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Feb 8th, 2008 at 21:44:38 - Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (360) |
Gamelog Entry #2:
Gameplay:
This game continues to astound me. It has not lost any of its great quality on over 3 hours of gameplay. I still feel an attachment to both of the protagonists, and the story is still compelling. The story line is great, is good as you can get for a military first-person shooter game. Im not quite sure where it is going yet because I have not gotten that much farther, but I still know that the US is trying to stop the terrorist organization in Russia from completing their goal, which is to bring back the Soviet Union.
My friends still watch me play the game, so I know that it has not lost its human to human interaction while I play the game for over 3 hours. The NPC's still interact with you also during various points of the game, which keeps you from losing all human emotion while playing this game if you do not have any friends who want to sit and watch you play it.
This game also flows really nicely. The transitions fro level to level are really smooth. The player understands where he is going to next and for what reason... and it all makes sense.
I definitely am still interested in playing out this game. I still feel submersed in the gameplay and the game has lost non of its interesting qualities I felt at the beginning. I absolutely loved playing this game.
Desgin:
This game is designed really, really well. One thing that i especially like about the game is the level design. Like I have mentioned in earlier gamelogs, I believe that an important aspect to any game is level design and that each level should bring a new element to the game to complete the gameplay experience as a whole to the player. This game accomplishes this from the very beginning. This game has a huge range of different levels. For example, the first level is a training mission, and afterwards, for the second level, you are dropped off on a cargo ship in order to capture a warhead of some kind. At the end of the second mission, two Russian Migs come and attempt to shoot down the ship and everyone inside of it, so you have to make it out of the cargo hold alive before you accomplish the mission. This is a really innovative concept and I have not played any other game on the market that has this same type of scenario. After the cargo ship, you have to rescue an important government personal that the terrorists have managed to take hostage, and this is a sniper level. There is another level where you are the gunner of an AC-130 gunship and you have to provide air support for the ground troops. These levels are very different but work together to make this game a complete and thorough experience for the gamer.
Another aspect I really liked was the level of strategy that the developers put in this game. This is not just a regular first person shooter...it takes a bit of skill to accomplish the missions. For example, for the sniper levels, some of the terrain is better suited for sniping, while other parts of the level are suited best for short burst machine gun action. There is also different types of objects to take cover behind. If you try to hide behind a hay bill or a thin piece of wood, enemy troops will be able to shoot you through it, just like in real life. But if you hide behind a tank or a thick sheet of metal, enemy troops are not able to shoot through it. The developers did a really nice job adding this element into the gameplay.
The controls for the controller work correctly. There is nothing wrong with the implementation of the controls and it seems like the developers had a really good button layout in mind when creating this game.
Multiplayer is so much fun in this game. I did not get a chance to play it online, but I did get to play it with my roommates, and each level is different and brings a new strategy to the table. The only thing that i really would have liked to see added was a co-op campaign mode. I think it would have added a lot more social interactivity among gamers, however, the versus multi-player mode is outstanding.
The sound effects if the game are right on. It really does sound like a grenade is going off, or that a helicopter is hovering 25 feet off of the ground right next to you.
The grenades design is also an awesome element of this game. The smoke grenades provide excellent cover, and how the developers implemented the flash-bang grenade was outstanding.
The artificial intelligence in this game amazed me as well. The soldiers would seem to fight each other, even if you were not in the fray. Your allies would actually help you out in all of the situations and would not leave you like a siting duck like a lot of other military first-person shooters do.
Overall, this game was amazing and if this website would have allowed me too I would have given it 6 out of 5 stars. I thoroughly enjoyed it and can not think of a single element that the designers left out.
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Feb 8th, 2008 at 17:50:35 - Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (360) |
Game Entry #1:
Summary:
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for the XBox 360 starts the player off on a training mission somewhere in the MIddle East. A terrorist organization does not like how Russia is being run and wants to bring the Soviet Union back into existence, so the leader of the terrorist organization knowing full well that other countries of the world will join the war, starts a civil war. The single player campaign is played from two perspectives, one perspective os from that of a US soldier and the other is from that of a member of the SAS.
Gameplay:
The beginning scene is a training mission, where the developers teach the player how the game works. It is a great introduction because the controls are not too complicated and easy to learn, and the level feels less like a standard tutorial and more like a level of the game. The player is also introduced to an avatar of the game, Soap, a US soldier recruited fresh out of training. From the very first mission, I can feel the badassery of Soap and instantly get attached to his personality.
From the first real mission, aka, the mission right after the training mission, the player is instantly fully immersed into the game. There is instant action as soon as the level starts, which immediately drew me in as a gamer. I could not stop playing, even if if for a short amount of time.
The story progresses and you get to be a member of the SAS. I find this interesting because you get to see how the story emerges from two different perspectives at the same time, and I can only assume that these two characters' paths will cross at some point in the story later in the future.
Human to human interaction in this game is very active. My friends were watching me play this game, and we were talking and they were "helping" me out by shouting random pieces of information while I was playing, such as "Dude to your left" or "Grenade, THROW IT BACK!". It was lots of fun and very social. The NPC's are also very active and will interact with you at certain points throughout the game, which made the game feel more realistic and more human.
