Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=471https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2980GAMEPLAY (Session 2): Halo 3 is the last game in the series and it finishes the story of Halo. At the end of Halo 2, Master Chief was arriving at Earth on a foreign spacecraft preparing to “finish the fight.” In Halo 3, he is fighting on Earth and that’s where the story starts. As you progress through the game, it reveals more about what’s happening on Earth: there is a hidden artifact underneath the planet and the Prophet of Truth is trying to activate it and you need to try to stop it. I enjoy how the story was progressing as you played through the levels, showing more information and why the Covenant joined forces with the humans. Your main goal is really to try and stop Truth from activating the artifact, but when that fails, a hole is ripped in the sky and another life form, the Flood, land on Earth via a ship. So now you have to try to destroy the Flood before they wipe out Earth, but the Covenant let you know that there is something of value in the ship: Cortana. This is your new mission and you have to fight your way through the Flood (I don’t like the Flood, but it is part of the story) and find her. The way the story unfolds is done well as you have to complete objectives before continuing on to the next level. Pretty similar to many other games, but Bungie Studios does it well in Halo 3. The game is really interesting to play, especially the multiplayer. The campaign is well done. I wanted to know what was going to happen in the end so it kept me interested in trying to finish the whole game. The multiplayer is another part of the game that keeps people in, myself included. You can customize your character to look however you want (although there are limitations on color, armor, etc.) and if you get all of the achievements in the game, you are rewarded with a katana on your back as you play multiplayer; something else to keep you interested in the game (it kept me interested). Multiplayer is fun, fast and exciting. You level up and you get promoted, which is always nice to have on your avatar. Also, depending on who you play with, you may or may not enjoy the experience online. Some people just have bad mouths and start to say random, stupid things, but there is an option to mute other players and that comes in handy sometimes. Halo 3 will continue to be popular because of the multiplayer and people are always going to want to have fun stealing another person’s vehicle while they are using it. I know I did. DESIGN: I mostly enjoyed the levels of Halo 3. Since the first game in the series, there have been a couple of levels that I cannot stand, and they consist of the Flood levels. Having to fight your way through Flood enemies is not fun for me, and I know that many other people don’t like that as well. I enjoyed the levels on Earth, where there were no Flood and only Grunts, Brutes, and Jackals. Everything looks great there are detachable turrets (which is new in this game) to take anywhere you want so fighting enemies can be a breeze if you’re good with the weapon you’re using. The levels are varied and the atmosphere changes when the Flood arrive on Earth; that’s good because it gives you the sense that Earth is now in danger because of the Flood so you know you have to do something about it. There is a lot of close combat which is fun, but sometimes can get really crazy and you might die if you don’t pay attention to everything that’s going on around you. What I really love about some of the levels is the open area. Rushing towards a Wraith just to steal it is fun and having different positions to try and sneak up on it makes it better. The different vehicles in the game fit well with the different levels of the game and so did the enemies. The game looks great, the AI is really well done, and the characters have depth to them. This makes Halo 3 is a good game. It’s not great, but it will last a long time because it is fun. Halo 3 is the first game in the trilogy made for the Xbox 360 and it’s the first Halo game (besides Halo 2 PC) to have achievements. Since the debut of the Xbox 360, all games on the system had to have achievements for the players and this was its own reward for the players. Halo 3 has achievements and anyone who owns a 360 will want to have completed all of them to show off. I enjoyed getting achievements for Halo 3. It was cool and it made me want to get every single one of them. Many of the achievements are multiplayer, but there are some that are single player as well, to balance the rewards out. For people who do not have the online achievements, they will be playing for a long time just for the ones they don’t have (I did this when I first played it). It’s really rewarding to have completed something in particular to receive a notice on the screen saying that you completed the task to get an achievement. And what do you get for completing 100% of the achievements in Halo 3? You get a katana on your back that lets everyone in the world know that you have finished the game with everything completed. Every time you play online, your sword will be there and it’s a nice feeling showing off to the world that you’ve done everything the developer put into the game. Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:31:06 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2980&iddiary=5621https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2980SUMMARY: Halo 3 the third installment of the Halo franchise and continues the story of Master Chief trying to save humanity from the Brutes and the Flood. The Prophet of Truth is trying to activate a Forerunner (an artifact) discovered underneath New Mombasa (Africa), but by doing so he would be destroying all sentient life in the galaxy. It’s up to Master Chief and the Arbiter to stop Truth from activating the Forerunner and save humanity, as well as the Covenant Elites who joined forces with the humans. GAMEPLAY (Session 1): As the third game in the series, you have been introduced to many of the characters in the game: Master Chief, Cortana, Sergeant Johnson, Captain Keyes, and the Arbiter. They are all well done and have a backstory to them, so if you have played the previous games, like I did, you have a connection to the characters. Master Chief, though he doesn’t talk much, is a strong guy and he will beat anyone who tries to attack him. His story is well developed although you never see his face so you don’t know what he looks like. Cortana is another important character in the Halo franchise as she is important in stopping the activation of Halo. She is an AI character and is always in Master Chief’s head. She is always talking to you, giving you advice and having polite conversations. In Halo 3, however, this is the first time that you do not have her in your head for most of the game and it is up to you to go and rescue her. You don’t want her to become evil so it makes you want to go rescue her to save her from becoming corrupt. The gameplay in Halo 3 is pretty fun. At the beginning of the game you get a hold on your first weapon: an assault rifle, which hasn’t been in a Halo game since the Halo 1. It’s similar to other First-Person Shooters, but it’s still fun. One of the first enemies you encounter is a Brute and they are one of the toughest enemies in the game. Depending on what difficulty you have it on, they can be as easy as a Jackal or as hard as a Hunter so choose the difficulty wisely because on Legendary, they are a real pain, as well as every other enemy. To me, it’s always fun to be able to stick a grenade to tough enemies to kill them instantly and Halo 3 lets that happen plenty of times, and with the introduction of new grenades, you have another choice of grenade to use instead of the original standard grenades and Plasma grenades. Since it is an FPS, it will get repetitive eventually, though it will take a little while because Bungie Studios added a bunch of new vehicles to drive and new weaponry, which is a plus to many fans of the series.Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:26:44 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2980&iddiary=5605https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2747GAMEPLAY (Session 2): Playing through the game was really fun. It’s a 2D platformer with Mario as the leading character. The beginning world is pretty much an introduction to the rest of the game where you learn how to control Mario and is powers. I remember playing this game when I was younger and getting frustrated because my sister knew many tricks to get further in the game and I didn’t know what she did. But as I was getting older I found some hidden secrets and it’s the same today although I don’t remember exactly where they are. I really like that Nintendo added a lot of hidden surprises within this game because it lets the players choose whether or not to play through the whole game, level by level, or jump to the last level to see what happens at the end of the game. I must admit that I haven’t actually played through every single world. I always used an item to get me to the end, which I like because I wouldn’t like to play every level just to see the ending. I really enjoyed this game because of the oldschool feel to it. It reminds me of when I was younger, which is why I guess Nintendo put it on the Virtual Console. Along with being a fun game to play, it was interesting to play as well. Going through the levels lets you see the different looks of each world. You could tell when you were going to play through a water level or you could see that you would be fighting a Hammer Bros. Some of the levels are not really challenging, but other can get you a bit frustrated if you don’t time your jump correctly, which happened to me a couple of times, but that’s part of the experience; trial and error. Just seeing what different powers Mario could get is really cool and wanting to get through a level just to see the outfits he wears is reason enough to play through a difficult world. And the music is really familiar and everyone likes to hear the familiar Mario tunes while playing the game. DESIGN: I thought that the level design in Super Mario Bros. 3 was really good. You have many different enemies placed in different places on each level (even though there is only one way to get