Week 10

Task

Many games have their own unique movement mechanics, but few are comparable to the sort of movement mechanics we typically use in tabletop games. However, one of the most commonly seen movement mechanics these share in common is a movement point system. Research and discuss in your learning journal how it gets used in one of the following games:

• Any of the XCOM Games

• Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire

• Any of the Civilization games

• Battletech

• Scythe

• Blood Bowl

• Call of Duty: Vanguard (2021) by Sledgehammer Games and Activision

  • I have played this game two different times—once during the open beta stage, and again during the recent free multiplayer week event—but only the multiplayer content. I have never played or even seen any more than a few seconds of footage for the campaign, and nothing at all with the zombies (I don't even recall seeing the promotional material for the zombies mode).

  • During my recent playthrough of the multiplayer content in this game, I noticed something pretty glaring that impacted the enjoyability of it—the multiplayer for Call of Duty simply wasn't fun anymore. Call of Duty: Vanguard's multiplayer didn't offer anything new or exciting like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) or even Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (2020) did with their unique (for the series at the time) mechanics and aesthetics, so it just felt like the same old tired Call of Duty multiplayer formula. Even some mechanics I had a positive opinion on, such as perching up against walls for better aim and stability, were entirely removed.

  • Another thing I noticed which hindered my experience was the pacing of the multiplayer. Everything was just way too fast, giving me barely any chance to even walk forward. Almost all the matches I played featured people sprinting around the map at break-neck speeds knifing everyone and racking up at least 10-kill streaks before each death. It didn't help that my latency to the game servers were terrible (which was most likely a fault with my internet and not the servers themselves), further decreasing the possibility of me hitting these players. The game also didn't have any spawn protection, so you could have the same people come up and knife you from behind not even a second after spawning, which impacted the enjoyability of the game severely for me.

  • For the two times I played this game, I played them on PC.

• Minecraft: Pocket Edition Lite

  • This is a game that I used to play as a kid a lot. On mobile, I didn't have the full version of Minecraft until around the time I was almost done with primary school, so if I didn't have access to my Xbox 360, this was the version of Minecraft that I would play on my iPad.

  • This version of Minecraft was limited in functionality compared to its full release (at the time of its release on mobile in 2011) due to it being the lite (demo) version, with features missing such as certain blocks/tools and the ability to save worlds.

  • I like this version of the game because of its simplicity (compared to the modern version of Minecraft: Pocket Edition)—the limited blocks, mobs, biomes, etc. create an easier and less overwhelming experience of Minecraft, albeit an experience that gets a bit boring after a while.

  • I played this on iOS, more specifically my Grandma's old iPhone 4, as that was the only device we had in the house that worked, we knew the password to and had a version of iOS under iOS 11 (you can't download games on newer versions of iOS if those games haven't been updated to include support for iOS 11 and above).