The game I am discussing is named Etherena.

I first played this many years ago, probably more than 10 years ago. The current version is not very different from that which I played back then, except for the sounds.

Link: http://www.mofunzone.com/games/etherena_beta.html

Youtube video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_iFDLygzeE

This is a battle game, with 2 characters. Players can choose whether to play against the computer or play against their friends as a dual players game. For each level, try to defeat the opponent and defend yourself.

Elemental tetrad:

1. Aesthetic: this is a very simple 2D game. The landscape varies with each level. Though quite pleasing to the eye, the surrounding is static and looks quite peaceful. It would have helped bringing out the story line better if the environment looks more like an Armageddon, and better still if the characters and the landscape were moving. Nevertheless I personally had not much time to care about the surrounding while playing against the computer because it simply moved very fast. The animations of the attacks are quite smooth. I absolutely loved the music back then (I still remember the melodies of one of them until today). The songs are very energetic and put me in battle mood easily.

2. Story: at the beginning the players will be walked through a short story line of the world’s fragile beginning. Maybe more details will help – the roles of the 2 players with regards to the world’s vulnerabilities are clearly missing.

            The Intro’s full text: “The new world is beginning. But it’s not ready. Not yet.

3. Mechanics: each of the 2 characters has his/her own set of unique moves which makes it really fun. After playing for a few minutes, you start remembering each of their moves, which helps with strategizing. The responsiveness has been good ever since I first played the game a decade ago. There is no perceivable latency with a key press and the players move really fast. Players can jump, attack and shield themselves while at the same time repelling the opponent. The shield will break if held for too long. Players may fall down the cliffs or from tall buildings and lose some of their life force. Of course if they get attacked they will lose life force too depending on the strength of the attack. Players just keep on going until the opponent dies and level up, or until their character dies, in which situation they will replay the current level. Though I hardly make it up to the next level, from online sources there are currently 21 levels, and multiply by the combinations of characters played, you have the number of possibilities for different playing experience! You can even play against the same character as yours (Because why not right?).

4. Technology: Etherena is made with Flash. Flash is relatively simple to learn, and is optimal for making 2D games. That must be one of the reasons why Etherena is 2D and not 3D. Nevertheless it wouldn’t affect the amount of love this game has enjoyed because the interesting moves and beautiful landscape will get you addicted. Also, creating a multiplayer game in Flash is also notably challenging, hence Etherena is at most a versus game of 2 players.

Lenses:

1. Lens #49: The Lens of Punishments: Etherena employs a few punishing systems which keep the player moving: they can’t hold their shield forever because it will eventually break; shields only repel opponents instead of injuring them so players can’t always rely on it but have to attack; if players let their characters fall down to the cliff too often they will lose lots of life force etc.

2. Lens #42: The Lens of Simplicity/Complexity: The rules of Etherena is very simple. In fact, it can’t be more simple: fight till one of the players dies. In contrast to this, it seems that to the first users, the keys for the moves and attacks are quite counter intuitive – while the instructions say that the keys to move are the arrow keys, they don’t seem to work for the left character (which is the one users control in single player against computer mode) and instead, the keys A, D and W are used for left, right and jumping up. Attack keys are also quite all over the place. It would be easier if either there are instructions on the key mappings on the screen while playing or all the attacks are mapped to the same row on the keyboard.

3. Lens #49: The Lens of Visible Progress: I personally don’t see a lot of effort in this aspect of visible progress. Possibly because the plot is really simple and there are no rewards – for instance, tools to increase strength – other than defeating the other fighter. The transition from one level to the next has not much of a progressive change. The scenery changes and the number of chances to be hit decreases but that’s about all to it.

4. Lens #51: The Lens of the Pyramid : Again, there is no culmination to some ultimate goal like saving the world or something similar. Until now Etherena is still in “beta” stage and the story line doesn’t seem to evolve after each level.
5.  Lens #52: The Lens of the Puzzle : Players can’t win a level just by taking chances. They need to eventually figure out during a fight what combinations work best while in a certain position. It’s exactly this requirement of quick reflexes and thinking that give the users the sense of accomplishments when completing a level.

