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Oct 19th, 2009 at 19:01:51 - Black and White 2 (PC) |
Gamelog Entry #2:
GAMEPLAY
Black and White 2 was a fun game to play but short lived. I’m one land away from beating the entire game. What’s worse is that after the final land, there aren’t any sandbox modes to play, which is usually standard in most free form city builders and some RTS games. I’m at the point in the game where I’ve gotten all of the buildings I’m going to need, my creature has long stopped growing, and I’m just repeating a worn out formula for building my city.
This time around, I tried out the evil side of things. This was surprisingly similar to the good god strategy. Building a structurally sound city is still a must, and sacrificing all of your villagers for miracle power is not recommended. The main deviation is in building a strong army and encouraging your creature to fight enemies. I found that being somewhere between good and evil was the best combination for success.
I was disappointed by the lack of story in the game. Aside from providing a basic reason for why you were fighting and traveling from land to land, the game didn’t tell much of a story. The optional quests were never tied to the main story or to each other (except for the brew brothers quests) and added very little to gameplay. Overall, I enjoyed the game but it has a number of areas in which a great deal of improvement is needed.
DESIGN
In my opinion, Black and White 2 took the best features of multiple genres, skimmed the main idea of each off the top, threw them in a mixing pot, and expected this formula to render a great game. The graphics were impressive, the art was cute, and the premise of having a god, city builder, and virtual pet RTS game sounds like a good idea. But here’s the catch, a good city builder requires unique ways to build a city or different ways buildings can be implemented, neither of which are present in Black and White 2. Creating your city in a spider web like fashion is the only logical way to build in the limited space. Virtual pet games can be fun and are optimized by having multiple things that the player can do with the pet and requires dependence of the pet on the player. After the fourth land, I would check up on my creature only if I had nothing better to do or needed him to attack a nearby army, aside from those two exceptions, my creature was completely autonomous. The creature has three basic needs: food (which he can be trained to get himself), rest (which he can be trained to know where to sleep when its needed), and attention (which can be remedied by a couple of strokes every twenty minutes).
The most important element of any good RTS would include multiple types of units to direct into battle. In Black and White 2, the player may build archers, foot soldiers, and catapults. Again, a simple formula can be applied to creating a decent army and that same formula is applied over and over again throughout the game. Of all of the things Black and White 2 can boast about having, very few can be considered more than shallow, poorly developed features. Some sort of specialization would have done this game a great deal of good. There was an attempt to create emergent complexity, but that attempt was rendered useless by the sever lack of options needed to complete each level in a different way.
As for the narrative of the game, there was only one weak storyline: Stop the evil Aztec god who nearly destroyed the Greeks. The game world has a fantasy setting with Greeks, Nords, Japanese, and Aztecs races. You are a god created out of a single pure prayer from a Greek man. Save the Greeks and fight the evil Aztecs. Don’t get me wrong, this is a great basis for a story, but after the chaotic destruction of the Greeks in the second land, the story progression ends. The only encouragement to continue playing is to either complete the game or to enjoy the increase in difficulty. Rewards through cutscenes or progression in the story would have been a nice addition.
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Oct 19th, 2009 at 15:09:09 - Black and White 2 (PC) |
Gamelog Entry #1:
SUMMARY
In Black and White 2, the player takes on the role of a god and interacts with the world through a hand that can lift trees, cast miracles, and move objects (including rocks and people). The objective of each level is to conquer the surrounding villages and cities by either building an army or by creating an impressive city. To assist in this objective, the player is given a giant creature that can cast miracles against your enemies or aid your people.
GAMEPLAY
The game’s beginning tutorial was helpful in teaching the basics of play, but even in my first round through the tutorial, I was aware of the inability to skip through the pointless banter of your good and evil “consciences.” The most entertaining part of my initial hour of play was just after my pet (a wolf) awoke in the first Norse land. I quickly learned how to feed, train, and workout my pet. I feel like the novelty of watching some of his goofy animations and actions is going to take a while to wear off. For example, I caught him pooping on a villager and after a couple of slaps, he promised to never poo on a villager again.
Black and White 2 is an interesting RTS in that the core game mechanic is managing resources and units to conquer the land, but with strong city builder and tamagotchi influences. In order to beat each level, care must be taken to designing the city strategically as well as maintaining your creature. City defense, leaving the most fertile ground for fields, providing adequate housing, and strategic placement of storage facilities are all necessary strategies that the player must utilize in order to succeed.
So far, I’ve been a good and patient god. In order to gain light side points, each level has been won through building an impressive city with happy citizens. For the time being, my wolf won’t attack (or eat) my villagers but will happily help them in construction or gathering. This method of playing the game is time consuming and doesn’t provide that interesting of gameplay. My biggest complaint up to this point is that when you’ve impressed a village to join you, they take f-o-r-e-v-e-r to immigrate to your city. By the time most of them reach my influence ring, many have become elderly or died.
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Oct 5th, 2009 at 21:22:19 - Mario Galaxy (Wii) |
Game Entry #1
SUMMARY
In Super Mario Galaxy, the player takes on another adventure with Mario to save Princess Peach. Bowser just can’t leave the poor girl alone. Mario must collect stars to continue to the next level. As usual, the player must interact with a 3-D platform game atmosphere by finding ways to navigate through the world and defeat enemies.
So far, it sounds like every other Mario gaming experience, but there’s a twist. Bowser has upped his game to taking over the galaxy, and Mario must find his way through multiple worlds to save it. The new physics engine is what makes this game unique from its predecessors. Each planetary body has its own gravitational field that will allow the player to run upside down and sideways, avoid falling into black holes, and experience worlds that only the genius Shigeru Miyamoto could create.
