EatThePath's GameLog

Kirby's Adventure (NES) - Mon, 22 Jan 2007 01:26:16

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 01:26:16 CST

My experience playing K’s A was definitely different this time. This is because the game got harder, so the “creative expression” I was talking about last time wasn’t as prominent, though it certainly still present. I love that almost everything can be done a few different ways, like hitting the “blow me up” blocks. Or getting through a room might entail using the laser power to shoot down floating baddies to clear the air for jumping over spiky holes, or if you have one of the various shoot across the screen attack powers, like the tire ability, you can just zoom over each gap and forget the bad guys. Even so, there were a lot more rooms where quick reactions save you from losing a life point to a suddenly appearing hazard. Also, the density of bad guys has increased, which serves a few purposes. Obviously, it makes things more difficult. But more guys (usually of different types) means more “weapon” choices, and more guys also means unleashing those “weapons” can be more spectacular when a whole series of baddies bite it in one explosive action. Speaking of mass destruction, I saw some new powers which keep pace with the increased dangers Kirby faces. I fought an alarm clock miniboss who’s showed up twice so far who grants you a three time “clear the screen” ability. I also got the “hyper” powerup which is not something you ingest and keep, like Kirby’s other powers. It’s essentially just the star powerup from Mario. And as always, you can still fly past everyone, though there are more and more dropping and flying and jumping bad guys to make that less effective. K’s A reminds me of Mario at times, and also MegaMan. There are similarities in the “weapon” switching and the platformer layouts. There was a particular segment of a level which involved dodging intricate patterns of projectiles fired by cannons which gave be a powerful déjà vu association with the airship levels of Mario 3. There have been some door sequences too that are straight out of Mario castles. The boss fights are very similar to MegaMan fights, though probably less trying. Definitely a similar feeling though when you find a powerup which makes it easy. All in all, I see a lot of things in K’s A that probably would have blown me away at the time it came out, if I didn’t realize they weren’t innovations so much as techniques taken from other games. But good design is good design, and using things you’ve seen elsewhere doesn’t detract from the fun had by the player. In fact, I’ve seen and played a lot of bad games that try to be “innovative” by avoiding good things that other games have and trying something new. Too often it’s just a bad idea, the game isn’t fun, nor innovative. So I can respect K’s A as an amalgam of successful NES designs, because everything it does, it does well, and almost every inclusion is a thoughtful one.

Kirby's Adventure (NES) - Fri, 19 Jan 2007 08:30:02

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 08:30:02 CST

I am lucky to have chosen another great game for our second week's assignment. (Of course, it's from a hand selected list, so it had something going for it from the beginning.) I had a lot of fun playing the first "world" of K's A, which consisted of a few stages accessed via a level select screen which is actually just another level of the game, something I thought innovative when I saw it years later in other games. The controls are pretty standard, and where K's A deviates from other platformers they are intuitive and easy to pick up. The gist of gameplay is quickly apparent: evade bad guys and their attacks while traversing Mario-esque levels. The special part of K's A is that you can ingest most bad guys with Kirby's signature inhale move, now familiar to legions of Super Smash Brothers players. The more powerful bad guys will even give you a power up when you "eat" them, which is generally a sort of attack. This lends a kind of RPG element to the game on a very very small scale, but you don't have to put any hard thought into what your course of action is. To wit: KIRBY. CAN. FLY. Pesky basically-goombas clogging your route? Getting tired of obliterating them with firebreathing Kirby? Just take a nonstop flight to The End of the Level. If you read my logs from last week, you'll know that I'm starting to sound like I did writing on RoboBlitz; this is because K's A is reminding me a lot of that game. You have so many abilities that are so strong, with hardly any actual limitations on your strategy (in terms of what attacks harm what guys etc. etc.), that achieving the in-game goals take a back seat to having fun with all the ways you can get there. Right, did I mention you can eat the guy who turns into a whirlwind, granting you the same power, so you can turn into a twister and slide through 4 screens with essentially the same invulnerability as a star would grant in Mario. ...? Did I? Cause you can. For as long as you want. If you're not already flying past everyone. I would end there, but on a serious note, consider that most games make you wait for character enhancements, but from the outset you have everything at your fingertips in K's A. I think this bolsters the argument that games are a form of art, because in such a setup the focus is on creative expression, not challenge and victory. This distinction as art is especially interesting because as I've just described it, there is a performance component as well as a creation/consumption component to games as art. So. Back to more interpretive thrash you with your own powers that I stole from you dance. :D (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Fri, 19 Jan 2007 09:14:31.)

