 |
|
Feb 8th, 2008 at 04:06:02 - Tekken 3 (PS) |
GAMEPLAY
Aww, yeah! Now that's what I'm talkin' about!
After getting accustomed to the rules of the game, I notice that I'm able to play it much more naturally. Combos come easy, juggling is second nature, one-hit-kills are a piece of cake (we';l get to that later). It's not hard to see why this game caused such a commotion in the late nineties.
There are just so many possibilities, so many factors you need to take into account. To do well at this, you have to devote your life to it. I was forced to play on easy mode, as I wasn't as used to Tekken 3's interface as I was Tekken 5, but even on easy, the computer offered a challenge. On that difficulty setting, getting the timing down isn't as important as the harder difficulties, but the fights are still very intense.
DESIGN
Tekken is the pinnacle of 3-D fighting games for infinite reasons. Here's a few I noticed while playing.
"Hellz yeah!" sense of achievement. It's important to make sure you're picking the right difficulty. Too easy and you'll be bored, too hard and you'll want to throw the controller at your roommate/houshold pet/self. So when you find a challenge that's just right, you're inroduced to a whole new spectrum of awesome. You feel great beating the heck out of someone and achieving the "perfect" victory, and when you're faced with a tough opponent that you can't seem to beat...but then you finally do...THAT's "hellz yeah!" Good developers, way to keep me reeled in.
Heart attack inducing intensity. Punches and kicks fly like bullets and hurt like 'em, too. At times you're caught in a stalemate with your opponent with the two of you blocking and dodging each other's attacks. This leads to heavy anticipation. "Who's gonna land the next hit?!" you ask as you pound your sweat drenched controller, until BOOM! You hit him! WHOO!!! I am the man!.........Then you die with one hit in the next frame.
What? What do you mean? Let's get to those one-hit-kills I was talking about.
Tekken's attack damage was toned way down in later iterations of ther series, so it came to me as a huge surprise when a punch that only took away 10% of my opponent's health bar in Tekken 5 suddenly had my enemy at half strength. "Whoa, WTF?" was all I could say as I, winning with full health and my oppenent an inch away from death, suddenly was brought to the same status as the other guy in one second. LITERALLY...one second...
So, once I realized that the damage was ramped up from what I was used to, I decided to test the strongest attack I'd ever seen in a Tekken game: Paul Phoenix's charge-up punch (Away + LP+RP). "PERFECT" is all I hear as my opponent falls...one hit...less than five seconds...bad developers, now I want to do that every single match...and I almost did.
In conlusion: THIS GAME EFFIN' ROCKS. The characters are colorful and appealing. The gameplay's fast, responsive, addicting, and SUPER-deep. I love it. We're getting married this Spring...
read comments (1)  - add a comment  - read this GameLog  |
|
Feb 7th, 2008 at 23:02:58 - Tekken 3 (PS) |
SUMMARY
Tekken 3 is a one-on-one fighting game. The player progresses through a series of fights by defeating one opponent after another. The game employs a 4-button attack configuration: left punch, right punch, left kick, and right kick, whick, in comination with the 8 D-Pad buttons, can be strung together to attack the opponent.
GAMEPLAY:
Tekken's gameplay was the fastest 3-D fighter on the market when it hit the scene in 1998. It's hailed as the original Playstation's number one fighting game, and it's easy to see why. After almost ten years, Tekken 3 has aged surprisingly well.
This game is FAST. The key to nailing a speedy fighting game is responsive controls, and Tekken has always been known for this. If for any reason, your character doesn't do something the milisecond you hit a button, that fighting game is as good as dirt. As such, Tekken is pure gold.
The game starts out with the player selecting one of about a dozen characters. Each character has varying levels of attack speed and damage. So, naturally, faster characters do less damage, while slow characters make up for their lack of speed with sheer power.
One facet of the Tekken games is that every character has the ability to string attacks together for up to a 10-hit comination attack. It's up to the player to find the right chain of buttons that leads to this kind of attack through trial-and-error.
Another gameplay feature of Tekken and every other fighting game is juggling. Juggling is a technique in which the player launches their opponent into the air, and by attacking correctly, they keep their opponent airborne, leaving the victim defenseless until they land. I found juggling to be a difficult technique to learn, as the timing required to attack your opponent has to be immaculate.
Speaking of timing, all fighting games are based on it, and this game's no exception. The player has to learn a boatload of techniques regarding time, from when and how to attack given the distance between your character and your opponent to what action to take the moment the fight starts. Here's a word of advice: When the annoncer says "FIGHT!", you better have made a decision. "Should I advance? Retreat? Attack? Jumo? Crouch? Do nothing (characters automatically block when standing still)?" All are possible solutions, so you need to do something EXACTLY when the match starts, and not just anything...it has to be perfect, because the computer knows exactly when the match starts, you don't. By the time you make a decision, you're 2-feet deep in fist through your stomach...
