Assassins Creed

Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Genre: Third person Action-Adventure
Platform: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Microsoft Windows
ERSB Rating: M for Mature

Character:
The player plays as a guy named Desmond who used to be an assassin. He gets put into a machine called the Animus and then the player is playing the character named Altair who is a member of a creed of assassins who fight for the good of humanity.

Story:
Desmond is captured by a company called Abstergo and is put into an Animus daily to go back into his memories and try to find out where his ancestors hid an ancient artifact. When he goes into the Animus he becomes an ancestor named Altair, he is a member of a creed of assassins but he kills an innocent person and gets demoted back to a starting assassin to learn from his mistakes. His master has him kill a bunch of important but evil people in different cities to slowly regain his abilities. After he kills all of the evil people he is assigned to kill he then has to kill his master because he betrays Altair. After the player kills the master he then has to hide the artifact so no one can abuse its power.

Resources:
The resources that the player has to watch is their health until they get kicked out of the Animus and how many throwing knives they have left to use.

Challenge:
The player has to kill certain people who are guarded by lots of guards and once the assigned person is killed the player has to kill all of the guards that attack them.

Stranglehold

Publisher: Midway, Success
Developer: Midway Chicago, Tiger Hill Entertainment
Genre: Third person shooter, Action
Platform: Xbox 360, Playstation 3
ERSB Rating: M for Mature

Character:
The player gets to play as inspector "Tequila" Yuen. He is a cop who is fed up with all off the killings and gang violence so he decides to take matters into his own hands. He has the ability to slow down everything he sees so the player can plan out what they want to do.

Story:
Tequila has gotten fed up with all of the bad people in the area and that the police are barely doing anything about it. Since the cops wont do anything about it he has decides to take care of it himself. He uses his connections to find out information about the bosses of all of the gangs and drug producers and takes them all out one by one. While he is doing this one of the leaders takes his wife Billie hostage. Tequila does everything he can to get her back and succeeds. He find out that his old partner Jerry was behind that and hunts him down and kills him. After Jerry was apprehended Chief Lee returns Tequila's badge to him which was earlier confiscated.

Resources:
The resources in this game that the player has to watch out for is their ammunition and their health so they dont die or run out of ammo.

Challenge:

The farther the player gets in the game the harder the enemies get. They start to get more powerful guns and can take more damage to that the game is getting more difficult but at the same time the player is getting better

Mirrors Edge

Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: EA Digital illusions CE
Genre: First person, Action Adventure
Platform: Xbox 360, Playstation 3
ERSB Rating: T for Teen

Character:
The player plays the game as the character Faith. She is a member of the "runners," her and a few other people that are in the group are experts at parkour. They use their skills to transport messages around the city because the government took away all secure communication and they need some way to be able to transport information.

Story:
Faith is transporting a message to one of her partners Celeste and then she returns to their home. She is listening to the police radio and hears that her sister Kate is being arrested for murder. Since she hears this she goes over to Kate as fast as she can. When she gets there Kate explains herself to Faith and how this happened. She was framed. After Kate explains police are about to be there, Faith leaves so she can find out evidence that Kate didn't kill anyone. She hears about an ex runner named Jacknife who gave her information about the murder and who she could talk to to find more things about it. He gave her the name of the person who was murdered's head of security who is Ropeburn. Faith find him and gets information about Kate being framed then he was shot by a sniper that was on another building. She eventually finds out that the person who shot Ropeburn and framed Kate for the murder was Celeste. She tried to explain to Faith that she switched sides because she was tired of being chased by the police all the time, but she escaped from Faith because police came. Merc told Faith about where Kate is being held and that she is at gunpoint. Faith makes her way to the roof where Jacknife has a gun to Kates head and gets on a helicopter. Faith runs towards the helicopter as it takes off and she jumps onto it. When she did this the helicopter got out of control and Jacknife falls out of it. Kate almost fell out but Faith grabs her and stops her from falling.

Resources:
The only resources in the game are the characters health which is not shown but when damage is taken the screen starts to turn red. The other resource is ammunition when she picks up enemies guns.

Challenge:
The game makes the player think in a different way. Since the character is skilled at parkour the player has to think of ways to climb and jump to get to their destination. although this makes it a little more difficult it also allows the player to do things that the player cant do in many other games.

Fallout 3

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks, ZeniMax Media
Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Genre: Action Role Playing
Platform: Xbox 360, Playstation 3
ERSB Rating: M for Mature

Premise:
The player must stop the Enclave and help other characters with Project Purity.

Character:
The player gets to completely create their own character how they want to.

Story:
The character starts out as a baby being born. This is where the player gets to customize their player. Then it fast forwards to the age of 10 months where the player gets to customize what the characters attributes are. After that it takes the player to age 10 where there character gets their pipboy from the Overseer. Then the player turns 16 and their father left the Vault and no one knows why. The player has to go out and try to find him. He find out that his father is working on something called Project Purity. Once he finds his dad then he helps him work on the project. The father James sacrifices himself to stop the Enclave from getting control of the project. At the end of the game the Brotherhood of Steel has to reclaim the area where project Purity is at so a giant robot and a bunch of Brotherhood soldiers attack and win the game.

