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Feb 20th, 2008 at 23:25:20 - Wii Sports (Wii) |
GAMEPLAY
For the second round of gameplay I decided to play some mini games on Wiisports. My personal favorite is the one based on bowling where the goal is to knock down as many pins as possible, but the catch is that each frame there are more and more pins. We had a lot of fun playing and screaming when one lone pin managed to stay up after all the others fell. We tried the other bowling mini games but they were not fun because they required a lot of spin on the ball and none of us managed to master that.
The next best mini games were based on boxing. The first is dodging tennis balls thrown by a trainer. This was very easy but was funny watching others play if they got into it and moved their bodies with the Miis. The one that my friend was best at was the punching bag. We have come to think that the Wiimote has a way to tell how hard you swing it, and that it is very sensitive. Because in this mini game you have to knockdown as many punching bags as possible and my friend swings the Wiimote so hard that the bags go down twice as fast as I could knock them down.
We went through all the mini games, played some longer than others and most of them are similar to the sport they are based on that they are merely a different way to do the same thing. After playing Wiisports for several hours I turned to my friend and asked his opinion. He told me that after playing it he wants to see what else Nintendo will do to utilize this Wiimote technology.
DESIGN
Lets see is Wiisports innovative, well the idea no…the execution YES! The Wiimote lends itself perfectly to this kind of sports game. I would say the Wii in general is an innovation, and each game coming out on it takes game design further to try and utilize this new style of control. The challenges are when you start to play the mini games. Each one has an objective and a finite end, and based on how well you do you get medals. I have spent many days trying to get gold medals being frustrated asking how is this even possible. The fitness test was also fun, the first time I just did terrible and it said fitness age was 40 something. Of course I had to lower that age so I kept at it until I hit fitness age of 22.
Wiisports is one of the best party games, it brings up to four people together to challenge each other over several different games. Really this game is meant to be played with others and I think that is why it is so popular. It uses games that everybody already knows the rules to. It also helps that it uses the Miis you create on Wii home. The tone is very cartoony and carefree. Nice bright colors and the soundtrack is cheery and repetitive. It doesn’t try to be photo realistic and emphasizes that this Mii avatar is you. You are actually playing bowling not playing a bowling game.
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Feb 20th, 2008 at 23:24:38 - Wii Sports (Wii) |
SUMMARY:
In Wii Sports you play a variety of sports and sport themed mini games. Each game takes advantage of the Wii’s unique controller; some take advantage of the nunchuk attachment. Nintendo added an exercise game in which it runs you through endurance, speed, and hand eye coordination and give you a read out of how fit you are.
GAMEPLAY
My friend and I have been playing bowling and baseball for the past hour and somehow Nintendo made baseball fun. The bowling is very fun you hold the controller just like you would a bowling ball. Then just like in bowling you pull down then swing, you can even give it spin and curve. It was fun because we could actually do well in bowling. I got a score of 216 which was pretty amazing.
After a few games of bowling we decided to play baseball. Now baseball became extremely funny because awhile ago my group of friends and I, we had a contest of who could make the ugliest Mii, so while playing baseball we got a laugh seeing all of those Miis make an appearance. Baseball was fun but like the actual sport got boring very fast. Pitching was easy simply swing the controller as if you were throwing a baseball. My friend reminded me to wear the wrist strap so I would not break his TV. Now hitting was alittle harder. We had trouble first timing to hit the ball then we had trouble not hitting foul balls constantly. Finally when my friend started beating me too badly we switched to tennis.
Tennis is the sport played in almost all the commercials. There is not much to say about it. Swing the controller when the tennis ball comes near your Mii. The only thing I found wrong was that you can’t control where your Mii goes so sometimes they will jump in the wrong direction. We played for awhile but we got bored pretty fast. So we decided to check out boxing.
Boxing if played correctly is the only game that you can consider a workout. This game utilizes the nunchuk attachment for the Wiimote. The Wiimote controls your right hand and the nunchuk controls the left hand. Yes the nunchuk also has movement sensing technology. So my friend and I were standing in his living room hands up ready to box both of us facing the TV. Boxing was great we both actually got tired and there were some nice fights and trash talk during and after. The only thing we couldn’t understand was how many times you can get knocked out before you stay down. There was one game where I knocked him out in 3 knockouts, but then there was a game where it took 5 knockouts before I went down.
