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P3-A,B,C,D,E,F,G

Grand Theft Auto Reviewers Review

 





P3A-Genre

Both IGN and The Telegraph agree that the genre of GTA V is an action-adventure game in their descriptions for it, for example in IGN it says "I flew a plane into another plane, fpught the crew, hijacked the thing, and then parachuted out and watched it crash into the sea to escape death at the hands of incoming military fighter jets", while in The Telegraph it says "After stealing some precious weaponary for a jewelry store heist from a moving van, I find myself under the attention of the local constabulary". These are all elements that you would find in an action-adventure game which is the overall genre of Grand Theft Auto V. The YouTube reviewer Jeremy Jahns also talks about how the game is an action game when he touches upon the organised crime that is within the game, however, he also calls the game an open world game due to the size of the map.

 

P3B-Target Audience

Both IGN, The Telegraph and Jeremy Jahns say the target audience is people who enjoy to play action games due to them discussing the genre of the game in detail. Jeremy Jahns also picks up on the fact that the game with all its missions and side missions as well as other things combined is a very long game to play meaning, that it is not a game for casual gamers but for more hard-core gamers.

 

P3C-Narrative/Storyline-P3D-Characters

In IGN the narrative is focused on the three characters in the game, Michael, Trevor and Franklin. It describes the characters of the three men and talks about their personalities and differences as well as giving them a little back story. It also mentions the fact that the plot of the game is fairly crazy and is open to what the player wants to do whether that is off track or not. The Telegraph also massively focus on the three main characters within the game and once again describe what their situation is within the game, they also compare the characters now to past characters that have been in previous GTA's. Jeremy Jahn the YouTuber talks about the fact that the storyline is based on the player completing missions based on crime and how acts of revenge are frequent within the game, he then goes on to describe the three characters in the game just like IGN and The Telegraph. The main thing that appears when Michael, Trevor and Franklin are talked about is how different their personalities are and how different the lives they live are.

 

P3E-Gameplay

When it comes to gameplay The Telegraph talks a lot about how the gameplay has been massively improved from GTA IV, it mentions how the driving is a lot better in GTA V touching up on things such as the car handling being much sharper. The Telegraph then goes on to praise a lot of other gameplay within the game that has been improved since GTA IV, including the gunplay and the fact that when the 3 main characters Michael, Trevor and Franklin come together they all have their own skill to apply to a certain mission. IGN also briefly mention the improved game mechanics that the game has to offer but mainly mention the fact of how there is so much for a player to do within the game including land and water based activities and how the map is so big it gives the player a lot of opportunities to do different things which is down to the fact that the city feels so real and at the same time so different, for example IGN talks about how where Trevor lives is so different to where Michael lives yet it isn't even that far away considering. Another piece of praise that comes from IGN is the lack of bugs within the game considering the size of it. The YouTube reviewer Jeremy Jahns once again mentions the improvement in the game and also praises the virtual stock market that exists although he does give the game some slight criticism when he mentions that the game lacks focus.

 

P3F-Platforms

Due to the Telegraph only doing the review when the game was first released the review only mentions the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms, however, IGN has an updated review and discusses how the game has now also been released on next generation consoles the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One as well the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. Jeremy Jahns doesn't actually mention any platforms in his review.

 

P3G-Personal Recommendation of Reviewer

I chose IGN because it is massively well known and massively reliable for things such as reviews and is very popular with it usually covering all bases of a game in its reviews. The Telegraph is a big paper in the UK and although game reviews is not its main things due to how big the paper was I knew something like a game review on it would be well written. As for my YouTube reviewer, I chose Jeremy Jahns. Jeremy Jahns has over one million subscribers on YouTube and his whole channel is based off reviews, on top of that he has been doing reviews for years now so I knew that he would know what he was talking about.



P2-A,B,C,D,E,F,G

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P2A-Genre

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

Everybody’s gone to the Rapture only has one main genre that it fits into and that is the adventure game genre, this is because the gameplay involves making the player explore the fictional village that was set up for the game and just involves them solving clues meaning there is nothing such as action involved within the game. On top of that the game also fits into the first-person genre as the character that the player plays with spends the whole game in first-person while they are doing their exploring.

Assassins Creed Brotherhood

Assassins Creed has three big genres that it fits into, this includes an action game, an action-adventure game and most importantly a stealth game. The gameplay fits into these genres perfectly, the game is definitely an action-adventure game due to the fact that there is obviously action in the game but on top of that the game has massive maps that allows the player to fully explore them and use the environment of that map to their advantage. The game also fits into the stealth genre well as well due to the fact that the player is playing with an assassin meaning his whole way of going about things involves him being stealthy to avoid detection, for example the game itself involved a lot of things such as tailing people but in order to not get detected the player would have to do things such as hide between the crowds.