Great game. It's awesome. Gonna go play some more.
add a comment - read this GameLog |
|
Jan 24th, 2008 at 23:52:23 - Gradius 3 (SNES) |
Entry #2:
GAMEPLAY:
Once I decided to check the options screen to see if there was a way to adjust the difficulty, the game became a heck of a lot more fun. The gameplay was changed considerably. On easy mode, many of the enemies that were at your throat on normal simply fly by as if saying "Hello, player whom I'm supposed to kill, how are you today?" Dodging projectiles became simple. Attaining power-ups was no longer a chore. I was able to get to the third level without losing a single life. I wouldn't have even dreamed of doing that on "normal" mode. Pfft, normal...more like "nor-hell"...
DESIGN:
The designers of this game must've had a field day on the testers. I feel sorry for the guy whose job it was to play it on hard mode. The game requires the ability to look in more than one direction, which human eyes simply can't do. Enemies mostly come from the right of the screen with a few exceptions. Unless you completely destroy every last one, you've got a lot of work to do. If you, by chance, let an enemy get past you, you have to contend with the enemies coming at you from the right, and the enemy that got past you along with his bullets. Let more than one enemy get past you, and you've ruined your life. The thing that makes this a prolem is that a collision with enemy units results in instant death. At this point in gaming history, they didn't like the idea of a "life bar" or a "health system" because that would be too FUN. So you can't go back to kill the guy you missed, you just have to grow another set of pupils. Sounds easy right?
With design like that, there's no skill involved, only memorization. A monkey can memorize stuff (not as much stuff as in Gradius, though), so all you have to do to be good at this game is memorize the locations of all the enemies, when EXACTLY do they appear, and what do I need to have to kill them.
The power-up tree is the unholy union of genuis and "effing retarded". The first branch is always "Speed Up", and without that, the game would literally be impossible. You have to be at a certain speed to get to the enemy locations on time in order to prevent them from getting behind you. And if you suck too bad, the game will highlight the Speed Up brach when you restart, because the game knows that if you don't speed up at least once...YOU HAVE NO FRIGGIN' CHANCE!
The first boss on normal mode CAN NOT be defeated unless you've earned the laser weapon and a couple of "options" (little balls that mimick your weapons). Well, it could, it would just take a little less than a MILLENIUM. The object of the game then becomes "speed up" or "get the laser", instead of "get to the end".
Gradius has a lot of things going for it. Even though it's completely unforgiving, it can still be pretty addictive. I still think Contra's Konami's best shooter series, though.
read comments (1) - add a comment - read this GameLog |
|
Jan 24th, 2008 at 01:01:07 - Gradius 3 (SNES) |
"$#*%!", "%$@*", and "$%?@!@#$%&~!!!"
That's all I found myself saying while playing Gradius III. This game is HARD. Unforgiving. Unrelenting. Almost impossible.
Before the start of the game, you select your power-up tree. Throughout play, you receive a power-up that highlights a branch on the tree. When a branch you want is highlighted, you have the option to either activate it or wait for another power-up that highlights the next branch in the tree. The game lets you create a custom tree or select from a few pre-made templates. At first, I went with the custom method in hopes of picking the best weapons possible. Selecting from the templates forces you to compromise, so I thought this was the best option. I THOUGHT WRONG!
The game starts off slow. Your ship moves pretter solemnly, and there's a lot of empty space to just flutter around in. Then the game throws the first set of enemies at you, and they move ten times faster than you do. If you defeat the line of enemies, they give you a power-up. My first instinct was to save it, as the more powerful weapons occur later in the tree. However, this puts you at a huge disadvantage, because your ship wont move fast enough to even get past the first minute of gameplay.
I die over and over again. Creating custom power-up trees became tedious three lives ago, so selecting from a template is now the way to go. By now I've memorized the locations of the enemies up until before the first boss, because by then, the game sends SO MUCH STUFF at you that you have no idea what's going on. You have to dodge bullets, other enemies, even the environment (when present). That's not a big deal, I've dodged all that stuff countless times in the past. The problem is that Gradius III sends this stuff at you in such grand quantities that the game can't even keep up with itself. At times this is a welcome defect, because when this happens, human reflexes are finally enough.
I played this game for an hour. Why? Because I hate myself...
read comments (1) - add a comment - read this GameLog |
|
|
 |
| panda-venom128's GameLogs |
|
panda-venom128 has been with GameLog for 16 years, 10 months, and 10 days |
view feed xml
|
| Entries written to date: 10 |
|
