends. There’s always so much to laugh and talk about together, like how we keep dying to the same obstacles, or how did someone manage to make it through so many traps to the red flag. Everyone goes through the same level and the shenanigans created in it, and this common experience helps players maintain their friendships.

Conclusion

The idea behind Ultimate Chicken Horse is really simple, but it’s so wonderfully made and it really compels you to play it with friends. If you’re not convinced, go and watch some Let’s Plays on YouTube and watch how much fun people are having with their friends when they ~~suffer~~ play. 😃

Street Fighter V

Posted on January 25, 2018 by pzhengyu

Street Fighter V is a 2.5D fighting game developed by Capcom as their latest installation of the Street Fighter franchise. It was “released” in 16th February of 2016 but I wouldn’t call the lack of content and game modes a proper release. Despite an underwhelming start, the release of Arcade Edition exactly 2 years from its initial release date makes the game feel like a complete package.

New to Street Fighter V is a spanking new V-System that gives every fighter a unique ability, a default character roster of 16 where you get to unlock up to 28 characters with an in game currency, and more surprisingly, updates and releases of new version will also be free to existing game owners unlike older installations of Street Fighter.

Lens of Elemental Tetrad

Aesthetics

In the case of a fighting game, Street Fighter V does a very good job in making each attack look and sound like it actually hurts your opponent. The overall feel and tempo of the game has been toned down to look less like an anime and more realistic.

Arcade Edition also brought forth an updated UI with bright grandstands and lavish gold hues that makes you feel like you’re playing in the grand finals of EVO at the comfort of your basement, along with an obnoxiously loud BGM that restarts every screen transition.

Story

Street Fighter V’s story mode takes you on every fighter’s story in poorly drawn comic strips that offers cheesy anime cliches and horrible dialogue. C_rapcom pls.

Mechanics

There are tons of mechanics that comes with fighting games, but I’ll only talk about the V-System that is unique to Street Fighter V (geddit?).

The V-System is represented by the V-Gauge that has either 2 or 3 bars that players can fill up by performing V-Skills, taking damage, and landing counters, by which they can expend these bars on V-Reversals and V-Triggers.

V-Skills are unique special moves that every fighter possess. For example, Ryu gets his classic Parry, and Birdie’s V-Skill lets you litter a banana peel on the ground.
Much like V-Skills, V-Triggers are unique to each fighter and they are often used as combo extenders or to turn the tide of battle as a comeback mechanic.
V-Reversals allow fighters to perform a counter attack, often as a safe option to stop the opponent’s pressure.

Lens of Skill

In a competitive fighting game, there will no doubt be an element of skill involved in the gameplay. You wouldn’t have a button mashing novice beating a competitive player, but for Street Fighter V, the skill gap was reduced considerably to make the game more accessible to a wider audience. Combos are a lot easier to pull off, and as a consequence, it reduced the diversity and variety of play styles in Street Fighter V across novice and expert players.

In the event where having two hands at your disposal is too much of an advantage, here’s a Street Fighter V combo video played with only one hand:

Lens of Head and Hands

Here’s a theory that ties in very well with this lens, and it categorizes players into 3 archetypes:

Brains refers to the scientific player where hitbox and frame data is king, every move is calculated and optimized depending on the situation.
Heart applies to the feeling based player who relies on mind games, making reads, and baiting their opponents.
Body represents players known for their physical capabilities, where in fighting games refers to their execution and reactions.

In Street Fighter V, the skill ceiling for both mental and physical elements are very high. Hence it feels to me like the game serves as a canvas for players to achieve and strive in these aspects.

Lens of Competition

Street Fighter V is straightforward in the sense that it is 1-versus-1 and the goal is to defeat your opponent. The competitive aspect comes in when your opponent happens to be a human being who is also trying their best to defeat you. With the addition of player ranks and online leaderboards, it definitely brings out the competitiveness within players.

If self-motivation and bragging rights isn’t your cup of tea, then perhaps the prize pool of $380,000 USD as seen in Capcom Cup 2017 should do the trick. This also segues nicely to the next point.

Lens of Economy

What sets Street Fighter V apart is that new content updates such as Arcade Edition will be free for everyone who already owns the game, and with that comes the introduction of Fight Money.

