Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=563https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3010GAMEPLAY #2: As I continued to play the story was the most interesting part of the game by far but the plasmids that I got added a new way to have fun along the way. Of all the plasmids that I got I enjoyed incinerate and winter blast the most. I thought I was sadistic before while playing games but this game took it too a whole new level. There is a serious god complex involved with being able to set people on fire at the snap of your fingers. With graphics turned up all the way you can almost see the flesh peeling off of their bodies. I had a lot of fun during my second play session fighting enemies because there was now my choice to what I could as I had a lot of different kinds of weapons to choose from such as chemical throwers that shot nitroglycerin and napalm to a crossbow that set enemies on fire. As the story progresses it becomes more and more apparent how truly ****ed up this place is. From orphanages that turn children into miniature farms for money to their guardians who literally have been brainwashed and tortured to no longer resemble humans to the various splicers that adorn the hallways, this is truly a society gone completely haywire. What is perhaps the most messed up element of storyline though revolves around the games first mini-boss. It is a surgeon who gradually lost his mind. He looked toward artwork, paintings in particular, for inspiration for his plastic surgery. However, he looked at Picasso's cubic period. He thought that because the painter was heralded as a genius and his work was said to be beautiful that if he did the same to people he would be famous in the same manner. His operating room is filled with corpses hung from the ceilings of failures some almost crucified before you. Throughout my time gaming I have never seen an image as haunting as this one. DESIGN: The plot is absolutely fantastic and it is shown to you via tape recordings and sometimes through other mediums and they are found at short enough intervals that the player is kept engaged in the storyline at all times leading to a constant feeling of anticipation. It was a really nice change of pace to play a game that you were on the edge of your seat the entire time for. Setting is something that the developers strove for and it is unmatched by any other game I have played in a long time. The walls are crumbling and the city is leaking from the core, it is actively decaying all around you as you play. One of my favorite moments of immersion though came at a place called Apollo Square. Andrew Ryan had ordered disobediant "parasites" as he called them to be hung in the metro center to be made example of.Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:32:58 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3010&iddiary=5727https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3010SUMMARY: Bioshock is a first person shooter in which you take on the role of Jack, a man who is on a plane that crashes outside of the entrance to an underwater city called Rapture. The game focuses on plot development and to make combat interesting provides a fresh new twist to the first person shooter genre. GAMEPLAY #1: The game starts off with a bang, literally, as your plane crashes into the water at speeds fast enough to rip it to pieces which float and sink in the water which, in addition to the wreckage, hosts a pillar of flame due to the burning jet fuel. Your instincts take over and you swim to the safety of a nearby structure that appears to be a lighthouse in the middle of an untold ocean. At this point I am already in awe which is a feeling that continues with me literally the entire time that I play the game. The job that the developers did with immersion is literally unmatched by any other game I have ever played. I find it necessary to point out though that in a game based entirely in an underwater city this is the only time your character ever swims. After you enter the building you get your first real glimpse at the grandeur of Rapture. The elegant passageways are made of stone with golden statues at every turn and above me I see a silk banner welcoming me to Rapture. The game is almost completely linear and I take the next logical step of progression which is to enter a submarine that takes me tens of fathoms under the ocean. A tape recording made by Andrew Ryan, Rapture's creator, plays and explains what you are seeing around you which at this point is massive would-be skyscrapers. Re-experiencing this part really made me understand one of the games many quotes, "building Rapture at the bottom of the sea wasn't impossible, it was impossible to build it anywhere else." This quote really gives way to the foundation the game has with Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead because in order to build a utopian society, which was Andrew Ryans goal, seclusion from outside influences is necessary. The tape recording of Ryan proceeds as the submarine continues forward and my favorite moment in the entire game occurs. As you look at all of this captivating and unique scenery around you Ryan reveals the basis for the beliefs Rapture was founded on. He says, "is a man not entitled to the sweat of his own brow? No, says the man in Washington, it belongs to the poor. No, says the man in the Vatican it belongs to God. No, says the communist in Russia it belongs to everyone. Well I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose Rapture." After all this build up and making you think that Rapture sounds like paradise the game is quick to remind you that it is a