Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=575https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3079GAMEPLAY I made a mistake with a name in the first gamelog, the satellite weapon is called the Hammer of Dawn and essentially unlimited ammunition as well as being the only method to kill certain enemies. It can also fry normal enemies so fast that any chance to use it I took, sometimes to the dismay of my friend who I was playing with. I only killed him once with it, and that was justifiable. He went in my way. He shot me way more than that. I am really beginning to like this game, the way that you have to take cover in order to not die within a couple seconds is hard, but it’s a challenge that isn’t impossible to overcome. We also had to fight a Berserker, which is a incredibly strong enemy who will kill you in a single hit, but can’t see. Instead every time the player moves or fires his weapon, the Berserker will go after the sound. The players have to trick him into breaking down several doors and then getting it outside in order to use the Hammer of Dawn on it. I really liked this part because I haven’t played any other game with a part quite like this. It certainly was a unique feel. DESIGN How this game really stood out to me was the innovative use of cover. You had to use cover, it was easy to use and it felt natural using after a couple of minutes doing it. That is probably the biggest thing that Gears of War did right. It felt like a real battlefield where you could crouch and hide behind ledges and walls, only showing yourself when you were shooting at them. At first the controls for thing did feel somewhat clunky but after about 10 minutes I was hiding throughout the battlefield like a pro. (That is one phrase I do not often hear). The weapon selection in this game was really only different from all the other games of its type by giving you the gun with a chainsaw on it and the Hammer of Dawn. And the concepts of both of those methods of killing things have been done before, but arguably Gears of War uses those features much better than the other games out there. Aside from those features the inventory of weapons is exactly alike every other fps, you have the machine gun, shotgun, sniper rifle, etc. The storyline is a bit sketchy for me as of right now, even though I played the game from the beginning, I still don’t really know what’s going on. It could be just me, but it doesn’t seem to be that well explained. Of course it doesn’t really need to for the purpose of gameplay in the middle of the game but still. I understand that there are some sort of creatures living in tunnels underground that come up and fight against you. Why this is happening is anyone’s guess. Despite this lack of background info the characters are being developed at a steady pace, nothing excessive but they are identifiable as individuals. Gears of War is a fun game and anyone who likes a good fps should play it, the way this game feels is different from any that I have previously played. I really do want to beat this game now. Thu, 06 Mar 2008 02:15:08 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3079&iddiary=5890https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3079SUMMARY Gears of War is a first person shooter that takes a slightly different form of play into mind, although it sticks pretty closely to the modern fps. You can hide behind nearly everything in the game, allowing you to always find cover. This game takes place in the future, but from the technology it implies the near future. GAMEPLAY The first thoughts that were going through my head while playing this game was its similarities to Halo. It had a similar control scheme, and the play felt very similar, until we hit the first wave of enemies. Then we were soundly killed and forced to restart from a checkpoint. At this point we discovered how important utilizing cover is in this game. It’s pretty easy too, just hit A near anything you can hide behind and you will get behind it. Then hit the targeting button to pop out and shoot people and release it to go back. Almost like Time Crisis except that you can move around the map yourself. The second thing I have to say about this game is the weapons are just awesome. Just like every other fps they have the shotgun, machine gun, grenades. But many of the weapons are unique in some way, for instance the Hammer. It’s a laser sight gun that only has the targeting laser which then will lock onto a certain point outside and have a satellite shoot that spot with a rather impressive laser beam from the sky. Verily fun. And the second weapon that I really liked was the chainsaw gun. Yes that’s right, a chainsaw gun. It’s a gun with a chainsaw on it, meaning that if you get up close you can proceed to cut your enemies in half with the satisfying chainsaw on flesh sound. (That got a little scary, too much fps maybe?). Anyway this gun is typically an ok machine gun but the chainsaw feature makes it awesomely cool. Back to playing more of this game. Second log to follow. Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:00:03 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3079&iddiary=5800https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2728GAMEPLAY I really like the way that Gradius 3 allows you to choose what power ups you get. It allows for a lot of differentiation in gameplay and makes it easy to get back to the powers that you want. And this isn’t overpowered at all, even when you have all of the upgrades possible this game is still difficult. Although somewhat annoying it is pretty easy to reach the top level of upgrades, meaning that when you die, and make no mistake you will die, it isn’t that hard to come back from it. Well that is if you can survive long enough. I may have had too much time on my hands but I actually beat Gradius 3 during the duration of this assignment. And for beating it I felt good. But then it displayed “Why don’t you try it on hard”, which prompted me to turn off the system and go do something else. I had died enough times on normal already. But since I beat it there is somewhat of an implied storyline. You fight all the enemy ships and at the end see pictures of you barely escaping an explosion. You killed off the invading army, or something like that. I enjoyed playing this game as it was a breath of