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Nov 19th, 2006 at 12:55:39 - Grand Theft Audo: Vice City (XBX) |
I borrowed a friend's copy of Vice City to see how I liked it. At first I drove around trying to get used to the controls. I found them very comfortable and intuitive and spent a long time driving around, stealing more cars and running away from the cops. What I enjoyed was the fact that I didn't have to do the main missions all the time. I could ride around, go for cool combos and rob stores. I spent about an hour and a half just driving around and learning the controls to do what I needed to do, but to be honest I really didn't want to follow the narrative. I was enjoying the immersive world that was created and that allowed me to drive around from neighborhood to neighborhood, stealing cars and changing radio stations.
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Nov 18th, 2006 at 22:40:34 - SimCity (PC) |
For the second time I played SimCity I tried to see if I could really handle disaster scenarios it could throw at me. I actually find these annoying and usually concentrate on overall city building when I play the SimCity series. Hospitals, Police departments and fire stations are among the last of the buildings I place in my mythical cities so turning off natural disasters is one of the first things I do. So I allowed bad things to happen to my city, I had some fires and some crime and had to rebuild on several occasions. What I really noticed this time around is that disasters have very instantaneous effects that don't really last. You have a fire that devastates your city for a few seconds, you rebuild and life goes on. There is no lasting effect on your economy, on that residential or commercial area, or your citizens. Things just pick up and keep going. Of course this could be chalked up to the fact that this isn't a REAL simulation, but a very abstracted one, I would still have liked to see the affected area grow slower over time, if at all. Permanent damage or more lasting damage would have forced me to manage my city better in the long run.
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Nov 18th, 2006 at 22:17:34 - SimCity (PC) |
I love SimCity. I have played the many incarnations of this game through the ages but I decided to return to the game to analyze it with a new eye. I picked the multi-island layout and started anew. I forgot how simple the graphics and controls were and I started on how I thought it should be run. But sadly my first few cities failed miserably. I kept trying to balance my industrial areas with the commercial areas and residential areas. Making sure everything is getting the proper tax support it needs and the areas are getting their needs met.
What I have always found interesting in this game is that you can't place individual buildings and areas. Unlike SimCity 2000, the original gives you blocks of area to work with so you must plan things in 3x3 sections. So in order to succeed at this game you must attain the proper balance of yellow, blue and green blocks within your world space. Finally I figured out that to create a thriving city I can put off taxing everything else but the roads, put commercial areas in the center surrounded by residential, with the industrial areas on the outlying parts.
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Nov 18th, 2006 at 20:58:46 - The Sims 2 (PC) |
The second time I played the game, on Friday, I attempted to interact with my characters. I found the controls very difficult and very annoying to learn. There was a large tutorial on how to exactly manipulate your Sims and make them interact but all I really wanted to do was control one and leave the others be. I found that if I ignored the other three Sims they wouldn't fulfill their ambitions and they'd get mad and do crazy things. I believe that you should be able to find out how to play a game through simple trial and error instead of having to read a cumbersome manual and follow a thorough tutorial. Furthermore, I wanted to decorate my house but to save my life I could not figure out how to place the furniture I wanted so I gave up. Right now, I'm very frustrated with the game. I still don't understand the narrative thread and the fact that I can't really manipulate the Sims as I want, bothers me enough to quit the game. Maybe tomorrow I'll have more luck.
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Ens has been with GameLog for 18 years, 0 months, and 4 days |
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