Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=702https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3215GAMEPLAY: I spent a few more hours with the game. It is utterly addictive in its way of gameplay, even if the levels are practically fixed. The enemies always comes from the same location and fires the same way, with the only different being when I kill them. This game relies primarily on the concept of a “bullet-hell” style. This is a style in shoot ‘em up games where the screen is filled with numerous bullets and the player must navigate through these bullets to safety. With the amount of bullets that are thrown at you, it would be nearly mind-numbing to try to memorize all the patterns even though it can be done. The game can become frustrating at parts, especially with the sometimes ridiculous waves of projectiles that the bosses throw at you. These ways often require concentration to avoid, especially since other waves overlaps and pass through other projectiles, creating an intricate moving network that required me to constantly have my finger on the slow button. But with the harshness of the game, I found Touhou to be a very fun shoot ‘em up to play. DESIGN: The characters and bosses in the game are primary magical girls that seemed to be under ten years old, with the main canon fodders enemies being angels that fly across the screen. The game is a vertical shooter with a bit more than the left half of the screen being used for the flying and combat. The right side of the screen contains the statistics that include the score, lives, and the power-up value. The power-up value is different from other games, in that when you pick up the red cards that are dropped by enemies, the value increases for a small decimal number. Whenever it reaches a whole number, your character gets an increased firepower to use. Every time the character uses a bomb, the power-up value decreases. This makes strategy somewhat important as the power-up value combines increased firepower in relations to bomb-usage. The backgrounds are absolutely beautiful, with three dimension clouds passing by on the first level. There is even land far below that is viewable. What makes the background even more interesting is that when boss fights occurs, a new background overlaps over the original background. One particular example was a wooden screen with Japanese characters carved out of the wood to create holes that you can see the previous background of clouds and landscape moving past. The bosses each have their own health bar that decreases rapidly at first, but as it goes further down, it takes more shots to damage the boss. After the boss reaches the small black portion of the bar near the end, the female magical girl that the boss portrays changes her attack waves to a more difficult style. After the bar completely empties, the magical girl changes style again as the bar refills. This repeats for a few times before the boss finally dies, but it is a new style that I haven’t seen on other shoot ‘em ups besides the Tohou series. Fri, 07 Mar 2008 05:44:35 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3215&iddiary=6050https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3215SUMMARY: Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith is the tenth game in the Touhou series that has built a large following as great shoot ‘em up games. Supposedly, the game has a great storyline, but unfortunately, I have no learned Japanese so I can’t tell you anything about the story. GAMEPLAY: First off, I have played the other games in this series and I love the series. I may be biased for the series, but it’s justified in the fact that they tend to change the formula around at least a little bit with every sequel they create. The previous series included a shoot ‘em up with a rival opponent on the other side of the screen in their own box, advancing through their level in the style of Dr. Mario or versus mode in Tetris. Another of the games had a mechanic where you take photographs of the enemy boss to damage them. In any case, the game series thrives on the uniqueness of each individual game in the series, while staying true to its main storyline and concept. Anyways, I started playing this game with great expectations. More or less, it didn’t quite exceed my expectations. In fact, I would say I was a little disappointed. The mechanics were pretty much the same, though now they changed the power up meter. Just like all the other Touhou shoot ‘em ups in the series, there is the shooting button, the bomb button, and the slow button. The gameplay is pretty standard, yet still has the refreshing adrenaline rush to avoiding all the bullets that are coming at my character. I played through a few levels with great satisfaction to the numerous patterns that the bosses were able to fire out. The intricate bosses and their style from previous games remained the same, including the ridiculous health bars that these bosses have.Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:58:17 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3215&iddiary=6049https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2908GAMEPLAY: Well, my opinion is reaffirmed. This game is absolutely abysmal. If I have to play another hour of this game, I might have to destroy my counter. The ridiculous gameplay mechanics with the unbalanced difficulty makes this an infinite chore to go through. I can’t even get past the first level. They only give you about four lives to survive on, which is truly not enough. The odd thing about the music is that at the beginning and at checkpoints where they start playing this odd blend, you can’t hear the sound effects no matter how much you shoot. Only when it is playing the regular music can you hear the sound effects. This is probably a limitation of the Nintendo, but it is such a relief to get away from the sound effects which are just loud pinging noises in its different variations. Sadly, this is the only good part about the game. DESIGN: The game throws you into the ship with four lives to count on. Unfortunately, your ship might as well be made out of junk. It flies like a rock, and requires that you are forced to spend your first power-up on speed, regardless of your skill level. First of all, the power up system is a unique system that is only used in the Gradius series. There is a bar at the bottom with several power-ups that you can choose to activate, provided you have picked up enough power-ups. This would have been a supposedly good system for this game, if it weren’t for the fact that the enemies were incredibly difficult. The enemies are much, much quicker than your ship, able to fly across the screen at speeds that are hard to keep up with, especially when your own ship flies like a giant rock in space. Often times, I found myself killed by the enemies ramming their ship into my ship. Even their own gunfire is much slower than they are, so much so that it will leave you wondering why they don’t just fire ahead of their ship and rush into it to kill themselves. It would have made a much more satisfying gameplay than this. Your extremely slow rate of fire allows the enemy to also be able to just gang rush your ship. The fact that they are able to gang together and rush at your ship in a straight line while you are constantly firing and still kill you leaves me mystified. What’s even more annoying is the jumping ground units that somehow even faster than the ships, and can jump through the landscaping such as mountains that, somehow, have a tunnel through the middle. You are given four lives with absolutely no continues, making it important that you stay alive. Each time you are killed, you start back at the checkpoint with only a single power-up to spend before you are faced with an onslaught of speedy enemies. An odd part of the landscaping is that if you go to the top of the screen, you are okay, but if you touch the landscape at the bottom of the screen, you will be killed. There is not much else to talk about since I can’t much further. My final opinion is…I hate this game. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 04:25:47.)Thu, 21 Feb 2008 04:21:58 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2908&iddiary=5476https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2908SUMMARY: Gradius is a shoot ‘em up that takes place in space with the player as a spaceship and loads of enemies appearing. GAMEPLAY: I came into playing this game with not much expectations for it. Even though it is considered one of the “great” games, it is still a dated game on the Nintendo. The first thing that hit me when I started playing the game is the complete lack of premise or storyline. It just sent me straight into the game without any kind of introduction to some dull storyline. That alone dimmed my expectations of the game by a lot, because I was expecting at least some kind of motivation for playing this game, but it’s only purpose seems to be that of a coin-eating arcade game. My play through for this first hour left me with a feeling that I was playing pong instead of a shoot ‘em up. The dull graphics were a pain to stare at while the sound effects were just plain annoying. The constant pinging type of noise for the shooting and the explosions grated so much on my ears that I had to turn off the sound. The music wasn’t bad at all, and it would have been much more enjoyable if there was a way to shut off the sound effects. The gameplay itself is dull, consisting of only shooting enemies, which are ridiculously fast for the slow rate of fire that your ship has.Thu, 21 Feb 2008 04:01:53 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2908&iddiary=5474https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2577GAMEPLAY: I have played through several more levels including the end of the American campaign, and I can honestly say that I am enthralled in the storyline. The twists and turns that they put you through are absolutely brilliant, while keeping a realistic edge that makes the story seem entirely possible in the real world. The enemies are difficult and tend to throw grenades a lot to which you must run or toss it back, but the thing that annoys me is when the enemies throw three grenades to the same spot. A bit of overkill, but it is just a slight annoyance to the overall game experience. A rare one at that, too. What also annoys me is the fact that the allied AI tends to have this annoying habit of blocking you during the scenes that entrances must be made after something like blowing a door open. Personally, I would like to be the first through to see the surprise and just fire like crazy to take advantage of that, though if you happen to be a second too late, you will find yourself following very closely behind an ally. If only there was a push button, I would shove him through as a human bullet shield. I know, not realistic, but it would have been satisfying. DESIGN: First off, the controls of the game are very intuitive with the standard control of a first person shooter, also allowing you to change the controls to your preference. I made sure to change a few keys, including the melee attack which was awkwardly placed as “v” which was a bit out of the way. The controls were responsive and the hit registration was satisfyingly accurate and clean. The health system is not one of a health bar, but of a type of regeneration where if you take a hit, you can heal up by just taking cover for a short time. But if you take enough hits in a short period and you will be down to the