fresh air, it forced me to think really really fast. It’s amazing how few games do it as well as a good shmup these days. DESIGN Gradius 3 is a great shmup and somewhat innovative at that, but it is a shmup. And you can’t play shmups forever. Gradius 3 had good graphics for the SNES and decent music, but none of it was really that memorable. I find that after I beat Gradius 3 once I really don’t feel the need to play it again. I beat it once, I liked it, but I’m done thank you. Easily the most memorable parts of this game were some of absurd levels that required ridiculous dodging skills. Most of those parts I remember and I remember the power ups. The power ups are something that’s unique to the Gradius series, you have 6 different levels of power ups, each level is ostensibly a little better then the one before, even though they do different things. Each energy block thing that you pick up moves the level your at one up, cycling through all the options and letting you choose which power up you want to get. This lets you make choices while just beginning (Should I save up for a better laser or get more speed?). The gameplay in Gradius 3 is entertaining, but emergence is something that I wouldn’t be quick to say. It definitely has a few emergent elements, like the upgrade system, but you do follow a preordained path set by the designers. The AI is good enough that moving around and dodging is required in order to survive more then 10 seconds, which keeps this game from getting dull. Frustrating yes, but dull no. Anyone who likes shmups, this is a good game to try. Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:26:41 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2728&iddiary=5264https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2728SUMMARY Gradius 3 is a classic 2d space shooter, shmup is the generic name for these kinds of games. In this game you fly a small fighter against hordes of enemies and enormous bosses. Just like most other shmups if you get hit then you will instantly die, I think there are some shield power ups you can get as well. Also this game has a rather unique method of powering up your ship, you choose when to get a boost but the more energy you gather the stronger the boost will be, in general. Gradius is also difficult. Incredibly difficult. Being able to pass the first level takes about 10 minutes straight of failing. (Yeah I got slightly annoyed at that). GAMEPLAY One thing I noticed is how fast you get into the action. You click that start button and within 5 seconds you’re blowing things up. No real characters, storyline, or text of any kind detected. I suppose that this game really doesn’t need storyline, and what it lacks in that it makes up with sheer difficulty of play. That first level, took so long to beat, that I had memorized the movement patterns of all the enemies by the time I got to the boss. My emotional state was really more into the determined against all odds phase. When you’re willing to try and do something that really you have such a small chance of beating, you could almost say desperation. But because of how difficult this game is after each part you beat you feel great, because you just conquered that part of the game. (That’s what I felt like after I beat that first boss. Yeah that’s right game, I took you DOWN). Another cool thing I noticed was that anyone watching me play was somewhat amazed at some of the dodging that the game forced you to do. They would just sit there amazed at this game. Well I’m off to play some more. Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:10:12 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2728&iddiary=5156https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2424GAMEPLAY I loved playing this game, maybe even too much. I love how you can completely build your base and armies to do completely different things. Also this requires you to think strategically and not attack with all your forces and leave your base undefended (I promise never to do that again), and that using the abilities of a hero is a good thing (it got so much easier, Resurrection for the win). Another thing is I love the storyline with Arthas (this guy is intense) and it really does make me want to play this more. What did somewhat annoy me was the fact that the levels are beginning to get harder, to the point where saving in the battle is a good thing to make sure nothing goes horribly wrong. Also the more I play this the original thrill I felt playing it is starting to disappear, but this game is definitely still interesting. I just find myself pausing midgame to go do other things, like check facebook. DESIGN NOTES There a couple of things in Warcraft 3 that I found to be really useful, and just cool, the heroes and autocasting. The heroes were just fun in general, having a single person who could unleash special abilities and level up from killing enemies was incredibly fun. Plus many of the heroes had auras that would improve the abilities of those friendly units around them, making heroes necessary in order to create a good army. Also because of the many varied abilities of each hero, leveling up the heroes increases the emergent aspects of this game. This game is heavily emergent, I myself have played through the entire StarCraft series and Warcraft 3 is very similar to the type of gameplay. Using many simple units, spells, and buildings these games make battles something like a game of rock paper scissors. For each unit or building there is a unit that can beat it for equivalent cost. And because of this there are many strategies with almost infinite variants. Someone who only built air units may find themselves hopeless against an army of archers, just as an army of archers would find themselves hopeless against heavily armored melee units, who in turn can’t hit the air units and find themselves facing extinction. Rock paper scissors. It’s as simple as that in concept, but in actual play the possibilities expand endlessly. A great design feature of this game was its great use of cinematics in between missions. These movie segments are gorgeous and further the storyline a great deal. I really must commend Blizzard on their incredible use of movie segments in their games. What interested me though was that even in missions themselves the game would have movie segments that