dystopian city and society here has all but completely collapsed. As soon as the submarine or bathysphere as the game calls them lands in the docking bay you witness the brutal murder of your rescuer who is there to guide you to safety by some shrieking monster that vaguely reminds of a Clockwork Orange for some reason, probably the mask that it wore. Soon the game introduces you to its unique twist on first person shooters-plasmids. Plasmids are genetic modifications that give you superpowers but in this city they are seemingly commonplace which adds to the otherworldy feeling that you get while playing the game despite the fact that the principles of Rapture are so close to what we hold in our society. The first genetic upgrade you receive is called electro-bolt which shoots lightning out of your hands in a manner a little too similar to Emperor Palpatine.Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:35:36 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3010&iddiary=5660https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2641GAMEPLAY #2: My second gameplay session was very entertaining and a lot of new things were thrown into the mix. The first time around I didn't play with items but the second time around they were enabled and they drastically changed the fight by quickening the pace and adding a slew of new tactics to use during the battle such as a ray gun or giant sledgehammer. As a side note there is nothing more satisfying than hearing the CLANG! of a home run bat as you slam it into Jigglypuff's face...revenge. Sadism aside I had a lot of fun with the game and am kind of disappointed that I hadn't played it a decade ago when it first came out. I have always been more PC oriented and playing some of these classics has shown me what I have been missing all of these years by not venturing into consoles. DESIGN: While playing the game I felt pretty excited most of the time and free to do whatever I wanted too, and despite the fact that the stages were small they felt incredibly open and some of them were even mildly interactive which added the new element of not only fighting against your opponents but the stage as well. From what I have seen the most major issue in fighting games has been covered and that is balance. There were a couple of errors made though in my opinion such as the distance that Pikachu's backward grab throws people. For the most part though I felt that I could pick any character and remain a competitor in the match. The game's interface is very streamlined and easy to use. It is straightforward and to the chase and is dedicated to getting the player into the thick of the fray as soon as possible. The various versus match game modes are all interesting and unique even though I only found two to my liking which were stock battles and time battles. The only real flaw I found in the game was the camera. Sometimes it would position itself in very awkward places that did not seem useful to any player and often caused me to plummet to my demise off the bottom of the screen.Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:01:03 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2641&iddiary=5018https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2641SUMMARY: Super Smash Brothers for the Nintendo 64 is the first in a series of fighting games of which there are now three. The series is a Nintendo franchise and is now one of their most popular exclusive titles. GAMEPLAY #1: Because this game's multiplayer is what it is renowned for I decided to just jump straight into it and for the most part ignore the single player. Despite not having played the game before I found all of the characters that the game had to offer familiar and, being a huge fanatic of the Nintendo 64 Zelda game, I chose Link as my first character(with the red tunic of course, because red Link is made entirely of win). My friend being the sadistic *Insert Expletive* he is chose Pikachu. So after fighting for a few matches I decided that hearing the television scream "PIKA-CHU","PIKA!", and "PIKA-PI" was a little more torture than any human being should subject themselves too for an extended period of time. So, I made him pick a new character. He chose Jigglypuff... The fighting occurs at a nice pace and is easy to learn but perhaps the most fun I had with this game during my first session was the trash talking involved while playing the game which increased exponentially with each person who entered the room and joined in on the game. The "ooohhhhs" and "ahhhhhs" of the crowd in game and out and of course the controller throwing that goes hand in hand with competition are what made this gameplay experience classic for me.Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:04:30 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2641&iddiary=5014https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2361GAMEPLAY #2: Once I was out of the sewers the game play style changed drastically. Oblivion became completely open ended. At first I forgot what I was supposed to do for a short while but the game's quest tracking system made it easy for me to get back on course. Now that I was out in the open world there were more interesting fights as well. I fought a pack of wolves on my way to a bandit hideout and during this got a feel for the game's loot and inventory system which is very well done. My first dungeon experience in this game was a lot of fun. The lighting gave it a feeling that was both ominous and exciting. There were also some minor puzzles to solve and some fights that were actually challenging because, from what I have seen, the AI in the game is of decent