|
Apr 29th, 2011 at 11:55:52 - Need for Speed: Most Wanted (360) |
Summary
Need for Speed: Most Wanted was released May 20, 2005. It is a simulation of racing cars, evading police, and skillfully driving through a city at a fast pace. This involves a user to pick a car, learn that car, and improve that car. Not only does the player have to race the car, but if a cop case ensues during a race, the player must evade the police after the race is finished. It is considered a simulation game. There are many ways in which a player can customize their car.
Luck vs Strategy
This game involves having a strategy on how one wants to efficiently set up their car. A player has the options of buying performance parts, editing the handling of their car from a list of options in the Start Menu.
Story vs Non-Story
The great thing about this game is that it involves heavily upon story. You are the protagonist in this game. At the start of the game you enter a city and are challenged by the top racer Razor. You race him, and because he rigs the race, you lose. You lose your car and you lose respect. After that you have to defeat 15 racers before you can get your car back. There are a series of cut scenes and text messages via the game that you receive from racers that give the game more story.
Realism vs Abstraction
In Need for Speed: Most Wanted, the goal is to defeat the 15 racers and get back your original car back. For the most part, this racing game is based on realism. For the first time in racing game, aerodynamics and physics played a role in how the car drove. In the settings you can change the height of the car, you can change whether you want more horse power or whether you wanted more torque. The player has to actually drive to a parts store to get parts. These parts include: performance, body, and paint. Some of the paint jobs make the game unrealistic due to the graphical affect. Also, the wrecks are unrealistic in the game. A car can take a significant amount of damage, yet show no sign of it.
Player's Role
From the very beginning of the game, the player is put into the
Game Limitations
There is a limited amount of space on which a player can drive. They are limited to the one city that is in the game. The driver is limited by the laws of nature. A person cannot drive into a tree or a building. Also, a player may not fly off into the air.
Gameplay
In this game you start off with many options. You can start a Career, play online multiplayer, quick race single or split screen, or complete Challenges. Career mode starts you off in the story, mulitplayer allows you to play against other players online with cars that you have won, bought, or made. Quick race allows you to race instantly. You can choose what type of race you want, choose your car, and choose to play alone or play with someone via split screen. Challenges is where you have a list of challenges that you can complete. You are placed in a random car to perform a random task.
Once in the Career, the story unveils. The driving of the cars is all different. Each car has a unique sound to its engine, and handles differently. While driving, you must dodge traffic. Cars will be driving down the streets during races. If you hit a car, it will slow you down. Usually, this will be the difference between winning or losing a race. While racing you have the option to use NOS. This will give you a boost of speed, once drained the NOS will rebuild upon acceleration. This is an unrealistic part of the game. Learning your car is key to winning each race. Learning when to use your brakes and NOS effectively. One thing that I noticed while racing was that the police cars get heavier, harder to push around, the nicer looking the police car. The game has an EA soundtrack that plays while your racing. One bad thing I thought, was that you can't play your own music while racing.
End Game
The player can end game with defeating the 15 racers and evading every cop in the city by exiting the city via jumping a broken bridge out of the city. A player can end game by getting 3 strikes from the police. A strike is obtained when the car is busted. Once there are 3 strikes, a car is impounded by the police. If the player has no other cars, then he cannot play = GAME OVER.
add a comment - read this GameLog |
Mar 28th, 2011 at 18:45:18 - Simcity 2000 (PC) |
Summary
Simcity 2000 was released February 28, 1995. It is a simulation of building a successful city. This involves building power plants, a water system, roads, power lines, an education system and so forth. Not only does the player have to build these things, but also has to manage resources and taxes so that the city brings in profit for expansion. It is considered a strategy game. There is no war in this game, only the creation of a city.
Luck vs Strategy
This game involves having a strategy on how one wants to efficiently and creatively set up a city. There are endless options as to how to build a city. As a player repeatedly plays the game, he or she will gain skill on how to better play.
Story vs Non-Story
There is no story in this game. There is no main character to follow, only a city that has many many needs.
Realism vs Abstraction
In Simcity 2000, the goal is to create your own realistic city. Being that this game was made in 1995 the graphics were limited, however; the cities made in this game are very similar to a city that one might see in real life. There are industrial areas, residential areas, and commercial areas of a city that can be grown. Overall, the game is geared towards realism with a couple of exceptions. These exceptions include making the natural disaster of a "Monster" occur on your city, or the making of an arcology, large buildings that hold 60,000+ people.
Player's Role
From the very beginning of the game, the player is put into the god-like role. The player is able to shape the terrain of the map. The map is divided into small tiles. These tiles can be raised, lowered, made into water areas in whatever manner the player wishes. Also, in this game the player plays the role of the supreme leader, who makes all of the important decisions of when to have a natural disaster, what city-ordinances to pass, or even the percentage of city resources that are used, such as fire department, police, education, transit maintenance. The player manages the city as it matures.
Game Limitations
There is a limited amount of space on which a player can create his city. A player is limited to the amount of money that he or she has. At the beginning of the game a player can either start off with $20,000, $10,000, or a loan of $10,000. This is to give difficulty to the game. Also, a player may have technological limitations. At the beginning of the game a player may choose to start at 1900, 1950, 2000, or 2050. The technology available for building during the game will depend on what option the player chooses at the beginning of the game, of course technology will become available as time passes in the game.
