Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=824https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3274Playing more and more GTA. This game is really terrific. I haven't gotten that far, but from what I have played it has been excellent. I'm really impressed with how the story has evolved. It no longer feels like they're just a bunch of character models sitting around talking, but they feel like real people with real emotions and such. The graphics go a long way to make the story more believable. I'm impressed with the whole "cell phone" element in the gameplay. This opens up a lot more opportunities to interact with Liberty City and those in it.Mon, 19 May 2008 16:46:21 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3274&iddiary=6169https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3286Oh yeah, and GTA IV has one of the tightest songs ever. "Rocky Mountain Way" by Joe Walsh, of Eagles fame. I'm not even the biggest Eagles or Joe Walsh fan, but shit, whenever I hear this I think of the unbelievable run the Colorado Rockies had last year and how great the performed down the stretch. That and I think back to when I visited Coors Field years ago. Hopefully I'll go again one day. What a badass tune tho.Mon, 05 May 2008 16:24:03 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3286&iddiary=6155https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3286Let's just say...GTA IV makes me cry...from my penis. This game is absolutely UNBELIEVABLE...and I haven't even played for more than a few hours. I haven't done many missions, I've just been driving around and really taking in the city. And my, this city is teaming with life. For once, all the residents of a city in GTA actually look like different people. I remember walking around in San Fierro in San Andreas and seeing the same businesswoman walk down the street about ten times in a row. No more, no more. The addition of the cell phone has been the biggest key addition in this game. The previous two major GTAs were period pieces, both in the 80s and early 90s. Although cell phones did exist back then (and in Vice City & San Andreas, respectively), there was no interactivity involved with them. This cell phone's use is unprecedented. It has text messaging capability, GPS, the ability to both recieve calls and call people, and some other things. You can answer it on foot or in the car, wherever. This really helps keep you in contact with your friends, girlfriends, enemies, whoever.Mon, 05 May 2008 09:48:16 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3286&iddiary=6154https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3286Mon, 05 May 2008 09:42:09 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3286&iddiary=6153https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3286I'm not going to talk about the gameplay in this entry. I'm just going to log my journey from the morning of May 29th to the afternoon. I got on the 7:37 train from Prospect Heights headed towards Union Station, downtown Chicago. I didn't work until 12:30 that day, but I headed down early to see if I can grab my copy of Grand Theft Auto IV, the latest game in a series of cultural phenoms. I got to Sears around 8:50, and I was surprised to see no one outside the State & Madison location. They finally let people in, and I went downstairs. There was another guy already down there (probably let him in from a different entry a minute or so earlier) and he was standing anxiously at the counter waiting for a sales associate to help him. I asked "are you here for it?" And he shook his head, "of course I am." A woman eventually came out, and we asked for the game and she had no clue what we were talking about. She probably should be fired...anybody working in a retail store that sells video games that hasn't been informed of GTAIV is in need of some serious help. She got back and said they didn't have any in stock. Frustrated, we went to fye a few blocks away. We walked in the store and a woman asked "are you here for the game?" We nodded and she pointed us up the escalator upstairs. As soon as we stepped off, a woman asked us "pre-order?" We both did not, so she pointed to the right and we were directed towards a man standing by a wall. There were also security guards in the store, and I'd never seen any in there before. The man handed us a copy each of the game, and then we went back downstairs to check out and pay. As soon as I completed the transaction, the guy came down from upstairs and announced "360 is gone, NO MORE 360." I had gotten the last copy and the store was only open for 15 minutes. This just shows you the impact that this game is having. I'll be back with more later.Thu, 01 May 2008 11:12:39 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3286&iddiary=6142https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3285Portal is absolutely fantastic. This game just works on so many levels it is incredible. Not only does Valve once again give you a mysterious storyline and leaves it up to you to decipher it, the gameplay is out of this world. This game marks a very unique spin on puzzle games and first person shooters, breeding a hybrid child of the two. There are FPS elements without ever picking up a true "weapon" in the game, and there are puzzle elements without ever leaving the sights of your character (a random female, who looks pretty good). When the Orange Box came out last year I was by far the most excited to continue the HL2 story. Episode 1 left you with a huge cliffhanger on the way out of City 17's meltdown. I ended up giving Portal a try first, just because it was a new and unique experience, and I was BLOWN AWAY. This game is