Guides
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Easter Egg An Easter Egg is an intentionally hidden cheat or hidden content in video game. |
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Silent Protagonist A silent protagonist is a character in a game who speaks no lines of dialogue, letting other characters tell the story in scripted moments or cutscenes. |
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Speed Blur The speed blur effect is typically used in racing games and amounts to the edges of the screen blurring around the player as he/she moves at a faster rate of speed. |
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Teleportation The ability to move from one area to another quickly - typically through some sort of special power or device. |
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Physics Manipulation Physics play an important part in this game in solving puzzles and/or combat. Notable examples include the Gravity Gun from Half-Life 2, and the Force Powers from Star Wars: Force Unleashed. |
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Black Mesa This page is for Black Mesa the COMPANY, not the location. Describe accordingly. |
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Strong Women Women capable of taking care of themselves and whom aren't stereotypical "damsels in distress." |
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Achievements Achievements are extra challenges added into games. Completing these challenges could increase your Gamerscore. |
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Regenerating Health Regenerating health is a gameplay mechanic which automatically refills the players health bar after successfully escaping damage for a set amount of time. It is typically seen in modern shooters. |
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New Game Plus A mode that allows a game to be replayed after a first completion, carrying over items, experience, weapons, and other elements from the first playthrough. Occasionally levels also differ in the successive playthroughs. A famous early example is the Second Quest in the Legend of Zelda. Common in RPGs. |
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Unreliable Narrator Don't believe anyone. There's more going on here than is immediately apparent. |
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Emergent Gameplay A new game design buzz word, the concept that by defining a series of simple rules within the game, these rules will combine to create exciting and unpredictable gameplay. |
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Motion Blur An post processing effect that blurs and streaks the entire frame when the player camera is manipulated. Loosely based on the behavior of real-world optics. |
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Evade To elude, escape, or get away from. |
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Immersion Immersion is what most games try to do - make the player feel like he/she is really there, in the game. Among some of the most immersive games are BioShock and The Darkness. |
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First-Person Perspective First-Person is a vantage point that attempts to simulate looking through a game character's eyes. It is most commonly found in First-Person Shooters and Racing games, but also finds its way into other genres, such as RPG's and 3D Platformers. |
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Explosion Something that blows up in a huge firey hell! Usually due to ill placed explosives or general "accidents" |
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Moving Platforms Platforms conviently moving you towards your destination to allow the crossing of large expanses which would otherwise be impossible to cross. |
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No HUD No HUD is a concept some games use to convey a sense of realism, artistic style, to look cool or to show off. |
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Can't Swim It can't be helped; some game characters just don't know how to swim! This usually means automatic death as soon as they hit the water. |
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Singing Characters Games with characters that burst into song. |
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Portals Portals have been taking a much larger role in video games now than ever before. Games like portal and Prey are both examples of these, and more are sure to come. |
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Humor Just good ol' clean funny. |
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WASD Movement The most common and often default settings to move your character in PC games with a first or third person perspective. |
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Linear Gameplay The opposite of open-ended gameplay, linear gameplay uses scripted events, cut scenes, and a restricted path to tell a story exactly how the writer intends, and control elements of the action. |
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Havok Physics Havok Physics (Havok) is a physics software developed by the Irish company Havok and released in 2000. It is used in video games as a physics engine. |
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Narratology The narrativists approach to video games involves the aspect of storytelling, a scenario, scene, characters and plot of which the user plays through and experiences and takes part in the story that unfolds. |
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Unusual Speech Patterns Games that feature characters that are known for a highly distinctive and unusual manner of speech. |
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ASCII ASCII is often used as a way to replace images where they can't be used, i.e. maps in a text based guide. In the past, adventure-games have also used ASCII-art. |
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Steam Steam is a digital distribution service originally created by Valve for its computer games. It was later expanded to distribute software created by other companies and includes social networking features and achievement support. |
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Evil Organization An evil organization is a group of super-villans who are hell bent on world domination or something of a similar nature. Usually defeated by a single Spy/Superhero/Average Joe/small child. |
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Voice Acting Voice Acting is the creative process (some would say art) of providing voices for characters in games, television shows, films, radio programs, and other forms of media. |
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Hostile A.I. A hostile artificial intelligence (AI) is a synthetic being, that has turned on it's masters. Among the most famous rogue AIs are The HAL 9000 (from 2001: A Space Odyssey), Shodan (from the System Shock series) and The Geth (from Mass Effect). |
