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Feb 8th, 2007 at 00:39:14 - Tekken 5 (PS2) |
The Tekken series is what has put Namco the creators of this game as legends. They have created a series of fighting characters that has not only evolved from the graphics of the original Tekken, but the style of play has also become more realistic. In taking this from a newbie’s perspective, this game is not at all difficult, compared to my previous post from Soul Caliber. The game is simple, defeat your opponents with the chosen character. The character has a set of moves that you must utilize or else you will be defeated. This is one of those games where pressing the button really fast or pressing the same buttons all over again can result in a combo. Players do not have a lot of patience in learning all the detailed moves of each character, they simply want to play the game, and I think Tekken accomplishes that well. I am a Tekken fan myself, and seeing the evolution of this game has made me realize how much goes into this game.
The simplest mode is the arcade mode in which you choose one character and he/she battles other opponents till the end of the game. After in which a little movie ending is played, and a new character is revealed. So the reward is simple, beat the game and you receive a new character. There is a motive for the player to keep on playing, even though it does sometimes become monotonous. Yet this is where Tekken can have the affect that Mario Party has, you can play with two players. With having two or more rounds, friends can duel between their favorite characters or randomly choose one. What makes Tekken Five special is the new feature of Tekken Bowling, in which the characters bowl against each other for the high score.
After my first hour of playing, the character I have chosen has gone through forty eight rounds, and the opponents are the same, just the difficulty has risen. This presents new challenges as my strategy to defeating must be cleaner, and I must be wary of their attacks as well. Yet in between the first ten to thirty minutes, I was beginning to feel bored. What I do not like about this game is how in previous Tekken games how some characters moved has changed, for example Lei, or Jin. In the past Jin was a hybrid mix of moves between his father Kuzuya and his mother Jun. But with the addition of Devil Jin, it seems the new Jin has a different fighting style all together and does not match the old Jin. With the Devil Jin he is not as agile, clunky because of the wings that is attached to him, but now he has the laser beam, the worse move in the game.
The game play in Tekken Five does not change much, the characters appearances are changed because of the steroids they must be on. It seems even the much older characters instead of becoming gray and fat, have become much more muscular and power. This is what Tekken is all about, no matter how old you are, you can still fight like a champion. Is it just me, or do the women in this game get much hotter? Well, besides their appearance, they are the toughest characters to hit in the game, but do take the most damage. Especially the girl version of Eddy whose name is Christie, is one of the most difficult characters to hit especially if you know the moves of Eddy, they are exactly the same. So in essence, the continuation of this game is really well done. The creators do not mess up the original game play and instead let the player decide how much they want to have with it.
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Jan 31st, 2007 at 02:23:07 - Soul Caliber III (PS2) |
After a dismal hour of playing, I am starting to wonder how Soul Caliber made the lists as a classic game. I decide to venture into the realm of the one player mode, in which I engage in the story mode, a common feature in fighting games in order to escalate the plot. Yet after defeating an opponent, the player is given a list of paragraphs to read, either search for this mystical “Soul Edge,” or some other trivial mission. Each choice you make affects the opponent you face, but in the end it really does not matter. You meet the “Soul Edge,” but are not allowed to use it because the character then becomes possessed. What is the point in having such a weapon if it is not attainable? This part of the game really just irritated me. Even though the game was already unlocked with all the possible weapons, I still could not find myself wanting to play this game more. The variety of swordplay was accurate, from the samurai stance to a fencing stance, however it lacked some good basis character.
I believe Namco, the creators of this game as well as the Tekken series, lost some basic skills in character development. One such character is Yoshimitsu, whose character has a sword just like in Tekken, and even their fighting style is exactly the same. What is recognizable from the start is the circular movement of the kicks, and the slash that this character makes. Was this a direct idea from Tekken, this lacks originality and I am very supportive of this game to not ever be on anyone’s classic list.
What still amazes me in my second hour of playing, is how my friends and I still did not know how to do specific moves. Unlike other games where the player can develop some type of muscle memory as to what buttons do what, I often felt the same way I started: confused. There is nothing to say more about this game but to save before you turn it off, or all your hard work goes away because the game is filled with glitches that love to corrupt your memory card data. Good luck on figuring out on how to do combos, because it is a total mystery to me.
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Jan 30th, 2007 at 20:15:32 - Soul Caliber III (PS2) |
In Soul Caliber III, this is a fighting game which incorporates the use of weapons. Not guns or slingshots, but ones that can be swung at an opponent in order to kill them. I myself am not a big fan of this game, because one has to very familiar with the game in order to really have a good time.
