Visuals

The all-important eye candy. Tech Crater looks at the quality of artwork, sprites, geometry, FX effects, lighting, texturing and everything else that puts eye-pleasing aesthetics on the screen. But it is not all just about style and beauty. Visuals are closely related with Immersion (below). The visual content must be appropriate to the genre and setting to maintain the sense of realism and belief in the gamer.

Audigy

SFX effects, music, dialogue, 3D positioning, P2P radio communications and environment effects can give a super boost to the gaming experience. Remember charging away from the spawn point with a hand grenade and hearing the words "Storm the front!"? Have you reminisced the words "Fire in the hole!" just as you lobbed the incendinary device? Such simple audio dialogue transforms the mundane task of moving away from a spawn point into an experience of blitzing action and realism. For this reason, Audigy has a close connection in the Force with Immersion (Ed - you mean like a Force Bond?).

Interface

"A game is a database with a fancy interface" (Ed - insert credit here when we identify the author). This statement sums up the importance of the interface. To convey all that a game has to offer, the controls need to be simple, self-intuitive, familiar, customisable, responsive and consistent. Tech Crater takes into account that some games require inputs of a complex nature such as flight simulators (requiring one joystick) and the robotic dueling Virtual On (requiring dual joysticks). The Interface is often forged from Visuals and Audigy.

Personality™

The Personality™ of a game defined - "The quality or collection of qualities which makes a [game] a distinctive [software]; the distinctive personal or individual character of a [game]" (Oxford English Dictionary Online, 11/03/07). Tech Crater proposes this new continuum to review how much a game stands apart from its fellows (Ed - standing out for good reasons).

Most games belong to a well explored genre but many aspects can set one apart. It could have unique concepts and features by being well designed and polished. There may be an enthralling world or a story presented in a non-linear manner. The characters or the story may embody great detail or well-researched history. Personality™ is a measure of how ground-breaking and innovative a game is in its field. The wide scope of Personality™ relates it to Visuals, Audigy, Interface and Immersion.

Immersion

A game can transport the gamer into another life, world and atmosphere. In the virtual world the gamer can be a Jedi, an evil genius or a thug. It can create emotions of excitement, suspension, fear, tension or power. All this can be experienced as long as there is no disbelief and no overriding sense of frustration.

To maintain belief in a game’s fantasy setting, everything should happen as the gamer expects it to happen in the setting. In the RPG Morrowind, belief is maintained even when the player walks on the air so long as magic has been cast. But when the character falls right through the floor into a void (a glitch in the release version), the belief is shattered. Many things will heighten gamer’s frustration including glitches, over-repetition of game events, impossible challenges, being lost without objectives and poor interface design.

Immersion is therefore closely related to Visuals, Audigy and Interface.

Final Impact of Game Review System

Tech Crater hopes that our review system will be informative to you as it is succinct. We welcome your comments, good and nasty, about our rating system. Below we describe the Final Impact scoring: