Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1833https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6352Game Log 3 Play Time: 2 hours 30 mins I finished episode 3 and started episode 4. During this play through people who are supposed to be "good" have revealed their questionable side. Snow has a bit of a violent and controlling streak. She wanted to burn down someone's livelihood, enforce an unfair law (unfair in the way that it keeps poor people poor and in prison), and is issuing threats stating it's "for the good of Fabletown". I've also noticed that Snow isn't as good a character as they are trying to portray her as. She's extremely unkind and unfair to Bufkin, the record keeper, and she acts as though she's above the girls Pudding and Pie. Not really a fan of her right now. Beast and Beauty are also being strange; they asked me to kill someone so they wouldn't have debt. Although their debt stem from from their own extravagant lifestyle in a bad economy. However, it seems that the Fabletown system is against them and even if they lowered their lifestyle they wouldn't have jobs. I think the commentary that the game is having with Mr. Crane is really interesting. In "the Homeland" he was a caring man and good teacher, all of his students loved him. But over the years (in Fabletown) he became run down by politics and started making deals to keep the town running. Then he blamed the town for his own stained hands and started making deals for himself. Eventually, he became the twisted and creepy old man he is today. The commentary about the corruption in both the real world and the fairy tale world is interesting too. Especially because so many of the "good" characters seem to remember the fairy tale world as perfect with good, fair endings, while side characters experienced hardship in both worlds. Since I noticed that I tend to play a softer Bigby I've tried to play as a more moderate one. Instead of always being nice sometimes I'll throw a punch if I think Busby's temper would cause his patience to run out. I'm definitely going to finish the game.Tue, 04 Apr 2017 23:18:37 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6352&iddiary=11097https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6352Game Log 2 Time Played: 2 hours and 30 mins I was mistaken in my last log and during this playthrough I reached and completed episode 2! During this playthrough I tried to play a softer Bigby after his conversation with Snow. If an option came up to stop fighting, I immediately took it and only used physical intimidation after multiple tries of non-physical persuasion. This mix of soft Bigby and normal Bigby (according to how Bigby was in the fairytale-land) seemed to be very effective. I was able to increase my standing with civilian fairytale characters while still being true to how other characters viewed Bigby's character, a mean, violent, and unfair creature. I still was fairly rough with some characters like Mr. Crane and Bluebeard. I chose to still be a meaner Bigby to those characters because I felt like Bigby keeps a solid grudge. (Also I don't like Mr. Crane at all, he's definitely doing some shady stuff.) I'm starting to think a little more carefully about the relationship between metagaming, ludonarrative gaming, and how I am personally reacting to the situations. Although I still feel like I'm avoiding metagaming and just play as how I view Bigby, in most circumstances I feel like I'm playing more to how I would react over how Bigby would react. There are some occasions where I think Bigby would lose it and not be able to stop fighting but I personally don't want him to fight because the people he's fighting with are doing it for "good" reasons.Mon, 03 Apr 2017 23:37:07 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6352&iddiary=11087https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6352Game Log 1 Playtime: 1 hour and 20 minutes During this gaming session, I completed the first two "chapters". It is an interactive story line with QuickTime events so all of my decisions impact the next scene and the final ending. I played with a group of people watching me and they were pretty upset at some of the decisions I made. One decision in particular was very controversial with them (which I did not expect to be), they were in a near uproar with several cries of "you should've chosen the other one!" It was after investigating the storybooks and finding out that Faith had a husband in fairytale-land. There was a choice to find Faith's husband (who seemed to be in danger) or to find Mr. Frog who had recently called you asking for help about a break-in. I chose Mr. Frog because I felt like the character would choose to help an acquaintance over finding a suspect in the case. (Also I personally wanted to help Mr. Frog.) They wanted the story line to progress whereas I was wanted to play, what I considered to be, in character. As a sidenote, I really like that some of the "nice/good" decisions aren't the "best" decisions. Also I didn't know that this game was based off of fairytales so that is rather exciting to me.Sun, 02 Apr 2017 20:55:50 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6352&iddiary=11084https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6298Game