Fight Money is an in-game currency that you can painfully earn through playing the game, and with enough currency, you can get access to unlockables such as maps, titles, color palettes, and new characters. That of course means that you can opt to use real world currency to unlock these items if you do not want to do it the hard way. It feels rather silly not be able to play the entire roster of characters but I suppose it is a necessary compromise in exchange for free content updates.

NieR: Automata

Posted on January 25, 2018 by RyanTWJ

NieR: Automata (PS4 Version)

SPOILER ALERT: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE AFOREMENTIONED GAME! READ ON AT YOUR OWN RISK!

NieR: Automata is an action role-playing video game developed by PlatinumGames. It was released in Japan in February 2017 and worldwide the following month.

NieR: Automata is set in a war-ravaged Earth where mankind has evacuated the planet whilst waiting for their created “androids” to reclaim the planet for them against invading alien “machines”. Players take on the roles of three androids, a combat model, 2B, a scout model, 9S, and a rogue prototype, A2. The game makes use of the Rashomon effect to tell the full story of the game.

NieR: Automata was directed by series creator Yoko Taro, produced by Yosuke Saito, composed by Keiichi Okabe and Keigo Hoashi, with Akihiko Yoshida in helming character design.

Elemental Tetrad – Mechanics

NieR: Automata has a unique game mechanic due to the daring move by the game designers to combine two genres of gameplay, namely “Shoot em up” and “Hack and Slash”. When the game first starts players are introduced to the “Shoot em up” section of the game. Players get a top down view of the protagonist, 2B, in her flight unit as she dodges incoming lasers and takes down enemies with the flight unit’s machine guns.

After a short cutscene, the flight unit transforms allowing for movement and shooting in all directions. This also allows for enemies to engage the players from all four sides of the screen. Up until now, the game is played in 2-Dimensional space.

Finally, when 2B is forced to land, the game transitions into the “Hack and Slash” genre, allowing players to play the game in a 3-Dimensional space, with greater focus on button mashing melee combat and perfectly timed dodges than shooting.

The game transitions smoothly between these two genres throughout, occasionally relying on cutscenes to do so, though more commonly by changing the camera viewing angle.

Elemental Tetrad – Story

The story follows the time-tested formula of the Hero’s Journey, very common in JRPGs such as this one. We are introduced into the world of NieR: Automata and see how the characters change with the events that occur. It is a truly emotional experience… But only for those who complete all the side quests as well. As I went through the story, I could understand what the characters were feeling, but I could not feel them myself. I believe I would have grown closer to the characters had I just been able to locate or complete certain side quests before finishing the game. Particularly, the side quests for 2B and 9S support androids, but most importantly the side quest where 9S marks 2B’s grave.

Elemental Tetrad – Aesthetics

NieR: Automata is beautifully designed, with several environments. From the City Ruins to the Desert to the Forest Castle, each of these are a feast for the eyes. Additionally, these environments are populated with their own fauna, giving the world a life of its own. However, what truly sets the mood in NieR: Automata is the accompanying soundtrack. From the peaceful melodies in safe zones, to the choir chanting during a boss fight, it is easy to hear why The Game Awards 2017 gave it “Best Score/Music”.

Elemental Tetrad – Technology

NieR: Automata does not depend heavily on technology. Perhaps the most difficult “tech” implementation would be the smooth transitioning from the 3D Hack and Slash modes of the game to the 2D Shoot em up modes, especially the modes that do not use cutscenes.

Lens of Surprise

NieR: Automata’s surprises come from the revelations in its story. For newcomers to the JRPG genre, the story is packed full of exciting reveals. For long time players of JRPGs they would have come to expect these plot twists, yet the reveals still deliver astonishment from learning new, and often dark, facts about this universe.

Lens of Fun

NieR: Automata stays fun as it breaks repetitive gameplay through its transitions to and from Hack and Slash and Shoot em up modes. This ensures that while you play the same game trying to achieve the same objective, your style of play constantly changes with the game. Each switch kept me engaged to the game, making me more eager to continue to the end, a problem I have with most other JRPGs that require grinding to attain a higher level to take on the boss.