ground like a dead fish. This type of health system is perfectly suited for the type of game that Call of Duty 4 is, allowing beginning players a more lenient way to stay alive and preventing expert players from attempting to commit a sort of Rambo maneuver, where they would run out in the open, gun-blazing in full auto. Not that it prevents the AI from doing the same exact thing. I have explained before about the enemy AI, and while they are difficult opponents to fight in open spaces, they still try to charge you when you are shooting at them. While this may be fine if they all charge at once (which sometimes happen), but you often see them charge one at a time, allowing you to easily pick them off. If they could have put in some intelligence for the AI such as letting some of them use suppressive fire (unloading their entire clip to keep the enemy in cover) while allowing their allies to rush it, it would be a much more satisfying experience. But I do concede that they effectively use grenades to flush you out. The graphics were a good point, allowing a immersive environment that utilized weather such as rain to give a better feel to the game as well as put very minute detail on locations that you would only probably see once in the entire game. The voice actors were superb and carefully chosen. The mission introductions makes you feel like you are getting a briefing from a superior on the objective of your mission. Not to mention that the sound effects of the weapons and explosion gives off the feeling of a true battlefield. All of these factors give the game a great immersion rating in my book, and truly makes the experience worthwhile. Overall, this game comes as one of my highly recommended. Sat, 09 Feb 2008 03:49:59 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2577&iddiary=4895https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2577SUMMARY: Call of Duty 4 is about taking on the role of a special military operative and a soldier in a war against militant groups consisting of Russian and Arabian terrorists that are trying to secure nuclear arms. GAMEPLAY: I had heard a lot about this game beforehand including a video review depicting how great the gameplay aspects of this first person shooter so I had a lot of expectations when I dived into the game. I was not disappointed. The game started out slow with the tutorial that set up the controls, but once the main missions started, I was startled to find an entirely immersive game. The first thing that hit me was the graphics of the rain on the first mission as well as the feeling of surprise and delight at being able to finally be the one to ambush and surprise the enemy instead of the other way around. The surprise slaughter of the enemies was enjoyable, even though this scene didn’t really last as long as I would have liked. But still, this left me gleeful and expecting more, to which the game provided. The AI was surprisingly intelligent in the game, using cover to fire at you with also surprising accuracy. It became essential to hold yourself behind cover and peek out for quick bursts of fire. But there are still some complaints I have with the AI, especially when they come out running in the open with their guns blazing like some suicidal maniac. These are trained Russian soldiers on a military ship, right? Maybe the Russian military should reorganize their training course, starting by firing all their instructors. I shouldn’t just bash on the enemy’s AI, because the ally’s AI suffers as well, but they might not be so noticeable at first. The fact that you do not have to care for their welfare is a definite plus, as games that required you to baby-sit dumb AIs like the Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter series just makes the game a chore than a pleasure. But their intelligence is limited by a set, defined pre-scripted path that makes it entirely predicable where they will go and what they will do.Sat, 09 Feb 2008 03:28:57 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2577&iddiary=4892https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2054GAMEPLAY: After spending more time with this game, I am starting to loathe it even more. You are practically required to take at least one power-up of speed-up, otherwise your ship is way too slow to efficient dodge enemy fire. I have tried numerous times to forgo this, but it is such a necessity that it shouldn’t have been a power-up. It should have been an integral part of your ship from the very beginning. I managed to get farther into the game, but the game itself keeps bombarding me with its ridiculous difficulty. A part that came to my mind is when I had to battle giant bubbles that bombard your screen with their slow movements, but splatters into several smaller bubbles when destroyed. In that scene, enemy ships spawn from behind, with the only intent to slam into your ship in a kamikaze style. Really, what is with this shoot ‘em up? I know that you have enemies, but they could at least stop trying to commit suicide on your ship. Overall, this game has been a horrible experience. I would highly recommend one of the Japanese’s more modern shoot ‘em ups than this classic frustration. DESIGN: One of the innovative features is the ability to choose what kind of power-ups that you want to have at the beginning of each “life”. During the battles, you can pick up the power-ups and eventually be able to get to which power-up skill you want and use it. But it also presents another problem. For one of the higher skills, it takes several power-ups to reach that level, power-ups that would be better applied if you just stick to the skills that only require a few power-ups to achieve. While it makes the game more strategic in deciding what skill you want to have, it also