through the level). The way the backgrounds look is really good for each world as it matches exactly what the world contains. Within each level you have different challenges to beat and sometimes they are really rewarding (for me it’s the water levels because I really don’t like those levels. It feels hard for me.), and some just are there to continue the game. The worlds are really colorful with bright colors and not many dark colors, although the last level is really dark because that’s where the final boss battle is going to take place. Many of the powers that Mario gets let him do things better depending on the world that he is in, like a frog suit to let him swim better. Very cool looking outfits for all of his powers and I can’t wait to play a new Mario game to see what new powers he will have. So this game is a bit challenging if you haven’t played it in a long time. Many of the platform elements can be done pretty easily but there are some levels where you can get frustrated a lot. There are some levels where you have to continuously grab a Star so that you can run across deadly plants. If you don’t, you die. I found this in one of the worlds and it got me frustrated because I couldn’t get one Star that I needed to continue so I got stuck on a brick with nowhere to go. Much of the other levels in the game have you dodge every enemy (or kill them) just by jumping or running, but there are some enemies, like a giant fish, that can’t be killed unless you have a weapon power (like fireballs or hammers). You need to have good timing with jumping to get past some of the levels because if you don’t time it correctly, you’ll have to start it over and sometimes it is fun doing it over, but if you die over and over, it loses the fun so try to get it right in a few tries. Most of the game isn’t really difficult, but it is challenging, especially when you ride the battleship to get to the boss for that world. Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:01:30 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2747&iddiary=5206https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2747SUMMARY: In Super Mario Bros. 3, you play a plumber named Mario. You move from world to world completing a variety of levels within that world. The object of the game is to move from world to world trying to save all of the kings that have been turned into creatures by the enemy Bowser by returning each of their wands. GAMEPLAY (Session 1): Super Mario Bros. 3 is a classic game from the 8-bit era. It’s one of the games that showed off the power of the NES. This was the game that gave Mario different abilities for his adventure to attack is foes. One of the most recognizable powerups for Mario is the Raccoon tail and it’s the first one that you get in this game besides the Mushroom. Since his first days as “Jump Man”, Nintendo gave him a better identity, a plumber named Mario who has a brother named Luigi. Since I was little, I have always enjoyed the Mario games, and playing this one again brought back memories from the first time I played it. So Mario is the protagonist, Peach is the damsel in distress, Bowser is the antagonist, and they are pretty much the main characters. You play as Mario, the lovable plumber trying to restore every king’s original form by defeating different Koopas to get their wands back. After playing for an hour, there are different Koopas with different abilities trying to defeat you, but, you overcome them by jumping on their heads at the right time. Before you reach the Koopa bosses, you need to complete different levels filled with different enemies, like Goombas, Koopa Paratroopas, and other similar enemies. They all appear in most of the levels, along with some other enemies that are harder to kill. Also, after every king that you save, Princess Peach sends you a letter, along with a new ability to use whenever we want to. These are helpful when you don’t want some of the enemies killing you, like an angry sun.Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:57:20 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2747&iddiary=5154https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2449GAMEPLAY (Session 2): UT3 is really fun to play. It feels like the classic UT games, but with better graphics and some familiar weapons from the past games. It is a first person shooter, so it does have some similarities with other games of that genre, but the weapons differ from other games. The weapons are almost the same as in the previous versions, but have been upgraded for next-gen systems. The developer, Epic Games, kept the familiar weapons from the series, as well as bringing back former favorites from the first game. If you have played the previous games, this is going to be familiar, but in a good way. The vehicles are still really good and they even included a Hoverboard, which is pretty fun to ride on. I have played the previous games so when I started to play this, it felt familiar. Once I got into the gameplay, I didn’t look away from the screen. It kept me interested because the enemy AI is really good and they can sneak up behind you and kill you. The new maps and new rules also gave the game