Critical and Contextual_KyleSmith
Critical and Contextual
By Kyle Smith
24th September 2024
We are going to research franchises in gaming and pick a franchise to write about for couple of weeks. My first thoughts are Sonic, Pokémon or Yokai watch franchise.
To get in contact with Rachel,
we can email her by:
email - rachel.williams2@confetti.ac.uk
Telephone Number - 0115 952 2075
Within the Critical and Contextual we have 3 assessments and the deadline for the first assessment is Sunday 13th December 24 11pm.
The Summative Assessment needs a 3,00 word case study, and a research journal. And there is 6 module outcomes assessed.
These websites has been provided to us:
This is a simple and easy digest way to interpret the modules.
Here's a list of genres that I could use:
Puzzle - Life is Strange
RPGs - Pokemon
JRPGs - Persona 5 ⭐
Sandbox - Gmod
First Person Shooter - Blck Ops
Sports - Wii Sports
Mystery - Detective Pikachu
Horror - Fnaf⭐
Rouge-like
Survival - 7 days to die
Platformer - Sonic⭐
Multiplayer - Titanfall
Single Player - Spiderman 2⭐
Third-Person - Fortnite
Sci-Fi - Skyrim
Historic - Black Myth: Wukong
Fighting - Super Smash Bros Ultimate
Strategy - Pit People
Action - Breathe of the wild
Battle Royale - My Hero ultra Rumble
Rhythm Games - Miku
Mobile Games - Bleach Souls
Shooting Games - Apex
Beat Em Up Games - River city Girls
Stealth Games - Agent 7
Gacha Games - Tokyo ghoul re exist
Visual Novels - Doki Doki Literature Club
Interactive Novels - Minecraft Story mode
MMORPG - World of Warcraft
Monster Tamer - Pokemon⭐
Simulator - Goat Simulator
Turned Based - YoKai Watch
Party Game - Mario Party
Hack an Slash - Lollipop Chainsaw
Open World - Elden Ring
Arena Fighter: Bleach Rebirth of Souls.
My Subject I'm choosing is Sonic the Hedgehog, this hedgehog has 95 games and continuing and been making games for 33 years so it's safe to stay it's a long running franchise, but a franchise which is full of history even rivalling the face of gaming. The first game was released June 21st 1991 with Sonic The Hedgehog and the newest or up and coming game is Sonic X Shadow Generations which will release on October 25th 2024.
Sonic the Hedgehog is mainly a fast action platformer with stylised art style with it being brightly coloured with the enemies being more robotic and not as brightly colour matching the themes of sonic the hedgehog. The target audience of Sonic is Children or Young Teens but it still targets fans above the age of it's intended audience. Sonic is rated 7 to 12 ratings for the games.
Here's my sources:
Here's the link of where I found the amount of Sonic Games:
Sonic the Hedgehog as a franchise as changed art style throughout the years it's been making games and It shouldn't be a surprise as it's got 95 games at first it had a rubber hose art style but slowly It started changing, this is apparent in one of his first 3D Sonic games: Sonic Adventure. At this point you can see the old rubber hose art style but it was less obvious and traded for more grounded style with the cartoonish characters, The colours weren't as bright but it was still loaded with colours that you couldn't tell.
Next was Sonic 2006 and they tried to go more realistic with environments and characters, unlike sonic adventure art style lasting around 3 main line games this realism art style lasted only this one game. This is due to the game being poorly received due to it's abundant amount of glitches making it sometimes impossible to play. I love this game though and I'll talk about it later.
After Sonic 2006 we got sonic unleashed where it's art style lasts until today It felt like a Sonic Adventure again but it's underlining style of rubber hose seems to be at least more apparent. But it felt and looked amazing, with the colours so vibrant and busy levels making it such a fun game to even just look at. It stays like this for a while until Sonic Boom.