The graphics of this game are not out of this world, it seems up to par with the rest of the fighting video games out there. And although I did not play this video game from right from the beginning, because a friend of mine had beaten the game many times, there was not a big reward for accomplishing such a feat. The only treat that he said was the hidden characters and the new weapons each character can have. But to a novice such as myself, the significance of these weapons really did not matter to me. This is what I find wrong with fighting games; everyone should have an equal chance of winning that is the human players should be given all available tools to succeed.
The actually fighting of the game could be improved as well. I do not agree with the concept of knocking your opponent out of the ring, it is more of a sumo wrestling ideology. Now a fighting game that I do enjoy and sword fighting games should model more closely is Bushido Blade. There is more realism to the game, unlike Soul Caliber with characters like Nightmare who appears to have a claw as a sword. And perhaps what is a more traditional fighting game such as Street Fighter; combos are only attained with pressing a button, and the directional pad, whereas the modern era of games relies more on the button pressing to do combos. The game also moves away from most fighting games with blocking as holding the back button. To add real element of blocking with a weapon, the button “X,” is used to block sword attacks, but leaves you vulnerable to a kick, punch, or a charge. What was oddly disturbing as I continued to play the game was that I continued to play much worse; I was not able to discover any good combos, nor develop some strategy as to how to defeat my opponent. Unlike in Tekken, a player is able to pick up what the character is about after a couple of rounds, but after six rounds using Nightmare, I still did not know what he was capable of.
What is perhaps the biggest flaw of this game is not the game play, but rather the consequences of forgetting to save your progress. As I did not want to find out for myself, I discovered Soul Caliber in general has a way of easily losing a player’s progress on the memory card. If the player does not save each time before they turn off the console, the likelihood they will not be able to open their file the next time they turn on the game. Data file corruption is one glitch that Soul Caliber has neglected to fix, and really irks me the fact you must save constantly, or else!
In all, this game is quite boring and I do not why I bothered to play it. The rooms are not the amazing, the characters are not that flashy, and half the time I did not know what I was doing. Somehow I managed to stab the opponent, but I would not know how to again. This game is clueless, and I am left unpleased.
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Jan 18th, 2007 at 00:53:03 - Super Smash Brothers (N64) |
This game does allow a novice player to gain the skills necessary to become a better player, of course through practice. In the arcade mode, the player is given set objectives, and fulfilling them has great rewards. What I have not done but understand is that there are secret characters in the game, further motivating the player to see all the way to the end. Unlocking these special characters promotes a further completion of the game, as well as discovering the many secrets of the game. This game then follows the convention of many arcade games as far as strategy, objectives, and level bosses. While this may further make the game complex, in actually it creates an identity for the player. As there is not one universally considered best character, many of the players today do not necessarily have the same favorite character. What this game is doing is not only promoting itself through this game, but makes the player think of the array of characters from which original video game they had made their debut.
What I often find myself intrigued with is the settle nuances of the game that is slowly picked up. The secret levels are so secret, often times they are produced with an elaborate array of pushing simply buttons. To access these secrets is a trademark of Nintendo finding your own way till you get it right. Alas some of these other rewards are not accessible without the useful help of a guide to the game. In some sense this helps Nintendo collect more revenue, as players are desperate for the edge over their opponents, but takes out the elusiveness of the game. Yet no matter how a guide helps a player, the skill is only developed through constant practice and thorough knowledge of all the skills the characters possess. And even then, the player must have the right strategy, good reaction times and some luck to win.
However one feature I did not appreciate as I got older is how much Pokemon there was, not only did it feature its trademark character Pikachu, but there was an item of the actually pokeball in which when it was thrown a pokemon came out for a short while and did some damage. Personally this feature became annoying, as it seems the creators were riding the popularity of the Pokemon era and its target audience, instead of including more of the original Nintendo characters such as Peach or Wario.
The atmosphere of this game is very important, because the magic circle is not limited to one person. Instead of having a four screen split with a limited view, all the players can see visually the interaction amongst their friends. This excitement in the dual further pushes the need to have rematches, a little bit of trash talking, but overall a fun experience. For those who ever criticize this game, this is definitely one of the best ever made. Of course there had to be a sequel, as the game still left for improvement, but in Super Smash Brothers Melee for Game cube, the game play still has not changed, only the graphics and characters have improved. In all this game has solidified itself in game history.
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noobkilla has been with GameLog for 17 years, 10 months, and 13 days |
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