Overall, I think it is still amazing how the game has garnered so much love without an elaborate story line. From the start while playing it, I was too caught up with strategizing in each move my character and the opponent make, and too fascinated by the music, to even care if the story was evolving or not.

Left for Dead 2 (L4D2) is a First-person shooter game which is situated in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. The player will play 1 of the 4 survivors of the zombie apocalypse. The player will either use a gun or an object as their weapon of choice. Together with 3 other players, they will work together and make it through different zombie infested areas to get to safety.

Game link: http://www.l4d.com/game.html

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

The Lens of the Elemental Tetrad

L4D2 was released in 2009, and it was one of the top games during that time. It was a sequel to Left for Dead (L4D), thus it retained many of L4D gameplay features. L4D2 can be run on the XBOX 360 and windows PC, which means the controls were easy to use, like most FPS games.

The game mechanics were rather simple (Basically just shoot zombies and survive till the end). Players arm their character with a weapon of choice, and get through hordes of zombies coming your way. Players are also equipped with a throwable item (such as a pipe bomb or Molotov) and 2 healing items. Each player must work together, and use resources wisely as they are hard to come by, which means that there is a certain strategy to get through each map. The map physics are also rather realistic; thrown items will fly though the air in an arc shape, or hitting an explosive gas tank will send zombies caught in the blast flying in the direction of the blast. One main mechanic of L4D2 is how the game generate enemies (zombies). The game uses an AI system that generates zombies randomly. This means that with each time you play a map, the zombies generated will be different each time, creating a “new” experience each time we play it.

The story of L4D and L4D2 are related, in which there are 4 survivors in each story. The 8 survivors eventually met in one of the maps and fought alongside each other. Each survivor in the story are complete strangers when they first met, but eventually will get to know each other (as seen from the conversions between characters during the gameplay).

The aesthetics of L4D2 is gloomy and dim (it’s a zombie apocalypse after all). Characters will be eventually covered in blood and dirt after trudging through hordes of zombies. The time and weather of each area is fixed however, but it still portrays the environment perfectly. The audio is also eerie, and overall fits the apocalyptic theme very well.

The Lens of Fun

The game is fun as the enemies in each map are randomly generated, thus creating a need for a different strategy each time a player plays it. Included in the game are hidden achievements as well, which prompts players to detour from the original game plan to complete these achievements as well. Thus which each instance of playing, the player will have a different experience of the game.

The Lens of Skill

The game is in real-time, which means fast reaction time is needed to play this game. Players must know how to counter certain zombies, know how to dodge or manoeuvre though enemies. Players must know which weapon is good for which situation, and know which route will allow them to reach the safe zone quickly. Some stages require all of the above mentioned skills to be completed. All these are skills that each player will learn after playing the game many times.

The Lens of Cooperation

L4D2 allows up to 4 players in a single game instance. Each player is essential to the progress of each map, and no one is able to complete the game on his/her own (zombies that can disable you). The resources in the game are also limited, thus each player must communicate on who needs the resources more etc. Thus this game encourages interaction between people. Each player must cooperate to help the whole team get to each safe zone.

The Lens of Challenge

Like most games, a game has to be challenging, if not who will play it? L4D2 is a simple shooter game, with the challenges being achievements and competition. Achievements are hidden actions or things in the game in which players can obtain by doing a certain thing. Some achievements are hard to obtain, while some are fun. Players has a sense of accomplishment if they are rewarded with a difficult achievement badge for example.

There is also a competition mode in L4D2, where 4 players play the survivor, and another 4 plays the zombies. The aim of the survivors are to get to the safe zone, while the zombies aim to stop the survivors from reaching the safe zone. This allow players to compete with each other in terms of cooperation and communication between players, whether they are playing as the survivors or the zombies.

