Gameplay Journal Entry #2

The game I have decided to play for this week’s journal entry is Dragon Ball FighterZ. I’ve been playing and competing in this fighting game for years now, and it’s beautifully made. The engine used to create the game is Unreal Engine 4. The game is based on the 2-D Japanese comic: Dragon Ball Z, and this is important because the game was made in 3-D. The developers managed to create character models that still look the same as the drawings they were referenced from in Unreal. The usage of shading and character positioning/angling allows them to look like they were ripped right off the pages. The game is also tied to a 60 frame cap to allow moves to be a specific amount of frames to start up. This allows for knowledge of the concept of frame data to show who has true mastery of the game.

The background of the game is a 3-D environment, but the players still movin two dimensions. This creates the illusion of an open arena while also catering to the rules that allow the game to be played. Moves cannot enter a 3rd plane or blocking and reacting will not work the same with only up, down, left, and right as directional controls. A quote from Romero in our reading helps describe the importance of a game engine: “The engine ‘is the heart of the car, this is the heart of the game; it’s the thing that powers it … and it kind of feels like it’s the engine, and all the art and stuff is the body of the car.’” (Lowood, 206) The usage of Unreal allows multiple fighting games to function around the same 60 fps cap that allows moves and characters to be balanced accordingly. Without a backbone like this, balance for each individual fighting game would vary vastly, and it would be even harder for the player to understand.

Interestingly enough, today was the game’s 3 year anniversary!

Famous match/gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdahogyJCNI

Works Cited

“Game Art.” Debugging Game History, 2016, doi:10.7551/mitpress/10087.003.0021.