Analyising video game Machinima and the effect it has on the story - X-men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance series.

In these posts I will analyse video game Machinima and the effect it has on the game. The fist being the X-men Legends, X-men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. The series then opted for a more similar looking graphics in the cinematics to the game-play graphics in Marvel ultimate Alliance 2.

In the first installment of the series, X men Legends (2004) the cinematics look similar to the game-play, but slightly better. This proposed no issue as the two styles of animation blended to create a believable world, but the cut scenes only really seemed worth watching to know the story, and didn't contain any particular reason to keep viewers from skipping them other than this.

In X-men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse (2005), and Marvel Ultimate Alliance (2006) the cinematics contained far greater graphics than the gameplay graphics. This I think was due to the aim to make the game-play look like comic styled graphics and a more realistic look for the cinematics. I thought this idea was great, because it allowed the users to see the characters in two completely different styles. The cinematics were much more enjoyable to watch also, because of the visual enhancement they had. Its not realistic per-say,  but it allows an exaggerated realism for the extravagant characters. The dialogue was also improved, and as they displayed many characters in the scenes, even unplayable ones, payers got to see more of the world they were playing into. These machinma were very good, and if an entire film was made in this style I would probably extremely enjoy it. If anything, it would be my opinion to aim for the whole game to look more like the cinematics, something I think Activison tried to do with the next installment.

 The final installment (so far) was Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (2009). This changes the game-play style of animation that used to look typically comic like, to a new style reflecting the art in the comic the story of the game is based on. They did the same to the cinematics also, blending the two styles to exist in the same world. I much prefer the game-play animation, but it feels the cinematics took a step backwards to look similar to the in game graphics. The machinima cinematics were more story driven and altogether better, allowing the animation to look like moving art work from the comics. I feel this was a good idea, though a bald decision as the cinematics were already the previous games highlights in my opinion. Unfortunately the game wasn't as good due to poor level design, but the cinematics and game-play blended well for users to expand the world they were playing into. This seems to be the way games were heading in terms of animation styles to merge the two elements of the game, rather than have very different styles, even to the extent of games based of films simply using clips from the film as cinematics, such as The Lord of the rings: Return of the King.