DOTA2 (Originated from DOTA, Defense of the Ancient) is a multiplayer online battle arena video game. The game usually involves 10 players, who are to be divided into 2 teams. Each team member will cooperate together and destroy certain constructions on the map to win the game.

Website: http://www.dota2.com/700/

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cSFPIwMEq4

Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2pEBkB2-FA

Overview

From the year of 2012, DOTA2 holds world-class tournaments annually: The International (Ti). Last year, Ti6 had a price pool of 20 billion dollars and invited 16 teams from different regions around the world to compete with each other, which was really impressive. From the fact we could probably have a conclusion that DOTA2 is becoming one of the most successful MOBA games around the world. To answer the question why this game could win a large gamer population, I would like to provide some analysis.

Lenses and Reviews

Lens#32 The lens of meaningful choices

DOTA2 currently has 113 heroes and 148 items. During the game, some of the items have limited stock, players can choose to use money to buy back to game immediately after death, for each hero, when they reach certain level, they can choose either to upgrade one of the 4 skills or to select a path in talent tree. Such large number of variables make this game flexible and brings out a lot of choices: how to choose heroes that are can have nice combo, how to choose skills that would counter the opponents, how to select talent trees to enhance heroes’ abilities, whether to buy new item for the next battle or leave money for buy back… All those options need to be chosen wisely according to different situations on the battle field and all the choices are meaningful because they all lead the team to win.

Lens#30 The lens of Fairness

It would always be a question for MOBA games that how to balance items and heroes’ skills. In this case, we regard fairness as balance of the game play. However, for DOTA2 it seems that the game is well designed and balanced. Over 83 heroes appeared in the matches for over 10 times, which demonstrated that DOTA2 is now relatively well balanced; there’s no a group of heroes that dominates the game play. In addition, the map is also fairly designed: two part of the map share the same amount of resources so that players would have the same chance for farming.

Lens#3 The lens of fun

DOTA2 is fun. However, from my own experience, it’s fun is not only the game itself, but also the nature of the game. DOTA2 is a competitive game and a multiplayer game as well. Players would have the desire of winning and as they win the game, they would gain pleasure from the game play. In addition, people usually play the game together and just like basketball, players would develop close friendship through game. People would make fun of each other, help each other and encourage each other during the plays. “When losing, we analyze why we lost together. When winning, we share the pleasure together.” All these elements make DOTA2 a really fun game.

Conclusion

DOTA2 is currently one of the most popular competitive games in the world. It’s well-designed game rules and well developed graphics are attracting more and more player around the world. Now it also steps into the field of VR and tries to design new heroes. I sincerely hope that DOTA2 would be more balanced and better in the future.

osu! is a freeware rhythm game whereby players use a pointing device (such as a mouse or tablet) to manipulate gameplay elements (hit circles, sliders and spinners) in conjunction with the song’s rhythm, scoring points in the process.

Game link: https://osu.ppy.sh/

Gameplay video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPw4BdUc9l8

osu! is easy to learn, but difficult to master. The mechanics of osu! are very simple. There are only 3 basic gameplay elements that players need to interact with, namely hit circles, sliders, and spinners.

A hit circle must be clicked on when the ring surrounding it (called an approach ring) just touches the hit circle. If the hit circle is clicked too early (before the approach ring reaches it) or too late, the game will award less points to the player, depending on the difficulty setting. Musicality comes into play because the approach rings are designed to reach the hit circles in sync with the beats of the song being played. Therefore, players need a good sense of rhythm to be able to click on hit circles accurately.

Sliders are quite similar to hit circles except that they also have a body called a slider track. Not only must the player click on the hit circle, he or she must also slide the cursor along the body of the slider track all the way to the end of the slider, in order to score maximum points.

Spinners are gameplay objects whereby the player must spin the cursor around the centre of the spinner in order to gain points. The faster the player spins, the more points are awarded.

Beatmaps are comprised of the above 3 elements, as well as an accompanying song. Map creators carefully design beatmaps by placing hit circles/sliders/spinners in accordance with the rhythm of the music. Players can then play these beatmaps.

