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Jan 18th, 2007 at 02:48:27 - Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES) |
I played the 2-player mode of Super Mario Bros. 3 with my girlfriend tonight, with her playing as Mario and myself as Luigi. I haven't played this game in probably at least 7 years when I rented Super Mario All Stars for my SNES. Playing this game definitely brought back a feeling of nostalgia, reminding me of playing early NES, SNES and Genesis games with my friends back when these games were not very old.
I did very poorly with my first few lives, instead watching as my girlfriend took on the first 4 or so levels, passing each one within a few minutes. I tend to play Mario games at a faster pace than her, leading me to make a few embarrassing mistakes like running into enemies or pits, while her more cautious approach seems to fit this game better. I got my Mario play style from playing Super Mario World, in which the controls might be a little more responsive due to the newer system, or perhaps because the collision behavior with enemies acts differently.
One thing I admire about the 2D Mario games is that they manage to have some fairly deep emergent gameplay that exists solely because of a combination of the simple 2-button controls and the choice of using different power-ups. It's nice that this game in particular has a wider variety than some others, with such unusual things like the frog suit and music box. Since I haven't played this game in a while and because I needed to play for about an hour, I didn't (remember how to) go for the secret flute that takes you to the last level in a matter of minutes.
We continued through the first world and I finally made a comeback when I stumbled across a 1-up in a level and then went on to get 3 stars at the ends of levels, giving me another 5 lives. Once I settled into the pace of the game I started doing a lot better than my girlfriend, who had probably done better when she saw that I initially had been floundering.
The old-school 2D graphics and simple sounds allowed the gameplay to really come out. One thing that I don't like about some newer games is that they rely too much on features and graphics as selling points rather than simply making a fun game, but that isn't the case here. The game is so well balanced that the players with the "twitchy" skills can enjoy it as a challenge and the more casual players can simply pick it up for a fun time.
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Jan 16th, 2007 at 22:18:30 - Guild Wars: Factions (PC) |
I played for about an hour and twenty minutes today between 3:40 and 5 pm. I again played as my assassin character, this time attempting to complete the story missions for the Factions expansion.
I started out at Raisu Palace, the second to last campaign mission. There weren't very many players around so I went over to the Kurzick area of the world map to investigate what I would have to do to get some of the Kurzick elite armor, which is the best looking assassin armor, in my opinion. Before the armorer would even talk to me I needed more Kurzick faction points, so I went and fought on the Kurzick side of Fort Aspenwood using the same build and technique as before.
I found that defending felt a lot easier than attacking. Two of my teammates quit out, leaving us undermanned, but I never once felt seriously pressed to defend the inside of the fort, although the Luxons did get inside for a few minutes once or twice. The enemy team probably had a few unfamiliar players or they were just uncoordinated, or perhaps even more of their members left the game than on my team. Either way, it wasn't a particularly challenging or exciting battle, but winning it allowed me to go back and have the option of buying the armor I was looking for.
However, I soon discovered that the armor I had thought cost only 1500 gold per piece was in fact the 15000 per piece version. So, in order to get the armor I wanted I'd need to fight my way down to a new area in search of a different armorer and then spend 70,000 plus materials on armor. Feeling disappointed but mainly just because I hadn't paid enough attention to the GuildWiki article, I went back to look again for a party to beat the final missions with.
This time I was lucky and ran into a few people that I had done a mission with about a week ago and I quickly joined their party which fortunately filled up with an acceptable variety of classes fairly quickly. The Raisu palace mission felt somewhat repetitive but it was at least satisfying to move through groups of at a rapid pace as we raced against the clock to save the emperor from being killed. We came close to failure only once when we decided to run through an area full of traps and beat a single boss at the end rather than engage in a long battle on those traps. After a few more groups of enemies that fell under the weight of a small army of necromancer minions aided by my poison and other degeneration skills, we had reached the end of the mission. To no-one's surprise, Master Togo, an NPC playing the role of distant headmaster to the characters starting in the Factions realm, is taken by the nemesis, Shiro Tagachi, and killed in order to complete a spell returning himself to the mortal world.