were completely made through the use of the games graphics itself. This made telling storyline fairly easy to do even in the middle of a battle. Also this never happened often enough to get annoying. Overall I really did like this game and would recommend it to anyone looking for an rts. Sat, 09 Feb 2008 01:09:22 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2424&iddiary=4777https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2424SUMMARY In Warcraft 3 the player controls the Orcs, Humans, Undead, and Night Elves through their respective campaigns. This game is a real time strategy game which puts you in control of the army of the race and makes you carefully manage resources to build up a base and army in order to defeat your enemies. GAMEPLAY The first thing that hit me was the storyline events that happen the instant you start a new game. The opening cinematic for this game is incredible, it firmly sets the idea of the world that you are living in and sets up the prophet for the conflict that is to come. This is immediately followed by the tutorial in which Thrall, the Orc leader, decides to play along with the prophet and follow him. The tutorial is well structured and does pass on the characteristics of the game very well. By the end of it I could use the heroes abilities easily and command the armies without too much trouble. This game was fun to play as well, the storyline actually continued to progress even in the game itself. Another thing I liked about this game immediately was how you could build bases to support your army. With all of these options I am guessing that this game will be heavily emergent, and very fun because of it. I found that I actually started to care about what was going to happen next so it was difficult for me to stop playing to even write this (I plan on going back to playing as soon as I finish this post), which means that this game is doing something right. That’s the end of my first review, I’ll get back for the second part. Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:05:30 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2424&iddiary=4636https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2277GAMEPLAY And now we get to the second gameplay session. Well as I embark on another quest to save the princess (every game has one or doesn’t it seem like it) I discovered I kind of like the battle system that is implemented for Chrono Trigger. Instead of having random battles the enemies are always on the map itself so you can see them before you get into the battle. It proved to be much less annoying then those Final Fantasy games. Anyway it proved to be very satisfying to see the monsters fall to the low bit count attacks. Another thing I found to be entertaining were the character interactions that go on. The princess, Marle, and Chrono, the main character, get into somewhat awkward situations while the scientist friend Lucca also has her moments when she interrupts the other two in the awkward situation. I must say I really do love the character development that is going on at this point. And I will probably keep playing to see the storyline as it unfolds. DESIGN NOTES I loved the way that the multiple timezones have overworlds that do really look like one is the past of the other. It creates a sense that the player is in a huge world that is farther than the ends of the Earth so to speak. Throughout the separate timezones many of the major cities and towns are mirrored albeit in a smaller scale, showing how the expansion of civilization happened over the years. Other then the fact that there are multiple gameworlds, each gameworld in itself is really not that impressive, they are typical for the games on the Super Nintendo. The battle system is one that takes a little getting used to, it is based on the typical Final Fantasy 1 battle system, where each party member has the action bar fill up so when it is full they can take an action. Chrono Trigger does this and also incorporates area effects and line effects that can hit multiple enemies depending on how your characters are positioned and where the enemies are located. Because of this area effects sometimes it’s better to wait for the enemies to position themselves for a huge attack instead of just moving as soon as you can. And because of this, battles forced people to think hard about what they were trying instead of just attempting to pound the enemies as soon as they could. Also unlike many rpgs, many of the decisions you make in the game do influence what end result you will get. This fact was found out after several failures on a boss to discover that a decision earlier would get me a better item to fight him with. And because of this the gamer inside me wants to try every possible combination of decisions to try and find out what happens in each different case. I would say this definitely raises replay value (and probably annoyance value). Chrono Trigger is an rpg that I am definitely going to take the time to beat. I really like this old game. Sat, 26 Jan 2008 03:41:31 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2277&iddiary=4373https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2277SUMMARY Chrono Trigger is a Super Nintendo game that is a rpg. Chrono Trigger is faintly reminiscent of the earlier Final Fantasy games for the actual gameplay, but the battle system was revamped and made timing as well as positioning very important to actually winning battles. Chrono Trigger is also an rpg where time traveling is allowed and lets you do some somewhat interesting stuff to the world map by traveling through time to the same spot in different times. GAMEPLAY What I found to be really entertaining early on was the sheer amount of minigames that were available at near the beginning of the game. Partially because of those minigames, I spent most of the first hour playing doing nearly nothing that was plot related. Some of the minigames that were available also had the tendency to be ridiculously hard, just to the point where it drives players nuts knowing that they can beat it, but also hard enough that it takes quite a bit of effort in order to achieve that goal. But the minigames weren’t everything, and soon after I had gotten enough of the points to buy that costly sword I started to move around try and forward the plot. I found the