Difficulty of a game

Difficulty

Game balance is the different difficulty that a game can be played in in accordance to the ability of the user playing the game. These Difficulties range from game to game. Games such as cubefield have difficulties that increase in speed, the higher your score is the levels change, the higher the speed. There are obstacles within the game and you have to dodge them and get the highest score you can. Everyone starts at the same level, the same speed and there is no differentiating between the better and worse players apart from the score they get at the end. Whereas in games such as Call of Duty you can change the difficulty from the start. There are four different levels of difficulty:
- Recruit, 
- Regular, 
- Hardened  
- Veteran. 

Respectively, they get harder from the amount of people that need to be killed to the specifics that you need to pass the missions. 

Those who play on recruit have most likely never played the game before. They play against soldiers who cannot aim correctly, they barely run, move slowly, do not face the way the enemies that are coming, they stare at you and are ready to die. Whereas when you play on veteran they are the opposite. They shoot through walls, as soon as you pop your head out of the window they will fire, they use their tactical grenades efficiently in order to kill you. You need to complete more tasks and you will find it much harder than the other difficulties.

In Call of Duty the first missions are usually those to allow you to get a feel of the game, they take you through the basics of movement, shooting, aiming down your sights, grenades and so forth. Then you have target practice to put what you have learned to use. In Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 you will have a little time trial where you have to put everything you have learned to practice. Such as throwing a tactical grenade through a room then killing the enemies, stabbing, shooting and avoiding civilians. There is a soldier who you hear speaking, telling you what to do and how to do it throughout the mission. It is better for games to start with this sort of difficulty, something easy as it allows the user to get a feel of the game, they can (if they have played the game before) remember what some buttons do and how to do certain things. 

Moreover there are some things in some Call of Duty games that there aren't in the others that are to do with movement. For example in Modern Warfare 2, you could lay down, crouch or go prone. However in Black Ops you could dolphin dive, then in Advanced Warfare you could double jump and boost with your exo skeleton. Normally as you advance through the game you will have to put abilities/skills/techniques that you learnt to use at the same time. So at the start of Call of Duty you may just be aiming down your sights, then running, then throwing a grenade. However as you advance you may need to run, whilst picking up a bomb, shooting the enemy and double jumping onto a building while using a score streak. Games use difficulty settings in order to challenge the user, to make them feel like the game is worth their time. 

If a game is to easy you may get bored and not really know why you’re playing it, but on the other side of the spectrum if a game is too hard you may not be able to advance and you’ll keep dying and losing. This will, in turn cause you to get frustrated and not want to play. Therefore changing the difficulty will allow you to challenge yourself in accordance to your skill level and you can change it depending on how easy or hard you think the game is getting.  A player may want to increase the difficulty setting in order to further challenge himself and it will happen throughout the game because the will get used to the buttons and how to play the game. Then these abilities will advance and develop which will, in turn, make the game easier because they can complete their goal easier. 

Narrative, FMV, Cut scene

Narrative

A narrative in a computer game is the storyline in which the game is being played in. It is a step by step story that entices the game player to look forward to that which will come next. Video game designers use narratives within their games to make the player think about that which comes next as well as follow the game stages. They can keep up with what is happening with the game and it makes them enjoy playing it as they are playing towards a goal. Once they reach the end, if they have enjoyed playing it they will look forward to the next game that will be released, a sequel to the first game.

An advantage to a game having a narrative is that they give the game a direction and purpose. Without a narrative, the player will not have a true purpose of playing the game apart from the addiction of it. A game such as Mario has a clear narrative which is to save the Princess from Bowser, but a game such as Candy Crush has no narrative. However the reason why people play it is due to the fact that they get addicted to playing it and compete with friends to achieve higher scores.

A disadvantage of narratives of games is that over time people spend a lot of their life behind a screen playing a game year after year, sequel after sequel due to the fact that they’re enticed in the game. This leads to addiction which could be detrimental for their health.

FMV

FMV stands for full motion video which is a scene that lasts quite some time (five minutes or so). It usually happens at the end of a mission, start or end of the game. It skips between scenes and you cannot control what occurs, these scenes are pre made. Their graphics are quite high as they are supposed to catch the eye of the gamer to be amazed by what is happening. Games such as Super Mario Bros start with a full motion video with lightning attacking the castle of the princess. Mario then goes to check out the trouble as the attacks were not normal and the player spots Bowser Junior sneak up at Princess. Mario turns around and sees Bowser Junior take princess and run off with her, Mario then follows. This full motion video makes it evident that the goal is to retrieve princess from the enemy within the game.

The advantage of the full motion video is that it helps the narrative become evident with the use of high quality motion videos.

However a disadvantage is that it stops the game to load (for the full motion videos mid-way through the game). The gamer sometimes would not like to watch it but they are forced to because there is no available skip button. This could frustrate the player as they would think they purchased the game to play, not to watch.

Cut Scene

Cut scenes are smaller scale full motion videos that occur randomly within the game at will of the video game designers. They are scenes that occur within the scene that the gamer is playing in whereas the full motion videos skip from scene to scene. Cut scenes give information about the next task you have to do, small hints in order for you to complete the next mission successfully. They are usually 30 seconds long, possibly with enhanced graphics and there is the ability to skip these cut scenes if the gamer would like to. Games such Final Fantasy 10 have cut scenes when summoning beasts. They show the beast coming into the fight and if you have the bar filled up next to its name, you can use its special move, its overdrive. These cut scenes are informative of how the beast comes into the fight and what their impact is once summoned.

An advantage of cut scenes is that, the majority of the time they allow the user to skip them if them. This eliminates the boredom some players get from full motion videos, that they may feel like it is hindering them from playing the video game as it is forcing them to watch a video.

A disadvantage of cut scenes is that if you miss something, a piece of information within the cut scene such as talking to someone who walks by and once the cut scene is over they walk off, you may not have the opportunity to speak to them again. Therefore in order to advance through the game, you have to rely less on the information the game has given you and more on ‘trial and error’ in order to proceed.