Comparison of 2 games

Dark Souls and Skyrim

Dark souls and skyrim are both Action, role playing games but with many differences, the differences in both games is what makes them lovable and still on of the greatest games to be played today. One notable difference that people love about each game is that you can redo a level or mission in skyrim and make it appear like you first went into that level again but in dark souls if you fail or die from a certain mission (or boss) the game remembers and takes all of your souls (experience) and humanity (lives) and the NPCs you attacked will constantly will attack you. This is why both games are loved because people love the hard difficulty that dark souls comes with even from a simple enemy where you may let your gaurd down and skyrim if you made a mistake or massacred a town you can just re load the game to your last save point.



Dark Souls                                                                                                    Skyrim



 As you can see from both games have a soldier as a front cover of both game cases but the differences in both is that one is a more nordic time (skyrim) and the other is a medievil knight (Dark Souls). From looking at the dark souls cover if you have played the game and aquired either the armour set or sword/shield of artorias you can see that the knight in this cover is him whilst the dovakin is the cover of skyrim. On the background of dark souls you can see souls of other knights who may be a very important part of the overall story and because they look like souls is a reference to what you collect in the game (souls). On the skrim cover it is the nord dovakin on a rock with a trail of faint mist and a dragon tail rapping around him what this could mean is that he is the only one who can stand against the dragons as he is the only one in that cover image.

  As you can see from looking at these two players who are controlling the main character dark souls players sword is positioned differently to that of Skyrim as the sword is either in his hand but at his side or over his shoulder. The shield is positioned the same way as it looks as if none of the weaponry or shields are completely in his line of sight that skyrim seems to be sporting when in first person view. Skyrim has both 3rd person and 1st person and when in 3rd person you can see the dovakins weapon either to his far right (as seen in the image on the right) which can't possibly be seen as well as it does in first person, when you are in first person you can see your hands right in fron of you as if you have your hands in front of your face. The same is said when you have a weapon in hand and instead of having your arm resting with your weapon by your side either in battle or a casual stroll instead you have your weapon right in front of your face where a normal persons hand would get exhausted from holding a weapon in tyhat angle if you haven't taken a battle stance as first person view doesn't seem to support instead it saupports as if you are standing perfectly straight up. In dark souls when in battle or on a casual stroll through zombie/ demon lane you are always sprting your weapon either at your side and over your shoulder no matter what weapon you have minus the crossbow and bow. Dark souls has no first person view but only when you use binoculars (even though it is best not to use them in battle) so I can't really compare the full battle systeem of first person view on that part exept that even though skyrim was made using motion capture for a lot of the game including the battle system they didn't get the full effect for first person view as the camera is in a still motion and dark souls even though it was mostly made mostly on PC animation it has captured the full effect of real life terror and a real life battling as most people with swords with be sporting thier shield more than a sword to protect themselves from eminant death or failure.

The way to go about things in skyrim and dark souls is completely different as when you first start in skyrim you have to first start by doing a few of the main quest missions before fighting any dragons and getting the words of power and you need to be a certain level to start other quests or covernants. In dark Souls when you first start the game you can pretty much go anywhere you want and take any shortcut you want which means completely missing most of the main quests and also jumping into big boss fights at level 1. Skyrim does not have cutscenes or any form of cinematic the only thing it does have to get close to a cinematic is a animated character talking to you or moving somewhere that is part of the story and corisponding with your question/answers. Dark Souls has got cinematics/cutscenes when you meet certain boss fights, when you start the game and when you end the game, when you talk to the NPCs they will be animated just like skyrim and corispond by what you said and what you do aswell.

