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Mar 6th, 2008 at 04:46:21 - Dynasty Warriors 6 (360) |
GAMEPLAY
One of the things that gets old in this game is the level design. There are three kingdoms and they almost always battle against each other. As a result, almost all of the characters receive the same battles just on different sides. Once we play through a battle a few times we know what will happen. This cuts down on the necessity to experiment with strategies which is a fun part of the game.
The characters suffer from some of the same problems. A lot of characters have the same weapons (i.e. swords, spears) with slight differences. The skill trees help vary the characters but the play style is the same for many. It can be annoying to get excited about unlocking new characters just to find out they're pretty much the same as four other characters we've played with. This isn't as big of a deal as it sounds though because it is still fun to play through the individual characters' story lines and work towards powering up a character that I like a lot or unlocking more characters.
DESIGN
As mentioned before, the levels of this game could be better. Instead of making each character just play a different part of the same battle, the developers could have made the characters go through different paths and fight different battles. There are four kingdoms in the game, Wu, Wei, and Shu, as well as "Other" which is made up of characters with individual story lines and objectives. All of these kingdoms are essentially battling each other for control of China. The "Other" characters are often the most interesting because they tend to be unique in both their design and the path that they take through battles.
As a fan of the Dynasty Warriors series I have also noticed that this game has actually removed a lot of the things that were improvements on past installments. For example, there are actually less characters in this game than number five. The tribal, jungle inhabiting Meng Huo and his wife are no longer available for play, as are the levels that centered around their home land. This is unfortunate, as the jungle levels were a fun change from the traditional battle grounds found in the rest of the game. This seems lazy on the part of the developer; they seem to have not wanted to invest the time to add this part of the storyline into this installment for some reason.
Another thing absent from this installment is the weapon variation and individuality of characters from the previous installment. Many of the characters with unique weapons such as claws, nunchuks, or tonfas, have been given more generic weapons such as spears and swords. This makes the seem even more repetitive which is bad due to the repetitivity already inherent in the game play.
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Mar 6th, 2008 at 00:59:23 - Dynasty Warriors 6 (360) |
SUMMARY
Dynasty Warriors 6 is the sixth installment of the very popular Dynasty Warriors series in which players control a hero in feudal China, hacking through waves of soldiers and other heroes. The game also includes RPG elements such as leveling up and a skill tree.
GAMEPLAY
Part of what games this game fun is the ability to fight off hundreds of enemies at a time while controlling only one character. This really makes the player feel like a hero and not just another soldier on the battlefield. This feeling is captured as well by the effect I had on the over all battle. If I let the enemy attack my AI controlled team mates, our bases would be captured and we would lose. If I ran over and defeated the entire attacking force we could continue winning. The game does a good job of making the player feel that even though a huge battle is going on, they are vitally important
I played this game multiplayer with one of my friends. This makes the game much more enjoyable in my opinion. Before each battle we would look at the map and decide who was going to head where or if defense or offense was more appropriate. If we failed, we would often look back and try to plan a different strategy. This added another level of interactivity between both the game and my friend and I that often does not happen in games.
Dynasty Warriors' gameplay is very repetitive; almost every battle's goal is essentially to protect your leader and defeat the enemies' leader. What keeps it fun is being able to get new abilities, weapons, horses, and even characters as you defeat enemies and battles. It is very fun to have a high level character who can mow down everything, even enemy generals, in a couple of hits with a powerful weapon that was discovered. All of these things made the game fun to play over and over even though my friend and I were basically doing the same thing every time.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Mar 6th, 2008 at 01:03:39.
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Feb 21st, 2008 at 02:55:42 - Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas (PS2) |
GAMEPLAY
As I mentioned before one of my favorite things about this game is the ability to interact with everything. We had some more fun stealing a two person airplane and attempting to infiltrate the GTA equivalent of Area 51. I really like being able to get in and take control of any vehicle I see. Not just that, but the game adds in little features like allowing the passenger to drive bys, which are also fun.
This game really gives me a sense of scale that no other non-RPG games do. I feel so tiny in the game world yet the game did a job of making me feel like I was becoming more powerful as I progressed through the story. Being able to go from riding a bike to driving a car to piloting an airplane expands the world in a really nice way.
DESIGN
One of the most innovative aspects of this game is not just how large the world is but the freedom the player has to explore it. They can drive around it in a car, fly over it in a plane or helicopter, walk/swim, or even ride a bike. This aspect is what allows for nearly limitless replay value even after all of the missions have been completed.
Multiplayer adds another fun aspect. Although it seems as if it was tossed in at the last minute, two players can often spend a great deal of time traveling around the world causing havoc or trying to complete self made objectives. I would have liked to see Rockstar flesh this mode out more; in its current state it is buggy and very limited compared to the rest of the game. For example, you can not enter buildings or participate in many of the in-game events if multiplayer mode is enabled. Bugs include the camera getting stuck where one or both players cant be seen and players getting stuck too far away from each other, unable to move.
In this section, you should write 2-5 paragraphs with your observations on the design of the game you have played. The emphasis here is reflection upon the design of the game. It is fine to mention specific aspects of your gameplay in this section, however, the discussion of gameplay must be there solely to provide supporting evidence for your assertions about the design of the game.
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Feb 21st, 2008 at 02:54:57 - Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas (PS2) |
SUMMARY
GTA:SA is an open ended third person shooting/driving game that allows the player to roam around the world freely but also offers a storyline with missions for the player to complete. More weapons, clothing, cities, etc. are opened up as the player completes these missions and progresses through the storyline.
GAMEPLAY
I had beaten this game long ago but decided to play the multiplayer with a friend. Upon activating two player mode one of the first things I noticed was how limited the camera was. Both players have to be very close to each other or else the camera will zoom out and warn that the second player is too far away, preventing any more distance between the players. This can be frustrating, especially when something happens like one player falling off of a high area. This happened when we were throwing grenades at cars on the freeway; one of us fell off, causing us to suicide because we were too far apart to move at all. This wasn't too terrible as we were not progressing through the game but was still pretty annoying.
We had a lot of fun trying to cause huge pile ups on the freeway and then blowing them all up with grenades. It was quite satisfying to see and hear 20 cars exploding in a chain reaction of explosions. The other part that made it fun was fighting off the police officers and helicopters as they came. We tried to get all the way up to 6 "wanted" stars so the army would come but only managed to get to 5, the FBI. It was also fun hijacking cars or motorcycles and trying to run away once we had reached such a high wanted level. What made it fun was how open the world was, making it feel like even though we were being chased by five FBI trucks we at least had a small chance of escaping. The interactability of everything from AI driven cars to their passengers also kept things interesting with no one experience being the same.
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ajf has been with GameLog for 16 years, 10 months, and 8 days |
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