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Jan 31st, 2007 at 04:22:51 - Shadow of the Colossus (PS2) |
After playing only the first Colossus in the game I'm pretty sure that I am in for a seriously awesome experience. The game starts with a character riding across a huge bridge towards a giant temple-like building carrying a girl. After some instructions from a disembodied voice you are put strait into the game. You have to hunt down and kill giant Colossus's to bring your ladyfriend back to life, using light reflected off of your sword you must search them out across a huge overworld map. I jumped on my horse and headed off to find the first colossus, who I found in a smallish valley. I spotted him from far off (due to the awe inspiring draw distance) and he just continued to grow as I got closer until I stood no taller than his toes. As I got off my horse and headed towards him I noticed the great music swelling up and it really helped to put me in the mood. Also as I got closer to him I noticed that the framerate had dropped considerably, but also that it took very little away from the gameplay since it almost added to the kind of dreamlike feel to the game, although the very fact that it was noticeable bothered me some. I used the light from my sword again to find the week spot on his heel. After hitting this I was able to climb onto his arm and eventually up to his head to stab him in his magical weak spot, sending huge streams of blood spraying out of his head. When he eventually fell I was attacked with what looked like spirits and woke up again in the temple.
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Jan 19th, 2007 at 06:17:40 - The Legend of Zelda (NES) |
Today I went back to my Legend of Zelda game and finished off the first dungeon. The boss of the dungeon is pretty standard fare as far as bosses go, a dragon. The boss was pretty easy once I learned his attack patterns and used my sword lazer to nail him in the head. After completing the dungeon I spent the rest of my time just wandering around the overworld. I remember when I first played the game I called the dungeons "levels" but now I've realized that this is perhaps one of the first games I played that didn't actually have "levels". I had been used to playing something like Super Mario Brothers and simply progressing through areas left-to-right in order untill I was done and when I was presented with something so original as Zelda I was only able to define it by what I already knew. In my game design this is the hurdle that I hope I'll be able to get over, I hope to be able to look at the medium of games in a new way and create something that is new and fresh, instead of refining the current conventions (although this is acceptable too, just look at new games like Gears of War which does not do that much new but does everything nearly perfectly).
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Jan 18th, 2007 at 02:38:58 - The Legend of Zelda (NES) |
Playing this game again after so long reminded me of both how much games have changed, but also how certain aspects have stayed the same. One thing that I was reminded almost immediately of is that you start the game with virtually zero description of where you are, what you are doing, or where you should go next. You are simply dropped into a plane and left to figure things out for yourself. After you walk into the cave and get the sword (one thing I remember from the first time I ever played this game is how the look on Link's face and the way he holds the sword in the air was burned into my memory, even though his facial features are made up only by a few pixels I was very effected) you are pretty much free to explore the world map. The last time I played this game was so long ago that I had not even realized the map on the upper part of the screen. The map shows only where you are on a large solid colored rectangle that represents the whole overworld map which is a method that I don't think would fly by todays standards. With no cues on where to go you are pretty much forced to simply wander around the map untill you run across the first dungeon. The variety of types of land and enemies really helped me to ignore the dated graphics and be pulled into the objectiveless exploration that I was doing around the beginning of the game. The difficulty of the game increases greatly when there are multiple enemies attacking you at once, since you can only move in four directions and only attack in one direction at a time I sometimes found myself panicking and fighting the controlls when there were multiple enemies bearing down on me before I got better at forcing the enemies to come at me a few at a time. I eventually moved onto the dungeon, inside the dungeon the developers use different color schemes, music, and enemies to really add to the experience of not being in the overworld anymore. Now, instead of being able to leave your square area from any open space at the edge you are forced through doors which must be unlocked by either keys or puzzle solving (such as the secret door I opened by pushing a block). Inside the dungeon you also find the dungeon specific items (that have now become a symbol of the series) which are the map and compass. The map gives you an overhead layout of how each room in the dungeon connects to the others and the compass tells you the location of the dungeons boss. Inside the dungeon I also found the boomerang weapon which greatly helps fighting multiple foes since it stuns whoever it hits leaving you the opportunity to take them out one at a time.
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Jan 11th, 2007 at 16:40:33 - Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (PSP) |
Today I played about an hour of the multiplayer function of Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. I played a series of standard "death-match" type games on the Ad-hoc setting (not over the internet). In this game each player chooses a squad of four characters and outfits them with weapons. The characters and weapons you have avaliable to you is directly influenced by how you have played the single player game, for example, if you have gone through the game "stamina killing" (knocking out a boss by depleating their stamina instead of killing them will unlock them as a playable character) all the bosses and recruiting tech experts for your tech unit you may have a team full of nothing but boss characters equiped with rocket launchers, which can sometimes throw off the balance of the game. You play your characters one at a time and as each one dies he/she is replaced by the next member of the team in line. The game controlls in multiplayer just as it does in the single player missions and many of the levels are directly based on levels of the single player campaign so they are familiar and, for the most part, very well designed. The design of the levels and the way the game controlls puts a strong emphasis on strategy and "getting the drop on" your enemy instead of simply running in, guns blazing. This counter balances one of the frustrations that I initially had with the game which is the fact that you cannot aim in the first person mode and move at the same time since movement while in first person is done with your left thumb on the d-pad while aiming in first person is done with your left thumb on the analog nub, once I developed some strategies I no longer found myself being frustrated by this. One of my favorite strategies is to equip one of the members of my team who is skilled in sniping with a tranquilizer sniper rifle, I will lie in wait and knock out the other player from a long distance and then run up and kill him with a knife (which nets you extra points). One of the interesting innovations of the multiplayer mode is the use of the sound based radar system, the player who is the point leader of the match will have a small frog above their head which will periodically make a "ribbit" noise that will show up on his enemy's radar.
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r3dhalo has been with GameLog for 17 years, 10 months, and 12 days |
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