Kingdom+Hearts+3D+Dream+Drop+Distance

For this assignment I played Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance. This is the seventh installation in the Kingdom Hearts series. In this game you play two characters, Sora and Riku who are completing their Mark of Mastery exam to prove that they are true of heart in order to become Key Blade Masters. The characters get dropped in two different parallel dimensions of the same world. In order to continue, both characters must complete their tasks in their parallel worlds and eventually their story lines overlap. Throughout the game you are dropped between the two characters which is very confusing at first but adds an interesting twist as you continue, (http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/07/17/kingdom-hearts-3d-dream-drop-distance-review, April 7, 2013).

As soon as I started playing this game I wanted to quit because I had no idea what was going on. I quickly realized that the game was a sequel and that I had missed something. From the very beginning, the game failed to invite me to participate in the semiotic domain. I felt like an outsider because the game had a very long introduction story sequence that seemed to be more for a refresher than a full story. The game failed to use the Committed Learning Principle because it did not engage me as a new participant in this semiotic domain. It assumed that I was already part of the Kingdom Hearts Semiotic Domain. From the very beginning with the introduction story, the game showed two already very developed characters that I could not relate to because I did not share any of the knowledge necessary to participate in the Kingdom Hearts semiotic domain. In addition the game did not give me any opportunities to further develop the characters in order to relate to them better. Therefore the only commitment I had to the game was to play it for this assignment because it is the only game I have right now.

In the game, you can move through flow which allows you to move quickly through the world with more power. When started to play I still did not really understand what my character, Sora, was trying to achieve based on the story that the game introduced in the beginning. I spent the first 20 minutes of game play learning how to move in the world and figure out what I was trying to do in the world it dropped in. I thought there would be more directions of where to go and what to do and when there wasn't I felt frustrated and wanted to stop playing. Here the game failed to use the Amplification of Input Principle. I felt like I was putting in so much energy and not getting any rewards. In fact I was not getting anything. After struggling for a while I decided to look for instructions and found a button on the bottom screen of the DS that told me what to do. I managed to follow the instructions and move on to the next task but there was no reward. In fact, there was a punishment! My character was tricked into following another character into a trap. As the player, I was not given any choice but to follow the character into the trap where I am knocked unconscious. Next thing I know I am Riku and am being dropped into another world. At this point I was thinking, "This is great. I just learned how to move in one world and started to grow a little fond of my character and now I am someone else some where new." It wasn't too though because I could still move through this world by using flow. I was able to use the Probing Principle to quickly figure out similarities between this dimension and the previous dimension I was in.

Next the game taught me a series of skills very quickly in a row. It did this by pausing the actual game and then giving my written directions to read and tab through and then I would practice them in a tutorial that looked exactly like the scene of the game I was playing. Finally I would be returned to the actual game to use the skill. First the game tried to teach me how to use flow to fight bad guys. I was thinking "Bad guys! I don't even know what I am trying to do! Why am I fighting anyone?!" There were four little bad guys that I later learned are called Dream Eaters. After I killed two of them, the game decided I was ready to learn how to fight larger enemies using flow. So it paused the game and again gave me written directions and practice and then returned me to the game. All of this happened in about five minutes. I felt rushed and did not feel like I had enough time to practice each skill before before the game started building on the skills and having me combine them. When I was confronted with both large and small enemies to kill, I resorted to my stand by reaction of just pushing all of the buttons and hoping for the best because I was too overwhelmed to use the skills the game taught me. Immediately after defeating the enemies, the game launches another tutorial that taught me how to go into an alternative universe to slow things down and be able to launch things. Then immediately after that, it tried to teach me about Dream Eaters and how some are good and some are evil. Then the game launched a tutorial where it had me make a good Dream Eater called a Spirit and play with it. It told me I would get some sort of points from playing with the Spirit that I could use to buy something. After all of that I was dropped back into the game with some new thing I bought, a Spirit I didn't know how to use and I still did not know what I was trying to accomplish. I feel like I did not have enough game time to understand the situated meanings of the directions it gave me about Dream Eaters and Spirits. Basically, I felt like it tried to teach me too many skills to fast.

I researched Kingdom Hearts on IGN and found that the game is rated an 8.5 overall which seems fair to me after I read the review of the game. The review seemed dead on with my perceptions of the game. For example, the review mentioned the difficulty of new comers to understand the background story and the really quick series of tutorials in the beginning of the game. It also mentioned how Kingdom Hearts attempted to combat these issues which helped me understand how to use some of the tools I had available to me. After reading the review, everything I was unclear about started to make sense. I started to understand the story and overall goal of my characters. I also realized that by the end of my play time, I had a enough of an understanding of the situated meaning of the vocabulary of the game that not only could I really understand the IGN review but I was able to understand how to apply it to the game. Now I feel like if I played the game again I might actually enjoy it but I would rather play the first Kingdom Hearts and work my way up to this game. I bet Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance would be a really fun game.