Skyrim is influenced by the viking era such as the clothing, the icy mountainous plain, the way they interact and talk, the taverns, the bards and many more bits to link it to the viking era. Skyrim has many attributes of the elder scrolls franchise bult into it aswell such as the start classes of nord, dark elf, breton and so on.
Dark Souls is a game that was insperated from the medievil times and that of undead zombie myths as those undead that lose their mind go crazy and kill on site either it be with there bare hands or witth the medievil theme with a sword or bow. Dark souls is more insperated from Demon Souls (its predicessor) as that game is simular to the medievil zombie apocalypse that is namco bandia soul series.
Dark Souls and Skyrim are both in equally as fantastic as each other and are both played as regularly as each other but a lot of people don't enjoy dark souls as they do Skyrim because in Dark Souls you die and die again over and over because of these over powered bosses or because you let your guard down on a simple enemy and then you lose all of the souls you created and the item called humanity that gives oyu your human form with skyrim if you die it is simply game over and then you are asked to load to the point you last saved oyur game and dark souls has no such function as Dark Souls wants you to live with the mistakes that you have caused. the simualries is only in 3rd person view as dark souls has no first person and they both have the same type of attack patterns when the main character is concerned and they both have character customizations along with changing the armour set as much as you want. The audiance that appeals to Dark Souls are those that have patience and enjoy the mysteries that the game brings whilst people who play Skyrim dislike that and prefer to rush things and have the information given to them in all sorts of layouts either it is from the main menu screen or from a character telling you.

Criteria 2+4 game review

Dark Souls Review



PRAISE THE SUN!!!! Dark souls a dark, mysterious and a wondrous game in terms of beauty where you traverse the land known called lordran as you must full fill an undead prophecy to light the bonfire and bring the light back to lordran before the darkness consumes all. 

Then this game first came out the developers said that you will prepare to die when facing the horrors that lie in store for you within the game and those who got this game before the UK release drowned in their horror as those who had online on their Xbox or PS3 had to face a level 711 NPC phantom that invades your world every so often until the release date of dark souls was finally upon them.

Dark souls has many lores and quests and even questions that this game would like you to find out for yourself except for part of the mission such as ring the bells, get the lord vessel and eventually defeat the lord of the sun. The problem which some players may get annoyed about is that the game doesn't tell you where to go or who to kill such as after ringing the first bell people don't know where to go to ring the second bell. The game prefers it to be like this as it gives you more freedom to explore and learn all on your own and come across new ways to get to certain areas. There is a bigger story to this game however as you come across certain people who give you very useful information to the story and even the layout of a lot of envirements tells a story of what happened to a certain god or how this person may have died.

As you come across certain characters such as Solaire of astora (who is the most important NPC who some people would say) you will be able to find their summon mark in a certain area near a boss battle. What these summon marks do is allow you to bring an NPC to your side to help defeat a boss. Even this online feature has allowed the player to put down their own summon sign for other players to see in their world and to summon you to help in their dilemma  When you have online and you just want to play around in lordran you may come across a blood stain or 2 and this blood stain will allow you to see how a player died in that spot and I have got to tell you there has been some really funny deaths and even suicides. As solaire would say

• "We are amidst strange beings, in a strange land.
• The flow of time itself is convoluted; with heroes centuries old phasing in and out.
• The very fabric wavers, and relations shift and obscure.
• There's no telling how much longer your world and mine will remain in contact.
• But, use this, to summon one another as spirits, cross the gaps between the worlds, and engage in jolly co-operation!"

• "Of course, we are not the only ones engaged in this.
• But I am a warrior of the sun! Spot my summon signature easily by its brilliant aura.
• If you miss it, you must be blind!"

The game mechanics such as swinging your, using a bow and using your magic is very intriguing as you put the characters weight into how he strikes such as a heavy and light attack to deal with certain enemies and how you you need to think on your toes whilst doing these attacks as the enemies tend to follow on with their long range, heavy attacks with even greater force especially if you are out numbered. 

The magic system has 3 types of magic users pyromancers (who wield all kinds of fires with their gloves), Sorcerers (who wields staffs to cast their sorceries)  and those that still have faith in the gods (who wield the magic of the gods in a.... doll made for children....).