Lens of Curiosity

NieR: Automata places you immediately into the action of a new world and requires you to process information that’s given without much context. All you know is that you are flying towards an objective, and your mission is to destroy the objective. One of the first things players would subconsciously ask themselves is “what is the objective?”. Personally, my variation of this was “what does the objective look like?” When I was attacked a giant metal arm with a buzz saw like structure for a hand, I assumed that was the objective, but this was not the case. It wouldn’t be until I faced a giant robot with two such arms did I truly know what I was supposed to best. Much like the explorers of the 16^th Century, I dug around every nook and cranny of this new world and found places that I would have never found if I had purely followed the story.

Lens of Unification Theme

NieR: Automata’s unifying theme encompasses the philosophical questions of life. The androids and machines were created with the sole purpose of fighting the war on the behalf of humans and aliens, but with the creators gone, what purpose do the creations serve? What separates the androids from the machines, when the machines have learnt to have emotions, or even when it is discovered that androids are made from the core of a machine? The story, side quests, and general setting for the game brilliantly come together to make us question this.

The World Ends with You

Posted on January 25, 2018 by Lewis

Description

The World Ends with You is an action role-playing game originally developed for the Nintendo DS in 2007 by Square Enix and Jupiter. It received generally positive reviews, and has a small cult following. Later on, a mobile port was developed in 2012. More recently, a Switch port has been announced to be released later this year.

You play as Neku, an introverted kid who has recently died and is forced into a game where he needs to accomplish missions in order to gain a second chance at life. You run around Shibuya, Tokyo achieving these objectives, and while doing that you learn more about life and other people along the way, eventually learning to interact with others and appreciate them.

It really drew me in for many reasons. The story, setting, and aesthetics immersed me in the game, and made me want to continue playing until the end. The world was interesting and always had something worth exploring. It was fun to experiment and try out new things, and test the limits of what I was capable of doing.

Gameplay video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MacsjwKETLE

Lens of Elemental Tetrad

Aesthetics

The game is done in a very stylistic, cartoonish way. It was made for the DS, which does not have good resolution, so it suits the technology pretty well. Set in Shibuya, Tokyo, the game draws heavily from the fashion of young teens. As such, it feels very unique, as it has an interesting fusion of hip hop, pop, punk, gothic lolita, and anything else which teenagers like. There is even a giant graffiti wall in the game, which has important significance to the main character.

Mechanics

The game has the player running around a fictional Shibuya completing tasks. Many of the tasks are simple such as travelling to a certain location or fighting a certain monster. Fighting is also interesting. Firstly, monsters generally do not engage the player in combat. Usually, it is the player who needs to choose to fight, and then they will enter the fighting part of the game. Secondly, the fighting is done on 2 separate screens, where the player has to control 2 separate characters. Thirdly, the player fights in a variety of ways. Slashing, dragging, poking the screen, blowing into the microphone; depending on the attacks equipped, any action could be an attack.

Story

The game puts the player in control of Neku, a player in the game conducted by the Reapers. Neku has recently died, and this is a chance for those people to gain a second chance at life. Players will have to complete tasks given to them, and will need to survive for seven days to win. However, the monsters which the reapers send to attack are special, and exist in 2 different planes at the same time. As such, Neku needs to team up with another person, which is hard for him as he is an introvert and does not like to interact with others. Throughout the game, the player learns more about this world and how things work here, while Neku learns to trust in other people and accept them for who they are.

Technology

The game makes great use of its technology. Being on the Nintendo DS, there are a variety of gimmicks which were available to it. The game makes you fight simultaneous battles, making use of the dual screen nature of the console. In addition, no feature of the DS was left unused: The touch screen, microphone, wi-fi, and even things like sleep mode were used to provide different experiences to the player.

Tying it Together

Neku is forced to learn about others and how they work and gradually accept them into his life. Similarly, we as the player learn more about this world and learn more about how the game works. The technology is introduced bit by bit, and the attacks gradually expand their variety in how to use. We also get thrown in this world and it’s varied and interesting art style, which is created from a clash between many different existing styles. In the end, it gives an experience of learning about others and appreciating them, even though they are different from us.

Lens of Curiosity

The game is set in Shibuya, but it doesn’t allow you to access most of the places. Slowly, the game expands, and you can visit more and more locations which may be familiar to you if you have been there in real life. Even if you haven’t, it is still interesting to see where can I go next. Other than that, there are a huge amount of attack powers in the game, but you can only use 6 at a time. The game encourages you to try out all of them and find some which suit you the best. In addition, using the attack powers will upgrade them, and sometimes they may even evolve into new powers! This is in addition to the game slowly unlocking new equipment with a variety of effects, and new game mechanics to alter the game.