RoboBlitz (360) - Thu, 11 Jan 2007 17:59:44

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 17:59:44 CST

Okay, I didn't even know the half of it when I posted before. This game rocks. I got two new "weapons" which blew things wide open. Having them changes everything. First you get the Point-to-Point Beam, and a little later the much desired logical extension: the Tractor Beam. I'll briefly summarize these new tools but you can see them in action here in a demo/overview of the game. Basically, the P2P beam lets you attach two things via a forcefield rubber band that looks like red electricity arcs. If you shoot one node onto a barrel, for instance, you can then shoot the connecting node to the ceiling and the barrel will shoot up and then hang. You can have five beams going at once, which lets you string objects together or, as I did first thing, paralyze all your enemies and tie them to the walls and each other. Then they tumble about once they unfreeze in a desperate sort of tug o' war. I've also used the P2P beam as a sort of reverse cannon. Attach the initial node to a box that's lying around, then wait for a baddie to come near. Then shoot the closing node onto the baddie and the box will come flying and brain him. Alternatively, close the beam onto a wall and anything in the way will get thumped. Perhaps my favourite ridiculous use so far was attaching so much stuff to a heavy flying guy that he shot his explosive projectiles point blank into the enveloping screen I had assembled for him to wear, eventually gunning himself down. Once you've played with the P2P beam for a while, you quickly yearn for a simple addition: the ability to connect yourself! You get that ability in the tractor beam soon after acquiring the P2P beam, and at that point pretty much nothing can stop you. You can pull objects to you, or vice versa depending on weight, or fly to a ceiling, or in open areas with columns swing about like a vine-conveyed ape. Elevators, ramps, and ledges are obsolete! So is slowpoke motoring around; traverse vast distances in seconds with a preliminary boost-jump into a tractor beam swing from somewhere above you, and without touching the ground you've flown 100 meters! Obviously it's a lot of fun to have so much power over your interactions with your environment. Which brings us to a crucial topic: the environments. There's a lot to talk about, however, so it'll be in the next installment. Suffice to say, most of that talk is good talk.

RoboBlitz (360) - Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:16:19

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:16:19 CST

I don't know how to begin; I'm thinking of the most informative way to describe how much I like this game. Briefly, this game makes things as simple as they can be, which lets the game mechanics shine in open-ended glory rather than gum things up in a complex but limited set of interactions. RoboBlitz flirts with being in a few different genres, but essentially you navigate levels with some bad guys trying to complete an objective which usually boils down to "hit the switch(es)" but can sometimes be more complex. A standard recipe, except that all gameplay in RoboBlitz is based on complete interactivity with game objects in a real-time physics environment. Take one of the preliminary “puzzle rooms” as an example. You come across a room that has two platforms connected by a pulley system. You realize through experimentation that in order to move the platforms (thereby opening new pathways), you have to put weighty objects on one in order to raise up the other. You can do this by using your grabber arms to carry small boxes with you into the room and deposit them onto the downgoing platform. This is your only choice, unless you have one of the more advance weapons, an antigrav tool. It fires small blobs that latch onto an object and make it levitate a few feet off the ground, until it wears out some seconds later. Among other things, you can use it to “grav-cart” heavy things in order to transport them easily. Indeed, the platform puzzle can be licked in short order if you move one of the nearer heavy boxes in this manner. I’m having tons of fun playing this game because it challenges you in very unorthodox ways. It’s not hard to beat the bad guys; you can bash them with heavy objects, shoot them with a paralyzing EMP gun, blow them up with rockets, or just run away with your superior mobility. You can even float them with the antigrav blob gun, rendering the melee enemies harmless and immobile. The puzzles aren’t difficult either. You get plenty of hints if needed and the levels have plenty of indicators on where to go next. The only difficulty you face is deciding how you want to accomplish your goals. What are you goals anyway? Beat the level? Why? You can play around with eight floating boxes in a sort of one man soccer game. If a bad guy appears, shoot hit with the EMP gun, pick him up, and throw him into a pit. Go back to playing. Your options feel limitless. The only boundary you have is your own creativity. The fun is what you make.