makes it harder to achieve the desired skill. The AI is a point of interest in this game. Quite frankly, it reeks of mindless intelligence. Each enemy’s main goal, like in any shoot ‘em up, is to shoot you, but like other lesser games, it also wants to kill you by any means, including kamikaze style killings and using the environment to its advantage. The enemies simply aim at you while on their regular flight path, with the only real exceptions are the equally dumb ground troops that walks back and forth as well as the kamikaze ships that tries to hit you in its turns (though they don’t seem to try that hard). The bosses are one of the big dumb points that I have encountered so far. Examples would be the first two bosses that have only one repetitive attack each. Once you know the attack, it is surprisingly easy to beat the boss. The only chance that they could kill you is if by surprise, which it quickly loses. The environment, a landscape that is somehow in space in which, if you touch it, you can be destroyed. The bottom of the screen is a prime example, as you will be instantly destroyed upon even trying to feel the ground landscaping, but if you were to touch the exact same graphics on the top of the screen, it will have no effect unless it is one of those large hills or mountains. The landscape is constantly against you, as there are spots where it has some kind of weird maze in the middle of the screen that you must transverse. Your shots will not penetrate through the environment, but your enemies’ shots will. This game was made in an arcade style only suited to a small audience. Thank goodness that people have improved a lot on shoot ‘em ups since then. Fri, 25 Jan 2008 01:41:54 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2054&iddiary=3985https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2054SUMMARY: Gradius III is a shoot ‘em up game for the Super Nintendo. Essentially, this means that you are flying a spaceship that must fight through gallons and gallons of enemy ships and creatures in space. GAMEPLAY: I wasn’t expecting much from an old-style shoot ‘em up (also known as the shortened “schmup”). And I was right, for the most part. The first thing that hit me about this game was the lack of a story, or if there was one, I simply could not find it. I like at least a bit of a story to compel me to play further, even if it doesn’t have too much importance. The game essentially throws you in the mist of combat at the very beginning. After choosing my selection of what kind of power-ups I would like, it began with my ship flying in space. And I quickly found out that this game is a lesson in frustration. You are given three lives and several continues, but every time you die, you have to start over at a checkpoint. Now this wouldn’t be so bad, if it wasn’t for the fact that you die in one hit. Make a mistake and you are sent back to the start of the checkpoint without any power-ups except for one measly given power-up to somehow get you by. I am, by no means, an expert or hardcore player of shoot ‘em ups. I would even say that I am just a casual player, but this is utterly ridiculous for difficulty. While I was able to get further and further each time I died, the fact that dead is inescapable even on easy except for hardcore shoot ‘em up fans makes me want to throw my controller in frustration. What’s even worse is the fact that you are given a limited number of lives and continues. It wouldn’t be so bad if you could try again and again; and get further each time, but with a limited amount, once I lost it all, it’s back to square one.Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:14:28 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2054&iddiary=3957https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1899GAMEPLAY: I have to admit, after beating a couple more bosses, the game has gotten more enjoyable. While I still don't like that you have to travel far stretches of land except to reach the boss, I would suppose that would be much better than choosing a boss to fight off a selection menu. Though the stretches of land has more significant value when I found out that you can get more health if you kill lizards. This gives me a more easier time if I can't defeat a boss because of my health. I could just go around the land and hunt small, tiny lizards to make my journey easier. Oh yay, I get to go hunt hard to find and equally hard to shoot lizards in an empty land that is well-kept, yet lacks the animals to keep that land grazed (somebody has been doing his gardening...maybe the mysterious voice did it). And I do mean that "yay" in a bad way, but I'm not having any problems defeating the bosses as the puzzles are currently quite easy and the bosses don't really do much danger that it can give you an adrenaline rush. The regeneration system also makes it much easier as your health regenerates over time, giving the game less of a action feel and more like puzzle-solving feel. You aren't rushed to do anything. The enemies certainly doesn't rush you as they are slow and their attention span is like that of a two year old. The puzzles are quite good, reminding me of other puzzle-like gameplays that are incorporated into games like Prince of Persia. Life situations were solving a puzzle means the difference between life and death. I like gameplay like that, so I do like Shadow of the Colossus. Really, I enjoy the game, but it could have more depth in the gameplay mechanics and A.I. intelligence department. The giant's brain is as big as a peanut...reminds of elephants. DESIGN: I have to admit, the jumping and running of the main character is much more realistic. The protagonist is obviously not trained to run and jump, as he is dressed in peasant clothing, so I wouldn't