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Mar 6th, 2008 at 02:11:10 - Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven (PS2) |
GAMEPLAY
This game does a good job making you feel like a bad-ass. The game gives you the opportunity to perform stealth kills given that you're able to get the drop on your enemy. The type of stealth kill you perform is dependant on your position in relation to your target. If you're directly behind them, you'll slit their throat, but if you come from the front and you manage to attack right before they see you, you'll plunge your blade through their heart. The coolest one, by far, is the "death from above" kill where I jumped from a rooftop and impaled the guy as I landed.
Sneaking is easy enough. The camera gets in the way quite a bit, as my control over it is limited. It's really easy to get lost. Each level is like a maze. There's an item that allows you to mark you path on the map (colored rice), but you shouldn't have to rely on something like that to get through a level. In any case, I'm having fun, so hopefully, I'll learn to adapt with time.
DESIGN
Ah, the ninja: today's most misconstrued and fictionalized beings. A good chunk of what people know about ninjas is either completely false, or just plain stupid. Thus, a game like Tenchu, where an attempt is made to portray ninjas realistically, is more of a history lesson than a game...at least it is until the logs appear.
You start every game with a grappling hook that you can use to almost teleport to higher ground. If an enemy is one the ground and you're on a rooftop, your enemy won't be able to see you, especially if the sneak button is held down. Actually, I take that back. I was running on a roof and was spotted by an enemy guard. All I had to do was press the sneak button and it was like I was like it never happened.
The game's reward system is very well done. You're rewarded in small ways for almost everything you do. If you're able to perform nine stealth kills in a level, you're rewarded with new moves. If you're able to stay hidden, you're rewarded at the end of the level with new items. And it's not like you're given the key to the city for every step you take, so there's great incentive to perform well.
Now to what you've all been waiting for: what's bad about it. Who the frag thought up the camera system for this game? It's like the game designer was made fun of in school and became bitter about it then sought revenge, but all they could think to do to get back at society is make it so people who play this game won't be able to see the cool stuff that happens. When hugging a wall, you're not able to move the camera freely, unlike while just walking. Instead you can only choose angles, like left, right, and ONLY if you're at the corner of a wall does the cameral focus on your character, allowing you to see around corners. Even when you're given control of the camera, you still can't see anything. You can only circle around your character, you can look up or down. The game has a view button where the stick that controls movement controls the camera...but you have to sacrifice being able to move! I guess being able to do both would have been too forgiving. Then you have indoor levels. When you're outside, sneaking around is great, but inside it's a completely different story. There's a meter that gauges how close you are to an enemy, but it's only based on proximity, so factors like height are impossible to take into consideration. This game was made in a time before surround-sound was standard, so you can't detect enemies by sound. When you're outside, enemies are far away and you can memorize their patrol patterns, but inside, confrontations are so up-close and personal that all you can do is turn a corner and eat cold steel. Mmm, my favorite...nothing fills me up quite like a sword rammed violently into my abdominal organs.
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Mar 6th, 2008 at 00:28:26 - Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven (PS2) |
SUMMARY
Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven is a single-player, story-based, stealth game in which the player assumes the role of one of three characters, each with unique abilities, and must traverse a level and eliminate targets without being seen. The player can employ various items to prevent them from being spotted, or in the event they are seen, use items that aid in escape or killing targets.
GAMEPLAY
One of the main gameplay mechanics is sneaking, and that's something this game does both well and not so well in order to establish the rules of the game. As far as I can tell, there are two levels of existance: visible and invisible. Unlike other games in the stealth genre, Tenchu features a sneak button where, when pressed, all your steps are muffled no matter what the circumstance. Remember that, it's important: ss long as the sneak button is held down, your CAN NOT be heard. Falling from fifty feet up? Hold down the sneak button. Jumping into a pool of water? Keep that sneak button held down. Walking though a forest of trees made out of rubber duckies and leaves made out of broken glass in Autumn, so the ground is covered with broken glass and the only way to avoid the glass is to jump on the rubber ducky trees but every time you jump on a rubber ducky, it squeaks, so you might as well walk on the broken glass, 'cause either way, you're screwed? If that button's pressed, enemy guards will be none the wiser.
This game is an attempt at making a game where ninjas are portrayed realistically. For the most part this is true: I sneak around, I stick to the shadows, I don't disappear and reapper outta nowhere (...yet...I'll get to that in my next post). However, there are still some things here that make it undoubtedly fictional...and undoubtedly fun. For instance, there's an item that brings you back to life where you're killed instead of forcing you to do the entire level over again. Many games have done this before, but the way Tenchu does it is both clever and crazy: it's a log. After the death animation, your character turns into a log...that's right...A LOG. This is a reference to the ancient ninja art of making your enemy think they're attacking you, when they're just attacking something that LOOKS like you. Here, you just turn into a log and respawn...not quite grounded in reality, but it was still awesome.
There are a bunch of realistic items like throwing stars, blowguns, caltrops, and smoke bombs, and they're cool, but...I want more logs...
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Feb 21st, 2008 at 00:07:18 - Super Smash Brothers (N64) |
Entry #2:
GAMEPLAY
I’ve started to get some of the aspects of the game down. I can utilize attacks more effectively, dodging is second nature, and I’m having a great time. It’s the controllers are bulky and that makes it hard to pull of some moves, most notably dashing, but it’s something you get used to with time. I tried some of the single player features to practice, but that’s just as punishing. Who gets priority when two characters is beyond me, and I couldn’t seem to get the timing right for anything. There’s a training mode that allows you to slow the game speed down to a crawl, but after getting used to the normal speed, but this makes things worse. Jumping was a chore and I only got it right half the time. The single player game, which seems like a normal fighting game’s arcade mode, is just as difficult for me, even on easy mode. The game is difficult, but not unforgivably so, and thus I can overcome its obstacles.