All in all, Wiisports is a great game given the fact that it comes free with your Wii.
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Feb 8th, 2008 at 13:45:59 - Rainbow Six Vegas (360) |
GAMEPLAY
For the second round of game play my roommate and I did some coop. There are two types of coop, one is coop story which is just like single player except you have your partner rather than your squad. But we decided to try out terrorist hunt which is a game mode where my roommate and I infiltrate buildings to kill a certain amount of terrorists. We both had fun playing terrorist hunt, running through office buildings after a flashbang grenade. My main grievance with that mode of gameplay was that instead of all the enemies loading at the start, they would load based on where you are in the level. This made it so you could peek behind a door, see no one take two steps and get shot in the head. This made it so frustrating that my roommate used a riot shield and I sent him into rooms first so that all fire would be drawn to the shield while I covered the back.
After being very frustrated in terrorist hunt we went over to coop story mode. Story mode was a lot better because enemies would be in certain areas and not spawn behind you. We went through the levels and it was actually easier than single player mode, the downside is that there is no storyline when you are playing coop. In the beginning of the missions where the story is normally explained that person is missing in coop.
DESIGN
The design was pretty good but I am bias to the genre of tactical shooters. My main problem with the game was the save system like I mentioned in the first post. The problem that my roommate brought up was the cover system; you have to hold the left trigger to stay in cover. So in tactical shooters you are in cover more than half the time and we have to hold a button down. It ended up not being too bad, if it was the A button I might have thrown the game out the window. The challenges are basic, kill enemies while protecting object A, and survive while killing object B.
The level design was very good; cover was set up in such ways that if you were silent and accurate you could potentially never get shot. They made you utilize your team and the heat and night vision. Emergent complexity I would say is the choosing of weapons and attachments to those weapons; whether you want to be silent using silencers or, if you want to be load using machine guns and shotguns.
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Feb 8th, 2008 at 13:45:31 - Rainbow Six Vegas (360) |
Well I start off in a helicopter with some girl on a laptop telling me that terrorists are in Mexico and that it is my duty to stop them. So as I rope down from the chopper, enemies attacks separating me and my team, so I’m left to traverse the streets of Mexico killing terrorist while my team finds a good LZ. I meet up with my team and then we go on our mission tracking the terrorist. I have played for a good hour and a half and I’m still in Mexico so I am left wondering why it is called Vegas. The reason I might be in Mexico still is because the save system sucks. I will randomly get checkpoints but it seems that I have been playing for a good while when I will get flanked and die, normally this is an, aww well situation but they send me back so far it feels that I’ve played the level 4 times through.
The game play is very good, it is a first person shooter, and there is a cover system which I love. Finally games where you can duck behind walls when fired upon instead of jumping around hoping people miss. And the beginning cut scene in the helicopter they give you the ability to look around as you fly above the city, and it seems that they really put effort into those scenes, there are fires, smoke and people running around. I have the sense that they knew people don’t want to listen o the lady talk to give the players something to look at. The levels are very well done; they give you the sense of a completely open environment and actually give you several paths to take.
You are not alone, you are accompanied by your two teammates, since you are the player you are the squad leader and can send your team in which ever direction you wish. I normally send my team into a room first to test where the enemies are then I come in and snipe. They have this real fun mechanic where you send your team to a door. Then you can have the option of just going in and clearing the room till it’s secure or throwing a flashbang, smoke or frag grenade in beforehand. The team is very useful and they are also key, because if a teammate dies you restart from a checkpoint. This is not as annoying as it sound because your teammates are very good at what they do. If they do happen to die, which is normally because I sent them into a room of 8 enemies, all you have to do is give them the magic shot and they are all better.
The actual game play is nothing super different, I’ve played Gears of War which also has the cover system. But Rainbow Six Vegas is very fun, they give you a very wide range of guns, this is not the normal here is a basic, machine gun, basic sniper, etc. You actually get to go into fine details for each weapon, and add various scopes or laser sights. Another thing is that through the game there are boxes that allow you to change what weapons you have. I started out with two assault rifles but I switched to a burst fire assault rifle and a sniper rifle. My roommate likes to play with an assault rifle and a shotgun, but I guess to each his own. I really can’t comment on story line as of now because I haven’t even gotten to Vegas which is in the title so.
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| Lightbane's GameLogs |
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Lightbane has been with GameLog for 16 years, 10 months, and 8 days |
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