Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1581https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5465You don’t need to know what you are doing in a game to enjoy it. Some of the most memorable parts of games are the parts when you are not quite sure what’s going on, how you got here and why this is all happening. Valve is good at this. The beginning of Half-life 2 is a whole pot of confusion. You end Half-life 1 in hiatus and begin Half-life 2 in what seems to be a completely different world. Portal right off the bat has you doing tests for a computer you can’t see. These moments set up the feeling of the game and place the character, or the player, in their place. Makes their role in the world known. I recently picked up an indie title called Hotline Miami. From the start menu you have no clue what’s going on. You only hear noise, grant it the noise sounds great and fits the aesthetic of the game, but it make the whole thing feel dreamlike. The start of the game has you talking to people in animal masks and does not give much insight to the story, but after the encounter you quickly learn one thing: you’re going to be killing a lot of people. Now I’ve played about two or so hours of this game and I still have no clue what is going on, but I’m enjoying the hell out of it. Part of this is the great, challenging gameplay, and the other part is being left in the dark on what exactly is going on. It makes the world feel alive. It gives the feeling that there is more to the world than we are seeing, and make you feel very small, bat at the same time impactful. You don’t know how your actions ripple throughout the world yet, and until you do you feel like a king.Mon, 10 Dec 2012 18:25:16 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5465&iddiary=9761https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5430The biggest complaint among many gamers today is linearity in games. While at times linearity can deliver a rich story, like with the Uncharted series, it can reduce a game to nothing more than a movie that requires you to press a button every once in a while. These games tend to be the triple A modern military shooters such as Call of Duty and one of the worst offenders Medal of Honor. Many people are becoming fed up with linearity and its starting to unfairly be coined as a bad quality in a game. Gamers are wanting the ultimate freedom in their games. We’ve had freedom before in sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto and MMOs offer great freedom such as World of Warcraft. However I recently picked up a game that has given me the most un-linear experience I might have ever experienced in a game, Saints Row the Third. This game has no hold on what the player can do. I right off the bat gives you the ability to make whatever character type you want. I for example made a black cross dressing fat man with a Latino girl’s accent named Charity. Charity has her goals in mind as the leader of the most prominent gang in the world. Killing everyone in sight. I couldn’t even begin to tell you what the story is because I’ve only done three missions, yet I still have 15 percent of the game completed. It’s nice to have a game that does not put any restrictions on you, that truly is an open world game. A world that I can hop in and mess about in for 20 minutes then leave feeling like I did something. It certainly shows the appeal of the non-linear form of gaming.Sat, 08 Dec 2012 14:06:23 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5430&iddiary=9734https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5429The only thing in video games that are the highest quality it can achieve right now is music. There is enough space in the disk to allow the music quality to only be limited by the quality of the speakers you are using to listen to it. What really counts now is what it sounds like, how it is composed, and if it fits the game. In days long passed music in games consisted to simple bleeps and chirps that formed a melody as simple as the game mechanics. They were memorable, even if they were bare bones, but fit the game very well. Come to think of it, most older games all had fairly distinct soundtracks. Grant it, I was not alive in the 80s and early 90s to experience all the gaming world had to offer, but I’ve played a fair number of games from the past and can’t think of one that I could not hum the tune of off the top of my head. The funny thing is, is that I don’t think I could do that with most games now a days. Dot want to get into the argument of ‘things were better back then and are trash now so we should take a step back’, because that’s not what this is about. This is about how many soundtracks in newly released games can come off for the most part a little bland, and that when a game is released that has an exceptional soundtrack it really stands out. The game Journey was released a while back and is in my opinion one of the beast games released last year, with one of the beast soundtracks ever recorded. The soundtrack, unlike many games out on the market, is not there because a game needs music, but partners with the game. The mix of Asian, Middle Eastern, and Western motifs in the game set the world as something new and exotic, while showing through echoing melodies that it is a world that is past its prime. As the character makes his journey up the mountain, so does the soundtrack. It’s hard to describe without playing the game as they both work with each other so well, but if I were to now listen to the whole soundtrack, I get the same feeling I do as I play the game. I go on a journey, and that’s what makes good music.Fri, 07 Dec 2012 14:16:30 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5429&iddiary=9732https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5348Multi-player shooter only games are a popular subgenera on the PCs, and have been for quite a while. With the business model shifting to free to play games, these shooters need to stand out from the other free to plays, and from triple A titles like Call of Duty and Battlefield. How fun the game is to play is definitely a factor in keeping a player attention, but MMOs and their infamous grinds have showed us that fun gameplay is not always what keeps a player coming back. Developers for arcade games used to time rewards such as checkpoints and items to occur right before the player