DESIGN
The controls are simple, yet incredibly deep . The A button in conjunction with the analog stick create special attacks. The B button is your hand-to-hand attack button, and when the analog stick is flicked in a direction and then the A button is pressed, an opponent launching “smash” attack is unleashed. Then you have the Z button, which is guard. This creates an impenetrable shield around you that shrinks over time, making it finite. While shielded, you can flick the stick left or right to dodge or get behind your opponent, which leaves them open for an attack if you do it right. R button is grab, in which you take hold of an opponent to possibly use as a shield, then you can press R again to perform a high damage throw. Up and the C buttons are jump, and when pressed twice you can do a double jump. A triple jump is done by double jumping, then performing an “up-B” attack, which has an area of effect unique to each character, another aspect of gameplay that must be mastered.
While playing this game, my friends and I laughed and yelled at the screen numerous times (or maybe that was just me). The game is centered around the multiplayer experience, but some aspects about the “multiple” player game make this almost unplayable.
One reason is the SUPER crappy camera. SSB does its best to make sure that every player is visible on the screen at all times. The game accomplishes this by zooming the camera in when characters are close and panning out when they’re far away. Whoever thought this up needs shock therapy via Pikachu. The levels are designed on such epic scale that when two characters are on opposite sides of the map, they turn in to atoms not visible to the naked OBSERVATORY. This problem would be easily fixed if there was only some way of distinguishing between characters, such as a “1P” icon above an arrow. For the game’s sake, it does feature one such icon but it disappears at the most inopportune moments. Something like that needs to be present at ALL times in this game! That’s not the only reason the camera bites fire flower. The point of view is always centered between the two farthest players, but the game still tries to make your avatar discernable from anything else, so sometimes the game has to cut off the edges of the map. If you’re knocked away for whatever reason, but not K.O.ed, and you can’t see a platform, or yourself to save your live, you’re gonna want to suplex the cartridge.
I guess that’s the only thing that hinders the game…but it’s really, SUPER significant…
This game is SUPER time-based. You MUST nail the timing for your attacks, there’s NO room for error. You need to know when to attack and how. Pressing the guard button doesn’t result in an immediate shield, so THAT need to be timed. There’s another time delay when you’ve been knocked into the air and you have to wait before your character can recover. Like any game with combos, there’s a big delay between the end of one and when you can start another. This delay allows your opponent to recover, and, what do you know? You need to master more timing. But these are the rules that make the game playable, fun, and worthwhile, unlike the camera, which just decided it was gonna make its own rules…
So, once you’ve got all that down, the game is SUPER fun. Making you opponent fly off screen is such a gratifying thing that I enjoyed it even when I was the one garnering frequent flier miles. The game’s developers really hit the nail on the head with satisfying gameplay that makes you cheer for your self when you do well, and if you’re like me and you’re constantly blasting off at the speed of light, you still get to witness some SUPER pretty explosions…of yourself.
SUPER Smash Bros. is a SUPERfluous game with SUPER deep gameplay and SUPER easy to learn controls. Aside from the SUPER flawed camera, this game provides hours of SUPER fun for you and your SUPERb friends. However, if you’re turned off by SUPERficial timing based fighting systems, this may not be the game for you, but it’s SUPER rewarding if you master its SUPERior SUPERness………SUPER…
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Feb 20th, 2008 at 20:08:39 - Super Smash Brothers (N64) |
Entry #1
SUMMARY
Super Smash Bros. is an over the top fighting game for up to four players. Players use a plethora of moves and power-ups to weaken their opponent(s) enough to be knocked off screen. Players have the choice of playing as one of several characters, each unique in move sets, speed, and damage, which they then take into several different themed levels.
GAMEPLAY
My first hour spent with the game has come and gone. Time flew by faster than my character, as I have yet to win a match against my friends who have much more experience than I do. This was my first time playing the original SSB, which is a shame, because had I even seen the title screen of this game previously, I bet I’d be a lot better at it.
My first inclination when I started play was to mash buttons. I’ve played Melee on the GameCube, and that never got me anywhere, so it’s apparent that this game contains some considerable depth. That’s not something you expect. You really can’t anticipate how much calculation is actually required when confronted with the terrifyingly brutal materialization of malice that is…Jigglypuff…
There are basic things about the game that you NEED to know before you play, otherwise you won’t stand a chance, such as dodging, guarding, triple jumping, smash attacks, dashing, and the entire item sub-category. A player who doesn’t know these things versus someone who does will lose. They WILL lose…it’s a fact…unless that person literally kills their opponent.
Each level is completely different from the last, as some are harder than others. Some are simply a decorated platform, while others are multi-faceted planes of existence where background objects interfere in the fight. Some levels only have two exits: stage left and stage right, while others have pitfalls every ten feet, which ties in to the goal of the game. The goal in each level is to get you opponent to fall (or fly, as I did many times) off the screen.
So far, the gameplay’s SUPER fast (hence the title), controls are responsive, and victory is satisfying…something I haven’t seen yet. This is NOT a pick-up-and-play game. You gotta have serious skill to step into this ring. I do not…yet I can’t stop playing.
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panda-venom128 has been with GameLog for 16 years, 10 months, and 11 days |
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