Minecraft

Minecraft fits under many different types of game genres such as survival world, role-playing, action and sandbox. The games main genre is the open world genre however. This is mainly down to the massive worlds that the player is put in where he can choose to do what he wants such as building things of his choice such as creative mode where the player is free to do whatever he wants. The other mini-genres that the game fits into such as survival mode makes sense as this relates to the game mode within the game known as survival. In this mode the player has to create things such as places to live while also collecting food and resources such as iron or coal to help them survive.

That Dragon Cancer

The main genre associated with That Dragon Cancer is the point and click genre, this is because the game has simplistic controls that involves the player interacting with the game by selecting certain things for the main character Joel to do, this could involve getting the character to communicate with someone in the game by clicking on them or by making Joel do something within the game e.g. there is a part were you have to make Joel play on the swings and to do that you have to click on the swing. The game can also be classed as a sub-genre of the art game genre due to its surreal and real life experiences that are within the game.

P2B-Narrative/Storyline

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

Everybody’s gone to the Rapture is set in a small fictional English village in the 1980’s called Yaughton which is meant to be in Shropshire, England. You soon discover during the game that all the inhabitants of the village have disappeared and it is your role to find out where they have disappeared to and why. To do this the game shows off things such as old telephone calls or radio broadcasts, the game also features mysterious floating orbs of light within the sky. From time to time these orbs of light turn into human-shaped lights which re-enact past events which have taken place. With all these clues eventually the player can piece together all the information to find out what happened to all the inhabitants of Yaughton.

Assassins Creed Brotherhood

Brotherhood follows on Desmond’s and Ezio’s storyline from the Assassins Creed II storyline, after Desmond and the team escapes the Templars attack which took place at the end of Assassin’s Creed II they flee to Monteriggioni. Once the animus is set back up the player then gets to continue Ezio’s story which is seen through Desmond’s eyes. In it the main role of the game is for Ezio to acquire the Apple of Eden which is an extremely powerful object which can cause serious problems if it falls into the wrong hands such as the Templars. When the player is finally re-united with Ezio they find themselves in 1499 where Ezio escapes from Rome with his uncle Mario Auditore where they also return to Monteriggioni. However, once his uncle is killed by the Borgias and the Apple falls in Cesare Borgias (who also killed Mario) and the Templars hands. Ezio returns to Rome with his family and once again finds himself on a mission of vengeance and takes lead of the assassins who are currently losing the war against the Templars. Once he takes lead of the assassins he creates a brotherhood which will be strong enough to take down the Borgias and the Templars. 

Minecraft

Minecraft itself doesn’t particularly have a storyline to it as there is no actual campaign that comes with the game. Instead the game is more focused on the creative side and mainly just has different modes on it for players to engage in, the biggest example of this is creative mode that is on the game, this gives a player access to all the resources within the game to let them build whatever they feel like building and it also means they won’t die from starvation as they don’t need to eat food to survive like they need to in survival mode. This then leads me onto survival mode which is another popular game mode within Minecraft, survival mode is what I described in the earlier paragraph but on top of that it is more of an online mode as you tend to find more groups of people participating on the survival mode.

That Dragon Cancer

The storyline of That Dragon Cancer is quite a heartfelt one as it depicts the life of a young boy whose name is Joel Green, the game is based off real life events and tells a truthful story of the young boy Joel Green when he had cancer. The game shows the 4 year fight that Joel had with cancer and puts it into a game to give someone an experience and small idea of what it’s like to be put into that situation. Although the game sounds seriously sad and depressing (which it still is) it also uses colourful and creative techniques to make the experience of the game more enjoyable for anyone who purchased it. 

P2C-Production Process

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

The idea for Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture was actually inspired during the making of another game which was called Dear Esther. It was inspired when the developers team, The Chinese Room wanted to add interactive features to their current game Dear Esther but that proved to be too impractical. Other inspirations include the British apocalyptic science fiction of the 60’s and 70’s such as The Death of Grass by John Christopher. Because of this the game Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture was born. Although the game is still classed as an indie game it did something that not many games in the indie genre would do and that was partner up with Sony rather than do tactics such as crowdfunding. The reason for the company partnering with Sony is because they didn’t feel they would earn enough off the crowdfunding technique or through other techniques such as releasing alpha versions, so decided to take a different technique. The game also needed a soundtrack, this task was set upon Jessica Curry and was then released as a 28-track album in Britain only. This then led to a Windows version of the game being released on the 14^th April 2016 as well the PlayStation.