Log 3 Playtime: 45 minutes This is my second time playing this game through and there isn’t anything that is very different. The game’s storyline is linear so I can’t really change anything. The only things that I’m noticing on this playthrough that I didn’t notice last time is the villager interactions and the older brother/younger brother interactions. In the beginning of the game there are more villagers that you can interact with that slowly disappear as the story goes on. Also they are more happy the closer they are to the starting point. As for the brother interactions there are very few interactions in which the older brother relies on the younger brother, most of them are things that the older brother has to help the younger brother do, like swim across rivers. Sat, 18 Feb 2017 15:23:05 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6298&iddiary=10980https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6298Game Log 2 Playtime: 2.5 hours This game took a very dark turn that I honestly wasn’t expecting. There was an ominous foreshadowing of death with three criminal’s bodies hanged (I’m assuming that they were criminals because their heads were hooded) and a dream-ish sequence about their mom and dad with the younger brother being strangled by the older brother. I think the younger brother feels guilty about the death of his mother and secretly thinks that his older brother blames him for her death. As we left the forest there was a man who was attempting to commit suicide, he was standing on a chair and tying a rope around his neck. I wasn’t able to save him but when I was attempting to make a jump later, I died and had to redo it. The second time he lived. It was revealed that he was committing suicide because his wife and child died in a house fire while he was gone. He ran into the fire to save them but only retrieved their bodies. To console him I found a music box in the wreckage. The game took an extremely weird turn. There were cultists who were sacrificing a girl, then a yeti who froze an entire village and their invading forces, then that girl turned out to be a spider-woman who tried to Shelob the two brothers. The Yeti the brothers killed by accident and the Shelob-woman on purpose, who stabbed the older brother as she was dying. Also I accidentally crushed the frozen forces and stabbed/maimed some dead giants who were battling. I reached the glowing tree on the older brother’s map. AND THEN HE DIED. THE TRIP WAS NOT WORTH IT. Although, I think that was kind of the point. They went on this grand and magical adventure to save their dad from death and one of them died in the process. I think it brings up the questions - is each life equivalent? Would you exchange someone’s life for someone else? I will admit that it was a nice touch at the end that you couldn’t use the left side of the controller anymore until it came time to do things that the brother had to do for the little brother, like swim. The brother couldn’t swim/was too afraid to so he had to rely on his brother’s memory to do it (and you had to use the left side to swim and not the right). Also I finished the game. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Fri, 10 Feb 2017 23:41:40.)Fri, 10 Feb 2017 23:40:29 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6298&iddiary=10969https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6298Game Log 1 I played for about an hour. The game has similar gameplay to “King’s Quest” so far, which is great because “King’s Quest” is my favorite game. The weird thing about this game is that the language is gibberish, so you have to deduce what’s going on from bad, over acted animation. However, instead of feeling like an actual language, like “The Last Guardian” or “Atlantis”, it just sounds like fake. Every time they speak I get distracted on its falseness and miss the what’s going on. The story so far is that the boys’ father is deathly ill and the two boys are going somewhere to get help. This is made even more urgent by the fact that the mother has died. (I think that the little brother had something to do with it, they were on a small together when she drowned.) I don’t like the little brother at all and while I like the older brother more, I’m not attached to either character. The little brother has an abrupt sob-story that only sometimes affects his personality, and other than that he’s an obnoxious, property destroying hooligan. The older brother doesn’t seem to have a personality at all. Controls-wise this game is strange; the left half of the controller is the older brother and the right half is the younger brother. To play, you have to control each brother simultaneously as they can’t move very far from the other without stopping and yelling at each other. I have high hopes for this game, but I wish they would step up the acting/animation in the scenes.Tue, 07 Feb 2017 23:01:45 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6298&iddiary=10966https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=62313rd Log Today I played for about an hour and the spear enemies re-entered the game. The spear enemies are a source of constant stress and worry when it comes to Trico. (If he can reach them he'll eat them and if not they'll attack him