challenging, fun, addictive, everything. The only bad part was when the game ended...but thankfully there are advanced challenges! Portal can very easily be turned into the next blockbuster series. It will never reach the status of Half-Life, but it has the potential for future games and a lot more possibilites. I am excited to see what those possibilities are.Thu, 01 May 2008 10:59:43 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3285&iddiary=6141https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3272This game pisses me off in the sense of its lagginess. It runs alright when you play it, aside from the occasional crash, which is annoying enough. But the entire game is very bogged down, especially between plays. Replays damn neer need to be turned off, because it has to "load" each time for about 10 seconds before you even get to see it. I'm surprised by this, as its not the case AT ALL in NBA 2K8 for 360. Given the high quality of that series for the last several years, I'm very surprised to see such carelessness go into this game.Thu, 01 May 2008 10:53:42 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3272&iddiary=6140https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3274I recently played GTA: San Andreas to get ready for GTAIV. What really amazed me about this game is the sheer size and scope of everything. GTAIII blew everyone away with one city. This game is three cities just as large, all put into one enormous state. The state is called San Andreas, and there are three cities: Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas, which mock the state of California and the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas, respectively (even though Vegas is clearly not in California, but hell, its close). The space between the cities and what you can do in them is mind-blowing. The state of San Andreas is a huge one, and there are many different environments. North of San Fierro there lies a sprawling oceanside community that is quiet and peaceful. To the West of Las Venturas there exists a huge sprawling desert that is nothing but badlands with trailer parks. And to the northwest of Los Santos and South of San Fierro, there is a huge mountain range with towering peaks. Missions you can do in these outside environments can lead to many things. There are bike rally races on the huge mountain. There are also bank robbery missions that have you knocking off the joints in small towns across the map. In the desert, you can learn how to fly a plane and chopper after you acquire it. It will make me sad to see this type of environment absent from GTAIV. But GTAIV is only the beginning. There will be other games released under the GTAIV moniker (just as Vice City and San Andreas were released under III) and then the good times will REALLY start to roll.Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:57:02 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3274&iddiary=6129https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3272MLB 2K8 is a conundrum. I want to like the game very much, but I just can't bring myself to truly love it like I have baseball games in years past. Let's start with the benchmark. MVP Baseball 2005 is still the clear-cut best baseball game ever released, IMHO. This game had a very pure fielding system. You felt the physics at work when you took ground balls and tried to get in the best possible position to throw a runner out at first base. The hitting mechanic was great as well, using the control stick to guide your ball wherever you pleased. The pitching system was great as well, offering a risk-reward factor that was great. MLB 2K8's mechanics are all very different. For one, the hitting in the game uses something called a "Swing Stick", which is more or less the mechanic I outlined above. The hitting in this game produces way too many home runs. I was playing a game the other night with the Cubs and Derrek Lee had 5 HRs in 5 ABs. This is just way too unrealistic, and I was playing at a hard difficulty level. The worst part is I only used a home run swing once. The other 4 bombs I hit I swung for a contact hit to RF (the ones Derrek normally gets in bunches) and they all produced oppo-field HRs. Also, pitchers in the game never tend to throw balls unless they get in trouble. Is it realistic that every pitcher in this game will only throw strikes? Hell no. Pitching, to say the very least...is strange. They have this new thing called "Total Control Pitching" and man, is it whack. It basically has you mimic a series of pushes, pulls, rolls, and clicks on the right control stick. ONly you must get it 100% correct and there is virtually no room for error. Thank god they let you switch off "TCP" for the more traditional break point pitching found in MLB 2K6 and MLB 2K7 The fielding mechanic is actually the game's best. Fielding feels very natural, and the throwing mechanic is a great one. You basically sacrifice power for accuracy, like in year's past. But this time you must allow yourself to field the ball in a good position to make a throw to ensure it gets there on time. Occasionally a fielder will make a great play to throw a guy like Jose Reyes out at first completely off-balance. But for the most part, the game forces you to field and then get in a position more suitable to make a powerful throw to get your man. The same is said for the outfield positions, and the game actually allows you to start your throw and get in a good position to make one before you actually make the catch. I will be back with more about this game later.Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:52:04 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3272&iddiary=6126