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Mar 6th, 2008 at 02:38:27 - Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War - Soulstorm (PC) |
Gamelog #5
Entry #2
GAMEPLAY
For my second round of play, I played the campaign using the other new race, the Dark Eldar. It was much easier for me to handle the Dark Eldar than the Sisters of Battle, mostly because I had already played the demo which restricted me to playing only Dark Eldar. My first level of choice happened to be one where the win condition was not destroy all my enemies but capturing and holding over half of the critical points in the map for about seven minutes. This was fairly simple, I just had to keep two to three squads nearby two points and constantly reinforce them.
My second map proved slightly more challenging. Right off the bat, two squads of Chaos Space Marines attacked my base, leaving my hero unit the task of keeping them back while I built my building that requisitions soldiers. This map was very large in scope; it could probably have held eight or more armies. This made it difficult to spread out to search and capture points, because I didn’t want to spread my army too thin. Also it took awhile to find where the enemy base was. They often attacked from the south, making me think that that was where they were coming from. After searching around the southern area of the map only to find absolutely nothing, I started realizing that they were coming more from the northwest.
I wasn’t aware that the wind conditions in this game were to completely destroy all enemy buildings that produced soldiers. In the previous game, the HQ was all that had to be destroyed. Since I focused all my attention on just destroying their main base, they were able to spread out and build a few other buildings in opposite directions, making it harder for me to track them down. It only delayed the inevitable for them. I eventually got them.
DESIGN
This game of course has all the great features from previous Dawn of War series, such as point capturing and that all units were in the most part uniquely different than other races. The big thing with this game was the two new races, Dark Eldar and Sisters of Battle. With the two new races are new resources special to each race. Also the game now features vehicles that are not restricted by mountains and other obstacles.
The Dark Eldar have a unique feature in that once a building starts being constructed, it will automatically finish without having a builder stay and build it. This allows for a rapid base build up for the Dark Eldar. Their specific resource, souls of fallen soldiers, give them special bonuses that can be called upon in battle, such as demoralizing enemy units or weakening their armor. The Sisters of Battle’s resource did not seem nearly as innovative, although I didn’t get a chance to really try it.
The campaign has been improved significantly from the previous game, Dark Crusade. The campaign has a better narrator, who doesn’t over emphasize words like “indeed” and the campaign has a better story. The story explains more why certain races are involved in the first place and how the other races got involved. Dark Crusade’s campaign was more about that enemies exist and they must be killed.
One of the problems I had with the game was the voices for the Sisters of Battle. Either because their voices were louder or higher pitched, it was more annoying to constantly hear their battle cries repeated over and over. While other races do this too, it isn’t as obvious for them. Also, the Sisters are very similar to Space Marines and the Imperial Guard. Their builder unit and some of their buildings look similar to Imperial Guard buildings and how they are extremely zealous resembles the Space Marines. They are however more religious or ritual sounding then the Space Marines. While Space Marines are extremely religious zealous, the Sisters at times seem more ceremonial, for example, after capturing a point, they chant like they are at church.
This game however is extremely awesome and I can’t wait to play more of it.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Mar 6th, 2008 at 02:38:56.
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Mar 6th, 2008 at 01:18:17 - Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War - Soulstorm (PC) |
Gamelog #5
Entry #1
SUMMARY
Dawn of War – Soulstorm is an expansion to the RTS game, Dawn of War, set in the Warhammer 40K universe. The expansion adds two new playable races, the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar.
GAMEPLAY
The Dawn of War series is my favorite RTS. So I couldn’t resist waiting till the last minute to do my gamelog on this expansion which was released today. I jumped right in and started playing as the new race, Sisters of Battle. I decided to see how well they would face up against their enemies from the 40K universe, basically every other race that are not human or possessed. I did not get to test that thoroughly as I’d hoped. The Necrons, a race that was significantly more powerful in the previous installment, quickly took out half of the map. Five squads of the standard soldier type were able to take down three Necron Warrior squads, the Necron Lord, and a Tomb Spider, which is usually enough to take out an entire army.
I also didn’t get a chance to tryout the Sisters unique resource, Faith. I was having a difficult time collecting enough requisition resource to reinforce my squads. It took me awhile to figure out how to even collect Faith. What I thought was just an upgrade that increases the maximum amount of Faith possible turned out to be the upgrade that gave Faith resource. By the time I figured that out, I was already destroying the Necron base, the only opposing force left.