The weapons in the game come in all kinds of varieties such as Daggers, Straight swords, Great swords, Ultra Great swords,  Curved swords, Katanas, Curved great swords, Piercing Swords, Axes, Great axes, hammers, Great Hammers, Fist weapons,  Spears, Halberds, Whips, Bows, Great bows and Crossbows. 

During gameplay you can make a type of role play character from different games, anime/manga or any other such character you may know and because you can make your own character to maybe even resemble him in character creation you have tons of weapons to choose from and what manner of spell caster you wish to be. You can even if you so choose to make the story as you go along such as you could become the furtive pygmy and play as him through out the game simply by dressing as him and using his type of magic set thanks to the Artorias DLC which adds in more magic for you to use in both pyromancy and Sorceries.

The character designs even though a lot of them are actually in armour, or a cloak are very well done as a lot of thought has gone into a lot of them such as the elite knight armour as it shows a lot of colours and shows a lot of detail and especially the ornstein armour with its marvellous lion helmet to the theme of the colour to resemble a lion.  

 Some people who first play this game sometimes give up on the game because it is either stupidly difficult with the bosses (I would know because I was stuck on the first boss for a month till the patch came out), some don't like the storyline as it seems to know have one layed out for you and that just leads to random roaming without knowing what to do. After the patch 1.02 came out for dark souls everything got a bit more easier for players even though it is still a game for you to prepare to die in as most bosses, enemies will still surprise you in certain areas even if you have played the game over and over again. 

The graphics of the game is absolutely spectacular especially when you aquire the binoculars as you can see the beauty of the city of anor londo or other areas that have awe inspiring beauty. The graphics of the game really brings it to life either you are in a dark cave or in the suns brilliant gaze as this game in on both the xbox 360 and pS3 graphics card (also the Ps3 Blue-ray feature) really boosts the quality and allows the makers of the game to add more detail as they have done for this game. 

The music track of Dark souls such as the nameless song( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvvFnR0kJFw ) really makes this game worthwhile to play as nameless song really works in certain areas   and the rhythm of the song makes you want to listen for as long as it is played. the ornstein and smough battle music( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nsps0I58yUM ) is especially thrilling as you fight this boss battle as it works in synch on how this boss battle is played such as this song is rather fast past and quite edgy as is the fight against these two bosses.

My entire thoughts on dark souls from the graphics, the soundtracks, gameplay, animations and storyline is pretty good as it has shown to make people think more on their toes and not have people give them the answer such as the quests, storyline and your main objective objective which also means that the developer wanted the players to be more free to do as they please within the game. The animations I believe may need some work as for one their arn't many animations in the game except to walk and run and also attack (which is understandable as everyone in the game is either a hollow or a monster). The storyline I rather enjoy as I like to both re-enact a dark souls character role as I play and find the hidden stories such as the broken pendant and the true identity of the god of war. 

My verdict of dark souls is a 9/10 as it may have a few flaws it is still a great RPG game to play and to role play in so as they say have fun and join in.....

crit 4 Be able to respond to media products

Genre

GTA: Is a action/3rd person free roaming shooting game and driving catagory.

Games are devolping and changing to multiple genres to better fit and to better get more costomers to play and buy the game so they come up with new genre mixes such as an RPG/Sports game, Action/adventure, action/first person and many other combined genres.

Classification has always been a bother since man became more creative in music, gaming, artistic style of clothing and even how one would speak. Even though a lot of us do classify each other as different we also classify a person on thier nature such as how they project their personality and their attitude towards others and to yourself.

When people buy a game they normally would just buy role playing games or action games and others such as myself don't bother with Sports games such as the Fifa series or an NFL game. I do like racing games but they are the only sports game i do like same for other people aswell as they may hate sports games but only buy the FIFA series because they may like football but that is it.

as i stated in the second paragraph games are now becoming more genre based as i play an RPG game and it may contain a new type of sports game of their own such as final fantasy 10 has blitzball which you can play any time along through the game. If a person heard you play a certain game or if you play a second installmant with out playing the first installment such as if you played dragon age 2 and not dragon age 1 than people will think badly of you or say that you are a complete idiot for not starting with the first installment.