something new to keep in fresh, but familiar. Some of the maps are small, which gets you into combat really quick, and others are really big, requiring vehicles to move across the maps. Also, adding orbs to capture enemy nodes makes you think of strategies to keep the enemy from capturing you nodes with their orbs. DESIGN: Although sometimes weird, the AI in the game is pretty good. The enemies fight together to capture a flag or to capture a node. The same thing goes with your team AI. They keep the game interesting because they don’t do the same thing over and over. They think of ways to pass the enemy to get into their base. I even got surprised as to how smart the enemies are when I was playing Capture the Flag. They had a diversion with two of their teammates and the other two went to the base to steal my flag. It wasn’t until I heard “the enemy has taken your flag!” that I thought, “Whoa, when did they get into my base?” Moments like these keeps in the game to see if it will happen again. From the maps that the campaign put me in, the levels seem pretty different, but a little the same. The maps have different structures in them in different places on the map. Although they do look mostly similar, the way the graphics look for the entire game make the maps have some similarities in the shading and textures. The levels are both big and small, depending on whether you want many or few players. The variety in maps lets the player choose where to play and what map will be their favorite. In CTF, the bases are on either side of the map, with the center area open for long range combat with no vehicles (usually). With capturing nodes, the nodes are really far apart so the vehicles help to get there faster than the enemy. Really well built levels with variety in size, and vehicles that make it more fun. Good game for the PC. Fri, 08 Feb 2008 23:46:26 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2449&iddiary=4731https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2449SUMMARY: The single player campaign of Unreal Tournament 3 is revolved around the character Reaper, who you play as. This takes place in the future and he is hired as a mercenary by a man named Malcolm who orders him and other men into battle. The reason Reaper accepted the job was because he wants to get revenge on the Necris, aliens who almost killed him at the beginning of the game. GAMEPLAY (Session 1): I have always liked the Unreal Tournament games and this one is no exception. The graphics are really good and story is a bit interesting, but not that much. From the beginning of the game we are introduced to the characters of the single player campaign. The character we play is Reaper, who is almost killed by a group of aliens attacking his colony. Even though I played it for an hour, the single player isn’t really up to what other shooters have done. The thing is that with Unreal Tournament, it has always been a multiplayer game and the single player is fun, but it still feels like it’s just there for practice before going online and playing against other people. I still see no point in the campaign mode, but the company did try to do it, although it did feel somewhat similar to Gears of War, there other franchise. I do like the characters a bit in UT3. I like some of the voice acting on the characters, but I don’t like the voice over for Reaper. It seems a little mono. I think the voice acting for his sister is really well done, although it can be a little weird for some moments in the game. During combat, all of the characters introduced in the intro do talk and say that they need help, but they aren’t really smart. The other characters remind me of the past UT game as in they are just there fighting with you, but don’t really have a connection with the player. Playing Capture the Flag or Deathmatch with your teammates still feels similar to the other games in the series, but that isn’t a bad thing. Fri, 08 Feb 2008 21:19:24 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2449&iddiary=4661https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2124GAMEPLAY (Session 2): For the second hour, it went by quicker than the first hour, gameplay wise. There wasn’t as much story because it had already been told at the beginning of the game. This is good because it gives players the chance to see the game world. After seeing Hyrule field, you get the sense of how big the world is. This is a good thing because it gives the player freedom to go wherever they want to go. This is also slightly bad because at the beginning of the game you play as Young Link and you have to run around Hyrule field which is a bit boring but once you get your horse Epona, it becomes faster to cross it and more fun. I felt that the progression of the game felt really well. As I entered Hyrule, I knew that I was supposed to go to the castle to see the princess. The trick to get into the castle was to sneak past the guards. That was pretty fun because I didn’t want to get caught. This was the first time that the player got to use the Ocarina to play a special Zelda song as well as receiving a letter that lets you move around the castle without the fear of being thrown