Assassins Creed Brotherhood

The game was developed by a subsidiary of Ubisoft, Ubisoft Montreal, this was down to the fact that Ubisoft Montreal was behind the first Assassins Creed as well as the second instalment meaning they could be trusted. One thing that was new regarding the game was the fact that it now for the first time offered multiplayer to the game. Despite the fact that a majority of the game was developed in Montreal Canada at Ubisoft Montreal it was also supported by Ubisoft owned companies, this included Annecy, Singapore, Bucharest and Quebec City. In fact, the multiplayer which was new to the game was mainly developed by Annecy and not Montreal. On top of the games release there were two sets of big DLC’s that were released that were free for players to download. The first one was called Animus Project Update 1.0 and the second was called Animus Project Update 2.0. The first DLC included a new map and new mode, while the second DLC once again included a new map and new mode and also introduced a player grading system. The game was also different in the sense that it didn’t have a number to follow up with the title to let the gamer know which instalment it was, this was down to the fact that Brotherhood was a follow up to Assassins Creed II meaning it still had similar settings and characters. Ubisoft feared they would confuse players by calling it Assassins Creed III as then they would have expected a whole new game and not a continuation of the Ezio story. There were some problems leading up to the games release, this happened when the creative director of Ubisoft, Patrice Desilets left before the game could be presented at the E3 2010, however, the production manager of Ubisoft Jean-Francois Boivin claimed this was just a creative break. At the E3 2010, Ubisoft showed off a cinematic trailer to go with the game as well as a walkthrough that went through the beginning of the game.   

Minecraft

Minecraft was developed by Markus Persson and was only originally developed as a project for himself and was based off inspirations from the past that he had such as Dungeon Keeper and one of the biggest and most apparent influences in the game, Infimmier. When the game was in early development a few prototypes had been made which showed an isometric 3D building game which was in first person and included RPG elements to it. After feeling satisfied with the game Persson released the game to the public on the 17th May 2009 on TIGSource forums and was classed as a development release, throughout that time further game modes were added to the game such as the survival mode between 2009 and February 2010 and on top of that updates were also released with the first major update being the alpha version update which was released on the 28^th June 2010. This soon led to the games popularity rising which caused a problem for Persson who for the early stages of the game also had a day job with Jalbum.net, however, once the game began to rise in popularity he quit his day job to keep on top of the game and then followed that up by creating his own game company to make it easier for himself as he now wasn’t the only person working on the game. The company that he created he called Mojang, this was only possible to do with the money Persson had already received off the game. After creating his own games company on the 11^th December 2010 it was announced the Minecraft game had officially moved into the testing stage on the 20^th December 2010. After getting past the testing phase the official full Minecraft game was released on the 18^th November 2011 to the public.

That Dragon Cancer

That Dragon Cancer is based off the developer’s experiences of when their son (Joel Green) had his 4 year battle with cancer, the game was made as a way to remember Joel after he subsequently lost his battle with cancer and also as a sort of eye opener to people to show what they actually had to go through. The game during production hit a lot of problems such as backers constantly pulling out of funding the game due to how sensitive the subject of it was, this led to 70% of the game being re-wrote to stop the backers pulling out and for them to be able to complete the game. The re-writing of the game made it so players would be more focussed on interactions with Joel. However, the parents still needed money to make the game due to them losing 70% of their backers, so with the backing of Ouya they set up a Kickstarter campaign, the aim was to raise $85,000, however, after gaining 3,700 backers they managed to raise $100,000. Another problem the team had while creating the game was the fact that they didn’t have the technical capability to put faces on the characters of the game, as a result no character within the game has an actual face.

P2D-Characters

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

When it comes to Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture there are five areas within the actual game, each area revolves around a different character but the main two are Stephen Appleton who is scientist at the observatory at the village and his wife Dr Katherine Collins also known as Kate who like her husband is also a scientist at the observatory.

Assassins Creed Brotherhood

Assassins Creed Brotherhood has a whole range of different characters which Ezio encounters, however, there seems to be 3 main characters in the game. The first one being Ezio himself who is the leading assassin within the game and has the whole story based around his travels and fights with the Borgias. The next being Desmond, Desmond is the reason we see Ezio’s story as we see it through his eyes due to the animus as Ezio is one of Desmond’s ancestors. Players also get to do quite a few side missions with Desmond as he tries to escape the Templars grip himself.  