dies. Over time the player becomes conditioned to expect a reward, and will keep putting in coins to get to the next reward. This strategy worked great for arcades, and more and more developers are implementing this feature into free to play games. I was recently playing Blacklight: Retribution, which is a free to play FPS, and I was wondering ‘why do people spend all their time playing this game. What makes this the shooter for some people and not others’? Then I shot someone in the head, and it hit me. This game gives you mini-rewards. These range from the sound you hear when you get a head shoot, to being able to deploy your mechs. These do not happen too often though. The game is not very easy, and it take some work to pull anything off, which makes victory even more memorable. Like the arcades of the past, you become conditioned to these tiny rewards. You know roughly when they’re coming and how to achieve them, which makes you want to keep playing to achieve them.Fri, 16 Nov 2012 10:21:22 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5348&iddiary=9635https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5328Mobile games are probably the fastest growing game medium at the moment. Nearly every device these days is capable of connecting to some form of app store where thousands of games from platformers to shooters. Every type of game is now imagined on a mobile platform. There is a problem with the development of mobile games however; some developers don’t fully know the device their working on. They take a genera they want to work on, take a shooter for example, and ‘dumb it down’ so it can be played on a phone. That doesn’t work. All it leads to are a clunky control system and your thumbs taking up 60 percent of the screen. It flat out doesn’t work. When making a game for a mobile device, you can’t simply use the same control scheme as you would on a TV with a controller, you have to reimagine it. The developer that has done this the best is Ubisoft and Pasta Games with the platformer Rayman Jungle Run. Many other platformers on mobile devices have attempted to be controlled in two ways. One is the familiar way, a D-pad on the screen with a button or two for the characters actions, or they take advantage of the accelerometer and have the player tilt the screen to make the character run. While these two ways work, they run into the familiar problem of not being able to see the screen because your fingers are in the way or the screen is tilted. The Rayman developers looked at platformers on mobile devices and found a constant: players are always moving forward. Usually the games are simpler than the platformers on consoles, so there is little to no need for backtracking. So Ubisoft and Pasta Games made a decision that mobile platformers should have made a long time ago, always have the character in motion. Platformers have taking advantage of this style before, but not many mobile ones have. It make the game seem more fluid, you don’t have to worry about precise movements on the touchscreen D-pad, it add a layer of replay ability to the game because if you miss an item there’s no turning around to get it, and it allows the screen to be seen which is great for what is arguably the best looking iOS game out there.Fri, 09 Nov 2012 09:39:14 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5328&iddiary=9617https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5303Not very often is the sole purpose of a game to bring out the emotions of the player. To make them feel for the different characters, to not have the goal of the game be finishing your quest, but making the characters in the game world happy. To The Moon is a game like no other that I have played before. The game is set in what can be assumed as the near future, and a special agency has invented a device that can alter the memories of dying people, so their last memory is a dream they always had. At its core To The Moon is a love story. While it’s fairly simple, its characters are very compelling. You control Dr. Watts and Dr. Rosalene who spend the game granting the patient, Johnny, his last wish: to go to the moon. The game is very simple point and click game, but the mechanics can be overlooked for what you’re really here for, the story. I was thinking back on this game after I played it and was wondering, why did this game have more of an effect on me than other pieces of media with sad storylines? Then hit me, the interactivity. Movie and books have had great stories with great character before and you get very involved with them. You begin to care for them, but you aren’t them. You don’t control their every move. They aren’t an extension of your body like a game character is. In a sense, you’re not playing Dr. Watts and Roalene, but their figures that represent you within this story. You, not the characters that you look at or read about, care about the outcome. If anyone asks me for proof of games as an art form I’m now glad to have two examples: Journey and To The Moon.Thu, 01 Nov 2012 19:22:17 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5303&iddiary=9589https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5246A selling point for a modern game is nonlinearity. For some games a linear story, like the Uncharted series, carries it along, but for one reason or another developer’s feel that games need to be more open. Often this lead to a thrown in good or bad choice system to make the experience ‘your own’, and it usually feels pretty cheap. If your game is going to leave many choices up to the payers, you have to design around that, not throw it in because the developer says nonlinear sells. The newly released Dishonored have ‘leave it up to the player’ in mind throughout the whole development cycle, and it shows. While the game has a take on the ‘good or bad’ system, where freedom shines is how to approach your target. The development team at Arkane Studios spent a lot of time coming up with a variety of ways the player can infiltrate the domain of their next assassination target. This could be strolling through the front door, shooting a guard in the face, and then slowing time to knife everyone before they have a chance to sound the alarm; or by taking control of a fish and swimming through the sewer drain to reach the room of your target and quietly planting some infringing evidence on their person. Take for example