My first hour of gameplay during this game was phenomenal and I can not wait for the second hour of gameplay...
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Jan 26th, 2008 at 01:53:20 - Elebits (Wii) |
Game Entry #2:
Game Play:
I still do not believe that there is much to the story after my second hour of game play. I got a little bit further into the game, where Kai's father calls him and says the he will not be coming home and that the Elebits are acting kind of strange. Kai still believes that his parents love Elebits more than himself. Not much more going on in the story than that. I cant really say that after two hours of game play that I feel any connection with any of the characters in the game. They characters feel empty and dull. They do not have much personality to them.
The levels are still the same, except I have moved from the upstairs area into the downstairs area. The objects f the levels are still the same, except the developers threw a couple more twists into the objects. One of them was that the gamer has a certain limit of objects they can break, and if they break more than that limit, the game terminates with a level failed. The other new aspect that the developers threw into the fray was that the gamer gets a noise meter, and if they go above the noise meter a certain number of times, then the game terminates into a level failure. They overall objective is still the same though, capture enough Elebits to get enough watts within a certain time limit.
As dull as I make this game out to be, I still find I give it a 3 stars because there is something that makes me want to keep playing it for a short amount of time. If I fail in a level, I keep trying to beat it, so there is some sort of motivation affect that Elebits does bring to gamers.
Design:
I think that overall what the developers were trying to do with the game was very creative and unique. However, I don't think that they implemented it very well at all. I personally believe that level design is an important aspect to any video game. Each level should contribute something unique to bring the game together as a whole. I definitely do not believe Elebits has this effect. Like I said previously, the levels are not much different from each other and the overall objective is the same. I find this to become boring quickly, which results in me, as a gamer, not wanting to play this game for more than a couple of levels at a time.
The developers also implemented the Wii controllers into their game very well. To open a door, the gamer must click on the door knob, hold and make a twisting motion with the Wii-mote. This goes for opening faucets and other various objects that the gamer can interact with in the game. However, I did get frustrated easily with these controls as well. When I would open a door, sometimes I would open it up too hard and the door would close automatically, kind of like in real life. This was annoying, as I always had a tendency to do this with the door. The same thing went for opening drawers and cabinets in the rest of the game. I found that you can interact with everything in the levels, which I absolutely loved about the game, but i was also easily frustrated with this fact as well. There would be these items that the gamer would pick up occasionally, and to activate it, the gamer would have to pick it up and slam the item against the floor or an object. Whenever I wanted to do this, the item always never seemed to activate, but when I was just simply trying to move it from one place to another, the item ended up activating and would thus result in me, as a gamer, wasting an item, which would just frustrate me farther.
I also found the music to be really annoying. I am usually tolerant of most music, because I have been heavily involved in orchestras and bands throughout my life, but I could not stand this music. All of it sounded the same. In every level. In the beginning of every level, it had an option that you could pick music from previous levels if you wanted to. I do not know why it had this option, as the entire score sounded the same, which added annoyance as I played through the game.
Overall, I found this game to be an average experience. I did not find anything too great about it. Everything was average about it. The story, the game play, and music, the controls, the game world. So, for the overall gaming experience, I give this game a 3 out of 5 stars.
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Jan 25th, 2008 at 23:30:22 - Elebits (Wii) |
Game Entry #1:
Summary:
Elebits starts off introducing the protagonist of the game, Kai. Kai is a little boy who feels like his parents do not love him because they are too wrapped up in their research of creatures called Elebits. One night there is a storm, and Kai's parents leave him to go take care of their lab, when all of a sudden the electricity goes out. Kai wants to watch his favorite television show, but can't because of the electricity. Remembering that his father told him that Elebits create electricity for humans, Kai grabs his father's capture gun and is bound to capture enough Elebits to get the television working.
Game Play:
This game definitely starts off with an interesting story line. During my first hour of game play, the story really did not progress at all. After an hour, I was still playing the character Kai, and still capturing Elebits with my fathers capture gun in order to turn on the television. I feel that every level has the same objective; capture enough Elebits so that I can have enough Watts to power whatever device I want within a time limit. I do not really see what time limits has to do with capturing enough wattage to power up electronic devices throughout the house. I think the developers had a good idea in creating this game, but they did not tie the story very well into the game play...at least not very well within the first hour of game play. But maybe, I am hoping, that that will change my second hour of game play.
The game play itself was not all that interesting. Like I said before, it felt like every level was the same and all of the objectives of every level was the same. I did not feel like the levels progressed very well. For example, the first level was the bedroom. I had to collect so may Watts within a certain time limit. The second level I started off in the bedroom, but got to go out into the hallway. I had the same objective as the previous level, collect so many Watts in a certain time. And the objective in the third level was the same as level one and two, except the only difference was that I got to explore the bathroom. It felt very repetitive and not very exciting because of this. The story does not progress either; I'm still Kai and I'm still trying to capture Elebits to watch my television show.
Elebits also is a single player game. There really is no interaction with any bystanders. Come to think of it, there isn't any interaction with NPC's either, which, in my opinion, kind of dulls the game a little bit more.
I'm hopeing my game play experience will be more exciting the next time around...
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Doc has been with GameLog for 16 years, 10 months, and 11 days |
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