Terrain is the environment that is located around the persons or player's whereabouts. Terrain can range from many different types of genres and settings with areas such as deserts, mountains, ocean, arctic and much more. Terrains can be defined in ways looking at the objects and weather in the scene which give the environment a greater and more realistic effect. For example, A desert would have objects such as cactus' and tumbleweed as a sandstorm could occur every now and then.
Minecraft
In Minecraft, there are many different Biomes that consist of having different types of environment and terrain which changes how they are generated, how they look and difference in resources that you can find there. A list of all of the different Biomes are: Plains, Desert, Mesa, Taiga, Northern forest, Swampland, Extreme Hills, Ocean, Ice Plains etc.
Here are some images displaying what some of the terrains look like within the game.
Desert:
The Desert is a terrain that is very plain with nothing but tonnes of sand and a few cacti scattered around the biome.
Plains:
The Plains is a grassy land filled with grass, dirt, trees and some hills which shows how a field like terrain would look within a virtual and blocky world.
In Borderlands, There are Terrain that seem very rural and deserted filled with dirt and rocks with a lot of space and then there are areas within the game that are clearly man-made like buildings which alter how the terrain would look like if there wasn't any man-made objects. You can also see how the environment doesn't seem too clean or fancy since everything seems as if it has been made out of scrap material.
Castle Crashers
Here is a forest-like terrain within Castle Crashers and as you can see, the game sticks with the 2D cartoon-like and quirky artistic effect which fits in nicely with the game and successfully portrays how the terrain is supposed to look.
Architecture
Architecture is the way the buildings within the terrain are structured in a certain type of style. For example, in environments located in regional areas such as Japan will have buildings that are created to look similar to shrines and actual structures that are traditionally linked to the country because of the Japanese type of culture and way of living. Compared to another type of building is a large and futuristic scientific lab looking at games such as Portal which use smooth and clean types of materials where there are a lot of machines that mass produce a lot of products and most of the objects are defined using shapes rather than actual objects.
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4
Portal 2
An object is an item that you are able to see, touch and interact with. This also means that objects are things that get regularly used within real life and video games. Objects can range from things such as weapons, books, plushies, phones etc.
Pokemon
In all of the Pokemon games, There are many different items that you can collect and obtain for yourself to aid you along the way whether it be a potion to heal your Pokemon, A bicycle to help you ride around quickly or a Key Item that is key to have to progress through the game. Items within the game are used very frequently and they can be found in certain areas or they can be bought in the PokeMart where a large majority of the items are sold for currency you earn through winning battles.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
In Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, when the game begins you are able to entering a buying menu by pressing the default key "b". In this buying menu, you can spend the money you have earned throughout the current game you are in by killing a numerous amount of enemies and just as the rounds go by.
Characters
Characters are the people that the player controls to progress through the game. Some characters may have different abilities compared to others which are used for each completely different purposes, meaning that some could be beneficial in ways that the other couldn't be.
Tracer (Overwatch)
Tracer is an offensive flanker who has the ability to "blink" in any direction by a radius of 7 meters. She can use her blink ability every 3 seconds and she can have 3 blinks stacked up all at once, which allows her to easily get into the behinds of the enemy back lines so that she can take out fragile support character or deal a larger amount of damage to the various tanks with her pulse pistols. When she builds up so much damage. she can use her ultimate ability where she can throw and stick a bomb quickly onto an enemy target which could kill a radius of players if they are in a very close range to each other.
Reinhardt (Overwatch)
Reinhardt is a core tank which is almost a must-have in every game. Reinhardt has the ability to pull up a shield whenever he likes with a total life of 2000 health. This shield is designed to protect his team and more importantly, block "choke points" of the various maps within Overwatch. Reinhardt also carries a large hammer which swings in the whole radius in front of him dealing 75 damage per swing, meaning that he can be a big problem for characters with very low health or characters that are stood in the same area. Reinhardt's ultimate ability is named "Earthshatter" where he lifts his massive hammer into the air and slams it down ferociously to the ground leaving enemies in his sight dazed and unable to move, making them very easy to kill.
