Game Design - Theory and Analysis (LESSON TASK)

 Video Game Analysis - Generations

Pre-2000s Game: Half-Life (1998)

Half-Life is a first person shooter developed by Valve and was Valve's debut product. Valve was disappointed with the lack of innovation in the FPS genre by opting to make an immersive world rather than a 'shooting gallery', with nearly uninterrupted movement of the player character and a story told through scripted events rather than cutscenes. It has received more than 50 PC 'Game of the Year' awards and is considered one of the best and most influential video games of all time.

While I can't give a personal opinion, having never played it myself, it was received with high praise from critics - scoring 96/100 on Metacritic and a 9.5/10 on IGN. It is also very positively remembered by fans with people still playing it to this day and having an all-time overwhelmingly positive rating (96% of 78,243) and a recent very positive rating (94% of 938) on Steam where most of the reviews are people saying the same thing of "old but gold" or meme quoting characters from the campaign.

Post-2015 Game: Hollow Knight (2017)

Hollow Knight is a 2D Metroidvania developed and Published by Indie Dev team Team Cherry which was funded partially through a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign that had raised over A$57,000 by the end of 2014. This Indie game was a large step forward in pushing Indie games into the public eye and solidified the Metroidvania genre into the indie scene.