Lens of Freedom

The game gives you an objective to complete, but other than that you are free to explore the area. To make it less daunting, the game starts out with a very limited area where the player can move around in. This slowly expands as the player completes more and more objectives and progresses throughout the game. Even not counting story progression, the player is free to play the game how they want. Free to choose their attack powers, and free to choose their difficulty, and free to choose how many or little fights they want to engage in. The game gives you the space you need to enjoy the game in the way you want to.

Lens of Challenge

The game allows the player to set the challenge at the level they are comfortable with. Firstly, there are difficulty options (easy, medium, hard, extreme). Secondly, the game allows you to fight multiple enemies in a row (normally you automatically heal after each battle, but with this you can forgo that). Thirdly, you can set your player’s level, which determines how much health you start the battle with. In addition to this, you can change your equipment easily and change your attack powers. All of this allows immense variety to the kind of difficulty you can set, so you can play the game however you want.

Deemo

Posted on January 25, 2017 by REN HANFEI

Description

Deemo is a mobile music game developed by Taiwan’s Rayark. Its IOS version was published in January, 2013, with Android version followed a month later. In 2015, its PSVita version released.

Deemo builds a quiet and mystery world for its characters, and for its players. Players have to play songs to develop the storyline and speculate the story plots from dubbed animations and tiny changes in the game’s world.

Deemo cooperates with certain indie musicians to provide exquisite original music in the game. It produces a feeling of healing, touching and peace through its music and story. It is not quite popular but has certain die-hard fans in China.

Lens of Elemental Tetrad

Mechanics

The rules in Deemo are quite simple. Players play piano songs just like playing the piano — click on certain position at certain time point. After finishing a song, accuracy rate, grade and some other judgements would be given, along with a new height of the tree, which plays a significant role and implies the total score in the world.

With the tree height increasing, the story goes on, with more songs unlocked and more rooms accessible in the world. Players can explore the rooms and unlock hidden songs as well.

Story

In Deemo, there are only 3 characters, and none of them can speak, one of them does not have a specific appearance, one of them always veils her face. The only way for players to get the story is to watch the dubbed animations, to look out tiny changes after playing certain songs and to combine them with own imagination.

The story starts in a lonely piano hall, with only a piano and a dumb man in black named Deemo. Unexpectedly, a girl falls in the hall all of a sudden. Deemo catches the girl and keeps her company with his piano melody in the following days. In the meanwhile, a sapling appears in the hall center.

Days after days, with the piano melody (played by game players), the sapling grows. Things start to change quietly in the hall. One day, a path comes into existence, leading to a small study, filled with old books and with a veiled girl seated in the midst. Other rooms become accessible afterwards. When the sapling grows into a 14-meter tree, strange broken glass appears. It never grows taller after 20m.

There is no obvious conflict in the story. Actually, no clear story is given. Events are unfolded linearly with the progress of music playing. Author tells the story slowly and imaginably, as an interaction with the players. The story tension is moderate and the imaginary space attract players further.

Aesthetics

One of the brightest attractive points for Deemo is its aesthetic, namely, its music, scene and interface.

First, as to the music, all of the piano songs in Deemo are original. Rayark (the producer of Deemo) cooperates with a number of distinguished indie musicians to provide exquisite music in the game. Music style differs from each other but matches current stroy plot, and are divided into different packages, with different illustrations.

Second, the scene in Deemo is attractive. For one thing, it combines some not fashion drawing styles like abstractionism and Baroque, creating a mystery quiet world different from common games for players. For another, every song has its own illustration, which matches the melody style and current story plots well.

Third, the interface of Deemo has achieved much praise. Its interface is simple, clean and clear. Players would feel comfortable and fluent in operation.

Technology

Actually, technology does not play a vital role in Deemo. There is no VR, no AR, no sensors and even no modelings. The most “tech” part for the game may be the beats recognition, which is set manually. Unlike common music games, it provides a long-time recognition of each beat click, giving promise to a more accurate judgement for player’s performance.

Lens of Curiosity

A most appealing point of Deemo is its ambiguous, imaginable and gradually progressing storyline.