quality even though the enemy units don't always cooperate very well. DESIGN: The combat of this game was supposed to be revolutionary and it was. The problem was that it wasn't really involved apart from the melee. The spell system is very unintuitive. You can only have one spell out at a time which is hindering if you try and make your character a spell caster. The character development system is very intricate and a lot of fun. I love how you level up skills by using them. It allows for someone to build their character the way that they like it without locking people into a class based system. The only problem I found with it was that once leveled up you couldn't assign experience to skills in a different category which early on isn't a problem but after playing through a large portion of the game trying a new school of magic or different weapon style would be near impossible because of how ineffective it would be. The game world provides an unrivaled interactive experience and lots of things to do. My gripe though is it's size. For a role playing game it feels rather small but most of my role playing game experience comes from massively multiplayer games which, characteristically, are very large. During the two game play sessions that I had I didn't run out of content in this manner but by looking at the size of the map I could tell that later on it would be a problem. One of the things that I liked the most about the game was the scenery and a small world limits that factor. I could see game world exhaustion in Oblivion taking almost hundreds of hours as there is so much to do. Apart form the game's main story there are tons of things to do. Mainly the guilds in the world which provide their own quest lines to the player. Even though this game log is complete I look forward to being able to play this game more and realize that I should have started a long time ago. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:20:32.)Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:15:10 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2361&iddiary=4525https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2361SUMMARY: The fourth installment of the Elder Scrolls series, Oblivion, is a somewhat high fantasy role playing game. You take on the role of a prisoner who, due to fortunate circumstances, is chosen to carry out the will of a now deceased king. GAMEPLAY #1: The game starts off at character creation and the depth of it is fascinating. I sat and toyed around with it for what could have easily been an hour before finally finding a character appearance that I enjoyed. After creating my character I was sent off to the loading screen to begin my journey, hooray. To my surprise the loading time was very short and the screen barely had time to appear before receding and putting me into the starting zone, which to my dismay was a jail cell. I felt trapped in it and my character must have been claustrophobic because I immediately started to jump around and ram into walls in a manner more suited to a madman than the savior of an empire. This led to the realization of how well thought out the control scheme is and how familiar it seems to someone who has never played the game before as I already knew how to control most aspects of my character. Soon enough the king showed up and I was led down through a secret passageway into a system of stone passageways underneath the prison. I learned of the treacherous plot to kill the king and with his dying breath he said he needed me to pass on a family heirloom to his son in order to save the kingdom. Up until this point I had been fighting against what seemed like a brotherhood of assassins alongside the king's bodyguard. However after the king had been executed and I was told that I should exit through the sewers. I began to expect that the worst cliche in RPG history was about to be repeated and of course it was. There is no better way to make you feel like a weakling stable boy in a high fantasy role playing game instead of a heroic knight in shining armor than having your character fight rats. Yes, they have teeth and yeah, probably rabies too but the straight fact is that they are rodents and in a game they are beyond not intimidating, they are almost cute. The developers might as well send you out to kill little bunnies in the middle of a forest, at least that way when you are swinging your sword aimlessly at your feet you will get to see some pleasant scenery. I eventually triumphed through all the obstacles put forth in the sewers and exited out into the world of Cyrodill. I immediately saw why Oblivion's graphics were heralded as the best to date in a role playing game. The environments were truly breath taking. They made you feel like you were there as your character under the hot, bright sun standing next to a cool stream as the wind swept by and made the grass sway.Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:40:02 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2361&iddiary=4506https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2083Gameplay #2: My second session was one characterized by anticipation. I couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen next even though everything seemed vaguely familiar. Deja vu moments aside though I had a blast continuing my adventure throughout Hyrule which included defeating many foes and performing the rolling animation again and again...and ramming into objects again and again to hear that oh so familiar thud as head smacked into wall. The story was completely enveloping and I lost track of time for hours. Even though my first session ended barely having left the starting zone I now found myself having completed the entire Triforce. I really have to say that I was incredibly impressed by what has always been my favorite boss battle. The fight against the electric jelly fish, for lack of a better name, to obtain the last piece of the Triforce. The environment feels like a living, breathing organism as you walk around it. The entire time I was convinced that I actually was inside of a whale. Design: My major gripe with this Zelda game is by far the cutscenes, especially the one that occurs when you first pull out the master sword and you are propelled through time. You literally sit there and read dialog as it slowly appears for what seems to be a good twenty minutes. Apart from the dialog I didn't find anything that I disliked about the game. The dungeons all seemed very unique and I never felt like I was solving the same puzzle twice. The different themes of all the dungeons also prevent the game from feeling stale as each one is radically different from another ranging from sunken temples to a underground graveyard that is largely invisible. The tone of the game is perhaps one of its most interesting aspects. when you are the young link the world seems much happier and carefree as things often do when you are in your childhood. However, immediately after you pull out the Master Sword the world has been taken over by Ganondorf and the same people who were once kind and carefree are hateful and unforgiving for the most part. One aspect of the game that I found particularly relieving is the inclusion of a save anywhere feature that let you quit anytime you needed without losing any progress. This serves two purposes really as it lets the player stop and continue at his or her own pace and makes the game world feel less divided and more congruent. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Sat, 26 Jan 2008 03:06:14.)Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:59:10 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2083&iddiary=4361https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2083SUMMARY: The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time is the action-adventure and puzzle game that defined a generation of role-playing video games. The game is fully three-dimensional which in 2008 seems rather unimportant but back in 1998 when the game was first released the only other major title to have done this was Mario 64 so being 3D was...kind of a big deal. GAMEPLAY #1: The game starts at a respectable pace and is quick to remind you that it is not a platform game via the absence of a jump button. I know, I flipped out also when I found this out and felt like a lost dog trying to find his way home in the dark. But alas! I found the light, or rather it found me and the game's tutorial instructor and personal guide, a fairy named Navi, appeared before me and was there to show me how to once again get acquainted with the still awkward N64 controller, not to mention make me comfortable in this oddly pixelated,I mean beautiful, world. For everything that I can say about the environment there will always be one thing that holds true and that is that it does a phenomenal job at immersing you into the world of Hyrule. Suddenly the nostalgic feeling which I had been waiting for was awakened and I became even more eager to set out and defeat the evil Ganondorf, the series' antagonist. Rescuing Zelda was simply an afterthought when I was nine and thought that I should keep it that way. Things were more straightforward then. The formula for games to me that far back was simple. Step one was to kill the bad guy. There was no step two if you didn't include my victory dance. The controls were easy to learn and it wasn't long before I was slashing away gleefully at whatever came my way. The targeting system which works by holding down the Z button to lock onto a target until released is a very nice addition to combat as it prevents problems created by bad camera angles that are often present in 3D games. It also serves to make Link's(the protagonist and poor sap that the player takes control of)hacking and slashing more efficient, which is a definite plus because I really do enjoy my borderline sadistic hacking and slashing...CHOP. The combat was really engaging and amazingly simple to use considering its depth. While locked onto an enemy it allowed Link to perform combat moves much more easily such as blocking or doing a jumping power attack. It also altered Link's movement capabilities. Dodging left, right, or doing a back flip became as easy as holding a direction and pressing a button which is great when you consider the alternative which is to receive a Deku Nut fired straight at you directly in the face. (This entry has been edited2 times. It was last edited on Fri, 25 Jan 2008 05:24:20.)Fri, 25 Jan 2008 05:01:02 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2083&iddiary=4022https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1686SUMMARY: Crytek, the developing company of the Far Cry series, has made its latest foray into the video game design world with Crysis, an innovative first person shooters that has top of the line gaming rigs on their knees. It is set on a modern day island, ala Far Cry, that is inhabited by Koreans and...something else that I have yet to discover. The game has you assume the role of Nomad who is part of a team of elite soldiers that resemble what you would think Navy Seals are like except with more advanced technology. GAMEPLAY: For the hour that I played the game I solely explored the single player campaign and let the multiplayer sit for a later date. One of the first things that I