Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1533https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4934While playing this game with several friends I decided to go all out and print the game board out on 30x30 vinyl and even make jolly rancher vodka to represent pokemon elements. This was such a fun game I have no doubt ill be using it again and again in the future. But even though it was fun it did have frustrating bits where chance of rolling numbers would "kill" you... but even in the game sense it makes sense of why it is like it is. For instance when your on the home stretch you come across 4 gold spaces... and each one is tough, and I got stuck on each one, (especially frustrating when I had earlier luck and had gotten a sizable lead) one tile in particular is tough where you have to roll a 4 to move on or else you drink 4. Also as I was playing I noticed that there was lack of rules in some areas like one space you could create your own rule but making your own rule could be catastrophic as one of the players made another player drink every time they drank... Easily enough the copy drinker got a bit tipsy that night. So if I was to change something I would maybe edit something where there were certain time limits to some drinks. Again I would like to say this is an incredibly social game, its best to play with people you trust because it makes for a more comfortable atmosphere when everyone drinks instead of some feud between two people that escalates in a drinking war. If I were to learn something from this game, it is that alcohol and games go well together to create a strong social environment of all around fun and I also feel that if this was in another format aside from board game that it would not work as well. All in all a fun game to play with friends!Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:47:37 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4934&iddiary=9145https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4934First off I feel like its needed to say, that this is a game where you will drink. And if you play strictly by the rules you will become under the influence of Alcohol. With that said, this game is one of the funnest things you can do with your friends. http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/1191/gottachugemall.png This is the board game I am using and the gameplay to it is simple enough. You have however number of people you want to play choose a starting pokemon of Charmander, Squirtle, or Bulbasaur which influences trainer battles (which I will get to later). Then After determining who goes first, you go around the board by rolling a die and then under the rules of the game, have to do what the space you land on says. This is where the game gets innovative, as it uses a multitude of pokemon and has little quirks associated to each one, like the slowpoke board space for instance: If you land on slowpoke you then get to do a gesture that through out the game you can do any time and the last person to do that gesture will have to take a drink. Another element that makes this game interesting is the fact that there are three different types of board tiles. The first type is normal tiles (like the slowpoke tile) The second type are silver tiles which have a special set of rules that go along with them depending on where you are like one such rule is that while you are on one certain set of silver you can not talk or you have to drink for every time you talk. The last one is the Gold Tiles where no matter what you roll you must stop on them every time and go in some sort of special chance rules ranging from "roll a 1-3 to take a drink or 4-6 and skip your turn" to "roll a die, if its even roll again, if its odd take a drink for how many evens you rolled". Another cool element to this game is the trainer battles, because this adds another social element to this game depending on the more friends you have playing. The trainer battles are simply if you have 2 players land on the same tile you must do what the tiles says then have a trainer battle by rolling dice and who ever gets the higher wins and loser drinks 2, but with a little added on fun, the starting pokemon that you choose have advantages over one another so if you get an advantage you get to roll 2 dice and pick the higher number to win.Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:19:36 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4934&iddiary=9144https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4878The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has some inventive bosses. After recently playing thru a boss run in an attempt to get an awesome shield, I got to experience every boss battle that I have attempted up to this point in the game and you can really enjoy the ingenuity of each boss. This has been a pattern throughout the whole Zelda franchise to have boss levels that are memorable and inventive using different environments or fighting techniques and weapons to fight for victory. In Skyward Sword the boss's so far have varied from one on one sword fights, that utilize angles of the Wii motion control to get in slashes or thrust in weak-spots, another boss fight involves using your bird to dive bomb a giant sky whale and kill parasites to cure the whale. These are just small examples of the way Nintendo makes these bosses unique and fun to play. Speaking of that awesome shield, Skyward Sword also brings up an interesting new concept of item upgrading. This is played into having breakable shields and multiple types of shields for example you can start off buying a wooden shield, this is the weakest of the shields and it is weak against fire (it will go up in flames due to the slightest spark). Now to fix this flaw in defense you can upgrade to get a stronger wood based shield or upgrade to an iron shield(weak against electricity) or a sacred shield(which is weak but can repair itself). To upgrade you need items and money that you pick up thru the world. Its a unique entry in the Zelda series to have better control of how you play by upgrading items to best help you in the game.Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:07:57 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4878&iddiary=9052https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4878As a long time fan of the Legend of Zelda series, I was excited when I heard of the new release of Skyward Sword. The things that I was interested in was the interesting graphic style, the new world, travel by flying, and the new control system utilizing the Wii motion plus. The Wii motion plus was definitely interesting as compared to the last Nintendo release Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess which used the regular Wii motion controls and while it was not bad, I felt that it wasn’t as precise as I wanted so I swapped for the GameCube controller for better game play. However, the wii motion plus definitely makes gameplay for this game unique, interesting, and fun. This gameplay allows you take on enemies in different ways, for instance you can attack from angles, different ranges, and environment all with the utmost precision. The controls also allow for some interesting moments like flying thru the air using the Wii remote for speed and balance, or even pulling a bow string to fire multiple arrows. Now starting off the game really allows you get involved into the story by starting you off in the kingdom of skyloft (which is floating above a sea of clouds, cut off from the land below) as Link the skyloft academy trainee who has to get ready for a race to determine if he can rise in rank and one day become a knight for his kingdom. Right away you meet several characters that sets up our speechless hero’s personality and his motivations as it helps you get use to the controls thru situations that need you to get a sword, find your avian stead, race the other trainees and eventually get into the meat of the game when you start your quest to find princess Zelda. With this simple task you are sent all over the world below the clouds to meet unique creatures and fight fascinating monsters. The level designs for the game start off ranging from kind of dull and one note to breathtakingly beautiful (one level involving a Buddhist temple is to this day one of the most stunningly amazing and unique twists to a level ive seen in a long time). However, the more I played this game the more I found myself having to come back and see changes to the environment that makes different uses of the terrain, for instance where one area was just a simple forest surrounding a giant tree with the usual twist and turns of hollow logs and greenery, later you come back to the area to find the entire place flooded to the top of the giant tree and you are allowed to swim the entire area finding the cause of the devastation. This simple idea of reusing terrain in different ways keeps the game interesting unique as there are only of handful of spots you actually go to, but if you reuse those spots and make them different every time it changes the feel of things and allows you to explore new places making it seem like a completely new area. One thing I did find sort of frustrating with this game was the lack of connection of the world. Now what I mean by this is that in near all past reincarnations of the Legend of Zelda you find that you can get to all places by walking, flying, magic, horse… in this version of the game, however, you start off in the area that is in the sky and if you wanted to go to the forest but found out mid-adventure that you needed to go to the desert area you would then need to find a portal to the sky, then in the sky you would need to find a portal to the desert. I think this is annoying as far as travel goes, and gets tedious when you are trying to complete something but have to do extraneous travel to finish it. Instead a solution I could see is maybe starting out with the ‘sky to forest to sky to desert’ path but when you start finding new areas maybe have those connect to the other land mass areas… I don’t think this would be that hard to accomplish as it would just be simple pathways and this small task would open up the world and make the earth… connected. (This entry has been edited2 times. It was last edited on Sun, 05 Feb 2012 18:26:11.)Sun, 05 Feb 2012 18:23:53 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4878&iddiary=9033