At the very beginning of the game, the girl falls and Deemo catches her. Players just know something unusual happens but not clear about it at all. Then, the story develops with the tree grows. Some telling details emerge as well. Players play the game to know more about the story, and speculate the story from the tiny details and dubbed animations. Their curiosity on the story impels them to continue the game.

Lens of Experience

Deemo offers nice experience for players.

Psychologically, as mentioned above, Deemo provides a sense of healing and peace through its stories and its music. Different from some popular mobile games on the market which pursue high complexity and make players addicted and frustrated, Deemo is a nice way of relaxation for users.

Physically, the rules and interface of Deemo create great user experience. Some mobile music games require delicate operations, which means players would get much better experience on iPad and some other tablet computers. However, such problem does not happen in Deemo, since Deemo does not distribute certain place for certain key, but each key drops to a wide (possibly overlaps other) key range for players to click on, which made it convenient and comfortable to manipulate on phones.

Lens of Skill

As a music tempo game, Deemo definitely require certain skills.

Deemo requests basically 3 skills for players: tempo sensitivity, response agility and finger flexibility.

Moreover, as mentioned in the technology part of elemental tetrad, Deemo has a more precise judgement system on players, which means it has higher demand on players’ skills.

Lens of Fantasy

The world in Deemo is a world of fantasy with classical music, grand piano and delicate decoration. With the story developing, it shows other fatastic rooms for players.

Also, with more and more story plots emerging, the complete story emerges. Each player has his own guess and story about Deemo. Most regard Deemo’s world a dreamland of the girl or Deemo. Deemo’s world is a fantasy world in name and in fact.

Civilization Beyond Earth: Rising Tide

Image

Game Description:

A 4X turn based sci-fi game where multiple sponsors (civilizations) land colonies on an alien planet in a bid to escape a post-apocalyptic Earth. Subsequently, these sponsors compete to realize their vision of a new idealized humankind by defeating their competitors militarily or discovering and achieving one of four different philosophical objectives to advance humanity beyond its earthbound form.

Image result for civilization beyond earth rising tide

Lens 01: Essential Experience

The essence of the game is to land on an alien, unknown planet, then use its unique resources with your unique leader abilities to achieve success.

Mastery through control
- By studying futuristic technologies and making branched decisions, each civilization will attain affinity experience from one of 3 unique philosophical affinities. This affinity ultimately improves their civilization and their military units visually and game-play-wise.
Immersion
- Every turn taken brings the civilization one step closer to a new technology/civic/building/unit that could boost the player’s game-play, thus encouraging the player to use these improvements to advance the civilization to gain even more or better technologies/civics/buildings/units. This creates an effort/reward cycle that creates immersion.
Social experience
- This game implements a then new diplomacy system where different players can enter into diplomatic agreements with each other where the nature of the agreements depend on the leaders’ unique abilities and non-preset personality traits players acquire mid-game depending on their play style or immediate needs. Even the AI controlled civs like or dislike you based on these personality traits. This allows different players to enter into alliances during game-play where each player’s unique play style are apparent.

Lens 02: Surprise

The entire game map usually starts out unknown to all players and each player has limited vision depending on how many cities and units they have and where they are located. Thus, the player will inevitably occur positive surprises, like resource pods or resource rich locations, as well as negative in the form of hostile alien nests and unexpected terrain obstacles.

Lens 05: Endogenous Value

This game has 2 main forms of collectibles: artifacts and quest objectives. Collecting artifacts and activating them in sets of three gives civilizations unique buildings or abilities that give them unique advantages. Achieving quest objectives grants the player additional story information that gives additional context to the game world, some quantitative reward, and implicitly guides the player to take actions that improves game play.

Lens 06: Problem Solving

To maximize game play advantage, the player has to solve problems like where to settle cities, which technologies and civics to research and what to focus city production on. The correct decision to take is never fixed due to variables like surrounding resource nodes, each civilization’s unique abilities and what the other civs are doing.

Lens 07: Elemental Tetrad

Aesthetics
- At the beginning of the game, all civilizations start out looking like standard space explorers. As they advance technologically and devote themselves further into the in-game affinities, their cities and units visually to reflect this.

