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Mar 6th, 2008 at 00:27:21 - Warcraft III: Regin of Chaos (PC) |
Gameplay
Like Starcraft, Blizzard developed the factions to represent extremes of game play style, and include a balanced choice. Like the Zerg, Night Elves build quickly and cost less, with powerful ranged damage, but their units have low hit points. The Orcs have massive amounts of hit points and powerful melee units, but are extremely expensive to build, and build slower, The humans and Undead lie in between these two extremes. This careful balance allowed me to pick the race most suitable to my play style and kick some ass. If I was feeling defensive, I would go casters with humans, and if I was feeling bloodlust, I’d go melee with the orcs. This choice of strategy through race adds a lot of replay value and fun to the game.
Design
Following the success of Starcraft, Blizzard continued its real time strategy series with Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, released in 2002. Warcraft III contined Blizzard’s RTS tradition of unique but balanced factions, adding two more playable factions on top of the Orcs and Humans available in Warcraft II: the Night Elves and Undead. To further complicate balance issues within the different factions, Blizzard introduced an entirely new aspect of game design to Warcraft III: Heroes.
Heroes are special units available at the start of the game, that gain experience with kills, leveling up, getting more powerful and learning unique abilities over time. Heroes can add defense to nearby units, like Paladins with Auras, damage masses of units at a time, as Far Seers do with the earthquake ability, and even heal units, as the Undead Death Knight. With the introduction of Hero units, Blizzard blurred the line between real time strategy and RPG, creating this amazing hybrid game. In addition, each faction had three unique heroes, each with its own unique set of four abilities, a major balance headache.
Blizzard solved this problem rather cheaply by mirroring. Instead of truly unique heroes, each faction has the same collection of hero types. There are melee heroes, capable of absorbing lots of damage, ranged, damage dealing heroes, which deal massive amounts of damage but are fragile, and balanced heroes, which are in between, and often have healing abilities. Each faction gets one of each type-and though they do have minor differences, such as the Night Elf abilities to cloak during the night, the heroes do not stray vastly from their designated type. Though a bit disappointing, the game still demonstrates a careful balance amongst the factions, if not amongst the hero units.
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Mar 6th, 2008 at 00:27:03 - Warcraft III: Regin of Chaos (PC) |
Summary
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos is a real time strategy game for the computer which has players mine and manage resources and build and battle with armies in a fantasy setting.
Gameplay
I’m not going to lie. When I first popped in the disc and saw the flashy intro cinematic, I was shaking with excitement. I started the campaign immediately, and my jaw hit the floor at the beautiful, full 3D graphics I beheld! An interesting new feature in WCIII’s story mode- the briefings all happen in game-which is great, especially with the improved Campaign editor. Now people can make entire movies in the game, which the game itself seemed to become at parts. The story was captivating- it kept me plowing on through the single player mode madly, I had to know what happened next! WCII is a great example of narrative driving the game, at least in single player.
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Feb 20th, 2008 at 17:07:52 - Super Smash Brothers (N64) |
Gameplay
Like I said earlier the gameplay is pretty simple. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t ingenious. With the addition of more players, either people or CPU players of varying difficulty, the game becomes chaotic. Characters bounce across the screen madly, punching and shooting everywhere-everything! Things start exploding! My eyes widen and my fingers cry out in protest as I rapidly smash the buttons-but I can’t stop, I must destroy my foes! It's this madness, this frenzy that makes the game so damn fun. It's unpredictable, and in that, gives every player involved about the same change to win.
Well, since I’ve been blabbing about the multiplayer side of the game, I should at least mention Single Player. In single player there is some strange, lame attempt at a narrative, where the Nintendo characters are dolls coming to life (think Chucky from Child’s Play) controlled by a mysterious white glove (Michael Jackson?!). Choose a character and fight through the levels and opponents to unlock more characters and levels for multiplayer. Throw in a half-assed boss fight every now and then (Metal Mario?), and huzzah, there it is. The fun in Smash in all in the multiplayer, so gather some friends.
Design
A very neat design feature of Smash is the symbiosis of fighting game and platformer elements. For example, the levels have jumpable platforms and power ups (ranging from lightsabres to the giant sledge hammer from the original Mario game), which are unheard of in most fighting games. This adds a whole new, refreshing feeling to Smash, compared to the more standard fighting games, like the old Street Fighters, or Tekken.
Another great design feature is the nostalgic character selection. I don’t think the game would be anywhere near as successful if it had used original characters. By using characters already established in the Nintendo games, Smash lures in the players of the original games who are happy to revisit their old favorites-it’s like an all star game, full of celebrities.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Feb 20th, 2008 at 17:12:39.
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Feb 20th, 2008 at 17:07:20 - Super Smash Brothers (N64) |
Summary
Supers Smash Bros is a brawler fighting game for the Nintendo 64 featuring characters from various Nintendo franchises. Players choose a character and fight it out in a free for all or team battle.
Gameplay
Witness to the dramatic addiction effect of Super Smash Bros Melee on my peers, I decided to investigate its predecessor on the N64. Initially I was surprised of how simple the game was.
First of all, pick a character. The characters in the game come from the various Nintendo games, which is quite fun. You can be Link from the Legend of Zelda games, Samus from Metroid, and of course, Mario. The levels mirror the characters-there is a Hyjal castle level for Link, a level with pipes and plant monsters for Mario, etc. Each level is relatively small-this is a fighting game after all-with maybe a few jumpable platforms.
After characters are chosen and a level is selected, it’s time to fight. I found the controls pretty easy to grasp-with the basic jump around, block, punch and kick basics. Characters also have their little unique aspects, for example Kirby can fly and devour other characters, then gaining their likeness, Link can throw his boomerang and Samus can shoot her gun and power it up to shoot huge plasma-balls. My personal favorite is Captain Falcon’s (an unlockable character from single player) “Falcon punch,” a super punch that sends characters flying.
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