Sonic Boom was supposed to be a fresh start and whole new sonic. It's art style went back to the Sonic 2006 art style while the characters were still cartoonish. Like 2006 this also was a flop and poorly received. Even though the character designs were kind of cool but the rest flopped as in the Gameplay, writing and everything. Sonic the hedgehog felt like it was now doomed and it couldn't get worse.
Sonic Forces comes out and the excitement was amazing, the art style returning to what it was before Sonic Boom and It felt like we were back. But Sonic Forces was bad. Really bad and now sonic felt like a franchise that couldn't be as great as it were years ago. It was the end.
Sonic Frontiers. Sonic Frontiers was amazing, and a step in the right direction. However, It's art style felt closely match with Sonic Boom and everyone was worried, it wasn't as bright. It was open world. If sonic didn't get it right this last time, this will be the last straw for so many fans including myself. The art style like I said was more realism and the character designs stayed the same. A lot of people had a problem with this as we loved Sonic to be more brightly coloured and not dull. It matches sonic and his ideals.
With the newest game being Sonic Generations X Shadow, It looks like we might get a more vibrant world and busy worlds. One of my favourite things about Sonic the Hedgehog is it's constantly trying new styles and it feels everchanging and not scared to try something new. And Sonic X Shadow feels like what the game should be and it looks nice with it's vibrant environment.
"Sonic and the black Knight 2009"
The people behind these decisions are called the Sonic Team. Sonic Team is ran by Sega because Sonic become such a beloved and a staple of Saga he got is own production team named Sonic Team. But the director of the Sonic games is called Takashi Iizuka. Sega was founded in 1960 and The Sonic Team was founded in 1991.
I love Sonic and it's something I grew up with for years and It's a part of me. I admit It's not perfect but I love regardless. What makes me so interested in Sonic is multitude of things. Firstly I love the fast action paced platformer that it is. In Mario and more, going fast is rewarding but technical and a lot of the time requires previous knowledge and trick but for Sonic Games you can go fast without further knowledge but the game still has that skill barrier where if you do have previous knowledge then you can go even quicker but it hardly never slows your pace. Sonic has a vast of characters but they all have personality which I don't think Mario can match. When playing the games you know each character has a story even if you don't know it and some characters that don't get presented a story still feels much alive. I'll leave you with one more reason, Sonic is someone I idealise a lot in my life. Sonic ideals is to live life and freedom in everything. With someone with social anxiety I wish to do things which I may struggle. Sonic feels like he represents a part of me which wants to live a free life with no anxiety and do the thing I struggle with. Sonic is about Freedom and being your true self and for me that something I wish to be. To quote something he says " Every world has it's end. I know that's kinda sad, but... That's why we gotta live life to the fullest in the time we have."
1st October 2024
Art movements:
Pop art
Symbolism
graffiti Art
Spiritualist art
Surrealism
Psychedelic
Sonic the Hedgehog is linked was inspired by Mickey Mouse and Felix the cat which Mickey Mouse has direct ties to the pop art movement with the character being a more rubber hose design and using a lot of bright colours within art just like pop art. Mickey Mouse was key in the pop art thank to Andy Warhol which is one if not the most famous pop artist having the famous pop art of Marilyn Monroe and yet he dedicated a piece of art to Mickey Mouse. Sonic being inspire by Mickey Mouse just further relates Sonic to the Pop art movement but not just pop art. Surrealism. Sonics world is a surrealist world with talking almost human looking characters with character with odd features like sonic massive eyes. In my opinion one of the most surrealist things in sonic is the death egg which resembles the face on the main villain Dr Eggman. Or the massive machines Eggman makes like the death egg robot which is separate to the Death Egg. All the enemies in sonic are surreal which is in theme. Sonic is about the healthy amount of technology and nature and how it can coexist and when we encounter a villain or a minion, of course we they will look weird or unnatural because its not supposed to be as an abundant amount amount of tech is unhealthy so making the primary focus about the unhealthy ways of using tech and using surrealism to strengthen that point works in favour of Sonic.
Comments
Post a Comment