out by the guards. By the end of the second hour of play, I had bought a brand new shield, found lots of rupees, learned about the story and reached Death Mountain, home of the Gorons. I still have MANY hours left to go to complete the game completely. DESIGN: One thing that I didn’t like was that there is no dialog in the game. The audio is really well done. The Zelda games have a great soundtrack with their familiar songs and you play them with the Ocarina of Time. The songs you play with Ocarina really stay in your head because they are catchy. This game has a really good story but with no dialog there is a lot to read. Though this is negative, I would prefer reading dialog than listening to bad voice acting. There are many games that have bad voice acting and I’m really sure that Nintendo would not want to mess up one of their favorite franchises with that acting. The level design in Ocarina of Time is really good. The center of the world is Hyrule field. It’s really big with a ranch in the middle, but there isn’t really much to do here other than walk across it and fight monsters during the night. The other towns in the game, like Kakariko Village and Death Mountain, are pretty detailed and the view from them gives you an idea of how high you are and how far you are from the rest of the world. There are many side quests in these different towns so you have plenty to do if you want to complete the game with every Heart Container and every item. Of course you don’t need to get all of them to finish the game, but the fun is trying to get everything to fully complete the game. (This entry has been edited2 times. It was last edited on Fri, 25 Jan 2008 21:32:12.)Fri, 25 Jan 2008 21:31:36 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2124&iddiary=4125https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2124SUMMARY: In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, you play as Link, a young boy who has a dream about a young princess, Zelda, about to be kidnapped by an evil man named Ganondorf. As you continue throughout the game, you learn more about the story of Zelda and who Ganon is. On your journey you gain equipment that let you progress to your goal of rescuing Princess Zelda. GAMEPLAY (Session 1): The game starts off with the story, of course. It doesn’t take long to get through the beginning and once you get your fairy, you leave your room and start to head off to meet the Great Deku Tree. Now, the story is something that we all know about. Link is the hero who has to go save Princess Zelda from the evil clutches of Ganondorf. This story can become pretty repetitive, but the way Nintendo uses it, makes it exciting. And this was the first 3D Zelda game on the N64, so the depicting the characters in 3D was important to the story to make it intriguing. I have to say, even though the story throughout the Zelda games is pretty much the same, Nintendo knows how to tell the story well enough that it doesn’t matter that the story is the same, just that the game is really fun. The story was a lot of the beginning of the game, but once it was over you had rupees to collect and a sword to find so that you could leave the town you were in. It was a little boring but I understand that you had to do this so that you could defend yourself once you reached the Great Deku Tree. Now the actual gameplay is something that is really well done. It is fun and you can pretty much go anywhere you want (although in the first hour of playing I could only go to the Deku Tree). The control scheme isn’t hard to understand. It’s really simple to do actions because the A button changes depending on what you see (i.e. if you’re next to a movable block, the button will either say “grab” or “climb” depending on whether you walk towards the block or stand next to it). It’s fun to just run around slicing bushes, signs, or collecting rupees (that’s money in the game) although it does get boring after a while. Learning most of the moves for combat takes only a couple of minutes so once learned, you can take the whole game to master them in combat to kill your enemies faster and faster. (This entry has been edited2 times. It was last edited on Fri, 25 Jan 2008 21:25:10.)Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:41:15 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2124&iddiary=4102https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1721SUMMARY: In Crysis, you play in the future as a US soldier, Nomad, equipped with a "Nano Muscle Suit" that allows you to have superhuman strength, a cloaking ability, increased speed and enhanced armor. Your primary mission involves rescuing a scientist who is trapped somewhere on an island. She sent out a distress signal so that someone could find her and stop the Koreans from opening an artifact that was discovered underneath Earth. GAMEPLAY (Session 1): Right off the bat, the graphics are incredible. I played it on the "High" setting and I'm amazed at how well they look. It does lag in certain areas, but other than that, some of the best graphics I've seen to date. So they start you off by jumping out of an airplane to a island. All you know is that someone is alive and they