Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=588https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3014Gamelog Entry #2 GAMEPLAY: So the bad guys got a little more difficult. Some of them actually had shields, and the bigger bad guys would fly in the air and when they attacked, they would actually hit you. So this forced me to learn to change up my weapons against different enemies. This made the game more challenging. Again, the world looked great. Each place I had been to was unique and had its own elements, bad guys, and set of obstacles. As I continued to upgrade my weapons, I was able to earn some new ones that turned out to be much more powerful than the one I had. This sort of made killing bad guys easier, but it was pretty cool watching the animations of my attacks. The game carries a lot of humor, whether its in the dialogue, or some of the crazy elements in the game. For example, controlling Clank is funny because he is not strong at all, and these little tiny aliens follow Clank around and protect him, while also telling him what to do. Some of the devices are funny to use. One device makes your enemies dance to a disco ball, leaving them vulnerable to any attack you wish to kill them with. In conclusion, playing Tools of Destruction was still fun the second time through. I learned more about the story, remained interested, and enjoyed fighting my way through obstacles and bad guys. DESIGN: I really like how they implemented the SIXAXIS controller in the game. In one obstacle, you are falling from the sky and you must avoid missiles trying to hit you. With the tilt sensitive controller, you must move Ratchet forward, left and right to avoid getting hit while falling down. I was impressed with how responsive to controller was to game. Also, ebing able to control Clank in the game, who usually just sits on Ratchet's back the whole time, was an ineresting change of pace. It took you away from all the weapons and destruction, and made you think about how to get from one place to another. The more used a weapon in the game, the stronger it got. Your weapons level up, as they should, since enemies do get stronger as you progress. Although enemies do get stronger, the game itself is not all that complex, and is still easy after playing two hours of it. Perhaps, the game was meant more for younger gamers. Even with the lack of challenging fight sequences and obstacles, I would still recommend this game to anyone who is looking for a fun 3D adventure. I have not yet fought with a boss, and I do look forward to playing this game more, and taking on a much more difficult task ahead.Thu, 06 Mar 2008 04:20:20 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3014&iddiary=5990https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3014Gamelog Entry #1 SUMMARY: Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction is an adventure game for the Playstation 3. The game follows the adventure of Ratchet who is a Lombax (not really sure what that is but he looks like a cat). ratchet is accompanied by he faithful robotic friend Clank during the game. Ratchet uses weapons, such as a wrench, a gun called a combuster, fusion grenades. You primary goal is to guide Ratchet and Clank though a world that seems to be against you for whatever unknown reason, and try to solve the mystery within the story by completing the game. Completing the game involves solving simple puzzles, destroying enemies and bosses, and collecting items. GAMEPLAY: I had a lot of fun playing the game for the first time. Although I was not sure what the story was about at first, I got a real kick out of blasting enemies with my combuster and hammering away with my wrench. The bigger the enemies were, the bigger weapons I used. Right when I started playing, I wondered why everything seemed so hostile. I was forced to kill a whole bunch of enemies even though they really did not do much to attack me. The game feels easy right away. Perhaps the real challenege doesn't start until I progress further along the game. The game kept me interested by allowing me to upgrade my weapons and buy new ones. This actually gave me a reason to pick up all the bolts throughout the world by killing enemies and breaking bolt crates. The flow of the game was flawless. Cutscenes were beautiful, and they did not take me away from the game at all. In fact, I felt like I was watching a Pixar movie, just like advertised. The game just looks great from top to bottom, and the sound really brought me into the game. Overall the game masters the use of 3rd person shooting and platforming. I can tell right away, that the further I get into the game, the funner it will be. Killing enemies is great, especially with the wide variety of weapons you can use. I just wish the game could be a bit more challenging, and bad guys weren't alwsys so easy to kill.Thu, 06 Mar 2008 02:07:10 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3014&iddiary=5877https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2853Gamelog Entry #2 GAMEPLAY: During my second session playing Wii sports, I tried to play tennis and golf. I found tennis to be the funnest of them all. This time, I was able to play with three other friends at once. It was easy to get into the game and matches can get very intense and exciting. Naturally, I think that tennis is a fun sport to play. And since I am not very good at it in real life, i got a real kick out of playing