Game Design

My two great games are Skyrim and Bioshock Infinite, and they both fight for my most favorite game.

Skyrim revolutionized rpgs and the community that it built is incredible. Skyrim lets the player freely roam around a vast gorgeous world encountering hidden dungeons, surprise dragon fights, important side quests, and the occasional funny moment. The player is not limited to stay on the main storyline and is encouraged to stray from that path. No quest in Skyrim feels tedious or boring, and each one has in depth thought, lore, and in-game changes. The combat in Skyrim is fluid and responsive while given the option to play in third person as well as first person. The only thing that needed some work in Skyrim that I can think of was the clunky UI.

Bioshock Infinite is a more singular game that forces the player on one path. But it is a hell of a path. The story is extremely well crafted, the art style is amazing and crisp, and you truly feel for the main characters which most games are unable to achieve. The AI in Bioshock Infinite is probably the best I've seen in a game. Maybe not so much the enemies but Elizabeth is the best AI companion. She is able to give you weapons and health while in combat, she can get you out of sticky situations, and never gets in the players way.

My two disliked games would have to be, this is tough, two MMOs Blade and Soul and Tera.

I've loved MMORPGs ever since my WoW days and it's difficult to find good ones nowadays. Blade and Soul was a game I tried after quitting the dreaded WoW. The game aesthetics were pretty terrible when you started off the game but I saw how beautiful the game could get if I progressed. Combat was fast paced but slow and clunky at first. The starting grind was pretty bad at the start and that was what probably made me quit it. One can only handle so many MMO grinds.

Tera is a beautiful game that loses players pretty quick at the start. Players are given a tease of playing a high level character in the prologue of the game and then sent back down to a lowly peasant after it. I actually like this feature because it shows players how the game will be like if you can get through the horrendous grind. And the grind is.......horrendous. Not the worst I've experienced but it's bad. I even had seen videos of amazing higher level gameplay and the tedious grind counteracted my previous feelings. I'm not saying just spoon-feed the player, but make the grind fun.. Black Desert is a good example of that. The combat in Tera was pretty open to the player but slow at first. The world was beautiful but the static AI made it feel lifeless.

Interfaces

1. Pressing buttons of an elevator.
2. Steering wheel of your car.
3. Traffic lights while driving.
4. TV Remote for a TV.
5. Dials on a stove to cook.
6. Pressing buttons of a microwave.
7. Pushing down the lever of a toaster.
8. Crosswalk signals.
9. Radio dials or stereo buttons.
10. Buttons of an alarm clock.

If I had to give a specific example I would say the addition of hand controllers to the Vive. They are easy to use yet you can do a vast amount of things with them. Coming from an artist point of view, seeing artists able to paint in 3D space in a virtual reality setting is amazing. The Oculus started off using an xbox controller which limits what a player can do, but they are releasing hand controllers to compete.

A bad example is one that was great in theory but terrible in practice, the Kinect. Most likely because there weren't really any good games for it. All the Kinect does is track your form in 3D space and relay the information to the xbox. Microsoft could have made a great push into VR since they already had a good tracking camera for it.