Torbjorn (Overwatch)
Torbjorn is a defensive character who stays within the back lines of his team as he has the ability to build an automatic turret which he can also upgrade to "level 2" when using his hammer on it. His turret does a surprising amount of damage and can be a large problem in specific games when it is not taken out. When Torbjorn uses his ultimate ability, "Molten Core", his turret proceeds to automatically level up to level 3 where it has extremely high damage and fire rate, more health and he himself also gets more health and deals more damage.
Mercy (Overwatch)
Mercy's job is to support the team in any way that she possibly can. Mercy can use her staff to either heal her teammates at a moderate speed or she can boost the damage of a target that she selects by 30%. Mercy can also easily glide towards her teammates every 2 seconds using her "Guardian Angel" ability. When Mercy's ultimate is charged, she can resurrect a number of teammates that have recently died within a specific radius which can be a game changing play that could put your team in a huge advantage.
NPC
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon - Partner
In PMD, you will have a partner who you will help receive their goal whilst they try to help you get back to being a human. Throughout your adventure, You and your partner go on various different adventures together where you explore through various dungeons completing missions and various quests where your partner fights along side of you. Your partner will always be concerned and talk to you whenever you need it, and he also takes the place of being a very special friend within the game.
This video will contain spoilers for how the game ends, but it shows how the ending is so impactful even though it is played using various NPC characters to guide you along the way. The music that plays gives a great emotional impact and you can feel the emotion of yourself and your partner with the various facial expressions and effects that take place within this final cutscene.
Feedback within video games is the way that the game tells you how well you are doing at the game which is given back to you by showing you statistics, creating various sound effects or making the controller shake vigorously.
Super Smash Bros.
In this GIF, you can see how each hit deals a certain percentage of damage towards the target that is being hit and that percentage is easily seen by the player because of its bright flashing animation and the numbers jiggling about. We can also see that each slash leaves a slight lighting effect which is also feedback for the player since it lets them know that the slash created contact with the enemy.
Here, you can see what it looks like when a player is defeated and how the end of the game is displayed with large and bold letters that imply that the game is over and a winner has been determined.
Interface
The interface is the visual components that the player can see which gives them information about the character they are controlling and things that can help a player be aware. An interface in an FPS game like Call of Duty has interface with things such as ammo, score, time, cross-hairs, hit-markers, mini-map, equipment etc. As you should be able to tell, there are all things that can make the player more cautious of the play-style they take as they may not have a lot of ammo or any flash-bangs left to kill more players meaning that they need to take a more careful approach.
Call of Duty
The UI in Town of Salem is rather simple but it gives you everything you need in the game to complete the game and fulfill the role that you were given at the start of the game. There is a button which will open up a black page known as a "will" which will be stated to the town when the person dies. In that will, they can write down anything whether it is information to pass on to the townies or the mafia tricking the townies into lynching one of their own. There is also information showing what role you received, descriptions about your role, people who are currently alive, the chat, the role list and if you are in the mafia, then it shows the other members of the mafia since you are all working together to kill all of the town.
Perspectives
Perspectives in video games can change a how it is played completely as there are a range of different perspectives for different games. There are perspectives that could give a game a more realistic view where you play the game in a first person person so you see through the characters eyes which is good for genres such as FPS, Action, Horror etc.
1st Person - Mirror's Edge
3rd person - The Last of Us
Side Scroller - Rabi Ribi
Top down shooter - Touhou: Perfect Cherry Blossom
As you can see, Perspectives in video games can change in many different ways which could possibly be because of the game genre or the general intention that the game is meant to be played. For example, I believe that mirror's edge was in first person because it wanted to make you feel the adrenaline of the fast paced parkour type of action so it felt some what realistic. I think that The Last of Us was in 3rd person because it helps the player progress through the game when using stealth movements as they have a wider view of the environment around them that the character themselves cannot see but I also think that the game wanted us to feel sympathy for the characters within the game.
FMV
FMV stands for Full motion video, and this is basically a cut-scene used within a game to enhance the story's narrative further using pre-recorded videos.
In this, we can see how they have used various 3D renders and music to display what the game is going to be like since this was an official Infinity Ward trailer advertises the game to hype the audience and get ready for the release of the game.
Here is the introduction cut-scene to GTA V, which introduces the main characters that you are going to play as within the game which tells us something about their personalities and themselves.
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