it on the video game. The game is easy since all you have to do is swing, but timing is key if you want to execute. There are however certain shots in the game where it is impossible for the opponent to return the ball, and you could exploit that. So at times, although there was a lot of competitiveness and fun going around, there were a lot of "BS" calls out there. Golf took a lot more patience to play. Out of all the games, I would say golf was the most sensitive and you can't just swing the remote recklessly. You would need touch and concentration. Overall I didn't think golf was too bad, and some of the courses were challenging enough and fun. In conclusion, there is some depth to all these sports games. You can develop certain techniques to be good at some of the games. It is fun to play against someone, but I think that playing against the computer can get boring and repetitive since they tend to constantly make the same mistakes, and give you numerous chances to win. They say you can get a workout playing wii sports, burning calories etc. But after satnding for a while, I got lazy and I would actually play better just sitting down. Overall I think I had a good experience with this game, and although there are not a lot of different outcomes to the game and not a lot of depth, I would recommend playing this game at least once to see for yourself how fun the game can be. DESIGN: Probably the most innovative thing about Wii sports is the use of the Wii remote. Sometimes you really feel like you are playing the sport in your own home. Swinging the baseball bat is probably the best example. This is something none of the other next generation consoles decided to implement in their games. I think that the goal of designers as to get people to feel more interactive with the game and get a sense as if they really are playing sports. The motions you reenact in the game are very similar to real life, which contribute to the realism to the game, and make up for the poor graphics and visuals. The games do bring challenges to the table. Baseball strategy closely resembles a chess match as you try to throw off the hitter with varying pitches and messing with the hitter's timing. Tennis is straightforward in which your goal is basically to hit the ball where the other player can't hit it. And bowling, well, is the same as bowling. Knock down the pins. This game is perfect for socializing, perhaps even great for parties, since anyone can pick up this game and even win. For those who demand realism in video games, this game can be frustrating for you, as the outcome is not always consistent with the motion of your controller. Finally, the gameworld can not get more childish than it already is. All the characters look funny, and their body movements are simple. So you do feel like you are playing a kids game after a while. But who says thats a bad thing?Thu, 21 Feb 2008 03:35:50 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2853&iddiary=5467https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2853Gamelog Entry #1 SUMMARY: Wii Sports is a compilation of different sports games which utilizes the Wii remote's motion sensing capabilities. It includes five different sports: tennis, baseball, bowling, golf, and boxing. The Wii remote acts as a tennis racket, a baseball bat, and a golf club, in their respective sports. It also captures your motion when you roll a bowling ball when you play bowling, and throw a punch when you are boxing. GAMEPLAY: The first two games I played were baseball and bowling. I had a lot of fun playing baseball. When I was batting, I held the Wii remote the same way I would hold a baseball bat and swung away. I thought that it was hard to hit the ball at first, but once I got the timing down, I was able to put some hits together. I was a little disappointed with the defense in the game, because it really matters where you hit the ball. For example, a ground ball would almost automatically be an out, and most fly balls that landed where restricted to only doubles. It would also seem random whenever the computer on defense made an error. Pitching was easy and took less effort to execute a good pitch. Playing with a friend was a fun experience but it didn't take long to finish the game and there wasn't that much excitement in the game compared to other baseball games such as MLB 2K7. Bowling was fun and easy to learn. I played with a friend in this game, and it was very interactive and games were competitive. Strikes and spares were not that hard to figure out and execute. The way I bowled in the game was nothing similar to how I bowled in real life. But it was fun testing out different approaches to bowling the ball. The characters are 3D but they all look rather funny looking. The graphics take away some of the realism in the game but the gameplay makes up for it I guess. There is a way of leveling up your character, which adds an interesting element to the game. Overall I had fun, and I would play this game again with a group of friends, but I don't think I would take the time to be really good at this game. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:45:33.)Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:44:50 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2853&iddiary=5349https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2340Gamelog Entry #2 GAMEPLAY: The game remained interesting as i played further along through the story. The puzzles would get more challenging, and it was harder to find water to regain your health. There were times in the game where fighting bad guys would get repetitive. The fighting scheme in the game isn't all that great, and it would get frustrating at times when you had to kill multiple enemies at once when you had very little life left. The story remained solid even though a side story developed with the Prince meeting a mysterious princess. Once you save her, she then helps you along your journey. She will follow you and she becomes an integral part of the mazes as well. DESIGN: There are a lot of good things to say about the game design. The game is pretty linear, since there pretty much is no wrong way to go. The story sets you in the right path the whole time. And although there are no divided levels, you always find yourself in a new part of the palace. The palace design is well done because you really feel like you are always exploring a new part of the castle instead of the same room all the time. As you work your way in and out of the palace, the story seems to advance pretty slowly. You are pretty much are on your own until you save the princess, and then you still have no idean how to save the kingdom. The game keeps you interested though, with the variety of puzzles and traps. It really is fun to watch how acrobatic the prince is since it would be hard to do anything he does in the game in real life. With the fights and battles, they can be tedious, since the people you fight seem to have little or no importance in the story. What makes the game special and deserving of a high rating is probably the implementation of the sands of time, which allows you to go back in time and actually save yourself from death. This is something I have never been able to use in any other game before. So it was pretty cool to mess around with and experiment. The cutscenes, storytelling, and graphics are all excellent for a Playstation 2 game. Each support to the overall gameplay experience. The puzzles are also pretty much straightforward, and doesn't require much strategy, just some basic logic, and a little bit of timing. So basically anyone can pick up this game and play, although it could be hard to pick up the game in the middle of the story.Sat, 09 Feb 2008 02:54:04 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2340&iddiary=4878https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2340Gamelog entry #1 SUMMARY: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is an action/adventure in which you control the Prince, who is a witty, confident, and acrobatic hero who's primary weapon is his sword. Sands of Time is a game of progression, as you use the prince to solve logical puzzles throughout the game which usually involve trying to get from point A to point B. Getting from one place to another requires you to run on walls, swing off poles, and do numerous jumps and flips. You are also able to slow down time as well as go back in time using the Sands of Time. There are also villains that you must fight that will get in your way periodically. Your primary goal is to undo an evil spell that you accidentally unleash at the beginning of the game. Easier said than done. The story follows the prince as he must save his father as well has a mysterious princess, and most importantly redeem his kingdom. GAMEPLAY: I was amazed at the different things I can do in the game, such as running on walls, and doing all kinds of acrobatic jumps. The puzzles were very engaging and fun. Getting from point A to point B is pretty much straight forward, but it is fun because of how you have to get there. They can be pretty intense as you have to work your way down as well as up certain obstacles throughout the palace. Killing off enemies is also fun because you are not really just button mashing. You can counter enemies, as well as dodge and acrobatically knife them from the back. However once you figure out how to consistently fight off these bad guys, it can get repetitive. The story is told straight from the prince himself, so the whole time you are playing, he is telling you the story. You know what he is thinking at every point of the game, and the story develops quite interestingly. I ended up playing the game for 2 hours straight because I was never taken away from the action of the game. I liked the character so much that I wanted to see him succeed therefore, taking up more of my time to play the game. The addition of slowing down time and going back in time makes the game very interesting. As a result, I was never really worried about dying or making a mistake, and I ended up being more experimental with puzzles and being more daring. This is a cool thing because if I accidentally died, I didnt always have to go all the way back to the last checkpoint. Although the game is a one-player game, I had my friend watch me play, and he would get involved with the game too by trying to tell me where to go, and we would end up solving a few puzzles together.Wed, 06 Feb 2008 14:44:41 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2340&iddiary=4474https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1748GAMEPLAY So, I ended up playing Halo 3 with my friends the whole weekend, since they really didn't give me a chance to play any other games. After playing for a while, I learned how to achieve double kills and killing sprees. This helped me to rank higher the more I played. Leveling