The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Text adventure

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is a text-based adventure game based on the popular novel “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams. Released in 1984, published by the company Infocom (the makers of Zork games) and had become a huge success and won multiple game of the year awards and sold over 350,000 copies. It was released on the Commodore 64, DOS and the Atari ST. the game was written by Douglas Adams and programmed by Steve Meretzky.

The game was notoriously known for being difficult and not giving out instructions to the players to help them and making them kill their character and start from the beginning. The original game interface was just a simple black background, with text waiting for input from the player as the game did not give out any help to the player. In one level of the game there was an item you had to collect called the “babel fish” which required the use of several in-game items, in which the player had use them in a certain order to collect it and many players had to restart to get them in the correct order.

The game has been updated over the thirty years of it release by the BBC who have added HD art, music and built social features.

The visual style of the game is very 2D does not really show us any detail on the background we have to rely more on our imagination than visuals. The game is annoyingly difficult at times as there are hardly any hints for the player and this is what i think made this game very addicting for players knowing that they have accomplished something difficult without the aid of visual clues.

I think what made this game unique is because it is a text adventure that gives a lot to the players but also very little at the same time which back in 1984 was common practice for video games to do that, but in 2014 it doesn’t happen at all games give us all the facts and hold our hands  through the game, I think this is what makes this game unique.

Screenshot comparison:

bradcast and non broadcast audio question

Questions:

What is your name

age

what course are you on?

Do you listen to either podcasts or radio shows and how?

Fable 2 game reivew

fable 2 is the sequel to the highly successful Fantasy/Adventure game fable for the original Xbox, in which it is set almost 100 years after the fist game.

plot:

The main story of Fable 2 sees you take control of the character the Hero of Bowerstone and from there you meet your sister Rose and the mysterious Lord Lucian who invites you and your sister up into his castle. Where you discover that you are a hero threatened by this, Lucian kills your sister but nearly kill the Hero where s/he is found by Theresa a “seer” from there she heals your wounds and watches you grow up, when you come of age she let’s your character go out in to the world to either get revenge on Lucian or save the world.

my opinion of Fable 2 is that it is a fun game that has given me a lot of hours of gameplay and a definition of what is good and evil in video games but the morality in the game is very black and white it tells whether you’re doing a good deed or bad deed, the game should let the player find out what has happened within the game at a later date overall this game did not live up to its predcessor in some ways, but exceeds it in some other ways including the combat system, the voice acting and the overall story.

 

 

game crontrollers

Video game controller’s blog

Xbox 360:

–           D-pad

–          Joysticks

–          Start and black buttons

–          Left and right triggers

–           Left and right shoulder buttons

–          Directory button

–          Infrared sensor

An updated version of the original Xbox controller, the 360 controller was a complete remodel and redesign which went through many different designs before the final design was chosen

Strengths: very comfortable to use, will continue to work after long periods of time, it can alert the user if the controllers charge is running low.

Weaknesses: uses up a large amount of batteries if you do not have a rechargeable battery pack, may mis-connect if another console is nearby and some buttons may stop working after a period of time

experiences with the Xbox controller has always been good, but after gaming seesion i sometimes find myself needing new batteries or my hands are stuck in the way i was holding it.

Nintendo DS:

-D-pad

-start, select buttons

-power button

-touch screen

-A, B, X, Y buttons

Strengths: very easy to use, all buttons are not too far away,

Weaknesses: the controller itself is not very portable as it is attached to console itself, may fail to work after a period of time, the touchscreen may get scratched or damaged and might not work in certain places

my experience in using the Nintendo DS controlsis that it works very very well it was never uncomfortable to use the only problem was that it required extensive cleaning on both the touchscreen and the buttons but overall a very nice controller

Keyboard:

–          num-pad

–          Directional keys

–          F1-F12 keys

–          Start menu key

–          Lettered and numbered keys

Strengths: easy to use, all the buttons are reachable, very comfortable to use,

Weaknesses: may only last a short amount of time if it is used constantly, certain keyboards may be expensive to buy, and keys may become jammed after long periods of time, not portable

my experience in using keyboards as controllers is that sometimes more useful than controllers for the Xbox or the DS, it may not be as portable or cheap, but most modern keyboards allow the user to create a Macro (instructions) within games to help with ease of use

Broadcast and non-broadcast Audio

Broadcast and non-broadcast audio

Broadcast audio, uses traditional transmission methods

Examples of listening to non-broadcast audio listening to radio 1 on the car stereo, DAB radio- traditional

the use of broadcast Audio does not involve use of the internet.

Non-broadcast audio-

Non-broadcast audio uses more modern methods than non-broadcast audio

It normally involves the use of the internet
Examples of non-broadcast audio includes listening to a podacast on Itunes or a radio show on iplayer A show on the intenet can come from a range of websites on Soundcloud,Spotify, Deezer

In store audio is the audio that is coming from the in store radio. Stream – continuous stream of data that is coming from the internet. Downloading a file is a file you must download before you can fully play it.

Download files include the following formats: MP3, WAV, MP4, M4A.

examples of podcasting and internet radio streaming sites:

http://www.podbean.com/ – provides a large libary of different genres of podcasts to stream also they provide the ability to publish your own podcast on their site

http://www.heart.co.uk/ – this is related to radio station that bears the same name but as it is being stream over the internet it is not broadcast audio it is non-broadcast audio there is also a slight delay as it takes longer for it to reach the internet than it does to reach the arial.

http://internetboxpodcast.com/ – host of the podcast The Internet Box and host the links to itunes and download links which come in m4A format

http://roosterteeth.com/podcast/ – hosts links to itunes page and downloads for its’ podcast

http://www.iheart.com/ – hosts real and custom internet radio stations  only avalible in the US