Task 2-genre

Objective- to devolop your understanding of indentification of generic types and to apply this to examples.

What to do

Pick between 3-5 games- Prince of Persia series , Final Fantasy series, Call of Duty series, Dark Souls and Tomb Raider series.

for each think through the narative structure, how you control your avatar and how the game handles- In the Prince of Persia series it is a third person view game with a linear system with a lot of acrobatic traveling for the main character and to me the game handles as awesome as all the other prince of persia instalments but for the animation it was on low fps with a slower clock speed which was improved as each installment came out.

Final fantasy first started as a 2D game with a over head camera as all 2D games but when final fantasy 7 came out it was introduced as a third peron view 3D game along with the later installments. Final fantasy 7 and above usually have a battle screen, over world map and field map which you can switch to at random times. How the avatars are controled are different in all three screens as you just simple run around overworld map until either battle screen or field map, in battle screen you click on certain words such as attack, magic, summon and item which will either attack them or go into another analogue box for you to choose which magic, summon or item to use. In the field map which is a town or place that the avatar is visiting you again just run around pick things up and even talk to people. Final Fantasy handles the same from final fantasy 1 to 6 which is the 2D version and final fantasy 7 to 13-2 handles the same way aswell.

Call of duty is a first person viewing shooting game which is mostly used for online gameplay but also still has a storyline aswell. How the avatar is controled is by moving the avatar from one destination from one location to the other and also shooting one person from the next as you go along with an array of weaponry. How this game handles is with

Dark souls is a third person view Role Playing/Action sandbox game where the character/avatar has to play the role that all undead must play. The controls of the avatar of dark souls is open world where you can both travel and fight on the same screen.

Tomb Raider is a third person action adventure game where the character plays her role by discovering new tombs and uncovering new mythological civilisation such as thors hammer to king arthurs excalibur. The avatar or lara croft is handled just like most other action adventure game as lara croft can jump, run-sprint and everything else most action/adventure games do. How Tomb raider handles is exactly like its predecessors

Then work out how it fits into different genre "boxes" by thinking about the key reference points of time, location, iconography and how you actually play the game. use your notes on classification and genre to help you do this-

narative   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLaCmCxb4tA
Dark Souls

• The idea i got from the Intro is how the game began and came to the conclusion from where you start. This Intro to me seems more like an inigma as it only talks about the begining on how the gods began and formed the world in thier image and the point on what caused everything to fall apart.
• The function that the begining narative has on the entire game is what are these lord souls, who has these lord souls and what the world will be like before you come into the gameplay and what it is you start off as.
• The main narratives of this game is quite complex as the only characters in this intro are characters you never see except for when you defeat them .At the end of a cutscene you see a woman hovering over a dead corpse who people speculate (the corpse) as the main character you control. After the speculating cutscene you see the main character being in a jail sell for a strange reason with chained up zombies and a key is trown into your cell by an unknown knight and once you meet up with this strange knight he tells of the story that all undead must take to save the world and bring fire back to the world (which this game is specualting to).
• The main agents for this cutscene are the three first named gods that came from the flame; nito the first of the dead, the witch of izalith and Gywn the lord of sunlight as the narrator says there name in this cutscene and also insinuating that they have some importance to the story.
• From watching all of the cutscene again and again and watching other programs that try to be mysterious it has made me think that dark souls intro is original and not a formula as no other program such as doctor even dark souls predicessor Demon Souls can't even compete at being mysterious or an enigma as Dark Souls.
• Looking at the structure in more detail it details how the three gods changed and formed the world to how they wish but soon lose everything they have made to the darkness even at there attempt to re kindle the flame but fail and when some humans die they come back as a undead zombie but with their humanity intact. The reason why i think the introduction cutscene is structured this way is because it wants you to think and figure out the plot of the story as the cutscene plays on and what type of era you will be set in and the type of enemies you will and won't come across.
• The narrative is being presented in an episodically way as it first starts off saying how the dragons ruled the earth in darkness, then it goes to talk about the flame that sprouted and the gods who were born from it, then it goes to how the gods defeated the dragons and became the rulers of the earth and how the world is back to being in darkness and the undead that come in it's wake.
• There is only one narrator in this story and the narrator is also very important to the story so that is why only one is displayed throughout this opening cutscene.