up in Halo 3 is a very rewarding achievement, and is enough to get me addicted to the game as I move up the ranks. I still have that lofty goal to get a 10 kill streak, which I have not done yet in the game. The more I got used to controls, naturally I was able to put together a good amount of kills each game and be a productive player, meaning having more kills than deaths. There were times where I had bad teammates, which ruined my game experience. They would either betray our team by killing teammates, or simply not be able to kill anyone. Failure to communicate in a Team Deathmatch would often result in a loss for my team. In addition to playing online, I also played the single player campaign. Objectives were simple, which was usually just to eliminate all the enemies. There was nothing complicated to figure out in the beginning, as the game did not really have any puzzles. My job was to point and shoot at the enemies, and move on to the next stage. The game had an excellent presentation and it was nice to watch the cut-scenes. To me though, the science-fictional story of Halo 3 was not as amusing to me. I will probably finish the campaign someday, but there was a lot of repetitiveness as I was forced to backtrack levels a lot and end up killing the same enemies over and over again. DESIGN In the mutliplayer part of Halo 3, the maps for the game play a big part of the game experience. Several levels were too big. I would end up walking around searching for an enemy for a long span, wondering where everyone is. One level had up to four floors, and it was annoying having to go up the air shoots and back down and not find anyone. I enjoyed the smaller maps which were good for 3 to 8 players. There was more action and it was more fast paced which kept me into the game and hungry for more kills, rather than exploring a large map. Each team deathmatch I played had different rules as well. The common rule for all games was the team with the most kills wins. Sometimes you were limited to only a shotgun and a sniper. This Team Deathmatch was called "Shotty-Sniper." This type of game forced players to approach the game differently and to think of a new strategy for each game. Therefore no match felt the same and repetitive. Another game was limited to only rocket launchers which was a very intense game and fun to kill multiple people at one time, but hard to survive more than 30 seconds. The game keeps the player interested by giving the player an opportunity to rank up. This is common in a lot of war games today, but since this game adds the element of science fiction, it is much different with the addition of alien weapons and vehicles. There are not too many other games where u can blast people with alien weapons. I guess what makes the game so fun is that there are so many strategies to each game, depending on the map and what weapons you are able to use.Mon, 14 Jan 2008 01:56:09 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1748&iddiary=3505https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1748SUMMARY Halo 3 is a First Person Shooter for the XBOX360 and is the conclusion of the Halo Trilogy. You control Spartan-117, the Master Chief, a fictional character part of the USNC. Spartan-117 is a very interesting character because he is the last of his kind. He is a super human soldier who runs faster, hits harder, and jumps higher than any normal human being. Your mission is simple, which is to protect and save humanity from the enemy alien civilization that calls them selves the Covenant. Your main weapon is you trusty assault rifle. But you are certainly not limited to that one gun. As you move along in the story, or play through several different multi-player matches, your arsenal can include pistols, rocket launchers, battle rifles, sniper rifles, grenades, lasers, shotguns, as well as alien weapons. GAMEPLAY This is the first Halo game that I have ever bought, and I am still very unfamiliar with the whole storyline. However, my friends and I have been playing the multi-player mode online using XBOX Live. Going online with a party of friends has been much more satisfying than playing the campaign mode by myself. With three other friends, we would play team deathmatches against other players online. We would do this all in the same room and on the same TV screen, which turns out to be a rather fun and exciting game experience. Using the mic, we can interact with our opponents as well. Most of the time we joked around with our opponents, and tried to insult them after each kill. Chatting in the game lobby was also fun, as we got to know our opponents better. At first, we were being matched up with high ranked players, and it was hard for me to keep up. It would get frustrating at times when the final score would be so lopsided. After a few social matches, we were finally matched up with players around our skill level. The team deathmathches were much more even, and our team started to win. I would have to agree with many people that Halo 3 is one of the best online multiplayer games. With competetive matches against different leveled opponents, each match was unique and had a different outcome. If my team kept winning, whether we went against a weak computer, or a low skilled opponent, we probably would not have had as much fun.Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:44:15 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1748&iddiary=3477