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Sep 27th, 2009 at 15:08:01 - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (XBX) |
GAMEPLAY
Well there are a couple main aspects or gameplay rules that occur commonly. One of my favorites is the vehicles. Driving each vehicle in this game has had special attention while designed and has a different "feel" to each. It gets you from point A to point B and has a smaller number of miscellaneous actionas associated with npcs. These vehicles cover land, air, and water too. When you're just walking around you can explore the world and realize how big it is. It was interesting when I found the two player game modes and invited someone else to play. We liked the free roam mode because the deathmatch one would end in about three minutes or less and killing pedestrians was only slightly formalized and was what we did in this mode anyway. We played this mode a couple of times, an hour or so each time, and then we felt we had exhausted the allowable game actions, expecially if we played these sessions close together, and left it at that. I would occasionally play afterwards, not having done a story mission in a couple of months I thought I would do one or two. But one aspect of the game I liked it collecting all the items for compeltion. These are not required but there are about four categories of optional items to collect that are hidden in the gameworld. Collecting all of one category would illicit a reword that would enhance your further game experience.
DESIGN
One main thing with this game to consider is the gameworld. It is pretty immense to the older game I have played. There is a lot of attention paid to the detail in some parts. It's mostly the buildings are each are unqiue with their own structure and artwork. But also the fact that these are modeled after cities in real life. Now one down side is about a third of these buildings are enterable, with most of the dormant ones being large skyscrapers in cities, small stores in rural towns, or any buildings that is placed there aesthetically to match the setting. Now playing the game I liked the amount of choices, the ability to pause progressiong through the story and improve my character or build his resources so I could perform better int he next mission. Each mission is a challenge in it's own rules, but it the game's constant rules that keep you from dying or getting arrested that "restart" a lot of your gameplay progression. The game is complex because it adds a lot of interactable items, buildings, vehicles, and people that have certain reactions and then simply place them in the world at appropriate times, and most of the complexity is from you changing their state in the game world and their reactions affect you or other objects. The tone is slightly dark with the subject matter of the missions and people in them, representing the "lower or bad side" of life. It might create a better sense as you are the character that is fixing the world, but fixing is the operative word where you are destorying one menace but creating your own. Any player can keep themselves interested because of the number of actions available at any point in the game. The pretty obvious elements that make this game popular are its design of the gameworld and choice or action list throughout the game, some sets of objects having very fine tuning to create a unique expereince for each, spanning sets of hundreds of objects. I like the cumulative reward structure recevied from main missions, side missions, or basic exploration, some items not just collecting but have a certain purpose or extra action allowing you to perform.
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Sep 27th, 2009 at 14:47:08 - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (XBX) |
SUMMARY
In GTA: SA, you are Carl Johnson coming back home to find that the town has gotten messed up and it's his job to put things back into place. You go around completing main story missions that interact with many npcs to correct the state of parts of the city that may also bring about rewards or services for you. Eventually you unlock other cities to progress through the story. Also present is a slew of side-missions for youto complete that do not impact the story majorly or at all and bring about further rewards. You do all this in a basic, FPS, and 3D platformer set in what seems equivalent to real-life.
GAMEPLAY
The game is basically you running around and deciding what to do because you have a lot of choices. It offers you the main and side missions that can be pretty numerous at some ponits, and in between or on your way to complete those missions you have a lot more choices of interacting with the world to get where you want. So playing that game can be simple if you don't know what's available, or overwhelming if you do. But you can get set into a routine of what you usually do in certain situations. I seemed to have fit the last description pretty early on. I usually have fun when I perform certain actions so I can improve my character's skillset and resources. This is done by doing some side-missions, but also comes from a considerable amount of "messing around." Of course there is a bit of controversy mixed into the game by how they portray certain ethnic groups in lower forms of activity, but when I play I usually ignore that; the story semi-encouraged this. While playing there is a sense of flow doing missions back-to-back, but taking time aside to recoup your efforts or resources kind of ceases the flow and sometimes you forget what you were taking a break from in the first place. This game is mostly one player except for the two minimal cases where you find an icon in the world and it either enables a small two player deathmatch session to kill pedestrians in an allotted time, or a free-roam method where the players must stay in the same camera view, but can perform as much non-mission related activity in the game world as usually possible.