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Source Engine Valve's current game development platform. The Source Engine's primary project is Half-Life 2 which shows off the engine's evolving capabilities by using newly designed or improved techniques in its episodes. |
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HDR (High Dynamic Range) A rendering technology using lighting with a larger dynamic range to create more realistic images. |
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Original Soundtrack Games that have an Original Soundtrack album. |
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Dark Humor Some games just won't settle for laughs. Some games make you want to cringe as you're busting a gut. |
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Puzzles These games test not only your reaction speed, but also your problem-solving skills. Often, puzzles will need to be solved before the player can progress to the next portion of the level or game. |
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A.I. Construct An Artificial Intelligence Construct is a synthetic technological creation that is a part of a bigger whole. The AI Construct can be a self aware computer or simply a grouping of technologies that come together to form one large being. Construct's are usually incorporeal, but have an extremely driving presence within a given game's storyline. An AI Construct, while not necessarily human, contains an identity and strong building of convictions which usually govern their actions and motives. |
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Spiritual Successor When a developer creates a game that could be perceived as a new installment in an existing franchise that they've worked on before, but doesn't share the same name due to licensing issues or other reasons, it's called a called a Spiritual Successor. |
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Genius-Level Intellect A characteristic present in game characters which prooves they have a superior state of mind reflected in how they solve problems and their way of approaching any situation. Also, their point of view of the world around them is very different from the rest. |
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Love Love is a powerful story telling element that can connect characters or drive a story. There are many video game characters are have fallen in love with someone or something. |
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3D Who needs 2D when we've got 3D? 3D, or 3 dimensions, is what we're used to seeing in almost every game these days, letting us do all sorts of awesome stuff like run in circles! |
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Death The main line of distinction between victory or failure in video games. |
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Graffiti Graffiti, depending on your perspective it can be art or vandalism; it is the practice of painting, etching, stickering, pasting, or in any way marking public or private property with lettering or images for a variety of different ends. |
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Developer Commentary Some games have included developers commentary. These comments can be in text form, audio that plays in the game or the menus, or video. Sometimes they are just added in the collectors editions. |
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Gravity #1 reason for death and frustration in platformers. Many platformers will have a level where they will change the force of gravity so the player will either jump higher or lower. |
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Digital Distribution Digital Distribution is the concept of purchasing digital media via the internet and having it sent to the user directly via the internet. No physical representation of this content is given but the content resides on the users hard drive and is legally owned by them. |
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Digital Rights Management Access control technology put in place in order to limit the usage of digital media. |
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Aural Characters Characters that are described and interact with the character primarily or only via audio (most often through dialogue, but usually also using some audio effects). As opposed to cutscenes which often emulate film, the way aural characters are presented in games often more closely parallels radio dramas and other sound-only storytelling media. |
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Foreshadowing Foreshadowing is a plot device that allows the creators to leave subtle (or not-so-subtle) hints about future events in the game. |
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Boss From Hell Your employer is the most formidable adversary of all. |
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Challenges Any game where you progress through progressively difficult challenges that usually reward you with points or medals based on your performance. |
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Isolation Placing the player in an environment and making them feel alone. Games often use this for atmospheric effect. |
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Boss Fight A boss fight is a culminating challenge that pits the player against one or more enemies representing a greater threat and/or difficulty than those previously faced. These scenarios typically feature unique antagonists. |
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Experiments Gone Awry When will those crazy scientists learn? Be it killer robots, invasions from outer space, sentient computers or mutations; they always seem to have the habit of leaving a big mess behind for you to clean up. |
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Women Antagonists In some games it is a female, rather than a male, that will oppose you. They can be just as strong and dangerous as males. |
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Jump It's arguably the one move that symbolizes the medium to those outside it. The ability to jump, be it onto building, onto platforms, or onto skulls, is one of the all time most important abilities ever put in a video game. |
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Unreliable Mentor The unreliable mentor is there to teach and guide you sometimes. Though other times you just don't know what their intentions are, and whether you should trust them or not. |
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Female Protagonists This concept is for games where the main playable character is female. Apparently it's not all about men. :D |
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Tutorial You don't know how to play our game, so we'll teach you how. |
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Message on the Wall Somebody wrote a message on the wall, maybe it was in blood, maybe they had a marker handy, but now here you are, reading it. |
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Meme origin When the President wants to go for a burger, you know the cake is a lie. |