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Feb 9th, 2008 at 03:31:40 - Paperboy (NES) |
Gamelog Entry #2
GAMEPLAY
My second session of Paperboy was different than the second sessions of the other games I played. For the first time, I wasn't bored in my second session. I was still enjoying the game, and there was even still a little excitement in me. I was liking the new challenges of the new levels, and the intensity of the game as I was determined to beat it. Still no characters or story thus far, and I think it's going to be like that for the rest of the game. The only characters could be the hilarious neighborhood people that are trying to stop you from delivering papers. People like:
-The woman who sprints out of her house after you with a kitchen knife
-A small running person dressed in orange who has loops around his hands. (A convict?)
-A large, completely grey woman who stands in your way with a GIANT SCYTHE. (I call her grandma death.)
-A man who appears to be on his back, flailing his legs in the air as he trys to put his pants on?
As you progress through paperboy, these neighbors come to have a warm place in your heart.
DESIGN
I think the game is actually pretty innovative. Though technically it still is just a side-scroller where you throw things at different things... I think what PaperBoy does hasn't really been done in any other games I've played.
You are Paperboy on a bike that is constantly moving forward. This is one of the first elements that make the game difficult, because objects are always coming at you've got to maneuver around them. Simultaneously, you have to be able to throw your newspapers onto people's doorsteps, which takes good timing. The idea of being a paperboy and making a paper route could really be complicated, but Nintendo pulls it off pretty well. I liked these elements of the game.
The level design in this was really basic, each level as you progress only differs because there are more enemies. This could be the weak point in this game, but this small difference is all that is necessary to make the levels harder. The game remains interesting because when you successfully deliver papers to certain houses, they remain on your paper route. But houses that you miss, or damage with the papers (like breaking a window) makes them unsubscribe. Thus, almost every level has different houses that you need to deliver too. Of course, since the game is pretty well designed, it's clear to the player which houses you need to to cover and which you don't. Not only does it lay it out on a map of the block before the level begins, but while you're actually playing the level the houses you don't need to hit are a bold firetruck red color.
To make another criticism of Paperboy, i could talk about its use of space. Though you can theoretically ride your bike anywhere between houses, signs, etc... The realistic place for you is right on the sidewalk. If you stray to the right of the screen, you'll likely get hit by a car, and if you are on the left, an object in someones front yard will come up on you and you won't be able to get out of the way in time. So really your space is limited in this game, but I think it's just another aspect that keeps the game challenging.
Paperboy has a reward structure that I think is cool. If you make it through the day without missing a single house, you get a "resubscriber" at the end of the level. I should mention that there are two ways to lose the game. You can run out of lives, which are lost by crashing your bike into things, and you can run out of paper subscribers by not delivering to them. So if you have a bad run on one of the first levels, a good performance later can make up for it. I really like this feature.
I loved this game, and I think it could be remade with today's videogaming technology into another hit. (Especially with the Wii!) Though Paperboy is quite difficult at first, it's good design make it a lot of fun.
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Feb 8th, 2008 at 00:10:13 - Paperboy (NES) |
Gamelog Entry #1
SUMMARY
Paperboy for the Nintendo Entertainment System is an underrated classic. You play as the neighborhood Paperboy who must... Deliver Newspapers! Riding a bicycle in a diagonal side scroll, you pass every house in the neighborhood and throw papers at their doorsteps! If you're a "Pro-perboy" like me, you can throw them in their mailboxes for extra points! But lookout, because the neighborhood is doing everything they can to stop you! If you can make it through the week, you can enjoy an honorable retirement.
GAMEPLAY
I love this game. It was one of my first games on the nintendo, and me and my brother played it a ton when we were kids. Playing it now, I was surprised at how hard it is. I've been playing videogames all my life, and I catch onto things pretty quickly. But Paperboy is a challenging game. With my determination to beat it, I got a sense of flow for about twenty minutes, until I lost all my lives and game over'd. Paperboy has a certain intensity to it, you have to bob and weave and nail the timing perfectly to get the papers into the mailboxes. I was excited to play it. The game play is cool because it's very easy to get the hang of, but tough to master. It's also simple, but at the same time it's challenging. Even if you don't die, if you miss a house or accidentally throw a paper through their window, you lose that customer! And Losing customers = death. (Game Over if you lose all of them.)
It's also interesting to play because you have to adapt to each enemy and each house so that you know what to do when you approach them, because you don't have much time to react when the house or enemy appears.
Essentially, the game had no story or characters. There was you, the Paperboy, and the only cut scene really is the very start and very end of the game where it shows a newspaper frontpage with your face on it and it says "Paperboy Delivers!" The other characters are just different sprites of people in the game, who reoccur and you grow to love even if they are chasing you with a knife or drilling you with a jackhammer.
