Hello, everyone!
How were your Christmas?
Any good game you've been playing recently?
What about New Year's?
I gotta say, I don't know how to start this article, but here goes:
I've researched a lot on this one, probably before I started the blog, because there are some genres that depend on others, while there are those who are defined by themselves, i.e. Puzzlers are defined by themselves, whereas Horror depends on Survival and it got me confused.
So, I created a quick list with short descriptions and some examples, the thing about gaming genres is you can't remember it all, so let's get right into it!
1.
Sandbox genre is mostly used for open world games, where the player can go
anywhere within the world (the box) and they can make a variety of differences to the world (the sand). It's literally when you go at the beach and want to play with the sand, you can go at any place and make anything, given you're provided with what you need,
i.e. on Minecraft, the most famous sandbox game of our time, you can go straight to the villages and can build there if you have glass for windows, wooden fences or cobblestone walls etc.
2.
Real-Time Strategy games,
such as Age of Empires, are a subgenre of strategy video games that do not progress in turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time".
Age of Empires is the most accurate example to RTS games and the main series is focused on historical events throughout time, between the Stone Age and the early Renaissance.
3.
Shooters are divided in two types,
First Person Shooter (FPS) and
Third Person Shooter (TPS) and we all understand how they work, since they're the ones mostly at the top every year,
e.g. Halo series, a very famous FPS series and Gears of War for TPS. I won't go further on this one, but I'll say one thing: the biggest change is mostly the camera angle where the player sees the world they're playing in, rather than anything else such as the controls of the game itself.
Of course, there are Shooter games that have both camera angles, but the toggle is kind of confusing, so many people tend to keep the angle that's most efficient for them.
4.
MOBA stands for
“multiplayer online battle arena", like League of Legends and DOTA. It's literally what the title says. A lot of people around the globe enter an online arena to compete with each other, show their skills etc.
MOBA games are also the reason
esports exist,
with the most known being LoL of RIOT Games. They're also referred to as
"action real-time strategy games", believe it or not and it does require different forms of strategies to be a functional team against another in order to compete and win.
5.
RPG (role playing games) genre has many variations, but I'll stick to the main point. It's those storytelling games where the player becomes the character from second 1 and lives through a main experience of that character, that which the developers have chosen to tell you, but with a twist. There's no
RPG game without your own choices and whilst you make no choices, well, there's no gameplay and no story.
One of the most iconic examples is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, giving the player the opportunity to manipulate the main protagonist's choices and beliefs to the player's liking.
6. Simulation genre is probably my favourite out of the list, "The Sims" being the franchise I love most. The description is pretty much there, but here's a fun fact about simulation games, as Google told me, they are developed to copy various activities from real life in the form of a game for purposes such as training, analysis, prediction, entertainment etc. The Sims franchise is only the most well known out of a big list of Simulation genre games, created and developed by EA Games.
7. Sports is also pretty much explanatory, e.g. Forza Horizon, Super Smash Bros and Tekken. Yes, these three enormous titles of their respective publishers are all considered sports games, because if they were real life, we'd see them as sports.
8. Puzzlers are those games where you must solve some kind of riddle / puzzle to move onto the next level, like in The Talos Principle where the player is a robot with seemingly very human consciousness and they explore a variety of stages that include over 120 riddles / puzzles. I love a good riddle / puzzle.
9.
Party Games are - as you guessed - video games designed to be played on parties (or as our friend Wikipedia says - yes, I don't know any of that genre, gotta be honest - "social gatherings", so a not so great party, I suppose, but who am I to judge? The girl who only recently started playing video games and writes her newly gathered information and experiences on a blog read by unknown people on a tiny corner of the internet). But yeah, apparently people LOVE this genre when on a party, with
Mario Party series and Jackbox Party Pack series being the top 2 packs on releases (Jackbox Party releases every year since 2014) and sells.
10.
Action - Adventure are synonyms to one another and you can't have adventure without some action or vice versa. Most video games with a
main story are considered to be this genre and it confuses people, asking "but, the player becomes a character and there are side quests and main quests, right? so, these are
RPG". Well, yes, I get your point, but it doesn't work that way.
The main difference is that on Action - Adventure genre the players decisions are all pre-determined by the developer and as the player you must obey certain quest directives to reach the game's finale. One well known franchise is Assassin's Creed, where you get to be Altair and Ezio and Arno etc throughout the franchise, but there's limited stuff you can do, say and see. After all, it is pre-determined of what your character is needed to do.
11.
Survival - Horror but these two aren't synonyms and to be frank, you can have
Survival without
Horror, but never the opposite. For example,
The Sims 2 Castaway is mainly a
Simulation game, but its subgenre is
Survival, because if your
Sim doesn't eat or sleep or drink water, they're not going to
survive. BUT in
Horror genre, if you're playing anything that has a villain who's chasing you to death, then yes, it's also
surviving when you run away. Whether that villain be
zombies, ghosts or paranormal phenomena, the game's main point is to scare you and yours is to survive until the end of it.
Popular franchises Resident Evil and Silent Hill are known for their horror element and people around the world love all parts of the two series. So much so, that Resident Evil got a remake for its respected second, third and fourth parts of the franchise (well, the 4th is coming on March 2023 and I will be covering them all once it's released).
12. Platformers are those games, like Crash Bandicoot and Super Mario franchises, where you have to pass Level 1 to go to Level 2 and so on, so forth until the ending where you get some kind of reward, such in Super Mario where you save Princess Peach and she thanks you SPOILER and she gives you a new quest! Yay, you!
 |
| Wow...Super Mario has changed SO MUCH since its first release!! |
So, what are your thoughts?
Have I given you any new games you'd like to play, maybe on a "social gathering" or even dwell on a fantastic world by yourselves?
That was it for my small analysis and I hope I gave you a better explanation as to the tags we give on games, even if they're easy to understand, we should still be able to tell the differences.
I, for one, have learnt a few things along this research!
And with that, I wish you a Happy New Year filled with love and joy!
'Til the next time,
Yours truly~
Comments
Post a Comment