Mechanics
- To support the sci-fi alien theme, players research highly abstract technologies while fending off hostile native aliens, researching abandoned ruins that once belonged to an alien civilization and even contacting them with a contact beacon as a win condition. Due to the desire of players to focus on more than one affinity, hybrid affinities with their own perks and aesthetics were introduced in a subsequent expansion.

Story
- The story features a select few human colonies leaving behind the rest of humanity on a post-calamity Earth after an event known as “The Great Mistake” hampered Earth’s ability to support life. After they settled the new alien planet, the civilizations that sprang from these colonies pursued the ideological affinities of technological Supremacy, cultural Purity or biological Harmony to rectify their past world’s mistakes. The victory conditions of building unique affinity wonders that aim to achieve each affinity’s ultimate goal is in service to this story.

Ark: Survival Evolved

Posted on January 23, 2017 by TSTeo

Ark: Survival Evolved

Ark: Survival Evolved is an open world survival RPG based on an island full with dinosaurs. The user starts out stranded on an island and has to learn to survive on the island. As you level up, you unlock blueprints to craft equipment aiding in housing, combat and also dinosaur taming. There is no explicit goal and the player determines his own objective from building giant fortresses to exploring every caves on land or underwater and even being a dinosaur breeder. The game offers choice of official PVP, official PVE, player-owned and solo servers to let players play according to their taste.

Link to Ark:Survival Evolved game play:

Lens of Elemental Tetrad:

Aesthetics: The game is in 3D with realistic artwork ranging from the island to water effects and also heavy emphasis on limited lighting when night time comes around. This lends to the feel of actually being stranded during the first few in game days of play when you can only craft a wooden torch for lighting and have limited sight range during the nights.

Technology: Ark: Survival Evolved is made using Unreal Engine 4 to deliver realistic graphics and also has VR support. The developers also allow players to utilize Unreal Engine 4 Editor to create additional content and mods for the game.

Mechanics: The player not only has health and stamina like standard RPGs, some unique attributes to Ark includes hunger, hydration, warmth and oxygen. The game tries to include realistic aspects of life with limited technology at the start: harvesting wood and stones to make your first set of tools like hatchet, pickaxe and spear for self-defense; harvesting bamboo and wood to build your first hut; killing fishes or dodos and even dinosaurs for meat and cooking them on campfires for sustenance. As player levels or explore, they unlock blueprints for advanced technology and eventually are able to utilize modern technology like GPS, auto-turrets and electrical appliances like lamp posts, refrigerators and lamp posts.

Story: There isn’t much story other than the player being stranded on an island trying to survive. The player determines their own story be it being an explorer, a builder or dinosaur tamer. In PVP servers, there are aspects of territorial control and invading other tribe’s fort to loot their spoils or staying on the low and settling down in areas with heavy foliage to avoid other players.

Lens of Essential experience (#2):

Dinosaurs!

Ark: Survival Evolved revolves heavily around dinosaurs and mythical creatures. There are 142 different creatures reported, with 119 of them released as of this review. Some of the well-known ones included the triceratops, T-rex, mammoth, Yeti and even sea creatures like Megalodon. The different creatures have different levels of aggression ranging from passive and are okay with you getting close to extreme aggression where they will try and eat you upon sighting you. Most of the creatures can be tamed by knocking them out through tranquilizers and tamed with food. The larger creatures can be equipped with a saddle once tame to allow you to mount them. There are flying and sea-dwelling creatures, a vast variety.

Lens of Curiosity: The user starts out with nothing and can see maybe a few different creatures near their spawn location. However, survival is of priority and the player is restricted to keeping themselves alive first. The player is able to swim near the shore as much as his oxygen allows and catch fish for food. It is possible to see Ichthys (dolphin-like creatures) swimming near the shore and circling the player playfully or meet hungry man-eating piranhas that attack you. Also, you can see creatures flying about in the air and also notice that the areas you explore on feet is extremely small in comparison to the in game world. This teases the player to level to reach a point where he can survive comfortably and tame dinosaurs to let him explore the land faster making use of the speed of various tameable creatures to fly from point to point. If dinosaur taming is too tough for the player, they can unlock blueprints for the raft early on in the game and explore the perimeters of the island by sea or even check out smaller islands nearby to harvest resources or just to sight-see.

Friendly Ichthy!

