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Feb 4th, 2007 at 21:11:29 - Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town (GBA) |
I am a HUGE fan of the Harvest Moon series. My fandom is expressed through a variety of creative outlets, such as inspired artwork and fanfiction (see: nerd). I only own four Harvest Moon games, however, out of the ridiculous number of Harvest Moon games that there are (not including their ludicrous amount of mirror versions of each game for each gender). Not all of these games are amazing, but each one is enjoyable, in its own way. My personal favorite is Harvest Moon 64.
I received HM:MFoMT (wow, what an acronym) for Christmas two years ago now, and really only started playing this February 1st. (Scandalous, I know.) The reason why was because I felt Game Boy Advances are not as entertaining as the big screen -- Puzzle Fighter II aside -- and was loathe to attempt yet another disappointing Harvest Moon game. (Incidentally, my friend gave me the girl version of Friends of Mineral Town because I am female.)
Fortunately, I have not been disappointed yet! Though the screen is hard to see in dim classrooms, this game so far contains the sheer unadulterated amusement experienced in Harvest Moon 64: it is uncontaminated by realism (har har) and rife with amusing skits and scenarios (which are and have been my favorite aspect of the Harvest Moon series: the fact that they're basically naive dating sims with farming involved). I am excited that I have a new game similar to Harvest Moon 64 in which I have not already accomplished every secret and done everything these is to be done, without spending over a year of real-time playing trying to accomplish it (see: Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life).
It's difficult to pinpoint why I like this game so much, and why I love Harvest Moon 64 so passionately. I have a feeling that since Harvest Moon 64 was my first HM game, my memories of it are tinged with the sweetest nostalgia, making the game much more special to me and greater in my memory than it might truly be, technically speaking. And since HM:MFoMT has similar graphics and the same characters, it inspires in me the same giddy happiness I derive from HM64, though a bit different as the game is different, and slightly dampened because the manner in which I am playing is less... emotionally inspiring. I cannot connect to a tiny dark screen the same way I can to a large, bright screen. So to speak. Maybe I'm getting far too personal with my games.
Regardless, I'm going to continue playing this game for a time.... My character's name is Dawn and I am "wooing" the doctor. I may update this more when I find features of the game I enjoy or dislike in the future.
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Jan 31st, 2007 at 01:28:11 - Super Smash Brothers (N64) |
7:50 pm
I continued to be beaten by both Adam and Eric for a while after the previous entry. They are both pretty good players, and though I can beat Adam at Melee, I’m pretty helpless against him in the original version.
I find it interesting that the original and the sequel are so different from one another in gameplay. For one reason, it is highly more enjoyable to play Melee for long stretches of time than the original. Part of this could be because there are fewer characters in the original, and even fewer GOOD characters. Eric played as a single character the whole time until Adam forced him to change characters (he was convinced that Kirby was the key to success). I can’t quite put my finger on what else could be the reason why this game is less enjoyable now; I know that back when it came out, it was a lot of fun to play. I can only presume that since a sequel has come out and heightened this type of gameplay to an even more enjoyable level, going back to the original is a bit of a turn-off. Lots of elements in the game were improved in Melee, and it’s very obvious when one plays the games for long stretches of time.
Overall, I didn’t terribly enjoy playing this game for this long. I enjoy it for a certain length of time, but then it becomes boring – it seems monotonous after a while, and especially if one continues to lose. I much prefer the new one over the old one, but I know a few people who like the old one better – Eric and Adam, though they both like the new one more, say the old one has its “perks”. Regardless, the game IS a classic by its nature, though it has a newer and better successor.
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Jan 31st, 2007 at 01:26:56 - Super Smash Brothers (N64) |
7:00 pm
For my second Classics game, I chose to play Super Smash Bros for the Nintendo 64 (along with friends Adam Edwards, Amy Carlo and Eric Osugi, and both males are also in this class). I played this game a few years ago when it originally came out for the Nintendo 64, and I loved it back then – I used to play it all the time with my friends and siblings. Back then I was good with Pikachu and Kirby, and I used to be pretty slick with those characters’ controls. The game is – was? – highly enjoyable and passed the time easily.
However, as the years went on I moved on to the game’s sequel Super Smash Bros Melee and became used to those controls, as I played that version of the game much more. Consequently, going back to the N64 game was a bit strange to play for a prolonged period of time – though this version was the original (and thus classic), it seemed like a different game after I had played a newer and faster version. The characters seemed to move slower, the graphics were blocky and things seemed to happen which were completely unintended. After playing the GameCube version for a much longer time than I ever had the original, players seemed to intend one thing and something else would happen entirely. We also would use excuses such as “I’m used to the other one, I can’t play this so well” which, despite being a true enough excuse, was disregarded and seen as a poor reason for sucking in multiplayer mode.
Interestingly enough, when I came back to this game after playing Melee for a few years, I am much better with Samus (a character I had never played before) than with my former-best characters.
So far the gameplay is somewhat enjoyable, although with fighter-multiplayer games, sometimes it’s no fun when playing with someone who is far better than you (and Eric beats us nearly every time). I played the game for forty-five minutes before writing this, and now intend to play another forty-five minutes.
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Jan 18th, 2007 at 22:29:29 - Soul Calibur III (PS2) |
5:00
This game is amazingly frustrating after two hours of versus-mode with two competent players.
I am amazingly incompetent when one hands me a PlayStation 2 controller, and it is evident by my failing-fast performance in the second hour of SC3 today. I am glad that I got a little better with Tira, which was obvious; during the second hour I started beating Eric more often (thought Adam beat us all the time regardless).
There is nothing bad about the game, really; I find that most fighting games however, along with most things, become stale once repeated over and over again. All we played was versus mode with different characters for the two hours. I guess in the way of fighting games, SC3 is supreme, even if it takes some getting used to the controls; but there's only so much entertainment fighting games can offer before it becomes the same old thing.
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| Mirri Night's GameLogs |
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Mirri Night has been with GameLog for 17 years, 10 months, and 15 days |
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