Minecraft

The only real character within Minecraft is called Steve, Steve is the character that the players control within the classic mode of Minecraft. However, after that there aren’t really any characters. For example, in modes such as survival the player plays his own character which is a default which he gets to get add things such as his own skins to.

That Dragon Cancer

The main character of the game is Joel Green as the game itself is based off Joel’s fight with cancer for 4 years, in it he is only a little boy. The rest of the characters are mainly just family such as Joel’s parents who feature in the game quite a lot.

P2E-Gameplay

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

The gameplay involved with Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture involves the player exploring the small English town Yaughton. In it the player can interact with the weird floating lights that can be found in the sky, this is useful as it can reveal parts of the story and give off clues, on top of that the player can interact with what would be classed as man-made objects e.g. doors, phones, radios and so on.  

Assassins Creed Brotherhood

Assassins Creed Brotherhood has a big emphasis on the nonlinear, sandbox style gameplay as well as other gameplay techniques such as parkour movements, crowd-blending stealth, assassinations and on top of that a melee fighting system. The game also offered multiplayer for the first time and around 15 or more hours of single player gameplay. The game is set in Rome and allows things such as a management system where the player can recruit new members to the assassins by destroying things called Borgia towers, in the game itself there are 12. The game also allowed players to invest within the city and help it grow and it also had a much bigger feature on horses which could now be used within the city and be used as a means of combat.  

Minecraft

Minecraft is a three-dimensional sandbox game that can be played in first person and third person perspectives, the game when being played on classic/creative mode doesn’t actually possess any actual goals meaning the player has as much freedom as he wants within the game. However, it is not the same in all the game modes. Game modes such as survival provide much more of a challenge to the player, in this mode the player has to create things such as places to live while also collecting food and resources such as iron or coal to help them survive.

That Dragon Cancer

That Dragon Cancer mixes between first and third person within the game while telling the story to give a different prospective within the game. The game also allows players to use interaction methods within the game such as allowing them to make choices that they are presented with. The game also offers a mix of surreal and dream like experiences to the player to keep the game more fun considering the dark subject that it is covering.  

P2F-Target Audience

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is obviously one for the indie gamers as it is still an indie game despite the fact that it was sold on the PS4 and funded by Sony. Another gaming audience that it fits into arguably is the non-traditional gaming audience, this is because it is not a very traditional audience that play these kind of games and that is arguably why Sony funded it as it offered something new.

Assassins Creed Brotherhood

Arguably the biggest audience for Assassins Creed Brotherhood is the more hard-core gamers, this is because it is a massively well-known game with a massive storyline to it and also includes quite complex controls to it meaning you would have to know what you were doing to play the game, the same also applies to the mid-core gamers as they would have a sufficient amount of knowledge. Another possible audience is the professional gamers audience; this is because the professional gamers like to play the biggest games out and Assassins Creed Brotherhood definitely fits into that as it is part of a massive gaming series.    

Minecraft

Minecraft could arguably fit into the casual gamer audience, this is down to the fact that there are no actual levels to the game or actual aims and if the player just sticks to creative mode they can just do what they want and pick up where they left off anytime they want. Another possible audience is the older gamers audience; this is down to the fact that they don’t have a lot of time to now play games but still enjoy to. Minecraft is good for this as it is a nice relaxing game with no actual aims meaning the older gamer can come and go when they please and it is also simple meaning if they didn’t understand the new controllers and so on they would pick it up very quickly.

That Dragon Cancer

That Dragon Cancer is aimed at audiences such as the non-traditional gaming audience, it fits into this audience due to the story of the actual game, this is down to the fact that the story of the game is not a traditional one and wouldn’t have anyone who would casually play this game. Another target audience it fits into is the casual gamer audience, this is down to the fact that it is a game that is available on platforms such as the iPhone meaning you don’t need a games console to play it and on top of that only needs the player to mainly just click the screen meaning it is nice and simple for them.

P2G-Platforms

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

Due to Sony funding Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture the game was made available on the PS4 and was made available on its original platform PC and Mac.  

Assassins Creed Brotherhood

Was made available on the PS3 and Xbox 360 when it was first released, due to its popularity it will now be released as a remastered version on the PS4 and Xbox One with the other Assassins Creed games that involve the Ezio story.  

Minecraft

Minecraft is available on virtually every platform there is due to the popularity of it, it is available on the PlayStation, Xbox, PC, Mac as well as recently the iPhone.

That Dragon Cancer

That Dragon Cancer is available on multiple platforms which includes the Mac and PC as well the iPhone, for the Mac or PC the game can be downloaded through the companies own website or off another distribution website such as steam.

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