a level where you must go to a bath house to assassinate two targets. The three level mansion has numerous widows to enter undetected, there is a storm drain you can swim through, or there’s always the front door. Those are the only three that I’ve found without doing too much snooping around, but experience from other levels tells me that there are at least three more. This game truly exercises the belief that the obvious answer is not always the best, and the developers implemented that with several paths the player can take.Fri, 26 Oct 2012 10:23:04 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5246&iddiary=9575https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5269Balancing is something that can easily be taken for granted in games. If done right, no one should necessarily know it. People day the game feels good to play. If done wrong however, it can completely ruin the gaming experience. Balancing in day to day situations only comes up if a game is unbalanced. It’s unfortunate that this is often the case, because balancing a game well is one of the hardest things the developers have to do. It requires constant play testing and changing to get the game just right. Balancing needs to be more recognized when done right. Civilization V is the fifth full installment release of the Civilization series, and while many balancing traits that will be discussed have also been in other Civilization games, this one is the newest and the first one I have played. Civilization V features 34 unique civilizations to play, each with different traits. These traits give the civilization a special bonus depending on the play style that is intended for that civilization. For example Queen Elizabeth of England has the special bonus of +2 movement for all naval units and receives 1 extra spy. As you can see these bonuses are influenced by the culture of the actual civilization it’s playing off of. They then also get two extra components that take the form of a military unit, special tile improvement, or special building. The game handles the balance of this system very well. No one unique ability overpowers another. One might better counter act another, but it’s not outright better. The developers looked at the play-styles of the players and made different civilizations fit those play-styles, and balanced them very well. They are bonuses for a reason, not game changers, and the game still requires skill for you to win.Thu, 18 Oct 2012 12:56:05 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5269&iddiary=9550https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5246The game Dishonored was recently released by Bethesda, and developed by Arkane Studios. This game is a first person RPG, which takes many cues from games like Bioshock and Deus Ex. The goal of this game is pretty straight forward; you have to save the recently assassinated empress’ daughter, while also overthrowing the illegally established military government, by assassinating key political figures. You can do this by which ever means you see fit. The game gives you the ability to sneak past your foes without them ever seeing you, knock them out so they can’t alert other guardsmen, or kill them to permanently end their threat. Will all three options are more than viable, the game heavily tailors to the sneaking paths. Killing guards increases your chaos rating, which in turn brings more guards, where sneaking will lower the amount of guards, and increases your rating at the end of every level. Like Deus Ex, the game allows your character to upgrade his abilities like blink, which allows you to teleport a short distance, and ability to see guards through walls. You get these upgrades by obtaining runes which are scattered throughout the maps. This game has the same problem that I am seeing with games that ‘allow you to play the way you want to’; they all tend to focus one way or the other. This game along, with Deus Ex: Human Revolution, focus on the side of sneaking. Both sneaking and attacking are viable, but one is clearly better than the other. I would love to see a FPSRPG that has both sneaking and attacking as equal ways to approach the level, but until then I don’t have much of a problem with sneaking around.Fri, 12 Oct 2012 09:48:05 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5246&iddiary=9522https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5227After eight years in development, the Half-Life 1 mod for Half-Life 2, Black Mesa, finally released last month on September 14th. The game was received to seemingly unanimous praise. It improved may things about the original game. The most noticeable was the graphical overhaul. The game looks great! The set pieces were also made much bigger. Due to limitations at the time Half-Life 1’s development, many of the areas you traverse are not awe inspiring in size. Take for example the dam in the first game. It was big for 1998, but now day’s looks like cinderblock in comparison to set pieces features in triple A games on the market. With Black Mesa the dam is huge. You truly feel like the dam could power the entirety of the Black Mesa Facility. The mod developers have done nothing to change the story of the game, which is what the player base wanted naturally. They have however changed some aspects of the games environments and pacing. Some rooms that felt tedious the first time around have been shortened, and some that had great mechanics to them were expanded, and the game feels great. Nothing added feels out of place, and nothing taken away feels missed. It was very risky for them to do that. People don’t like it when you mess with things they love, and so many people love Half-Life. This brings me on to another thing that we are seeing more of in the video game industry: HD remakes. Movies have been doing this more and more for a few years now and where it was once a novelty it has, in some peoples opinions, overstayed its welcome. With triple A games costing more to make than movies generally, this is a safe way for the developers to make money. They have been doing this for years with sequels, and it only seems natural to do it with remakes. One question that I often thing about the situation is, when no new IP’s are being made, with the developers make and HD remake of an HD remake?Fri, 05 Oct 2012 09:35:51 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5227&iddiary=9500