rather cliché mad scientist and daughter who had built a complicated and doomed to failure machine. In this case it was a teleport device that would move the person from one side to the other. However when your friend decides to try it her pendent reacts with the machine and rips a hole in time, which you must then go through in order to save her. Despite all of this being somewhat old for storyline sake the next part is what caught my attention. What had just happened is that I found myself in an entirely new area, but it started to look startling familiar until it was revealed that I was actually 400 years in the past. At this point I realized that I had been playing a very long time and decided that eating was a good option.Sat, 26 Jan 2008 03:04:31 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2277&iddiary=4364https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1704Summary: In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater the main character (who you play as) is Snake, who is basically a special ops soldier who is rather has some rather strange tendencies. Through this game you have to use camouflage and stealthy movements in order to sneak behind enemy lines to accomplish your missions. The object of this game is to accomplish your missions which typically range from rescuing someone to sabotage, sneaking is essential. Gameplay: The first thing that I thought of while starting a new game (I have never played before, but I am playing on my friends game) was that the movie clips are ridiculous. The first half-hour of the game I was able to actually play once, which included taking ten steps and climbing a tree, then to see another 10 minute cinematic. Although I must admit the cinematic sequences were actually drawing me into the game more because of the large amount of real history that was being used. A great deal of images and events that came on the screen I could recognize and say mentally “Yeah I know what that is.” I need to play a bit more to get more of the gameplay down but otherwise I find this game to be pretty entertaining. Which then brings me to the gameplay of this game. This game is slightly weird at first. I was having trouble trying to sneak around guards when I realized that I had to crawl past them without making enough noise for them to find me. Frustrating at first because of slow going but at least I could walk in a straight line by the end of that first mission. Another point of this game that is interesting is that it is really weird. Snake is just odd period. He doesn’t act like a normal person would in any circumstance. And not only that but the villains are crazy as well. The main villain in this somehow is able to control lighting with only his body without any provocation or explanation at all. And another one of the villains can control hornets. Come on hornets. Since when did that make sense? I do want to continue playing this game, because the sneaking really is fun. You will find the second half of this later. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:35:07.)Mon, 14 Jan 2008 02:19:55 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1704&iddiary=3518https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1704Gameplay: In my second session of playing Metal Gear I found that I was a lot more used to the controls and able to do things a heck of a lot quicker. But just as I got better at this, the game decided to screw with my mind and start making things much harder. This time around as I started the game up from my save point I really had to be careful to not be seen because as soon as I was seen tons of guards came trying to kill me. And they almost got me, leaving me with little health left and little hope to accomplishing the next hard part up ahead. At this point I was beginning to be annoyed with the game because I started to die while trying to complete the mission forcing me to backtrack a significant distance. This really emphasized how much this game is about stealth, if the enemy sees you then you will most likely fail. One thing that was picking up was the amount of cutscenes in comparison to actual gameplay time. There was way more gameplay for less cutscenes which definitely allowed the player to feel like they were actually doing something significant. Or in some cases failing to do something significant. Either way this was a fun game that I will most likely be playing again. Design Notes: What is definitely the most innovative design element of this first person shooter was its emphasis on stealth. Employing not only techniques of crawly in bushes and being careful about the noise made, this game also uses a somewhat complex clothing disguise system. If your camo matches the surroundings well then it will be hard for the enemy to detect you. However if it doesn’t match then the enemies will see you as clear as day. The levels that this game has provided work very well to accent the need for stealth. If at any time you are spotted the guard will call for reinforcements and have every single enemy near that area come running. And because of this the player has to think carefully about trying either to sneak past a guard with a big chance of getting caught or trying to rush the guard and knock him out before he has a chance to call for reinforcements. Much of the storyline of this game is told through the use of cutscenes, almost to the point of being excessive. However I find that the farther I get into the game the farther I want to get to be able to see the rest of these well done cutscenes and figure out what the plot is. The cutscenes and storyline are definitely a reward for progressing farther in the game as this game has a rather mysterious enemy force behind it. A problem with this game is that it can frustrate anyone who likes to go in with guns a-blazin because there is no way for that strategy to really work. All that will happen is you getting killed over and over again until the point where the ps2 is shut off or thrown out the window. This game is fun, but it really does force a particular method of gameplay in order to be successful. Be stealthy or die. (This entry has been edited2 times. It was last edited on Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:35:44.)Sun, 13 Jan 2008 20:45:23 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1704&iddiary=3426