GAMEPLAY
Super Mario Galaxy did a fantastic job of pulling me right in. The game began in Mushroom Kingdom, setting the player up for yet another Super Mario adventure with Toad, Princess Peach, and, of course, Bowser and Bowser Jr. flying in on a fleet of airships. The beginning cinematic was absolutely amazing and set the player up for a galactic adventure of epic proportions.
Despite the nostalgic beginning and overall premise of collecting stars to advance to different stages (like Mario 64), this game quickly defined itself as a phenomenal and unique gameplay experience. The first time I sat down and played, I walked away several hours later with a number of power stars under my belt. Every planet was its own puzzle and every character was well designed with bright colors and animations. This game was a spectacular visual experience that keeps players from ever suspecting the game was limited to a 480p resolution. The artistic qualities are not only limited to graphics. The game’s soundtrack absolutely blew me away. Each song was an orchestral piece that fit perfectly into Mario’s adventures.
The general story of this game is very similar to previous Mario games, except that you are introduced to a new character Rosalina who resides on the Comet Observatory. The observatory is basically Mario's base of operations, and the place where Mario returns to after collecting stars in other galaxies. The story line can be laughable at times, and doesn’t really make a lot of sense. This is to be expected considering that it uses the standard Mario storyline (which never made sense to begin with) but with an attempt to provide a background story to the Luma race and the galaxy in general. The conversation with my first “Hungry Luma” caused me to wonder if I had eaten anything funky in the past couple of hours. Here’s the quote: “If you feed me a bunch of Star Bits, I’ll burst with snacky happiness and then transform! Snackadee...Snackaday...SNACK-A-DIDDLY-DOO!!!” I then proceeded to fire star bits into this hungry guy until he was stuffed and transformed into a planet. If you are the kind of person who is bothered by nonsensical events, an enormous amount of destruction to scientific theories of the universe, and conversations like the one I had with the Hungry Luma, then this game is not for you. For everyone else who can take things like this with a smile or a shrug, definitely give this game a shot.
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Oct 5th, 2009 at 20:48:24 - Mario Galaxy (Wii) |
Gamelog entry #2:
GAMEPLAY
I really enjoyed this session, because I spent more time playing around and exploring the game mechanics rather than trying to complete as many levels as possible. I even tried out the “multiplayer” option, if you can even call it that. I can see how it could be helpful in certain areas where you keep failing to get Mario to jump high enough. Aside from that small benefit, it was more of a nuisance than anything else. My friends, despite their good intentions (or not so good, I’m not completely convinced), were a lot more likely to throw me off of the planet, into an enemy, waste my star bits, or place me back at the beginning of the level than they were to actually help. Switching the controller after every star, or after five deaths, is a far better compromise when playing with someone else. The little two on the box should be replaced with a one and a half.
This time around, I made a point to focus on the core gameplay. Before, I was stunned by the beauty of the game world and was a little too happy to be playing a great addition to the Mario series. Determined to be a critic, I tried my best to make the camera go crazy and was well on my way to making myself dizzy when I discovered why the camera is set so far back. In Mario 64, the camera was in a closer, over the shoulder perspective, but in Mario Galaxy, the camera is zoomed out, to the point that I was a little irritated with it. I’m assuming the reason for this is due to the fact that players are going to need the camera to constantly be changing in different directions as Mario leaps into space and travels to the bottom of one plant from the top of another. Imagine if the camera was set over the player’s shoulder. I wouldn’t have to try to make myself dizzy, I would be sick. The slight irritation of having to squint on occasion is definitely worth not feeling like Mario as he jumps from one planet to another over a black hole. I would much rather make him do it and watch, thank you.
DESIGN
Mario Galaxy’s physics engine continues to astonish me. I wish they recorded the programmer’s faces as the designers proposed what they were supposed to create. The initial task would have sounded daunting, but they definitely pulled it off. At the time of Mario Galaxy’s creation, there was absolutely no other game like it, and there still isn’t. The premise sounds the same, the levels still progress linearly, but the physics design was so innovative that this game may as well be heralded as the best platformer of all time.
What makes this game great isn’t limited to the physics engine. The qualities of a great platformer include enjoyable gameplay, spectacular visuals, a soundtrack that never gets old and suits the game’s genre, and huge amount replay ability. Mario Galaxy definitely polishes off each one of these requirements. Collecting 60 stars can complete the game, but by collecting 120, you can replay the game as Luigi. The greatest thing about Luigi is that he isn’t just a Mario clone, but changes the gameplay in that he jumps a little higher and slides a little bit more.
The controls are well suited for the changing perspective. It was the first time that I played a game where holding the joystick up didn’t necessarily mean my character would travel up. Depending on where the character is located in the world, pushing up on the joy stick can mean that the character is going to travel sideways, down, etc. The designers did a great job in making this be a logical progression to shift in any given direction, but did initially take some getting used to. Also, there was absolutely no lag, and load times between levels were minimal. Mario does have the ability to obtain objects that allow him to change form, a useful and old technique by Nintendo. Some new suits make an appearance and successfully added new challenges to gameplay.
My main critique is with the linear level design. Solve the puzzle on planet A, use the warp star to travel to asteroid B and solve the puzzle there, and finish with a boss fight. This time old formula has been used and reused. Some sort of level progression that gives the player multiple ways to get to the end boss battle would have been better choice. If you can’t solve a given puzzle the one way that you had to, you were stuck until you either gave up or had an epiphany. This game was rarely frustrating and was surprisingly challenging, but I could see an eight-year-old version of myself getting stuck and upset in multiple levels. Games where the player’s choices influence and even change the gameworld are becoming more popular and this isn’t just a coincidence. Player’s crave this kind of interactivity and would have made an already great game even more amazing.
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