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Apr 18th, 2013 at 19:37:34 - The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii) |
Skyward Sword is a single-player puzzle/action/adventure game for the Nintendo Wii. This game is another installment of the Legend of Zelda series, this time setting the beginning of the story and revealing the reason for the recurring characters Link, Zelda, and Ganon and their battles.
The player controls Link, the hero of time, and must make their way through overworld sections using the tools they acquire during play. Each overworld section has a dungeon or temple that must be defeated (in search of Zelda for the first half, in order to upgrade the skyward sword into the master sword during the second half).
Puzzles usually center around the item gained in that area, for instance the majority of clawshot anchors, targets onto which your clawshot item can attach and pull you to, are in the desert area, which is where you find the clawshots.
The game also has two recurring villains throughout the story, Ghirahim and The Imprisoned. Ghirahim is an "affably evil" but undeniably creepy character, while The Imprisoned is a giant monstrous enemy that Link must repeatedly seal using the skyward sword.
Gameplay:
The game definitely seems a lot more focused towards children than previous installments like Twilight Princess, not just in visual and musical tone, but also in the interactions. Help, hints, and tips frequently pop up on screen for the player, the text speed cannot be changed, and most cutscenes cannot be skipped. This can result in the player feeling like they're having their hand held through the first few hours of play.
On the other hand, the dungeons and puzzles are challenging and fun, the bosses are tough, and the Heroic Difficulty setting is very challenging.
I personally love the "Ancient Cistern" level, a large water dungeon with plenty of spider and bokoblin enemies, steam and water puzzles, and a dark underground area filled with dark, poisonous water and zombie versions of the bokoblins from before. The boss in this area is one of my favorites as well, a giant six-armed automaton made from bronze and dark magic. This boss, Koloktos, starts off stationary and must be teased into attacking so that the player has the chance to rip out its arm joints using the whip (acquired in the cistern level) and force it to expose its glowing heart (previously covered by the third pair of arms). After taking sufficient damage, Koloktos rips itself out of the ground and chases Link around the boss fight area swiping at him with all 6 arms, wielding a falchion each. After teasing it into smashing the weapons against the ground, Link can rip out an arm joint from one and steal the falchion, using it to smash Koloktos's vulnerable legs, and then attack its heart again.
Overall:
Great story, fun dungeons, but quit holding my hand Nintendo.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Apr 18th, 2013 at 19:38:23.
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Feb 28th, 2013 at 11:38:22 - Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GC) |
Gauntlet: Dark Legacy is a continuation of the old arcade game, Gauntlet, where players can select from 4 characters with different attributes and make their way through many levels of dungeon and several boss fights.
The newer version introduces 4 more characters for a total of 8; the warrior and dwarf (strength specialists), the knight and valkyrie (armor specialists), the archer and jester (speed specialists), and the wizard and sorceress (magic specialists).
Each of the attributes affects certain parts of the character's performance. Strength is a measure of how much damage their attacks deal, Armor indicates how much damage they take from enemy attacks, Speed is the attribute for how fast they move and attack, and Magic determines how large their potion effect is and how much damage it deals.
The game is a controlled-camera-angle hack and slash / shooter style game. All characters launch projectiles at enemies (humorous to see a warrior hurling endless axes), and each has a melee attack for when monsters come too close. The player progresses through 11 worlds, each with its own unique boss. The enemies, with some exceptions, spawn from generators located in the area, which must be destroyed to stop the flow of monsters. As the generators take damage, they generally collapse or shrink, and produce smaller and weaker monsters until they are destroyed. Monsters that don't spawn from generators include generals (bigger, stronger, and much tougher versions of the general enemy type for the world), golems (massive, tough monsters with large area attacks and slow movement), gargoyles (large, tough, dragon-like enemies with breath attacks), and deaths (robed skeletons that chase the players and suck their health or experience, depending on the color of their robe).
Players must deal with some resource management (potions, keys, health, gold), and depending on their strategy, lots of area control. For example, I played this game a lot with my mom and dad when I was younger, and we would always position ourselves so that two were firing sideways through a choke point, killing all the incoming monsters, while another aimed directly in towards the generator, cutting a line to it and destroying it.
The game is somewhat open-world, allowing the players to enter any world they have gathered the prerequisite number of crystals for, meaning that a player could visit every world of the original 8 worlds before defeating a single boss.
In terms of gameplay, Gauntlet: Dark Legacy really shines in multiplayer. It's fun to play solo, but gets boring rather quickly, but with more players, the game becomes very competitive very quickly and can be fun all the way to the end.
My overall rating for it is a 4 out of 5. Great fun with friends or family, but little single-player or replay appeal for me.
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Feb 4th, 2013 at 22:33:11 - Dungeons and Dragons, 3.5 edition (Other) |
Today, the group and I played my third session as DM. While most of the group couldn't make it tonight, I had recruited some other guys to fill in so we still had 3 players.
In the first two sessions, play was relatively serious because I was trying to introduce two friends, Chris and Murphy, to the game.
In this last session, however, Chris and Murphy were both absent and the group decided to go off the rails a bit- so I had to make stuff up on the fly.
Needless to say, everyone died. Everyone had fun though, and they got to see some interesting stuff I made up.
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TenebrioNimbus has been with GameLog for 11 years, 9 months, and 17 days |
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