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Feb 8th, 2008 at 18:23:53 - Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (PC) |
Gameplay:
The game only took two hours to complete, but during the end the action was intense. In the final boss battle, I, along with a couple dozen NPC rebels (not that they survived very long) had to take out thirteen Striders, giant three-legged machines of war who can seriously back a punch. And if that wasn't tough enough, each Strider was accompanied by one to three Hunters. It was impossible to kill the Strider with the “Magnasun Devices” without first killing the Hunters, since they could shoot the devices out of your grasp. Killing each Strider was immensely satisfying-the Magnasus Devices stuck directly to the Striders and exploded with a very satisfying crunch as the now separated legs fell to earth. The NPCs would cheer with each kill, then an urgent message would come in, warning that yet another Strider had been spotted nearby.
After all the Striders had been killed, the game was pretty much over, except for the rocket launch that would close the Combine portal and save the earth, then an attack by Combine advisors. I would have liked to have my gun when the advisors picked us all up and slammed us into the walls, then began to kill people one by one. Even if it didn't make a difference, it still would have felt like I was doing something, rather than just watching a movie unfold.
Design:
My favorite improvements over Episode 1 are: 1) Flashlight power separated from suit power, so you can swim in dark places without worrying about your oxygen running out twice as fast while using the light. 2) The ammo now has little icons that show up both when you are using the weapon and when you pick up the ammo, instead of just when you pick up ammo. This was a big problem for me the first time I played Episode 1, since I never could figure out what ammo I had picked up and when I could use the more powerful weapons again. 3) The models are much better. This also means that Episode 2 took up a whopping 3 gb on my hard drive, but the enhanced quality is worth it.
I found the puzzles fairly easy to figure out. There was nothing inherently new about any of it (though driving a vehicle that didn't have a weapon for the WHOLE time made me feel slightly exposed). However, the levels didn't seem so linear as in Episode 1, giving the game a more open feel. Of course, it was still progressive gameplay, but it didn't feel so much that way.
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Feb 8th, 2008 at 18:23:30 - Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (PC) |
Summary:
Half Life 2: Episode 2 is a first person shooter (FPS) in which the player plays Gordon Freeman, a lab assistant from Black Mesa who's specially designed HEV suit allows him to fight off wave after wave of zombies and aliens. Episode 2 continues the story of the Combine invasion of earth, and the fight to survive their assault.
Gameplay:
In the beginning of the game the action was rather slow, as new players were expected to learn how to use the controls to complete a rather simple puzzle to advance. Quite quickly, however, the action ramps up, until, about fifteen minutes into the game, I was fighting for my life against swarms of bug-like Ant-lions. Throughout the game, my heart was constantly pounding as I wondered what was around the corner, and the game never seemed to disappoint me. Even when we had finally arrived at the safe haven, not thirty seconds later there was somewhere else to go, and some more aliens to blow up.
The storyline in the game was quite compelling, with the cut scene at the beginning getting new players up to speed on what happened in Episode 1, then the rest of the game extended it quite well. I wasn't quite paying attention in the beginning, so I wasn't entirely sure why we were going to White Forest, but the game kept me too busy to worry about that much. In addition, the main characters are very well developed, allowing the story to be told quite efficiently through their mouths.
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Jan 23rd, 2008 at 22:11:13 - Gradius 3 (SNES) |
Gameplay:
During the second 45 minutes the game got much harder and also much more fun. I was able to collect enough powerups to get an 'option', which at first I thought was some sort of extra rocket (it's a little orange ball), but is really a nifty little thing that will fire when you fire, doubling your fire rate. The game allows the player to have up to four options, and those, along with a missile upgrade, lasers, and a shield bonus, allowed me to progress quite swiftly through the next two levels.
However, the increased amount of friendly fire on the screen made it much more difficult for me to see the enemy fire (it didn't help that their shots looked exactly like my missiles), and so I never managed to progress much further than that.
Design:
One of the best features that I saw in this game was the ability to use the options to increase not only the rate of fire, but the area that I could cover with them. This made shooting through a swarm of enemy craft a whole lot easier, as well as the boss levels.
As stated above, this made the enemy shots a lot harder to see. However, that could be looked upon as the penalty for the ease of killing, and if so would be a credit to the design, rather than a flaw.
The levels (those that I saw) mostly consisted of the same alien ships and turrets, though there were other enemies that varied from level to level.
The game creates conflict by throwing wave upon wave of enemies at you from all sides, which forces the player to move in all directions, instead of just up and down. On the other hand, the boss fights didn't really seem that hard, but there wasn't much space to maneuver, so perhaps that is more of a blessing than a curse.
On the whole, Gradius III is a good diversion, a game that is good if one has half an hour to kill, but not something that a gamer would spend hours on, trying to beat the next level.
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Jan 23rd, 2008 at 22:10:45 - Gradius 3 (SNES) |
Summary:
In Gradius III, the player operates a spaceship fighting against hordes of alien ships, creatures, and elements of nature. There is no story that I could see, except for a very brief intro movie of the fighter being dropped off by a larger mothership. The one very distinguishing feature I saw is that the powerups are leveled, so to get higher upgrades, the player must collect more powerups, instead of getting a single powerup for a certain power by killing a high level enemy.
Gameplay:
At first the controls were very difficult for me to figure out, though this was probably because I was running the game through an emulator on my PC. Still, I would have liked a tutorial at least. When the game started, I found myself frantically pushing buttons, trying to find out what did what before I was swamped by enemies.
In addition, I found the loadout screen, where the player chooses the type of upgrades that powerups will give them, rather hard to figure out. It was only after the third game I played that I realized that pressing the arrow keys would choose options. Now, I know this probably should have been obvious, but I have played other space shooters where the controls were different (ie, pressing A moved up and B moved down), and the purpose of the loadout screen was not very clear, since I did not start out with the selected upgrades. It was only much later that I discovered that this was the powerup selection screen. For example, choosing if a level two powerup would give me a single powerful missile, or multiple weaker missiles.
At the very beginning of the game, I was frustrated by the fact that I couldn't seem to survive longer than a minute every single time. However, this was fixed by changing the difficulty setting, which for some reason had been set to “Hard”. After that, I was able to enjoy the game much more, since the enemies and enemy missiles didn't move so fast, and there weren't so many of them as before. Not to say that it still wasn't hard. At all times I felt tense, wondering what was just up ahead, and if I had enough powerups to get through.
As I said above, there was really no story to the game. However, I didn't miss it, and in fact felt a little relieved at its absence. Other space shooters that I have played had storylines which were very shallow, or just didn't fit the genre. Having no storyline allowed me to continue to the next level after defeating the boss without having to endure a long cutscene showing me why I was going there.
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Bucky24 has been with GameLog for 16 years, 10 months, and 12 days |
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