My party quickly jumped into the next mission in which our only task was to charge and kill Shiro Tagachi. On our first attempt, it seemed as though everything was going well until suddenly Shiro snuck some ability through and managed to take out most of the party in a matter of seconds. It was confusing to me, but we retried the mission a moment later and everyone must have been focused on executing their skills more effectively because Shiro was finished in under 3 minutes. After beating him, the party partook of an award given by a group of NPCs in the final area, I used a ranger skill to tame a phoenix as a pet, and I ran through a long series of stilted dialogues between the NPCs who played some role in the game.
Since Guild Wars doesn't try very hard to immerse players in the story and I was being waited on to go to dinner, I didn't pay much attention to any of this dialogue and simply ran past it all towards the exit in hope of something being more interesting, but there wasn't, so I left for dinner.
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Jan 8th, 2007 at 22:42:50 - Guild Wars: Factions (PC) |
I like guild wars in part because it is quick and easy to find action. Granted, I've played it since it came out so it's not difficult for me.
Today I focused on working my assassin towards the goal of 10,000 Luxon faction points necessary to advance through the mission campaign for the Factions expansion. I own Nightfall, the latest expansion, but I've resolved to complete the story campaign for Factions before I move on to that campaign.
Before I left for my 3:30 class this afternoon I had been playing in the Aspenwood Gate PvP area, part of a pointless, ongoing war between two equally pointlessly opposed factions. This arena is far more satisfying than the normal random arenas because unlike there, Aspenwood features a small army of NPC's to reinforce player efforts in capturing several control points along the map. The Luxon side (my side in this case) is tasked with killing the enemy "architect" who is trying to build some new powerful weapon, while the Kurzick side of the battle is trying to bring amber to said architect so that he can complete his work.
- Technical Garbage -
Starting around 6:30, I returned to Aspenwood and tinkered for a moment with my Assassin/Ranger's (A/R) skill build, replacing the ranger "Serpent's Quickness" stance (a stance that lowers the recharge time of other skills) with the assassin skill "Critical Eye" (a skill that increases my chance of scoring a critical hit and since I'm an assassin, gives me more energy when I do), and replacing another ranger running skill with antidote signet, an energyless condition removal skill (removes poison, disease and blindness). By putting critical eye and antidote signet into my build I hoped I would remedy the energy shortage problem I had been having as well as raising my chances of retreating out of battle to heal.
My current build revolves around Aura of Displacement, a skill that lets me "shadow step" (teleport) to an enemy, where I put a hex on them that makes my attackes unblockable and unevadable, opening up for a string of attacks in which I poison my target as well as causing bleeding and a deep wound that reduces healing benefits and maximum health. When the action gets too hot I use Aura of Displacement's second stage, which returns me to where I first used the skill.
-- End technical garbage --
I'm enjoying experimenting with the assassin class' ability to shadow step, as it really gives them an advantage in terms of mobility and to an extent epitomizes certain images of the fantasy assassin. There are also interesting moments where players discover ways that these skills work in conjunction with other classes, as one time during the battle I had hidden behind a wall for cover and to recover when a friendly healer suddenly appeared next to me to heal me before running back towards the main fight.
The new PvP arenas, of which I have only played Aspenwood, definitely add a new enjoyable form of PvP play. It reminds me of playing other games in high school like counter-strike, where it felt possible to jump into a game and just randomly make friends with someone on your team just by talking or joking around in a server. This arena allows some of that because of the wait required between battles and because players generally stick to one side for long periods of time. It gives me a feeling of nostalgia mixed with some new fun and an interesting challenge.
I'm thinking about starting to explore other classes in guild wars more than I have up to this point. I've focused mainly on my warrior, mesmer, and assassin, although I only really play my assassin anymore. I'm thinking about starting a new monk because it seems like an entirely different type of play since you're working on healing instead of killing, and because monks get loads of appreciation when they're doing well because one or two good healers can get a party of 8 through almost anything.
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Awesome Juice has been with GameLog for 17 years, 10 months, and 14 days |
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