Semiotics

Rose:
Conatation- When I see a rose I think of beauty as you smell the brilliant scent that the rose gives off and that of a brilliant combined colour of red and green that seems to makes girls tremple with happy emotion.
denotation- a rose is a red soft flower with a green thorny stem that can easily prick you if you are not careful.
signify- A Blood red flower with a perfume like scent but with thorns that can easily prick you
signified- A rose means love and romance as it is normally added in with relationships and romantic partnerships

Rainbow:
Conatation- What the rainbow makes me think is that with 2 opposite and different weathers merging into one you can get something as beautiful as a rainbow as it shines in the brilliant sun and dense rain.
denotation- A rainbow is an amount of colours that shine in a low oppacity when it rains and the sun are out simultaneously. The colours in a rainbow is red, yellow, pink, green, orange, purple and blue.
signify- A combination of coloured lines can represent a rainbow. the multiple coloured look also is a sign for the gay pride march
signified- A rainbow can represent good fortune and beauty with the cobination of the rain and the rays of sunshine

Peace sign:
Conatation- What the peace sign makes me think is that it is a backwards swear sign so since it is a backwards swear sign it makes me think it has something to do with peace or happyness.
denotation- The peace sign is someone who gets there two fingers closest to there thumb and using the palm side of your fingers to show that you come in peace.
signify- A hand sign symbolising peace and victory as winston churchill started the meaning of and the hippies changed it to peace in the 1970s
signified- What the peace sign signifies is that of surrender and that of a peaceful transaction between two individuals as they talk for a peace treaty.

Alan wake poster:
Conatation- What the alan wake poster makes me think is that a man must brave the darkness and seek the light as he battles the dark forces that lur within.
denotation- This poster is of a man at night time in a forest with a brilliant shine overlapping him and making the man in the forest appear as nothing but a shadow. in the name of Alan Wake it shows as if it is a lightsource and in the A part of wake you see the same man as a shadowy figure holding a torchlight whilst it is switched on.
signify-A man walking away from the light and into the dangerous dark forest with his torch in hand as he finds the mysteries within.
signified- What this signifies is that Alan Wake has to brave the darkness and understand what has happened and what is going on as he uncovers truths and secrets buried deep in the darkest place.

Lego indiana jones poster:
Conatation- To me this looks like a childrens version of a man going around the lego world universe whilst he uncoverse the truth and secrets of the world as he looks like a type of adventurer.
denotation- This poster shows of a 3D lego character holding a whip in a type of stance and as a background is a world map with the description below stating all three films all in one game.
signify- A lego version of indiana jones showing his whipping skills with a world map background
signified- What this signifies is that Indiana Jones has been turned into a lego version for 3 years and above to play and enjoy the lego filled world.

Bioshock poster:
Conatation- When I first look at the cover of Bioshock 1 I get the feeling and idea that there is a type of longing or of some sort of bond as you see 2 hands trying to either claim each other or something else. The clock gives me the idea that time is of the essanse and not much time is left till you-save the world- so to speak.
denotation- this poster shows of 2 hands one looking younger and another older trying to grasp something and the background is that of a semented wal that looks stained and worn out by years of dampness with a clock situated in the middle.
signify-  two transparent hands trying to reach for each other as one is a small childs hand and another is an adults hand in a dank and dreary place.
signified- What this signifies is that the main character has to save that girl from her fate as she is to play a dangerous role of collecting peoples blood whilst there is danger nearby.