Lens of Triangularity: High risk, high reward and low risk, low reward is a huge aspect of the game regardless of server choice. While the player can choose not to tame dinosaurs, the player will have limited carrying capacity and strength. This limits how fast the player can gather resources and bring back to fortify their base or further research. With creatures, players can share the load of the resources between themselves and their mounts, also, some creatures like the triceratops are capable at gathering berries, allowing them to harvest multiple times faster than by hand. Even in choosing which dinosaur to tame, to get a stronger tame, you have to be able to knock out the creature first.

One of the best tameable creature is the Giganotosaurus (players call it Gigan in game). It is 25 times more durable to tranquilizers than the triceratops at level 1, becoming even more resistant as its level increases. On top of taking a long time to tame and having to try and survive while taming it, the aggressive nature of the dinosaur maintains even after being tamed. If a player’s Gigan takes too much damage, it can go into Rage mode, flinging it’s rider off and dealing increased damage to any living things near it for 20 seconds, regardless if they are ally or foe.

Lens of Freedom (#79): Ark is open-world without an explicit goal for the player. A common way for players on cooperative servers to collaborate is through having players doing specific set of jobs. Those who are more into taming dinosaurs will help tame dinosaurs for the tribe for various purpose. Those who are interested in crafting and gathering can bring these tamed dinosaurs out to gather resources like metal, gold or oil and create building components for the builders. The players who are more interested in building can then take these components and improve the fortress to house more dinosaurs or provide more comfort for the tribe’s characters. In fact, a player can choose to do any of the above mentioned task, albeit this means that progress in any aspect will be slower since the player has to improve each and every aspect. Player made content via UE4 editor can be uploaded on Steam Workshop for downloads and it ranges from new structures to sounds and game mods.

Cruise Ship by Valoule

Lens of Risk Mitigation (#16): As much as this game has a great concept and won various awards, the developers, Studio Wildcard failed to pre-empt optimization problems and also hacking issues. The cost for the realistic graphics took a toll on how smoothly the game runs and there are various reported glitches like dinosaurs clipping through structures or the ground and disappearing or starving to death in inaccessible spots. Also the problem of hacking is not handled well enough to the point that many players have trouble keeping their progress in PVP servers since hackers can level a person’s fort in matter of minutes. While the developers sometimes do mass banning of known hackers, they have not been able to fully prevent hackers from increasing their own damage or enabling god-mode. This makes the PVP component much less enjoyable and kind of restrict the game to cooperative, private or solo servers.

Ark: Survival Evolved costs $29 on steam at its default price but there is a free-to-play, micro-transaction driven Chinese server launched by snail games China on 1^st of January 2017 at the following site: http://ark.woniu.com/

Final Fantasy XV

Posted on January 23, 2017 by chaejinkeyne

Final Fantasy XV is an open world action role-playing video game developed and published by SquareEnix for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles. The game features an open world environment and action based battle system, incorporating the ability to switch weapons and other elements such as camping and vehicle travelling.

Official Website: http://www.finalfantasyxv.com/

The Lens of The Elemental Tetrad

Mechanics: The gameplay mechanic of FFXV is an action-based battle system. It is known as the Active X Battle system, designed and directed by Hajime Tabata. When the player comes into contact with an enemy, an encounter gauge appears on screen, allowing the player to flee before the gauge fills and avoid battle. This made it easy for players who are at a low level, should they encounter a high level monster.

Wait Mode System

There are two modes that the player can choose to experience the battle system, Active and Wait. In Active mode, it is real-time, while in Wait mode, the game suspends the fight and allow the player to select their target enemy or change weapons at their own leisure within the time limit. This appeals to different types of players, and can enhance their experience.

Story: The main story plot told in FFXV is pre-scripted, however since it is an open world environment, this means that the players can progress through it at their own pace. There are also “side” stories to be discovered as the player progresses, through camping/lodgings or side quests. The side stories help to improve the overall experience of the game.

Aesthetics: The graphics in this game is stunning and realistic, the surrounding environment has its own characteristics in different areas of the map and the music creates the mood of the situation the player is in, allowing the player to easily immerse themself into the fantasy.

Technology: Most cut scenes are rendered to follow the settings of the character the player have chosen. Playable only on PS4 and Xbox One (currently) and not older consoles due to technical troubles.

