Basic Principles of Action games

Action games are video games that emphasize physical competetions, includeing reaction time and hand-eye coordination. This kind of games include first person shooter games, platform games, fighting games and battle games. In action games, the gamer controls the leader of a team or the protagonist character of the game. This character collect objects, avoid obstacles, battle with enemies and navigate the game levels. When the level ended, character goes to a new level and challange the hardest battles with the new characters. Action games characters or avatar's health and lives depleted from the enemy attacks or touching with some obstacles. The game is over when the lives of the player runs out. The player win the game when finished a sequence of levels. Most of the action games can be unbeatable and having an infinite number of levels so the player concentrate on maximizing his/her score by collecting objects and fighting with enemies.

Action games require the majority of challanges that needs physical tests of skill. Some of the racing games, puzzle games, objec collecting games called action category but they are not the central to this genre. In action type of games the game players may face with tactical and exploration challenges but for action games require high reaction speed and high hand-eye coordination skills. Game player is always under the pressure of time so there is not enough time for planning strategy. Fast action games are more challenging games and they may involve puzzle solving skills but they are quite simple and easy because of limited time.

In action games, the game players often face with traps, enemies and obstacles. Attactking enemies are not complex artifially intelligent characters and directly attacks your character. As the levels passed the number of the attacking enemies number and the strength increase. Player gets score or health when eliminating enemies.

In most action games, the main character or avatar has a certain amount of hit points or health that are depleted by enemy attacks and other hazards. Mostly the health can be increased by collecting in-game objects. If the health runs out the player dies and game is over. In some action games if the player reaches a checkpoint or a new level starts player gains an extra health or life. Also players may earn extra lives if they reach for a certain score or find an in-game object.

Action games challenge quality increases with the time restrictions. When the time starts to expire, the player typically loses his lifes and so this will be more exciting for the player. If the player finishes the level before time expired the time bonusses mostly added to the player's score.

Action games can be played in either 2 dimensional (2D) or 3 dimensional (3D) from a variety of perspectives. Two dimensional action games mostly played in a side view, top down view or an isometric view. The screen scrolls in vertical or horizontal direction as the player explores the levels. In three dimensional action games the perspective is mostly related with the avatar from a first person or third person perspective.

Action games have a set of simple goals and reaching them is clear. In the end of the game the main goals are defeating the boss or the main enemy character. This boss character is mostly difficult to beat in action games.

Types of Action Games:

There are several major subgenre of action games:

Beat 'em up Games

Beat 'em up action gaems mostly involve fighting through a side-scrolling stage of multiple adversaries with using martial arts or close range fighting skills.

Fighting Games

Fighting games feature battles between pairs of fighters and mostly use exaggerated martial arts moves. There are limited attacks and defence actions and finished if a fighter's health gone to zero. There are always special moves and combo fight techniques.

Maze Games

Maze games like PacMan involve navigating a maze to avoid or chase adversaries.

Platform games

Platform games involve jumping and running skills between different heighted platforms and requires battling with enemies and avoiding dangerous obstacles. Physics rules are often unrealistic and game levels often vertically exaggerated. They may be played in both 2 dimensional or 3 dimensional forms.

Rhythm action games

Rhythm action games challenge the player's feelings of rhythm with awarding points for accurately pressing some buttons in syncronization with a musical beat. This is a new subtype of action games category.Rhythm games mostly classified as a type of music games.

Shooter games

Shooter games allow the player shooting at a distance using a ranged weapons and challenging them to finalize with great accuracy. This type of action games includes first-person shooters and third-person shooters.

Action games are the most popular video games. They have even been said to improve your eyesight and your reasoning ability! In an action game, you advance through the levels by obtaining certain items or killing a certain number of bad guys. These games involve hand-eye coordination and the player is usually under time constraints. If you can’t kill all the bad guys in a certain amount of time, well then, you lose! The game usually gives you a certain number of lives, but you have to be careful not to hit certain things that will take away from the time at your disposal or make you move more slowly. Action games fall into several subgroups, such as fighting games, maze games, shooting games, and platform games. Some of the best-known titles are Time Crisis, Pacman, Space Invaders Doom, House of the Dead 4, and Asteroid.

Action games are some of the most played type of games among both hard core gamers and casual gamers. Most action games are fast paced, requiring good hand-eye coordination to excel. Action games are of different types, and these different types have widely different stories that can keep a game player glued to a screen for considerable lengths of time. Some available sub-genres include fighting games, shooter games, action-adventure games, platform games or rhythm games.

Almost all action games include challenges like object gathering, puzzles or time constraints, and while these are used to improve gameplay and variety, they are not necessarily central to this game genre. Action games are noted for the hand-eye coordination of the player, and also the ability to react quickly to events during gameplay. Another similarity shared by nearly all action games is the presence of levels, which are generally increasingly more difficult to complete.