Resources:
The player has to watch out how much ammunition, health, and the condition of their weapons are in. All of these are shown on the players HUD

Gears of War 2

Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Developer: Epic Games
Genre: Third Person Shooter, Tactical Shooter
Platform: Xbox 360
ERSB Rating: M for Mature

Premise:


Character:
The main character in Gears of War 2 is Sergeant Marcus Fenix, a COG (Coalition of Ordered Governments) member and leader of Delta Squad.

Story:
COG is a all human alliance defending themselves from the Locust Horde who tries to sink every city on the planet to make an evolved race of the Locus called lament extinct, which would end up making humankind extinct also. To stop this from happening Delta squad must singlehandedly kill the gaint worm that the Locusts are using to destroy the cities. The Locus is still a threat to the humans though so they must go underground and find the Queen of the Locus's and kill her. Then they would slowly eradicate and no longer be a threat to the humans.

Resources:
The resources that the player must watch out for in the game is their ammunition and their health. Their health is not shown on the HUD like other games but when the character takes extreme damage a red COG symbol shows up on the screen.

Challange:
The campaign has three difficulties, Casual, Hardcore, and Insane. Parts of the game are more difficult then others, for example the player has to fight a newer type of Locust that has a double chainsaw weapon and they have to fight them with a chainsaw gun. There is also a mode called Horde which the player has to fight off as many waves of Locust as possible by themselves or with friends on Xbox Live.

Bioshock

Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: 2K Boston/2K Australia
Genre: First Person Shooter, Action-Adventure

Platform: PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3

ERSB Rating: M for Mature

Character:
The character Jack was "chosen" by Frank Fontaine to get to Rapture. The player has to go through the game getting different "plasmids" and weapons to make their player more powerful and find their way out of Rapture.

Story:
The player starts out in the ocean near a tower after being the only survivor in a plane crash. The player then has to go into Rapture and explore what it is. They have to watch out for the big daddies who are the guardians of the little sisters. Once the big daddy is defeated then the player can choose to save the little sister or take the ADAM from her which kills her in the process. if u take it from her then the player gets a large amount of ADAM, if they save the little sister then they get less but Tenenbaum will give them a reward of ADAM and plasmids. The player has to go through all of the different areas in Rapture to get to Andrew Ryan. To get to this point the character has to get help from Atlas. Once the player finds Ryan he is forced to kill him because he said "would you kindly kill me" the phrase "would you kindly" is a way to control people into making them do things they dont want to do. Once Ryan is dead the player finds out that its not actually Atlas helping him, its actually Frank Fontaine tricking the character into doing whatever he wants them to do. The player gets a plasmid that stops the "would you kindly" phrase from working. The player has to find away to get to Fontaine then. Once they get to him they have to take all of his ADAM so he is weaker. Once all his ADAM is gone then the little sisters come and help them and finish Fontaine off.

Resources:
In Rapture the resources that the player has to watch are their ammunition, health, EVE, money, and ADAM. The player needs to watch their ammo and their EVE for when they have to fight splicers. The health shows how many more hits until the player dies. The money and the ADAM are used to buy ammunition and different plasmids that the player can use.

Challenge:
The farther the player gets in the game the more powerful they get but at the same time the splicers also get more powerful. The splicers will fight anyone to get the ADAM from them so they can splice more and become more powerful. Also the different types of splicers all pose a different threat. The spyder and Houdini splicers can sneak up on the player so they have to listen carefully to hear them. The lead splicers are the standard ones who carry guns or a melee weapon, that are also the weakest ones. The biggest threat is the big daddies who protect the little sisters who carry ADAM. In order to get that ADAM the player must first kill the big daddy.

Rock Band 2

Publisher: MTV Games
Developer: Harmonix, Pi Studios
Genre: Rhythm

Platforms: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Playstation 2, Wii

ERSB Rating: T for Teen

Story:
A band starts out small and goes to "gigs" through out their town to try to make it big. The more gigs they do then the more famous they become and the more money they will recieve. Once the player gets enough fans then they can go to different parts of the world and play. The player has to unlock different vehicles so that they can go to those places, such as a bus or personal jet. Depending on the places the gigs are at depends on how much money and fans the player gets. The player can spend the money on different instruments or different clothes. There are four different instruments that the player can chose from, the drums, the guitar, the bass guitar and the microphone so they can sing.

Challange:
The campaign mode in the game gets increasingly difficult as the players ability gets better with the game. There are four difficulty settings that the player can chose from before each song or set, there is easy, medium, hard and expert. With the guitar and bass the higher the difficulty then the more notes have to be used and the faster it becomes. With the drums the player has to hit more beats and hit them a lot faster when the difficulty is higher. For a player who is singing the higher the difficulty the more accurate they have to make their voice with the song.