until he's so upset that he takes being pet all over to calm down.) In a strange moment, I had to leave Trico behind to help him go forward. (He was very upset and whined loudly.) When trying to unlock the door that he couldn't get past, I woke up a bunch of spear guardians. The spear guardians ran out to where Trico was waiting and started to throw spears at him when he was defenseless on a ledge. When I was jumping to get to the next part, the scaffolding I was on started collapsing and I was going to fall. From this new vantage point Trico could see this and jumped to save me even though he knew that there was nowhere he could safety land (hence the defenseless perch and all the spears). He dug his claws into the a space in wall and held on. Then I could either pull out the spears in his back and risk us falling down or climb up his back past the spears and jump in hopes of open the gate he was hanging off of. I chose to risk falling and took the spears out first. After we were both safe he asked for a pat and I gratefully gave it to him. I was extremely surprised when he jumped to save me at his expense. It's very weird to see him being uncooperative just because he's looking for a snack then looking worried while I'm about to fall. Then he proceeded to be fussy again because he was hungry. Understandable. There are trico statues showing up and I have to wonder if tricos were once sacred.Sun, 22 Jan 2017 02:39:24 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6231&iddiary=10903https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=62312nd Log Today I played for about an hour and was only able to focus on one puzzle. One thing that I don't like about the game is that although the puzzles aren't difficult, if you get frustrated you can't run off to a different part of the game and take your mind off of it. In TLG, you HAVE to complete the puzzle before you to complete the next one, there is no way around it. TLG is extremely linear. The puzzle, that I had so much trouble with, was set up so that Trico is not part of it. There is a giant eye in the beginning (which Trico is afraid of) so the unnamed boy (UB) has to climb on and jump between cages, weights, chains, and glass. After you destroy the eye Trico starts to follow below then you have to jump on to Trico. (Sometimes he will catch you by swinging his tail for you to catch or catching you in his mouth, on the first three occasions he did neither.) Then you have to urge Trico to jump from increasingly smaller platforms until he breaks one and has to go faster. Then it just stops and there is no indication of where to go next. There is where I stopped. I still pet Trico just for fun, get sad when he's upset or hurt, and give him barrels because he likes them (haven't found a reason for giving him barrels yet) but I've started to view him more as a tool. I get more easily frustrated when I have to replay through a few minutes of gameplay because he didn't get with the program and catch me. I've started to feel more for the character I'm playing, UB. This is because he has to do the most ridiculous things to get out of this random monastery that he was kidnapped, put in, and given a full body tattoo while unconscious. If TLG reveals who put UB in there, there's no way he is a good guy. It's become much more obvious through the designs and props that tricos were probably caged and tortured here, still not sure why. There doesn't seem to be any repercussions to my actions in the game. Trico doesn't seem to be more endeared to me because of the treats or pets. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Sat, 21 Jan 2017 20:05:29.)Sat, 21 Jan 2017 20:03:09 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6231&iddiary=10898https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6231I have played The Last Guardian for about 3 hours, and I've also watched a few of my friends play it. In TLG (The Last Guardian) you play as an unnamed boy who finds a wild trico (creatively named Trico) chained up beside him, working together you try to escape the strange ruins you woke up in. Aside from the frustrating jump controls and the incessant tutorial, I am enjoying the game. I am finding myself very emotionally attached to Trico because Trico acts just like my cats, however my friends don't really feel that way. They don't put their character in danger to make sure that Trico is healed as quickly as possible because Trico's shrieks are sad nor do they find amusement when Trico couldn't careless about helping you do what you want to do. To them, Trico is a tool to get them to beat the game. The game is built off of moral dilemmas - do I smash this piece of art because it makes Trico uncomfortable? Do I place Trico in harm's way so that I don't die? Should I be using this amulet that is super powerful/helpful that also puts Trico in a trance that makes him do what I want? Who knows, but probably not. There's a larger story going on with things being made out of trico horns and corralling/putting them to work. But I don't know enough of the story to comment on that. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Sat, 21 Jan 2017 20:03:44.)Thu, 19 Jan 2017 01:15:45 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6231&iddiary=10851