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Aug 24th, 2009 at 07:34:42 - Banjo-Kazooie (N64) |
GAMEPLAY
I went more through the game and the gameplay changed as expected. There were about 10 levels so the game wasn't too long. Each level had its own theme which meant each had a nicely painted environment. And also each had some unique and recurring characters. I liked the exploring nature of the game because the levels were easy to traverse and recognize. The boss level is certainly unique as it is nearly the only one and had its own set of logic to play against. At the end the story unfolds to a cliffhanger and as he credits roll you are sometimes rewarded with something extra if you collected all the items in the game.
DESIGN
This game had a simple design, to create a 3D environment to explore with your character, as what the limited potential of the Nintendo 64 could provide. They did so by giving you a character that was slightly agile, along with the moves, so they could build terrain that was not only pathway, but also caused you to see what skills you had earned to open that pathway. I think that may have been the only innovative element was the puzzles they created out of a seemingly docile environment. It does get a little more complex as you must remember from you growing moveset what to use, and also how to identify a potential pathway based on what you can do. You also change charactes in certain levels and now have a new, small, but completely different list of abilities used to go farther. The only part that would be frustrating would be when a pathway was identified leading you to a goal, sometimes this pathway is longer than average and contains some inherent risks that take some of the gamer's skill to overcome, which is something some gamer's might not have without practice. This game uses this logic to build up, it does have a good amount of moves, which the sequel expands on some, but could be greater to enrich the playing experience. It's posible this is one of the things that keep players through the whole game, creating more worlds almost entirely different from the previous so the player could have new experinces. It adds to the exploring nature by making the world very spacious and some goals easier than others, which is what you can start out with when getting used to the level's theme.
The game had few cutscenes, used mainly to describe big portions of the game's plot at each end of the game. Mixed inside the gameplay was random comments from the game's antagonist reclarifying the fact of why you are trying to defeat her. They didn't help a great deal as the plot is again almost removed from gameplay until the end. But the tones or messages of the game create a sense of completion that helps player want to go through, collect the required items, and beat the game. This is done so also by one gamer, there is no multipllayer yet. It does though have mock examples of social interactions when the character talks to other non-playable characters and receives sometimes vital information or other help. This builds a message that other will help you if you ask them, and you can also help them. This creates a nice playing environment with some goals that kept me playing, and while simple, is still fun to play.
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Aug 22nd, 2009 at 10:18:26 - Banjo-Kazooie (N64) |
SUMMARY
In this game you control a bear named Banjo with his bird partner Kazooie that team up against the evil witch Gruntilda to rescue Banjo's sister Tootie back. In a 3D environment, you walk around collecting items that help you progress through the game in different ways. These items are found in each of the many of the levels of the game. You also start with a basic set of moves to help you traverse the terrain in each level, and as you progress, learn new moves that allow you to go farther. The game's main objective is collecting enough items to reach the end of the game and beat the boss, but also doesn't require every item as the added challange is collecting the remainder and more hidden items.
GAMEPLAY
The game has a light feel to it, you can play at your own pace. What also adds to it is the simple cartoonish characters it uses by personifying animals and starts to create a world of it's own. The scenery isn't cluttered and uses almost everyday objects and the difficulty at most points is easy enough. I liked the feel of this game being fun without having intense gore or language, a funny fact as the words are printed on the screen but said in repetitve animal sounds unique to each character. The objective is easy to catch when playing as it is similar in each level, noticing how they place these items on pathways or another type of item in more obscure places. The control is fun because your just walking, nothing fast-paced, and the set of moves you have and learn add to the ease of movement. The game is interesting enough to play until you get to the point I have and have learned almost all the positions of the items and achieved fluid movement. This means it has great replay value, especially if you missed anything on the first playthrough. The story was ok, but it only progressed at the beginning and end of the game, almost absent in the levels, but the levels have little anecdotes of their own you have to solve. Playing this game I was pretty content and relaxed, some maneuvers took skill but it's nice to have a game that's doesn't get you tense all the time or frustrated about getting a game over.
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Pysis has been with GameLog for 15 years, 3 months, and 2 days |
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