Lens of Essential Experience

By clicking on hit circles in conjunction with the rhythm of the music, I feel more immersed in the music, as compared to passively listening to the music. Moreover, there are thousands of beatmaps to choose from (beatmaps are created by the osu! playerbase and popular beatmaps quickly rise to the top), which also means that there are thousands of songs that players can listen to. Songs are categorised according to various criteria, such as genre, artist, length, and speed (beats per minute or BPM for short). These characteristics can have a profound impact on the immersion experienced by the player. For example, when I am playing a beatmap whose accompanying song has a high BPM, the beatmap could be comprised of many hit circles and sliders which require great speed and accuracy to click. This inspires excitement and adrenaline rushes within me, making me feel more immersed in the spirit of the fast-paced song.

Lens of Surprise

osu! is full of surprises because every day, many new beatmaps are created by the osu! playerbase, and each beatmap has a different configuration of hit circles/sliders/spinners. Hence, playing new beatmaps offers me a fresh, unique experience. Moreover, new beatmaps enable me to discover new songs that I like, songs that I otherwise would never have heard of. Over the years of playing osu!, I have accumulated a playlist of hundreds of songs that I enjoy listening to, ranging from video game soundtracks to J-rock. Many of these songs are produced by small, independent music producers that are obscured by the more popular, commercial music producers that are often found on the front page of youtube. Here is an example of a nice piece of music that I found through osu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIn4NK22CBs. Most people would not have heard of the artist, MiddleIsland, if they have not played osu!.

Lens of Fun

Closely related to the lens of surprise is the lens of fun. To me, fun is a combination of excitement and surprises. In this section I will focus on excitement. In order to spice things up, osu! offers a variety of game modes that players can choose from. For instance, the Hard Rock game mode makes things harder by making the hit circles smaller, as well as making the approach circles close in on the hit circles more rapidly, and so players must react more quickly in order to do well in this game mode. The Hidden game mode eliminates approach circles and makes hit circles disappear after a short time, requiring players to rely on good rhythmic sense and memory in order to be able to click the hit circles accurately. There are many other game modes available, and players can even choose a combination of game modes, such as Hidden + Hard Rock. The harder the game modes applied, the more points a player scores, incentivizing skilled players to play harder game modes. Moreover, players can compare their scores with other players worldwide, adding a further layer of competition and fun. In short, the variety of game modes adds plenty of excitement and fun to the game.

Lens of the Elemental Tetrad

This lens is worth discussing because osu! is unique in that it has absolutely no story. It is set out to be a rhythm game that can be played multiplayer, and it does exactly what it claims to be. This detracts from the book which states that each of the four elements are equally important to the success of a game. In my opinion, osu!’s success has in no way been diminished by the lack of story. Perhaps this is because osu! is not a story-based game, and has no need for a story. In fact, the other three elements have amply compensated for the lack of a story. The mechanics aspect of this game is strong because the gameplay revolves around just three basic elements – hit circles, sliders, and spinners, keeping the mechanics easy to understand and accessible to all players. Moreover, these gameplay mechanics are strongly enhanced by the aesthetics, as the hit circles/sliders/spinners are visually displayed on the screen, making them fully visual in nature. osu! also runs very fast and smoothly even on low-end computers, and this is no surprise because osu! is written in C# on the .NET framework, which is an excellent configuration for producing games that run efficiently. By using such technology, latency is kept low (especially important for rhythm games), and this in turn enhances the gameplay and mechanical aspects of the game (players can play fast-paced beatmaps without being hindered by latency issues).

Game chosen: Dark souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin

Game Description

Dark souls 2 is an action role-playing game. The game itself is predominantly single-player, with the addition of player vs player (Pvp) and coop elements at short intervals spread throughout the experience. Scholar of the first sin adds existing expansion maps to the game, making the story more complete. The game, being a role-playing game, allows players to customize their avatars extensively, as well as providing various ways to defeat bosses / monsters, which is ultimately the main focus of the game. The enemies offer challenge despite the player’s level; Dying in the game has been a main staple of the series, and a single misstep can be a costly one in terms of endogenous value with the experience.