The Lens of Curiosity

With the exception of the main quests to progress the game, most of the other areas of the game are not compulsory to complete. Instead the player gets to freely choose to do different things; side quests, hunts, camping etc.
The game creates the curiosity in players to want to explore the open world environment by rewarding their actions with new recipes, secret quests and additional cut scenes.

The Lens of Interest Curve

In my experience of this game, I find my interest curve constantly fluctuating above my “line of boredom”. Just as I think my interest wanes and it is a good time to break, I find myself hooked in again with new information or something else that picks up my interest again. As the game progresses, this curve is gradually increasing, making it harder and harder to stop. However, at the end, while the finale was not a huge disappointment overall, at the point I had reached the end it was not as engaging as the rest of the story had been.

The Lens of The World

The world of FFXV is similar to that of ours, relatable through the use of technology, and also similar to the previous Final Fantasy with recurring creatures, though it is not a requirement to know, can create the sense of nostalgia for fans of the Final Fantasy series.

The Lens of The Avatar

The avatar of FFXV is Noctis Lucis Caelum, heir of the Lucis Kingdom, at the same time, he is just a regular guy who likes to sleep and play mobile games. It is an ideal form where the player can be a prince to a kingdom, and also project themself onto the avatar because of his relatable personality.

Megaman Battle Network 6 Cybeast Falzar

Posted on January 23, 2017 by Drani

01 Description of the Game
_________________________________________________________________________

Megaman Battle Network 6 <Cyberbeast Falzar> is the last series of the Battle Network game designed for Game Boy Advance. This is RPG game where the player will take the role of a 6^th grade boy in the world where a virtual partner ‘NetNavis’ is essential to everyday life. Lan will work with MegaMan.EXE (a Navi combined with Lan’s identical twin-brother DNA) to stop WWW from their evil plots and destroy the dangerous Cybeasts before they destroy the Net.

*Side note: There is an alternative version with identical
storyline called Megaman Battle Network 6
<Cyberbeast Gregar>.

02 Game Walkthrough
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03 Lenses of Elemental Tetrahedral
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.:: Technology ::.

Targeted for Game Boy Advance but is able to be simulated on Windows.

Paused battle to select battle chip

Neopets

Posted on January 23, 2017 by jiayingy

Game Description

Neopets allow players to rear virtual pets called Neopets and explore the virtual planet, that Neopets inhabit, named Neopia. Players are expected to feed and care for their Neopets when they get hungry or ill. They can also interact with their pets using items such as books or toys purchased with virtual currencies known as Neopoints which can be earned through playing games.

Game Website: http://www.neopets.com/

Gameplay Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdP5J-4Vqe4

The lens of the Element Tetrad

Technology

Neopets was launched in 1999, where user can play with just a web browser and Adobe Flash Player.

The technology used was simple and remained so till date. This thus eliminates problems such as lagging and would cater to most players.

Mechanics

Neopets was targeted at kids, hence the mechanis was simple but yet is a reflection of the real world. Players will have to earn money through playing games to purchase items such as food and medicine to care for their virtual pets. Money can be placed in the bank and interest can be earned. Players are also able to build customizable houses known as Neohomes for their Neopets.

There are also different themed lands on the planet which players can explore. Each themed land has their own games, attractions and shops.

Neopia runs on its own calendar, economy and stock market.

Aesthetics

Neopets has cartoony 2D graphics that is suitable for all ages.

The Lens of Surprise

While navigating between different pages, the ‘Something has happened!’ box may appear at the top of the page randomly, but not often. It may bring unexpected fortune or misfortune upon the player or it simply does not have any impact.

Players are unaware of such a situation beforehand. Sometimes, it may bring super rare items to the players and this is where the element of suprise comes in.

The Lens of Punishment

In Neopets, there are certain items that are available for free once per day per account. If users are found to make duplicate accounts to exploit this system, users will have their accounts frozen. The items and Neopoints will not be returned.

The Lens of Secret

There are some hidden locations and gameplay in Neopets which cannot be found on the map itself. These gameplay are usually magical and can provide the user with benefits.

The Lens of Fantasy

There are many themed islands on Neopia. Each island has different attractions, shops and games. It mainly fulfills the fantasy of children whom wants to live in a fairy land, underwater or in a haunted woods.