KINGDOM HEARTS II
Platform: Video Game

Brief Description: Control the Protagonist 'Sora' as you travel from world to world learning about the Antagonists plot and battle your way through battles with familiar Disney and Final Fantasy characters.

Genre: Role Playing Game(RPG)/Adventure

Reference to Caillois:

AGON - Since RPG's always consist of a Protagonist trying to stop the Antagonist from unravelling his evil schemes, it directly applies to Agon. In the game you are rewarded for defeating enemies with money, experiences, occassional items, hp orbs and mp orbs, which also comes under Agon as they're prizes for winning an event. When you gain enough experience, you level up and gain new skills and attributes thus making you stronger in different ways.

ALEA - When you are rewarded for subduing an enemy, the item that you occassionally get from the enemy is randomised between a handful of possible items, so you can never be dead sure what you'll be getting. This applies two roulette terms to the game as you get one for the chances of recieving an items and another for the actual item you will recieve if it rolls in your chance, therefore making them relative.

MIMICRY - Since RPG stands for Role Playing Game, it's pretty explainable that it fits into this category. As well as that, RPG's always follow a basic story and this is no exception, so Kingdom Hearts most definitely fit's into Mimicry.

ILLINX - In the beginning of the Kingdom Hearts there are scenes where the game cuts to static and weird imagery that can make the player disorientated, which made a couple of my friends who played the game confused as to what was going on.

Is this game fun? And why?
As a huge RPG, Disney and Final Fantasy fan, this game catered for every single one of my tastes buds. From the Title Screen to the Final Credits i felt fully emerged in this game and enjoyed every single moment. The use of colours and style for the environments, the characters, the story, the battle system...everything just blended together so well, it was seamless. Every aspect was engaging and interesting and i can fully say this is one of the best games, if not the best game i've ever played.

How are the rules of the game portrayed? Are they clear?
Kingdom Hearts II doesn't have any set rules, the game is pretty much open for you to do anything. Though the game restrict you from doing certain things such as "Attacking Civilians" but these aren't really rules. Even so everything you can do is explained to you at the beginning of the game through in-game tutorials, so everything is as clear as it can be.

Is the game suitable for the platform and would it work(maybe better) on other platforms?
Kingdom Hearts II can only really work on a Games Console, the game is too dimensional for a board game that it would be way too complex and would have to require perhaps millions of players to be created accurately enough to be like the Video Game. As for Flash it could work, considering Flash can use 3D but due to Flash not being made for 3D games, it may cause alot of problems and most likely wont be able to process a file as big as it needs to be to recreate Kingdom Hearts exactly. If it was to be done in Flash, the 3D would have to be downed to 2D and alot of features may need to be cut out.

Where there any parts of the experience that were unintuitive and if so; how could this have been dealt with better?
Just like every video game, they tend to be alot less intuitive then Board/Puzzle games down to the fact that you must use a controller as an extension of your body to control what happens on the screen, rather than your body by itself. Though concerning this, Kingdom Hearts delivers pretty well! When playing this game i had no problem picking up the controller and finding out what to do, though i play alot of games and they tend to link together with other games similar systems. If i was new to this game, the control system may be a little complicated for some as you have to hold some buttons to activate a press sequence for using magic and such, so this could probably simplified but i think by doing that they would have to cut back on what you could achieve on the quick during the game, so in my opinion this was dealt with to the best of it's possible outcome.


FINAL FANTASY X
Platform: Video Game

Brief Description: You follow a Protagonist that has been taken from his time and sent 1000 years into the future, as he tries to come to grasp with his situation and stop an evil known as "Sin" from destroying the world.

Genre: Role Playing Game(RPG)

Reference to Caillois:

AGON - Just like Kingdom Hearts, you battle your way through the game and are rewarded with various items and experience upon which you will eventually level up. The difference appears when you level up, as rather than recieving set skills and attributes, you recieve "Sphere Points" which can be spent to learn new skills and increase attributes whilst you work your way through the "Sphere Grid".

ALEA - When an enemy is defeated in battle you recieve items just like how Kingdom Hearts II works but aswell as being able to recieve items based on luck from defeating the enemy, you can also recieve items on a chance by attempting to steal from each set enemy. Some enemies have rarer items than the others, especially bosses that occur at key moments in the game, so it benefits you even more but just like defeating them, there's still a random chance for recieving an item.

MIMICRY - Final Fantasy is an RPG, so you have to play out the role of the main character, but the game also allows you to rename your protagonist so you can put yourself more into the role by naming them after you.

Is this game fun? And why?
I'm a huge fan of the Final Fantasy series so i really anjoyed the game, so my opinion may be a little biased but there are quite a few points in the game where i got bored. Since Final Fantasy games tend to be very story heavy, they need to make the story as appealing as possible and allow the game to flow as well as possible but Final Fantasy made a few slip ups in certain areas of the game that had me wanting to skip the story to adventure on, which i don't usually do in Final Fantasys. Though with this problem, it was overall pit was more fun than boredom, so they did a decent job.

How are the rules of the game portrayed? Are they clear?
Just like Kingdom Hearts II, this game has no rules, instead the game restricts you from doing certain things, such as attacking civilians, walking off cliffs and so on.

Is the game suitable for the platform and would it work(maybe better) on other platforms?
Due to the size and length of Final Fantasy games, it would not work on any other format, without it being downgraded in every aspect and sliced into episodes, even then only Flash could barely handle it...leaving a Board/Puzzle game out of the equation.

Where there any parts of the experience that were unintuitive and if so; how could this have been dealt with better?
There are a few unintuitive parts in Final Fantasy X which could have been done better:-

Blitzball: A football mini-game that takes place under-water, you have to pass to one and another and swim till you can make a definte shot by kicking it. The problem with the mini-game was it felt like a completely different experience and like a whole new game inside the game, that differed in controller scheme. Though it was relative to the storyline, it wasn't very well explained in the in-game tutorials and could have been elaborated on more about the physics of it all.

Spheres/Sphere Grid: The Sphere Grid is pretty straight forward, but the explanation of how you get some of the Spheres lays unknown and you have to discover yourself where to get these Spheres from even though they're necessary to recieve along the path of the story.