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Feb 21st, 2008 at 00:18:03 - Kirby's Adventure (NES) |
Gamelog #4
Entry #2
GAMEPLAY
As I advanced further, bosses and mini-bosses became more difficult while the levels became easier. Each new world had one more level than the previous, but the levels individually were getting shorter and shorter. Some of the shorter ones didn’t even have any difficult puzzles or mini-bosses, making them more of a chore.
The bosses however became more of a challenge. Bugzy, a bug that would grab Kirby if he came to close, and a rock creature that had a similar grabbing mechanism to Bugzy, were hard to beat because abilities that would hurl Kirby straight at them would simply leave him in their clutches to body slam. The boss for world 3, Mr. Shine and Mr. Bright (the Sun and Moon), also proved more difficult then the previous two bosses because you had to face off against one while being wary not to hit the other. All the bosses getting harder isn’t completely true. World 4 boss, Cracko, proved to be very simple to beat once I figured out how the level was set up (not just a boss, I had to jump several platforms to reach the specific area to face him).
I also tried some of the mini-games. My favorite was the quick draw game. There is a similar mini-game in Kirby Superstar that my friends and I used to play. I’ve definitely gotten rusty. I’m amazed at how many quick draws I won. The first three opponents are really easy to beat, where as the last two are more of a serious challenge.
GAMEDESIGN
Like all Kirby games, this game uses the innovative idea of instead of firing projectiles like missiles and fireballs at your opponent; you can use most of your opponents as projectiles against other opponents. What sets this game apart from its predecessor is Kirby’s ability to copy most of his opponents’ abilities and use them as his own. For an NES game, I’m amazed at how many different abilities there are. There’s almost as much to compete with Kirby 64, which had the ability to combine abilities. Some abilities however were too similar to each other, such as the ice and freeze abilities. One created a field around Kirby that would freeze any enemy and the other shot out a very short distance, maybe small three steps, in one direction that could freeze enemies. Games like Kirby Superstar would combine similar abilities into one, like the fireball and fire breath abilities into one fire ability, to make the gameplay more simple and easy to understand.
Some abilities are also more useful then others. While the gameplay makes it so that no one ability is useful throughout the entire game or level, some I thought were pointless. I never found use for the ball power. I was never able to hurt an opponent or crush a block with the ball power. Some abilities were also hard to handle, like the laser. I always wondered why it wasn’t a power in Kirby Superstar (the exact same enemy that gives the laser power in this game is also in Kirby Superstar but doesn’t give a power, if I remember correctly). The laser proved to be very difficult to use. I was very glad to see that some of the limited use powers, such as the microphone and crash powers originated from this game. I wish that some of the easier powers to handle, like bombs, would have been in this game.
I was glad to see that many of Kirby’s classic characters made it into this game, such as the Sun and Moon, Wispy Woods, King Dedede, and most of the mini-bosses. While many of them were probably new at the time, it is great to see all these characters in one game. This game expressed more of the two-faced nature of Sir Meta Knight. While Kirby Superstar had him solely as a nemesis, this game features him attacking Kirby by sending his minions against him, and aiding Kirby by giving him invincibility lollipops.
My biggest complaint is level design. The levels are too short. Until I got to a mini-boss or normal boss, most of the levels were simply getting past enemies and going in doors. Some levels I barely started and I was already at the end. I think what would have improved this is if some levels could be combined into larger levels. Also there should be more challenges that require certain abilities, like Kirby Superstar.
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Feb 20th, 2008 at 22:53:57 - Kirby's Adventure (NES) |
Gamelog #4
Entry #1
SUMMARY
Kirby’s Adventure is a platformer where Kirby must retrieve the seven pieces of the star rod from King Dedede and his cohorts. Kirby has the ability to inhale most of his enemies and can temporarily ‘copy’ their abilities for his own use.
GAMEPLAY
I’ve played nearly every Kirby game released up to Kirby 64 with the exception of Kirby’s Dreamland 3 and this game. It didn’t take long for me to get back into the rhythm of using Kirby to inhale enemies and either spit them back at others or copy their abilities.
There wasn’t much conflict in my gameplay. After playing several other Kirby games, it isn’t really hard to be surprised. All the enemies behave in similar fashion to the enemies from Kirby’s Dreamland 1 & 2 and Kirby Superstar. The biggest difficulty I had so far was fighting against world 2 boss, Paint Roller. His pattern was difficult for me to predict and he often bounced on my head.
Aside from this, the gameplay so far has been relatively easy. After playing Dreamland 2 and Superstar, there wasn’t anything new and surprising for me with the exception of a few abilities that weren’t in those two games.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Feb 21st, 2008 at 00:17:30.
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