Over the course of this class, we have played a plethora of games that have taken place in historical events. Some games were far more historically accurate than others, but there has been a consistent theme that regardless of how historically accurate the games are, there are still things to be learned from them about history. The games that we played this semester as a class and wrote blog posts on were Civilization 6, the Assassins Creed Franchise, Empire: Total War, and Tropico 6. We also managed to squeeze in a Call of Duty Zombies play day. Civilization 6 was a fun new gaming experience for me, as it was the first time I had played a real-time, turn-based strategy game. The Overall goal of the game is to achieve 1 of the 7 victory conditions that are possible. Those victory conditions are military domination, technological superiority, or cultural influence, over the other human and computer-controlled opponents. This was my first time playing the game and I had lots of difficulties learning how to play it because of how many options there are and the amount that there is to do and complete in Civilization VI. I have been playing video games for the majority of my life and this was by far the hardest experience that I had trying to learn and pick up how to play this game. Being thrown into a strategy game that I was unfamiliar with was difficult, I would make moves that I had no idea what I would be doing, and those moves would have consequences (good and bad) that I was completely unaware of how they were affecting my gameplay experience. I would try to make allies with other nation-states to establish trade and other perks of having allies in the hopes to become a superpower in the game but would continuously get raided by barbarians and other enemies that would walk all over me. The next game that we played as a class was the Assassins Creed franchise. I have played Assassins Creed games previously but never was really able to follow through with the games because they are just not my style of game. Assassins Creed is described as an open-world action-adventure-stealth. Many of the games take place during major historical events or time periods in history. For example, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey takes place during Ancient Greece, Assassin’s Creed Origins take place during Ancient Egypt, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla takes place during the age of the Vikings, and other time periods such as the holy land in the year 1191 and the Italian renaissance in 1476. The games are fictional, but they are based on historical events. The game takes you around these historical periods and has you complete all sorts of tasks with the overall goal of completing the story and ranking up your character as much as possible and collecting all sorts of cool-looking gear to improve the performance of your character in the game. The game that I have experience playing and will be more mainly focusing on is the very first release in the Assassin’s Creed franchise which is just called Assassin’s Creed. This game takes place during the third crusade, and it takes place in the Holy Land in the years 1191-1193. I have played these games before and have enjoyed them but maybe it was just the game that I chose to play but I did not enjoy the game as much as I thought I would. The game came off as very repetitive with the only real goal of assassinating all the main villains. The next game that we wrote a blog post about was Empire: Total War. Empire: Total war is described as a turn-based strategy and real-time tactics video game that I believe to be one of, if not the most historically accurate video games that we have played as a class. Empire: Total War was released on March 3rd, 2009, on Windows, Mac, and Linux. The game was developed by the British video game company Creative Assembly and was published by Sega. How the game works is that the player must choose an 18th-century faction that consists of Austria, France, Great Britain, the Maratha Confederacy, the Ottoman Empire, Poland-Lithuania, Prussia, , Russia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Provinces. Then the player will try to dominate the rest of the players, whether it is the multiplayer mode or single-player mode. You can dominate other players or factions in a couple of ways, you can achieve dominance through military force, diplomacy, espionage, and economics. Similar to my experience with Civilization VI, I struggled to understand and learn how to properly play the game. The last game that we wrote a blog post about was Tropico 6. Tropico 6 is described as construction, management, and political simulation game. I would describe this game as a hybrid between civilization 6 and the sims games. The game is a bit goofier, like the Sims games, but you are still building and expanding your city. There are four eras that you work through, those four eras being the colonial era, the world wars era, the cold war era, and the modern era. The game was released on March 29th, 2019, by publisher Kalypso Media, and developed by Limbic Entertainment. The overall goal of the game is to progress through the four different eras and make as much money as possible by expanding your city and building new buildings. I have had nothing short of a blast in this class. That being said, this has been one of the most unusual classes I have ever been a part of and I enjoyed every second of it.
- jacobemmick08