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Mar 5th, 2008 at 23:20:12 - Devil May Cry 4 (PS3) |
Entry #2
GAMEPLAY:
Devil may Cry 4 is a very fun game to play because of its combat and stylish ranking systems. Whenever you hack and slash at an enemy, you are given stylish points for the battles, which helps your overall ranking for the level. In order to get a high stylish ranking you need to use a variety of moves; if you use the same move over and over your stylish rating will go up at a very slow rate. This gives the player incentive to try new moves and keep combat from becoming dull by using the same move over and over again. The combat itself is challenging enough to keep the player interested and the graphics during combat are dazzling to watch.
Another cool thing about Devil May Cry 4 is its ability buying system. If you beat a level in a short amount of time, collect a lot of orbs and get a high Stylish ranking for a particular level you obtain a large amount of skill points. These skill points can be spent at the beginning of each level and sometimes within the level through special shrines. You spend the points on new moves for your sword, charge ups for your gun, grappling for your demon arm and other movement abilities such as dodging double jumping or enemy hopping.
DESIGN:
What makes Devil May Cry innovative is the ranking elements. A long term goal in the game is to get the highest ranking possible and performing the levels to the best of your ability. On the short term the game has stylish ranking within the level to maintain the players interest and keep the game innovative. All in all players strive to accomplish these goals not just for bragging rights but because it also acts as a reward of facility by allowing you to choose more abilities the better you perform. Although this idea of performing well to gain access to skills that help you perform even better is not a unique quality of Devil May Cry 4, it does this in a very smooth and captivating way.
The level design for Devil May Cry 4 make the game a lot of fun. First of all the graphics look great even when a lot of things on screen are in motion, making for good eye candy. The layout of the levels is linear but revolves around solving puzzles, so it doesn’t allow you to get too bored too fast. All the levels I’ve played have a good amount of enemies and the enemies are well placed in the level to keep the game challenging and interesting. The bosses at the end of some of the levels are practically levels within themselves because they have so many different moves and ways to counter attack that it becomes a matter of solving the puzzle. The tone of each level is mysterious and creepy which suits the game’s themes very well.
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Mar 5th, 2008 at 23:19:37 - Devil May Cry 4 (PS3) |
Entry #1
SUMMARY:
Devil May Cry 4 is a hack and slash adventure game in which you play as Nero, a young demon slayer unraveling the mysterious within a corrupt religious community. The object of the game is to kill all the demons and save the world.
GAMEPLAY:
I love the Devil May cry series, so I had high hopes when I bought it. The 40 minute required installation on the Playstation 3 seemed a little unnecessary, but it gave the background story during the installation which was convenient. The intro cinematic set up a good tone for the game as Nero defies physics slashing through demon minions making his way to the church while his female friend is singing surprisingly enjoyable opera. The new main character Nero is an oblivious young badass and is pretty likeable aside from some of his cliché dialogue. All in all I would say that the game made me feel good and successfully catered to my high hopes.
So far the storyline is pretty interesting. Right from the get go you know there is something fishy going on with the church because Dante, the main character in Prior Devil May Cry games, is attacking the church and assassinates the high priest. Oblivious as your character Nero is, he goes into battle with Dante and you finally gain control of your character. This initiates the first level which deserves referencing because its probably one of the coolest tutorial levels I have ever played in a game.
During the level, you spend time learning the different combos while fighting your old Devil May Cry main character, which is pretty unique. In the midst of this tutorial there are more cutscenes revealing your character Nero’s true power, his demon fist. Normally Devil May Cry is just swords and guns but Devil May Cry 4 implements a new grab attack which very well may be the coolest action your character can perform.
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Feb 21st, 2008 at 00:36:50 - Final Fantasy XII (PS2) |
Entry #2
GAMEPLAY:
The combat mechanics have been radically redone in FFXII. Instead of choosing actions for each character each turn, FFXII implements the gambit system, which allows you to predetermine the priority of abilities each of your characters uses in combat. If you want Vaan to use cure when an ally reaches 50% health but you want him to attack in any other case, then you literally place the “heal ally 50%” gambit on top of the “attack enemy” gambit. The system is useful for allowing your party to free roam as they fight as well as making combat much faster paced.
However, I think the main flaw in the gambit system is that it lowers the players interactivity. I could literally move into combat, go make a sandwich, come back, and my gambits would have done all the work for me. I won’t minimize the system so much to say that you could do this for any battle, boss battles tend to require you to change some gambits around and perhaps use some clutch items whose gambits you never bothered to purchase (you have to buy or randomly find your gambits).
DESIGN:
Final Fantasy XXII tries to be innovative by having a detailed storyline but fails to entice the player into the fantasy world. The story itself is shallow and cliché, you play as the fool of the game who by chance gets involved with the fate of his hometown. This storyline has been done in many other RPGs and even in other Final Fantasy titles, but FFXII just doesn’t deliver the drama well enough.
The way FFXII keeps the player interested in the game is by having a wide range of abilities to choose from. The game has a very well mapped ability tree that you can manipulate in any way you want with each character. The abilities you can get are very interesting and worth playing the game longer to unlock, but the fact that the characters aren’t unique means that there is no benefit for going a certain direction in the ability tree. This is a god example of how if you don’t limit the player then they may lose interest in the game.
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Feb 21st, 2008 at 00:36:27 - Final Fantasy XII (PS2) |
Entry #1
SUMMARY:
In Final Fantasy XII you play as Vaan, a spirited young citizen of the kingdom of Dalmasca, who finds himself apart of a quest to restore peace to his city during troubled times.
GAMEPLAY:
When I first started playing Final Fantasy XII I was excited because of the reputation of the Final Fantasy titles. By the time I got through the tutorial portion of the game, it had me thinking, “Ok, now when is the Midgar bomb going to go off? When is Kefka going to poison the river? Is the city going to be consumed by Sin?” I was waiting for the ultimate drama found so commonly in prior Final Fantasy games. I’ve played 90% of the game so far and despite there being beautiful cut scenes and spoken dialogue, these story-telling mechanics are wasted on an empty storyline. At this point I don’t care to end the game, because the game hasn’t yet begun.
FFXII offers virtually no playable characters that you can be emotionally attached too. Furthermore, there are only 6 characters to choose from, which would have been fine if they were deep characters that the player could connect with like in FFX but FFXII characters are just plain flat. Also, on a more mechanical note, the characters aren’t very unique. All characters can choose from the same map of abilities and none of them have character specific abilities.
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jscorca has been with GameLog for 16 years, 10 months, and 8 days |
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