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Jan 24th, 2008 at 17:44:57 - Gradius (NES) |
SUMMARY:
Gradius is a side scrolling space shooter that you pilot around, collecting and activating power-ups to finish bosses and levels.
GAMEPLAY:
While the game is fun at times, the difficulty is ridiculously hard. You collect power-ups which you can then "activate" to get: faster ship speed, wider shooting range, more powerful bullets (lasers), shield, or a buddy ship to help you along.
The game only gives you 3 lives, and so far I haven't been able to see if I could increase it by points or whatnot. What made the game interesting to me was how the power-ups worked. You collect them, but then you can "choose" what power-up you want to activate, depending on how many power-up icons you collect.
1 power-up gets you speed, 2 gets you double bullets, 3 gets you missiles that you launch to the ground, 4 gets you lasers, 5 gives you a buddy, 6 gets you a shield. What's neat is that you get to choose which one to activate, which is necessary for a strategy against your opponents.
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Jan 14th, 2008 at 20:00:01 - Jade Empire (XBX) |
2ND PLAYTHROUGH
GAMEPLAY:
Well, round two for this game went way past the minimum requirement. Spent about 5 hours playing it and it still holds its replay value. A new function came up when during the game I had to find airplane (known as Dragonflies in the story) parts to get to the next chapter of the game. It opened up a sort of mini-game that plays almost exactly the same as Space Invaders, except the plane you're controlling can move forward and backwards as well as left and right. You collect powerups to increase damage and increase your shields.
The game still keeps you on your seat and makes you want to complete more missions to unlock the story elements that you don't want to miss. It did, however, get a little slow sometimes when talking to an NPC took about 10 to 20 minutes to get a mission. The combat was still as fun as the first time, and at times it makes you want more of that rather than walking around finding missions.
DESIGN:
I have always been impressed by BioWare, not by just their stories and gameplay, but how much time they spend looking up or creating back-stories to each character they present. Each person you have join your party always has an interesting history that they either gladly tell you about or try to keep secret from you. Sometimes the people you meet have goals that conflict yours, for example, if you decide to show mercy to someone, the person you have as your follower will have his or her own opinion of what you did. BioWare also did lots and lots of research behind Eastern mythology to create an amazing fictional universe.
Even though Jade Empire doesn't have nearly as good a graphics as BioWare's recent game Mass Effect had, it does do a good job of level design and player control. There's usually more than one way to get somewhere, often having paths that form a circle to get somewhere. Player control is exactly what BW wanted, having you make choices to whatever you want, whether it's how to deal with a demon or having to find a husband for a woman who's a leader of the local gang.
The few complaints I have about the game are common glitches, autosave features, and teammate AI. The glitches Jade Empire had was usually lag. If you put in a button-mashing combo during combat, sometimes it either wouldn't pick it up, or would do too many attacks, having you attack at nothing. It would also be skipping frames during dialog scenes, making movements somewhat choppy.
The autosave feature Jade Empire has certainly isn't the best I've seen. Usually it saves about every 30-45 minutes during loading times, but when you've completed a quest or two in between those times and you die during a current quest, it gets rather annoying having to go back farther than you planned on. The biggest thing you learned was to save often manually instead of waiting for the autosave to kick in. The last complaint was teammate AI. There are two forms for your teammate that you can choose to have them in during combat: Attack and Support. The attack form usually has your teammate killed almost instantly, having all the enemies pointed toward you, so I found myself always putting him/her in support style, since it points all the enemies toward myself anyways and has the partner boost up one of my stats.
The game overall is very fun, if you're a RPG fan. This might not be for all gamers, but the story is very intriguing, having you play for hours before coming to a stopping point. It's not perfect, but it certainly will have you playing for about 30-40 hours per character.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jan 15th, 2008 at 00:44:42.
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Jan 12th, 2008 at 17:25:40 - Jade Empire (XBX) |
SUMMARY:
In Jade Empire, you are a top student of a martial arts school set back in Eastern mythology times. You were orphaned around birth, and were raised by Master Li, who taught you your fighting and magic skills, preparing you to fulfill your soon awaited destiny.
GAMEPLAY:
This game is very much like BioWare's other game, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, in which you level up your character by combat, talking (a lot) to people, completing quests, and reading pillars or scrolls or books.
What makes the game so fun is how much the story matters. Every time you complete a quest from the main plot line, you're left with a cliffhanger that convinces you (most of the time) to keep playing to see what more of the story you can unlock.
The combat was certainly an interesting form I'd never seen before in an RPG. Unlike KOTOR's round-based formula, Jade Empire has a mix between Baulder's Gate: Dark Alliance and Mortal Kombat. You have three main traits: body, spirit, and focus. Body is your health, spirit is magic, and focus is stamina, and you're able to use special gems and train different martial styles to enhance these traits. I started out choosing the balanced class at the beginning of the game to see if magic or stamina gave me more advantage.
The quests to the main plot line are fairly long (an hour at least), mostly because of all the dialog you have to go through to receive the quests. The sub-quests usually take about fifteen to thirty minutes to complete, and you can do them whenever you like. Each quest usually has you choosing what path you want to take. The Open Palm is the "good guy" path, while the Closed Fist is the "bad guy" path. I have chosen the Open Palm way, usually because it's harder (not all but most games) to do the "good guy" path in an RPG.
This entry has been edited 3 times. It was last edited on Jan 15th, 2008 at 03:03:36.
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Butano has been with GameLog for 16 years, 10 months, and 24 days |
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