noticed when creating my profile and starting a character was the differences between difficulty levels of which there were four ranging from easy to delta. Instead of doing what most games have classically which is increasing the amount of hitpoints enemies have or the amount of damage they do when the difficulty is upped Crysis had the enemies literally changing. For example on the easier difficulties enemies would speak in English which would make the player aware of what they were doing such as searching for him or throwing a grenade. On the Delta difficulty the Koreans actually speak Korean, making trying to determine what they are doing much more difficult. Immediately upon character creation I was sent diving into the storyline and game, both figuratively and literally. In order to prevent the normal boredom that comes from watching a cut-scene to learn mission details or reading something on the loading screen Crysis gives you an interactive briefing. While the player is sky diving at the start the details of your mission and thus the goal of the game are explained. Crysis is quick and to the point though and as soon as the briefing is over your chute fails and you are sent plummeting into the ocean. After crash landing into the ocean you are finally introduced to the most unique aspect of Crysis. The nano-suit, the armor that the team of soldiers wears, is effective in providing a gameplay twist that makes Crysis feel like a completely different kind of shooter(not to mention give the player a god complex). The suit has four modes which are easily activated: armor, speed, strength, and cloak. Each of these settings, only one can be activated at a time, increases that characteristic to a superhuman level. The catch though is that you only have enough power to maintain these modes for a small duration of time before your nano-suit recharges, which happens quickly but the downtime is enough to add a serious strategic element to the game. GAMEPLAY #2: During my second session I was able to find more uses for the suit's four modies. First there is armor which has you eating bullets in a firefight and living, although it is the least interesting of the four in my opinion. Speed is more fun, while active if you put your character into sprint mode you accelerate, for a few moments, to the speed of what appears to be a formula 1 race car as terrain blurs past you, making closing distances between enemies or getting behind cover a supernatural experience. Cloak is pretty straight forward, while active you become invisible and you are allowed to move short distances, making you feel like you're playing a ghost when you sneak up behind an unwary enemy to stealthily take them out. However, the strength mode is definitely the one that I have the most fun with. While active you arms pulse a red glow and you are able to do some truly remarkable things and gain some subtle advantages. Immediately noticeable is how high you can jump with it active, press the spacebar with this mode on and watch your character fly twenty feet into the air. Next I noticed that while active strength mode reduced the amount of recoil that I experienced when firing my SCAR, the starting weapon of the game. In the first hour though the most fun I had was due to two things-the sandbox style game and the suit's strength mode. While making my way around the island I found an outboard boat engine just laying on the ground. I picked it up easily enough with strength mode active and proceeded to run around. Shortly afterward I noticed that I was surrounded by what appeared to be an abandoned village, made up completely of rundown shacks. At this point I realized the serious carnage that could be had with the boat engine I was holding and the hopefully destructible houses around me. I tossed the engine like a fastball at one of the buildings and sure enough its walls came crashing down in a cascade of metal and shattered glass, I had yet to feel such elation in a game from something so simple yet amazingly fun as destroying buildings with boat engines and watching them collapse. There was no goal or apparent reason for doing so other than to watch the demolition of those buildings. I guess this just shows how fun random, pointless destruction is on occasion. DESIGN: After my second gaming session something else became even more apparent to me that it was before and it was how the sandbox style gameplay allows for nonlinear solutions to a linear storyline I.E. when I was tasked with destroying two tanks and could either take enemy rocket launchers to destroy them, lure them into a mine field, enter the top hatch in cloak mode and dispatch the soldiers inside, or do any other myriad of things to accomplish my objective. The storyline is fast paced and to keep you involved your squad leader is giving orders enough so that you stay interested in the plot line without getting annoyed that this guy is talking to you the whole time. Overall I was, for the most part, at the edge of my seat in anticipation of what was going to happen next and was very excited which led me to feel genuinely surprised when the unexpected happened instead of the general apathy that accompanies less involved games in the same situations. The games only downfall is its insane system requirements. Hardware wise it is a year ahead of its time and this fact extremely limits the number of people who can play it and experience all that it has to offer. (This entry has been edited4 times. It was last edited on Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:51:47.)Sun, 13 Jan 2008 19:03:35 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1686&iddiary=3408