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Mar 15th, 2007 at 02:42:02 - Burnout 3: Takedown (PS2) |
Crash mode is a radically different mode of game play where the winner is the player who causes the greatest amount of damage, measured in terms of dollars. In single player mode you are awarded gold, silver or bronze medals for surpassing certain dollar amounts. As crash events are part of the World Tour mode a seasoned player quickly learns the most valuable vehicles to crash into – most notably the oil tankers that are worth a massive 100,000 dollars if their tanks are destroyed. This is helpful when playing the multi player crash modes where players compete to do the most damage. After the initial collision the crash moves in slow motion and the player is able to control the direction in which their car flies. This is helpful for getting the cash multipliers that multiply your score by 2x or 4x. The 4x is usually much more difficult to obtain. If you cause enough accidents (the # is based on the level) you become eligible to activate the Crashbreaker feature which explodes your car. When in the air you are once again able to control your direction; sometimes providing a second chance to get a score multiplier. An excellent balance to the multiplier system are Heartbreakers, items that when collided with remove any multiplier obtained that round and cut your score in half. These are often very strategically located to prevent easy passage from the densest traffic that has the most potential points to the cash multipliers. I enjoy crash mode but feel that despite the variety of levels it is quite redundant and quickly leads to game exhaustion.
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Mar 14th, 2007 at 23:15:18 - Burnout 3: Takedown (PS2) |
In Burnout III: Takedown, new cars are awarded for reaching certain benchmarks. For example, benchmarks like 500 takedowns or Gold medals on all tracks. Going for the latter, I went through my World Tour mode to try to beat the remaining tracks that I had only been able to achieve silver medals on when I was more avidly playing the game. The one specific event that had given me trouble is called Burning Lap. In these events the player is given a high-end car like the F1 Racer and a time in which to reach the finish line for each rank of medal. From endless trials I learned that each rank of medal corresponds to the number of crashes. If driving optimally (which entails driving on the wrong side of the road and constantly gaining and spending Burnout accumulated from near misses with oncoming cars) you can crash once and still make the gold medal time. Respectively, two crashes are permitted for a silver medal and three for a bronze. This can be especially challenging in the long races where you’re driving at over 200 mph through busy cities in heavy traffic for over two minutes. I spent about half an hour in heightened emotions, occasionally screaming when I would crash around the corner from the finish line after two minutes of perfect driving. It’s certainly the most frustrating mode of the game, but helps to develop the player into an elite driver.
After the insane acceleration and speed of the F1 car, racing most of the other cars in other modes is a walk in the park. Things seem to be in slow motion and you have a lot more time to respond. So although I haven’t been able to master all of the burning lap events, my game play ability has certainly been elevated by it. It’s especially nice to have warmed up with some burning lap events before racing a friend with cars from something like the compact series.
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Feb 9th, 2007 at 14:38:32 - Warcraft III -- Frozen Throne (PC) |
Feeling confident in our improved abilities my friend and I decided to challenge my room mate in a 2v1 game despite being slaughtered a few days before. I swiftly made my first few commands, constructing the essential structures and ensuring my economy was on track. Things were rolling well but in my haste to build an army and upgrade their arsenal I had repeadedly forgotten to save money for upgrading my city center. Upgrading this central structure is essential for developoing more powerful troups and my delay here was costly, leaving me seemingly a generation behing my ally and sureley my opponent. However, I was lucky enough not to have my weak forces attacked and had the good fortune of my ally’s forces defending me while I continued upgrading.
I finally assembled what I felt was ad cent army but failted to organize it well. Though I had previously been told about the ability to group forces so they can be selected with the press of a button rather than struggling to target groups with the mouse, I negeltected to use this feature…bad move. My comrade and I launched our first offensive and were tearing through my room mate’s base. He started complaining about being bombarded before he had a chance to recover from his last attack we squashed and having the upper hand, my friend and I decided to show him some mercy…again…bad move.
With the extra time we were pleased to upgrade our forces and expand our grasp by securing additional gold mines to support the elite armies we were building. But before I knew it while my army was out exploring there were over twenty hyppogryph riders (powerful arches on flying mounts) in the center of my town destroying all my gold miners and timber collectors. He even destroyed my barracks before I could create any defensive forces. I was whipped out before my army was even able to make it back to my town. My room mate was able to trample us because he steadily improved as we leveled off. That loss taught more than I can express, and I we haven’t lost a 2v1 since, but that’s not to say it hasn’t been close. =)
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Feb 9th, 2007 at 13:57:16 - Warcraft III -- Frozen Throne (PC) |
Despite my longstanding appreciation of Starcraft, I had had not had a chance to try its brethren Warcraft 3 until very recently. I'm still pretty newb so for the most part I've just been learning playing against the computer or my roommates on the LAN. I've definitely progressed and developed a fairly solid game plan, however, I'm not comfortable enough with it yet to start building the foundations for my town almost unconsciously like my roommate can. I've gotten accustomed to playing Undead, which isn’t too much of a surprise since I played the parallel race Protoss in Starcraft. What makes Undead unique amongst the other races in Warcraft 3 is their "builders" have ability to open portals that summon buildings and then move on to another task. All other races builders have to stay around constructing the structure. Due to the initial monetary constraints in the beginning you cannot build all the structures you are permitted to, so you must prioritize. I sometimes build 3/4 of the base structures, get caught up building an army or scouting for an enemy and needlessly leave my town unable to progress. But I'm getting better. =)
The numerous projects and conquests one has to pay close attention to to maintain give the player a sense of what it would really be like to be the commander and chief of an expedition. There is a remarkable amount of strategies involved in successfully defeating a skillful enemy. One often has to make moves that seem irrational to succeed. For example, if you have a somewhat fortified base under attack but your army far away but close by the enemy it can be better to attack in hopes of destroying his base first or forcing his troops to retreat. Through my first couple of battles I was refreshed on the value of strategies like importance of having a rush defense and teaching crypt fiends the Web ability so ground troops are able to hit air targets.
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ChiefGrizzlyBlunts has been with GameLog for 17 years, 10 months, and 11 days |
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