expect him to do double jumps in the air. And the game surprises me by giving the main character a small running start before jumping and awkwardly running. It gives it a more down-to-earth feeling as they made the character more of a normal person than a super human, which there are plenty of games that have such. Especially with the fact that he stumbles backwards after swinging his sword at a wall. The game provides bosses, after bosses, after bosses, but it keeps it going by making those bosses unique. The basic idea of what to do is the same, but you get a unique problem to solve. That is one of the biggest focus of the game and keeps people coming back for more. The game tries to create a boss-fight atmosphere at times when I noticed that when you reach a boss, changing the music to something different even though you can change it back to normal when you defeat the boss or leave the area. The location of the fights is the main factor in how it tries to give a more gritty or spring-time atmosphere (it changes from boss to boss). The usage of everything in your arsenal, including that almost seemingly useless bow in the beginning. By the second boss, you are utilizing weapons that you haven't used before, and by the third boss, you are taking the environment into your puzzle solving mind. That usage of everything you have makes for an interesting experience, but it also means that item collection cannot occur in this game. A sound budget-saving idea as making designs and stats for a bunch of weapons would take a long time. It also keeps the problem solving simple, for the people who aren't as good at puzzles since you won't be getting a long list of items that you can use on the boss, but only a small fraction is actually usable. An improvement that they could have done would be to actually get voice actors to talk in the cut scene...but I suppose that would be pointless as the story is non-existent. Even if they have all these great puzzle monsters, couldn't they have come up with a better story...and maybe give background to our main character who remains nameless after all this time. I might even bet that there has only been one voice actor in the game, saying "Argo" for the main character and distorting his voice along with a female to make the mysterious god-like voice. Overall, a budget game that pokes holes into the mold. I wouldn't say it breaks the mold, but it helps. (This entry has been edited2 times. It was last edited on Tue, 15 Jan 2008 02:26:41.)Tue, 15 Jan 2008 02:23:19 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1899&iddiary=3737https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1899SUMMARY: Shadow of Colossus is about the main protagonist who is trying to revive a woman that he apparently is in an intimate relationship with. By following the orders of some mysterious god-like voice that talks through the ceiling of the temple, the unnamed main character goes around the land to kill off giant creatures or colossus, for the end-reward of having his lover among the living again. GAMEPLAY: I heard so much rave about this game that I had to try it. With that in mind, I started up the game and found it to be somewhat to my expectations and somewhat not. The graphics were talked about as beautiful, but what I found was below what I was expecting. The game does not seem to push the PS2 to its limits in terms of graphically quality as the landscapes and characters are filled with jagged and blurred lines, making it seem slightly more pixelated than I think it should. While the landscape and attention to gritty details obviously took a lot of work, it gave me the feeling that the game was not one of those high budget projects. The controls were awkward, but fortunately customizable so I changed it to something more to my preference. Even then, the controls itself was unique and took some time to get used to when I was fighting the first boss. The game is devoid of any other creature besides the giant being in the game. While an intention design for the mysterious land, it made the game feel empty and lonesome. The game was first frustrating as I got used to the controls when fighting the boss. The distinct lack of a tutorial left me with having to figure out how to defeat the boss with the very vague hints that they give. Hints that would be more better served if I had a general idea of what to do in the first place, but once I was able to get a notion of how to get on the boss and search for weak points, the game became much easier and more enjoyable. The game is not logical for some of the design decisions it makes. Why was the only way for the colossus to try to throw me off was to shake like a furious dog? It should have just reached around and plucked me off. It makes no sense. The giant can swing a club, but it's not smart enough to reach around and scratch his back? Well, I suppose it would have made the game much harder. The story is very basic. Even though I have only fought and beaten the first boss, only to return to the temple to receive the next boss in line, I can tell you that my summary was probably the sum of the entire story. You can't feel much for the characters when they are speaking in a language you don't understand and you can't see their facial expression. Well, more like one character, since only the god-like voice says anything. I don't think the main character has ever spoken once besides to say "Argo" when he whistles for his horse. There can be no character attachment or personality development when he speaks only one word. The story is about as thin as a piece of paper. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Tue, 15 Jan 2008 02:27:13.)Tue, 15 Jan 2008 01:47:25 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1899&iddiary=3713