Website: http://www.darksoulsii.com/us/

Gameplay Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSCcRirneos

Lens #9: Elemental Tetrad Lens

Aesthetics (Excellent) – Game is aligned with the dark / undead theme as with previous titles, visuals are appealing and very detailed with regard to the environment. Character and Equipment design both fit the theme well but yet offering unique artistic directions, as in the case of unconventional armors. Audio is engaging, such as within boss battles, or the sudden ambush of an enemy.

Story (Okay) – Despite being called Dark souls II, the game has little semblance to the previous title in terms of story line. When I was playing the game, a personal opinion was that I did not care about the story. The game attempts to string together events from various non-playable characters (NPCs) in order to immerse the player more in the world. It works to a certain extent, though limited interaction with NPCs results in the dwindling of these connections as well.

Mechanics (Excellent) – Mechanics for this game can be divided into 2 broad categories, game system mechanics and combat mechanics. Game system mechanics such as the character progression, equipment progression, level progression in the multiple areas has been comprehensive and yet not overwhelming.

Combat mechanics are also very fluid, with various fixed weapon types for the player, and very interactive AI on the part of enemies, especially the bosses.

One very important mechanic that this game offers, is the loss of all souls when the player dies, dying can be as simple as falling off a cliff (environment hazard), and even mobbed by basic enemies. Because the enemies’ AI act independently, it introduces a slight randomness to the equation, which makes it more addictive to try again. The loss of souls makes death a lot more punishing, and increases its endogenous value.

Technology (Good) – Being also offered on the PC, it can be expected that it works moderately well with a mouse and keyboard, but the results are abysmal when faced with the challenge factor of the game. However, with a game-pad controller, it changes everything; It feels a lot more connected to the game world when the controls flow smoothly, and the controller reinforces that.

I don’t believe that story is integral in this game, the other 3 elements are very well implemented, except perhaps the native keyboard/mouse control issues.

The 4 elements work very well together in creating an AAA title that succeeds the previous one well,  improving on the existing tested and proven system.

Other Lenses chosen:

Lens #80: Lens of Help

The game offers a way of helping other players, which is in the defeating of bosses. Players can place down summon signs for other players to use to establish a connection. Depending on the helper’s alignment or “religion”, the helper can gain additional benefits for both of the involved parties for items that cannot be gotten from monsters. Besides helping other online players, helping NPCs will also advance their own story lines in the game, and in return, these NPCs will become summon-able by the player should help be needed in defeating hard bosses.

Lens #6: Curiosity

Right from the start, the game plants the player in an unfamiliar environment where he/she has to set off on a journey through the unknown land.The many weaknesses / varied drops each monster has also helps to place more ways the player can navigate through obstacles presented in the game; It becomes just a game by itself to collect equipment and upgrade them throughout the adventure. Pvp has also been a very important aspect, as the game calls it “invasion”; Pvp can happen at anytime, both self-initiated or not. This makes the game more unpredictable and fun.

Lens #40: Triangularity

The most striking instance of triangularity would be in the difficulty or monsters versus the amount of souls they possess. Because the player loses all souls upon death, this is a very cautious decision to make. There are also many other instances, such as traps that guard a chest (risk vs reward), chests that turn out to be mimics, shortcuts that are infested with monsters, optional areas that offer additional gear not obtainable anywhere else. This even includes pvp / coop, which are optional but can offer souls and other rewards. However there is a “religion” that makes the game difficulty twice as hard without offering immediate rewards, but rather prestige in terms of a leader-board.

Lens #73: Story Machine

In this game, the player has the option to kill NPCs, which can present changes to the story lines associated with these NPCs. The main story line ending is also affected by certain NPCs that the player helps / punishes along the way. But besides that, the game does not have much of a story to go about, players can tell “mini-stories” by writing messages on the ground which are transmitted to other players on the server. These are generic messages such as “Ambush ahead”, “Hurrah” etcetera.