I attempted the Honest Video Game Covers Assignments! I really had to think about what game I felt had one of the most deceptive titles. So, I chose to change the Animal Crossing game. I feel that Animal Crossing title should really be called “Fish and Dig for Fossils” because essentially that is what you are doing the whole game. Yes, there are animals in the game that you interact with but they really do not do much besides wander the island looking for you. However, your job as the only human on the island is to fish and dig for fossils so that you can make money (bells). Despite the deception, I really like this game.

by Thomas Pulsifer

Following the 4-star assignment laid out by Cooper Graham, I’ve made an honest cover for the video game Bloodborne. As one of my favorite games, it was an easy selection to make. Those who have played Bloodborne will tell you it is NOT an easy game. Bloodborne, along with many other games developed by From Software, are notorious for their difficulty. Some of the bosses in this game will have you questioning your sanity. The phrase “Nothing But Suffering” is a bit of a joke referencing the difficulty of the game, as well as the overall tone of the world and story. Though this may sound negative, I actually love Bloodborne! I created this fake title in Adobe Photoshop by referencing the original title and replicating its style to the best of my ability. Though the text doesn’t look quite as dirty, I think it does a great job of invoking the feeling of the original. I also highly recommend Bloodborne to anyone who’s interested!

For my last assignment I did one that caught my interest because it made me laugh pretty hard. It’s an assignment where you manipulate the title of a video game to match up with its realistic game play. The example was of mario kart and it was perfectly done. It made me think of Super Smash Bros and how any time I play it the other people just try to smash all the buttons at once in order to win while I’m calmly using methodical combos to win. I found the game packaging through a google image search and then wrote over the title with my replacement words.

This is Overwatch in a nutshell. BTW I main Genji.

This is the actual cover.

I chose to do the four star design assignment to edit a game cover to make it more honest. I chose this assignment because of my love for games and the amusement I get out of seeing funny images and fails from games. This I my attempt at being funny. May I introduce the honest cover for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The Witcher 3: Wild Hours of Doing Anything but the Main Quest.

I have personally spent dozens of hours ignoring the main quest and attempting to get as many side quest done as possible. Whether they be Witcher Contracts, Treasure Hunts, or simply my curiosity of “I wonder what that question mark all the way to the north on the map is…” and then proceeding to find out by walking for hours to get there because the game just looks so good to walk around in.

Completing this assignment was a little challenging. I’ve never used any type of photo editing software to alter an image like this so it took a little while to figure out how to do it.

First, I got the cover art for the game and loaded it up in GIMP.

Once that was ready to be edited, I erased the text I was going to be replacing. I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to blend the background back together so I found an image of the same background but without the text to use as replacement.

With the background effectively repaired I was able to start adding the new text to the image. The text I chose to use took a while to find. It had to match the styling of the subtitle text that I was leaving in. Eventually I found one that worked, pulled the color from the other text and put it all together.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the best at video games. Sometimes I just play them the exact opposite of how they’re meant to be played, like taking a Mario Kart route backwards just to see how everything looks like going the wrong way. When there’s a boss fight, or any inkling of confrontation, my hands get kinda sweaty and my heart rate goes up. I get too nervous to play anything where you have to be constantly watching your back. I do, however, like the new Legend of Zelda game! Big confession: it’s the first LoZ I’ve ever played, except for the 10 minutes I spent wandering around in Ocarina of Time on the N64, not knowing what the heck I was doing. I love open world games, and hoo-boy this is a slam dunk. I’ve gotten lost, gotten my butt kicked, gotten the life scared out of me by those octo-dudes throwing rocks at me from the river (RUDE!), but mostly, I’ve wasted a lot… and I mean a lot… of Zelda’s time.

That poor girl has been waiting for me to come destroy Ganon, but here’s an honest look at how I’m playing the game:

I can’t help it. I take on every quest that people give me. I’ve always been that way. All these people need my help! Plus, who knows what kind of awesome thing they might give me. If I play a game, I want to play it as close to 100% completion as I can, so you bet your Hylian butts I’m going to do all these quests for you. And Zelda… well, she’s been holding up fine for the past hundred years. She can wait while I pick up some freaking mushrooms. And flowers. And gems. And fairies. And collect weapons… sorry Zelda.

For this cover, I snagged the original photo from a Eurogamer article comparing the American and European covers for the game. I chose the American version. I think it looks more dramatic, and I liked how the pale color of the title contrasted with the dark grassy rock in the foreground. The font I used is The Wild Breath of Zelda from dafont.com. (I guess she hasn’t had time to brush her teeth.) Click on through the gallery for the steps I went through to remake the cover.

I did end up moving my text around to even out the space between each line of text, as well as adding an ellipsis on the second line. Afterward, I cropped the picture so that only the actual game cover was left – no more keep case.

Time for another episode of Honest Cover, where we take a game cover and make it Honest!

Link to Assignment: http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/honest-video-game-covers/

Stars: 4

Process: Step 1: Find a game cover. I began by moving to my Steam library in search of a game I wanted to give an honest cover to. After settling momentarily on FTL (and loading its cover into Photoshop, resizing the canvas, all that), I wasn’t feeling it. Step 2: Find a game cover. This time, I chose Kerbal Space Program. Getting rid of the current text was simple enough (a box selection and delete), as was writing the new text. In an effort to make it a little less ugly, I copied the planet’s surface from just below the now-white box and used the blend tool to blend the pasted surface with itself. The result isn’t pretty, but it no longer features a stark white box.

This assignment tasked me with creating a more “honest” cover to a video game. The first game that came to mind was Brütal Legend, for its infamous genre switch. For anyone who hasn’t played it, Brütal Legend is a heavy metal inspired action game that kind of evolves into a strategy game.

This new title gives people a warning about what’s to come. Anyone expecting the game to play like an action game throughout would be disappointed be this transformation. With this new title to warn them, gamers won’t have to worry about false expectations interfering with their enjoyment.

To create this new cover, I was able to utilize PowerPoint. After finding the image that I wanted to use, I pasted it into PowerPoint. Then I used Word Art to create the title, and GIMP to make the background of the logos transparent.

Left 4 Dead is one of my all time favorite video games. It’s gameplay is heavily driven on teamwork and communication. It is so heavily influenced by it that one bad teammate will bring the rest down. As such, when playing online, it can be hard to talk to people since they might not have microphones. However, there is that silent, universal communication that almost everyone playing understands. There are the game mechanics as well. But there’s always that one person who doesn’t get it and if your luck is as bad as mine and you have more than one like that, then you’re screwed. Hence, my more appropriate title.