Gameplay
In this game you start off looking at a landscape from a top down view. You are able to edit the landscape with a toolbar. You can fill the area with trees, water, raised or lowered terrain in whatever combination that you want. After you finish editing this, you move on to the city part of the game. You select a money amount to start off with and a year that will determine your starting cash and technology level. From there you have a clean slate of landscape to work with. You can start off by building any structure you want. I usually start off with a power plant, then add residential, commercial, and industrial tiles in a 6 x 6 manner. Then connect them with roads and add power lines to go from the power plant to each of the type tiles.
Every building in the game has to have power and water. Next, building a water tower, couple water pumps, and water pipes to connect them all to each type of tile so that the buildings that will build will have water. The residential, commercial, and industrial tiles differ by color. Residential is green, commercial is purple, and industrial is yellow. After these tiles get water and power, they will begin to self build structures on top of them. These structures are built on their own and the player has no control over how large or small the buildings are. These are the core elements needed in a city to get started.
After these elements of the city are established additional elements can be added from the categories of: education, civil services, and entertainment. The education section includes buildings such as: school, college, library, or a museum. The civil services section includes: police station, hospital, fire station, and prison. The entertainment section includes: small park, big park, zoo, stadium, and marina. In addition to these, the player can add subways, railways, an airport, and bridges to enhance the traffic flow of the city.
Along with building the city, the player must choose which departments to pay services, how much to charge in taxes, as well as which city-ordinances to have in affect. If the player doesn't pay a department enough in services, that department will cause problems for the player. Example would be not paying the fire department enough money, the city would have more fire accidents and buildings would burn down. an example of a city-ordinance would be Tourist Advertizing, Legalize Gambling, Parking Fines, and more.
Once a player has a city that has a population in the millions, and is consistently bringing in a profit, then that person has essentially won the game. The "winning" of this game is based off the satisfaction the player has with his city. When a player thinks he or she has an awesome city and is done building onto it and playing with it, then that is when the game is over for that person. There is no official way to "win" this game.
End Game
A player is satisfied with his or her city or a player runs out of money and does not have enough resources to continue building a city.
add a comment - read this GameLog |
Jan 26th, 2011 at 18:57:22 - Clue: Discover the Secrets (Other) |
Clue: Discover the Secrets
Summary:
This is a newer version of an older board game of Clue. I have not played the old version, so I cannot compare the two. The game is a 3 to 6 player game, preferably 5 or 6 players. In the game clue, there is a murderer and the objective of the game is to find out who the murderer is, what their murder weapon was, and where this murder took place. The players use a note pad, personal player skills, and the process of elimination strategy to narrow down the suspects. At the beginning of each game, the Rumor cards(these have suspects, weapons, and places on them) are divided up into categories of place, weapon, and suspect. One card from each category is taken and put in the Confidential's folder to hold the actual murderer, murder weapon, and murder place. The rest of the Rumor cards are divided evenly among the players. Players will pick their token(suspect) to play, however; their Rumor card ma be the murderer or may be in another player's hand to disprove a scenario. Each player has a list of the weapons, places, and suspects that they will use to mark off each time something is disproved until they can determine the murder items.
Gameplay:
A player will start and roll dice until he or she reaches a room. They will then accuse a suspect, a weapon to have murdered in that room. Starting from that player's left, players will go in turn until they have a Rumor card that will disprove that their scenario wasn't correct. Once a piece of the scenario is proven wrong, it is marked off the list of weapons, rooms, suspects of the current player. A player cannot make a scenario in the same room as their last turn, unless they have an Intrigue card that allows them to.
Setting:
The game is set in a millionaire's mansion.
Board:
The board is divided up into rooms that players/suspects may accuse each other of scenarios where someone killed. The rooms include: the Kitchen, Patio, Spa, Dining Room, Pool, Theatre, Living Room, Guest House, Hall, and Observatory. There are secret passages between the Spa and the Guest House, as well as the Kitchen and Observatory so that players can move from room to room without walking a "space". The players are originally positioned along the outside edges of the game, outside of the rooms. The Pool is where a player would go if they want to propose the murder events. There are "?" spaces occasionally on the board, as well as on one surface of the two dice. If one lands on, or rolls a "?" they must pick up an intrigue card. An intrigue card may have several outcomes. The card could be an ability such as getting to see a card that disproved a scenario or getting to make a scenario in the same room you were just in. The intrigue card can also kill a player if the card has a clock on it. This will eliminate the player from the game.
Players(Suspects):
There are six possible suspects, whether there are six players or not. These suspects include an actress Kasandra Scarlet(red), a former football player Jack Mustard(yellow), an ex-child star Diane White(white), a well connected Jacob Green(green), a manners freak Eleanor Peacock(blue), and billionaire game designer Victor Plum(purple). Each suspect has a unique ability. For example, Scarlet can view a card that was used to disprove a murder scenario once during the game. One of these characters committed the murder, whether they are being played as or not.
Weapons:
The murder weapons of the game include: a rope, a candlestick, a knife, a pistol, a baseball bat, a dumbbell, a trophy, poison, and an axe. These can be items that a player uses in their murder scenario to guess what the actual murder weapon was.
add a comment - read this GameLog |
|
|
|
Eclypse's GameLogs |
Eclypse has been with GameLog for 13 years, 9 months, and 26 days |
view feed xml
|
Entries written to date: 3 |
|