Character:
At the beginning of the story mode the player gts to customize what their character looks like. but the clothes stay standard until more of them are bought. The player cant make the person look exactly how they want to because it gives them pregenerated faces to pick from but they can change the hair and eye color of the character. They can also change te height of them and how much muscle they have.

Type of Players:
This game would appeal to the "Joker" and the "competitor" type of players because they players can fool around in quick play where they can pick any song that they have unlocked to play. A competitor would like this game because they can play through the game and show off their skills to the other players.

MX Unleashed

Publisher: THQ
Developer: Rainbow Studios
Genre: Racing, Sports
Platform: Playstation 2, Xbox
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone


Story:
Through the game the player goes through a series of races with a dirt bike. The player races other dirt bikes but also different vehicles like monster trucks, trophy trucks, helicopters and planes. Once the player beats the vehicle the they unlock it and can use it at anytime. The game goes on until all of the races and challenges are complete.

Character:
The player doesn't really get to chose his character but they can customize it and the vehicle they ride. They can chose the name and number on the back of the jersey. The farther they get then the more types of jerseys and other gear they get. They can customize all of the gear they want as long as its unlocked.

Challenge:
The game has different challenges where the player has to do certain tricks or beat a time trail. The creators of the game made it so that the player would have to know certain ways to go and be used to the controls of the game. The creators also made the actual story game play difficult to so that the player wouldn't get bored of the game. The more the game is played then the more difficult the game gets because the player should be getting better at the game then when they started out.

Types of Players:
This game interests the "achievement" types of people because the farther the people get in the game the more achievement the player unlocks. It also appeals to the "joker" and "competitor." It is good for the joker because they can free ride and do whatever they want to in it. It would appeal to the competitor because the player has to be competitive to win the races.

Call of Duty 4

Publisher: Activision
Developer: Infinity World, Aspyer, Treyarch
Genre: First-person shooter

Platform: Xbox 360, Playstation


Player:
A player is the person who controls the charactor in a game. In the game the player does stuff someone wouldnt do in real life. Stuff like killing people, being in a war, and betraying people. People play games because they like the feeling of being able to do something that they cant or would be to afraid to do in real life.
"Call of Duty 4" allows the player to do things they would be afraid to do and get a sense of how war is. The player doesnt have a choice on how the game plays. Everything is predetermined for the player. Everything that happens in this game could actually happen in this life. So the player can imagine how war is really like for the Army and Marines

Rules:
Normal real world physics apply in this game, you cannot walk through walls or destroy buildings in one punch. In addition, the rules in "Call of Duty 4" are simple to follow. First, if the player loses his health, he'll die, forcing the player to re-start back at the last check point.

Resources:
In "Call of Duty 4" there aren't that many different resources. There is the ammunition of the guns that you have, once you are out of ammo you have to either melee the person to kill them or you would die but when you respawn then all of your ammo is restored. Then there is the characters health. There is no visual health bar but if you are getting shot at and the screen starts to turn red then you have to take cover or you will end up dying.

Roles of Players:
In the campaign there are to main characters that the player gets to play as. There is Sergeant Paul Jackson who is in the USMC, and a young SAS member names Soap MacTavish. The two government agencies combine in order to stop another country (which is unnamed) from terroristic attacks

Procedures:
Once the game is on you would hit "A" to go into a single player mode (campaign) or you could go down to the multiplayer and play online with other people. In the beginning of the single player you are taught the controls by training. Then the real game begins.
Conflict:
The conflict in the game are the rules programmed into it and senarios that the player has to go through to obtain those goals.
Obstacles:
The player has some obstacles to go through to get through the game. They cant just run through the game to get right to them. They have to kill the enemies shooting at them so they wont die. They also have to find their way through the map and to the objective.

Saints Row 2

Title: Saints Row 2
Designer/Author: Scott Philips James Tsai
Publisher: THQ
Developers: Volition INC.
Platform: Xbox 360
Genre: Third Person Shooter, Action Adventure

The Premise of the game is to take the role of a gang member and take over all of the territory that was once his before he got into a fatal injury and arrested.
Character:
The charactor that the player takes control over is the boss of the gang called the Saints.
Story:
The game takes place in a place called Stilwater. The game starts out as the boss being in the hospital section of a jail. He just wakes up after being in a coma for 3 years. Another member of the Saints purposly got arrested so he would be sent to the jail and help out the boss. They brake out of the prison and go back to Stilwater. The boss soon realises that all of Stilwater is now taken over by three different gangs. The Ronin, The Brotherhood, and the Sons of Samedi. The boss starts to rebuild his gang to get control of the city again. Once he gets his gang rebuilt again he starts to go after the other gangs to slowly eliminate them as a threat. After he eliminates the other three gangs then a government program called Ultor trys to eliminate the saints. They wanted the Saints so then they would only have one gang to eliminate instead of having to worry about four gangs. But their plans did go as planned and the Saints overthrew Ultor and became the most dominant gang.

Joel Stilwell