Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1104https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4009After the slideshow that showed the tragic aftereffects of the shooting, I thought the game had ended. I was happy until I realized that the game still went on. If I had enjoyed the game it would have been nice to know that there was more for me to play. It would have been like an encore at a live performance, but with this game, I wanted to just get up and quit. So the game zooms out of blackness to reveal a lava infested and disaster stricken land. On top of this, my weapons are missing except my handheld and a pistol. So I set out on a quest to find my missing friend while trying to battle off demons in a hazy green mist. I found this section of the game to be slightly more challenging than the high school. In battles I actually had to be cautious to the point that I was required to heal and defend. I thought that maybe the creators had tricked me into thinking I could have the computer play the game for me and be fine. To be honest, the pulsation of the difficulty level of the game actually made me believe that there was more to the cold, dead body of “Super Columbine Massacre RPG!” Overall I would give the game 4 out of 10. The graphics are pixilated but I don’t really mind it. If the objectives of the game were actually interesting and not the repetitive “shoot anything that moves” type of deal I might have had more interest in the game to begin with. There are many things that could be improved to make the game more interesting, but I highly doubt that this game would get much attention even if the creators reworked some of the game. I’m not disgusted with this game. No its actually pretty good compared to some games I’ve played. I just don’t think I’ll ever pick it up again. Playing “Super Columbine Massacre RPG!” once is more than enough for me. Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:03:43 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4009&iddiary=7535https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4009During my second time playing the game, I finally got into the fighting part of the gameplay. I started to compare this game to all of the other RPGs I’ve played before. Let’s just say this one really didn’t make it into my top favs. Battles in this game are ridiculous. How can a person stand up to a shotgun four times without keeling over? How many times must I knife the “Pretty Girl” before she dies? Im sorry little pixilated characters but since you continue to fight me so, your deaths are much slower and give me lots of pointless experience. I honestly gave up fighting people in the school and decided to go through the rooms of the school trying to find small cut scenes that would help me progress in the game. The battles are repetitive and the experience points/leveling system really doesn’t make the game any easier or more enjoyable. I went through all of the classrooms killing off each student, teacher, janitor, etc. with such ease that the game because irritating to play. I played through each confrontation by simply using the “Auto Play” button because I was bored of the game. If this game was not assigned to me I would NEVER have played it. The game really isn’t worth the memory on my computer. The student population of the school is mainly jocks, pretty girls, cheerleaders, church girls, goody goody girls, and nerdy girls. Each character-type is matched by a sad representation by their associated stereotypes. Nerdy girls have large classes and poorly tamed hair (although it is hard to tell with the graphics). Each attack from these stereotypes is also a poor representation of what those types of people would do in a situation like columbine. This brought forth a lot of questions while I played. Who says that a jock-type or a pretty girl will last longer in a fight against men with shotguns? Are only religious people allowed to pray and regain heath when their lives are in danger? Why do only women teachers cry? And why can only students team up with other students? Why don’t teachers gang up on Eric and Dylan? And one last thing… why are there Catholic school teachers in a public high school? That was just so random I had to laugh. I walked into a classroom and found what appeared to be a pixel version of a nun. I kept thinking that the designers were either Catholic or that they had some sort of grudge against the Catholic society. My thinking was pushed more towards the designers BEING catholic when Eric and Dylan commit suicide. I watched a very interesting cut scene showing all of the crying students and pictures of each boy as they were shown growing up. When the pictures of the traumatized high school students I couldn’t really tell if a lot of them had blood on their faces or if the picture quality just completely threw me off. Anyways, after I was shown the pictures of the crosses with each boy’s name on one I thought, “Oh, that’s the end.” Sadly, I was wrong. When I realized that I was sent to Hell, I laughed. The game started to seem like it was mocking the feelings that these boys had. Like the game was in some odd way trying to criticize what these boys had done by reducing their anguish and frustration with the world into a poorly designed and executed game. Think about it: these boys get muster up the gumption to attempt a full out attack upon their school in a brutal and sinister manner to terrorize the school, leaving chaos behind them. They go into the school avoid everyone they know so that can plant bombs at one end of the school and hop back across to the other side of the school to watch and wait their efforts unfold in a glorious explosion. All of their hatred and fury are put into poorly written out dialogue and cut scenes that make their terrible actions so fake and unrealistic. If the designers of the game were trying to make a point about Columbine, I didn’t catch it. Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:15:37 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4009&iddiary=7511https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4009This game is overall frustrating. Even in this technological age where graphics are becoming more and more complex, I can still appreciate regular 8-bit pixels of the older games but this is pathetic. “Super Columbine Massacre RPG!” is a tiresome and lacking game that poorly imitates that of Pokemon or other RPG’s. On technical terms, I spent the first 10 minutes trying to understand the overly basic controls of the game so that I could understand how I interact with the environment within the game. I figured out right away that the arrow keys move the character. Trying to find a menu took forever. I tried to push almost every button on my keyboard and found out that “0” opened up my menu. Sadly, the “menu” only led me to my weapons and equipment. Five minutes after exploring the menu I headed to the basement of the house to find highly undefined objects. There were no objects given to me except to gather up gear until “Vodka” came. All through my first time playing the game I was trying to decipher the text of the game. I was troubled why the game designers would pick a text that the player couldn’t read. Cut-scenes and directions in the game took two or three times as long because I would read the text maybe three or four times before I vaguely understood what the game was trying to tell me. Lucky for me, I played this game on both my laptop and my desktop; my laptop being Windows Vista and my desktop being Windows XP. I noticed immediately that the text rendered differently in XP than it did in Vista. Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:29:54 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4009&iddiary=7488https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3903I am increasingly enjoying watching my statistics change as I play through missions. In the absence of a car, most likely after I have smashed the car beyond recognition, I can run down the street. As Carl runs, jogs, walks, waddles, etc he gains stamina, muscle, and manages to lose a little weight. How thoughtful of the creators to add obesity to the mix of possible outcomes during game play. I personally think that there would be great joy in knowing that you could somehow manage to kill Carl by giving him a heart attack due to his obnoxious weight increase during the course of the game; but I’m getting off topic. Statistics in this game are slightly overrated. My CJ has spent a good while working on the muscle and fitness, and stamina part of the stats and hasn’t shown the slightest improvement in hitting power or speed but has only improved the amount of time I can sprint for (about 1 second more). That’s not very exciting change for all my concentrated gym time. I have also found quite an interest in my ‘sex appeal’ bar at the very bottom of my stats window. I haven’t seen a change in that stupid statistic during my entire campaign. What’s the point if my character is sexy? Does that give CJ more respect when I complete missions? How do I add sexiness to Carl? I honestly think that making a character sexy does absolutely nothing except add girls to the fans of games. From what I’ve seen, characters have to look like girls, have long flowing hair/hair that defies gravity, and have to be deeply emotionally scarred in which their existence as “normal” human beings has to be compromised. You can easily look to Square Einx for that kind of game. So, really, what is the point of creating a “Sexy” character? Overall the statistics are a slight glimmer of what could potentially happen here. We could be on the verge of a great RPG in which the player gets to choose how they run their own gang. This could happen if there were more meticulously plotted out areas of interest for the character. Add a good/evil bar, or have the character specialize in combat or gunmanship, almost anything could be added to that section to give it more ‘umph,’ more… pizzazz. Although, my vision of what could be done with San Andreas would probably end up being something similar to the hybrid test-tube baby of Mass Effect and Grand Theft Auto, but hey, it would make for one interesting take on the lives of gang members. Wouldn’t it? Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:20:26 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3903&iddiary=7334https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3903NOTICE: I made some major errors in my first log that I can't seem to edit out of my original post. That is a complete failure on this website's part. If I am allowed the option to edit my journal entries, I should actually be able to APPLY the changes I made to the entry! In many instances in my 1st post I used 'San Andreas' instead of Los Santos. I apologize for those errors in my post. I have tried to fix them but have had no luck as of yet. No on to my actual post: So after playing for a little while longer, I noticed that there is one major problem. Gang devotion is the leading factor in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. A good portion of my time playing the game was to piss off my rival gang members by spray painting over their markings and by wandering around their turf. This seemed to me like a waste of time. Why not join forces to make the gang bigger? I mean, I would rather know that I can have a temporary alliance with someone than have to shoot them down or run away whenever I walk into the general area of that gang’s territory. San Andreas throws me into the middle of a gang war as soon as I step into the virtual world in the shoes of Carl Johnson. Immediately I am told that the Ballas, the rival gang of Los Santos, are my sworn enemies and am given no real or clear answer as to why that is. This is reinforced by Big Smoke, Ryder, and Sweet constantly talking about the good of my gang and the evils of Ballas; never vice-versa. During gameplay , I typically try to defend myself from the spray of bullets from the Ballas or gunning them down myself. These actions make any peaceful relation impossible between the two gangs. The storyline requires that I not have any interaction with my “enemies.” So, I am told to ignore the Ballas (I try to) or shoot them on sight. Because of this general requirement, most of my missions are to wreak havoc upon the Ballas to repay them for their unjust actions to my gang. I must happily say that after forcing myself to play through the boring spray-painting missions, I have found something interesting to spark my continued game play. Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:45:51 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3903&iddiary=7311https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3903In my first thirty minute look at the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, I saw the most exaggerated stereotypes I've seen in awhile; the "attitude" of a typical black gangster and his friends, bad cops beating down on people in the local neighborhoods because they’re bored, etc. Not to mention the lack of education by the entire population of San Andreas. I mean, swearing and saying “man” or “bro” every other word are the most complicated things these characters can say? Congrats on making the characters as shallow as can be; Hats off to you. Well, I guess I can say that GTA: SA has some slight character depth. Although, I wouldn’t count my blessings in saying that these “people” are at all realistic in nature. The second major cut-scene in the game, when Carl meets up with his brother for the first time after being back in San Andreas, made the characters seem like PMS-ing muscular women that could backstab each other at any given moment for a Klondike bar. Brother fighting brother fighting unnamed girlfriend fighting good friend fighting…. It goes on and on. All during this time I am trying to understand a completely different language and lifestyle. I mean, I don’t speak broken English or live my life gangbanging or selling drugs, but that’s beside the point. This is chaos. The entire town of San Andreas screams “Ethical Problem.” The police are extorting money from local gangs and shooting down people (mainly me) when they feel like it; How is that even possible? Is there no government that regulates these things or hierarchy of power that goes beyond the police and gangs? Should gangs even be treated like a governmental power? I also noticed that no action was being taken by the local authorities on the murder of Mrs. Johnson. Should a homicide just be pushed aside because their child is in a gang? Is it right to ignore the lives of people associated with gangs? I honestly am starting to get interested in this game. Although, if the game doesn’t pick up pace with the storyline, I will stop playing altogether. The ability to walk around, customize your character, overhaul any car you steal, or spray-paint over all of the opposing gang’s graffiti is completely pointless to me without some kind of connecting plotline. Without it, I could just pick up Saints Row and do the same kind of thing, as well with any other Grand Theft Auto. The story is the thing that makes me want to keep playing. Until then, I’ll be waiting for something interesting or exciting to spark my game-play. Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:13:52 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3903&iddiary=7283