want to be rescued. Then something attacks you and you fall into the water below. This is (of course) the training level as you can do whatever you want before finding some enemy to kill. The suit has different modes and I enjoyed using those modes, especially the cloaking ability although it doesn't last long. Nomad isn't the only one who was separated so you have to go find everyone else. The voice-over acting is really well done in this game. It feels real. The chattering, the jokes, it all sounds as if it was really happening in the real world. As the game continued, it was fun sneaking up on someone while cloaked, grabbing them, then beating on them until they died. I really enjoyed playing Crysis for the hour that I played it. The story is interesting, but it feels familiar like other games that have something hidden underneath Earth's crust. It's really fun just turning on Strength mode and punching everyone to death, but that will get you killed if there are many soldiers around. Modifying the weapon you are using is pretty cool too but you tend to forget about it after a while because all you are really doing is shooting the same looking enemies over and over. The game does give you good training over the first level because it tells you what you could use each mode of the suit for, but throughout the game that's everything your suit can do...nothing else. They're fun to use (like cloaking) but if you don't want to use them, all you have is a FPS and it's just like other titles only with prettier graphics. It's just funny how they always send you to do missions and not any of the other teammates (although they might have some as well. We just might not see it.) Even with some little gripes (it's really just the training level so there isn't much there), it's a fun game. GAMEPLAY (Session 2): Continuing where I left off, I'm still in a forest on an island. It all looks pretty much the same except for some houses that you need to enter. This time I have to go rescue another one of my teammates...and complete mission objectives, of course. Mostly I was using the cloak to get past any enemies that I saw. But the AI isn't dumb. Even though you're cloaked, they can still hear you so if you're not careful, they'll start shooting randomly in your direction. It wasn't any different than the last time I played. The only difference was that I killed more enemies this time around...and I died once for being a bit careless...anyway, it was repetitive, but fun. Now, I think that the main characters are really well done. The voice acting is great and the graphics make them look lifelike. Right from the beginning you can see that every character has a history together. They are friends and they've been through a lot together, probably training or other missions. There are only four other people who go along with you to the mission, so you feel important. It does move the story along, but only because YOU have to do most of the missions. Pretty much every game does that because you are the main character so I don't think anyone is bothered by it...I'm not really. DESIGN: Crysis is not the best game out there, but it is really good. The modes on the suit add some changes to the gameplay, which makes it fun because with Strength, you can punch down buildings and kill anyone who is inside (always fun!), or become faster (kind of fun, but never really use it...). If you're like me you might cloak yourself a lot to sneak up on enemies. It's fun to through them at a wall. The levels of Crysis are not very different. You're in a forest for most of the game up until the alien species gets release (toward the end of the game). Don't get me wrong, the forest looks really, really good. Some nice foliage, trees, vehicles, houses, and the water looks incredible. All of this is really well done (even inside the alien territory, although it does look the same and I got confused a couple of times). This is one of the downsides of Crysis. I know that it IS set on an island and there is so much you can do with forests so I can see why they couldn't do so much. One of the things I enjoyed about Crysis were the cutscenes. The characters looked really well. DirectX 10 was suppose to be an improvement in gaming and although still new, Crysis looks really good while running in DX10. They have a DX9 version as well, but I haven't tried it. The textures on the faces and the suit look incredible. The details give the characters a realistic feel to them. Crysis is pretty much a system killer because you need a really good PC to play it on the high setting. My computer lagged somewhat during the cutscenes, but only when there was snow. Other than that they were smooth and the emotions on the characters' faces were in sync with the voice acting. Really well done cutscenes in my opinion. The game is really good. I would recommend it to a friend and I'm pretty sure that playing online gives more replayability to the game. I haven't tried it online though. Overall, really good game. (This entry has been edited3 times. It was last edited on Mon, 14 Jan 2008 01:00:31.)Sun, 13 Jan 2008 22:35:22 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1721&iddiary=3446