I played this with my roomate who doesn't play videogames. It's a challenging game, so she gave up pretty quickly. The two player feature is like the original mario bros, where it's the same thing but you take turns. So even if you could just hand off the controller instead, this was still fun because it switches you off every time you die. There was the common "Aww," when Paperboy ran into a sign, etc.
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Jan 25th, 2008 at 05:13:35 - Final Fantasy (PSP) |
Gamelog Entry #2
Gameplay
I have to admit that playing this second session was kind of boring, I did defeat some monster-lady that made my town pretty happy, and then I went to the next town and saved them from pirates. Getting a pirate ship seemed awesome at first, but there really wasn't anything that great about it because I still had no idea where to go. The story had progressed, but it was still kind of uninvolving and wasn't clear on how I had progressed through the game.(I'm sure my reaction to the story has a lot to do with my predisposed experiece with newer RPGS.) The game wasn't really that fun to play anymore, it got repetitive as I would go and get into 4-5 battles, then go back to town and pay for the inn to heal my guys, and repeat. Definitely no more flow, and not all that interesting. Though I admit that I did get a kick out of fighting a shark. The reason for this somewhat negative experience were the design issues in the game, which are understandable. This was one of the first RPGS and it was really great, but still needed a lot of fine tuning. (Apparently, there were improvments made upon the game in further versions of Final Fantasy.)
Design
There are a lot of cool innovative elements of this game. Controlling a party rather than having a central character is one of them, and being able to name each member of your party is very cool. Also the class system was another neat aspect, you have the freedom and the power to have a team of nothing but fighters, nothing but black belts, or even (if you're a moron) nothing but white mages, if you wish. Having the freedom to roam from town to town makes it a little less linear, which is cool. Another innovation is the randomness of the battles. In Zelda, you got to a level and you see all the monsters and you kill them. In Final Fantasy, you see your destination and you move there but you don't know if you'll fight one battle or three, and you don't know if you'll be fighting tough ogres or weaker imps.
The biggest complaint I had about this game was that there is no instruction, hints, advice, or definitions whatsoever. The reason I had such difficulty at the start of the game was because I was fighting all the monsters with no weapons, armor, potions or magic. When I got weapons, (And it was a gamble to see which character could use which weapon,) my warriors started killing them in one shot. When you go to buy weapons, armor, or magic, there is no indication of who could use what, Or even what the spell or armor does. You assume that the more expensive armor is better, but it turns out your Black Belt can only wear Wood armor and your Fighter is the only one who can wear Chain. I have learned over 8 spells for my white and black mage, but I still have no idea what some of them do. The names of each spell is limited to 4 letters (the names of almost everything in the game is limited to 4 letters,) So I've got things like "FIRE" and "CURE" which make sense. Fire does damage to one enemy, cure heals one ally. But then I've got things like "LOCK" and "HARM," and every time I have ever used these spells, they say "ineffective." There is never any explanation anywhere for what these spells actually do. I've tried the spells in different contexts in battle and still I've got nothing. "Ineffective" is a vague term for not doing anything.
Which brings me to another irritating part of the Battle system: If one of your warriors kills an enemy, and You've already set another warrior to attack that enemy, the turn is spent and you get "Ineffective," rather than that warrior going to the next enemy. Since you can't see the health bars of the enemy, its pretty much up to chance of how much damage your guys do so focusing attacks on single enemies is not always the best idea, because you could kill him on the first shot and the rest of your team's attacks are wasted. Another irritating part of the battle system is that for your Mages, they are allowed to do 2 spells of every level before you have to go to the inn. This makes the regular attackers much more effective. Apparently in later versions of this game they implemented Mana or Magic Points.
Lastly, another thing that was irritating is something that most people get used to in RPGs, and thats the "waiting" kind of effect in battle after you've chosen which each of your characters will do. After each enemy or each warrior does something, there is three seconds of text that you can press A to bypass, but you still have to wait three seconds nonetheless. This gets irritating when there are 5 enemies and 4 of your own guys, and the only thing you're doing is pressing A A A A A A A A A A A to have each of your guys perform a regular attack. I didn't see this change significantly in the Final Fantasy series until Final Fantasy X, where your fighters did things instantly, and while the animation was happening you could select actions for your next fighter.
Space was an odd thing in this game. You had a whole island to walk around on, but it didn't help you or reveal anything new. Even when I got the pirate ship and could basically sail forever to the left of the screen if I went around islands, it just didn't make sense. There was no map, and you really have no idea where to go in this game. If you talk to the townspeople they don't even tell you where to go.
I don't recall any cutscenes in my sessions with this game. When you do get in a battle you cut to the battle, but there is nothing in between. If I was making an RPG, I would want to make sure that I explain what every item does, and I'd want to have a minimap and clear indication of how to progress through the game.
So Final Fantasy was really a great step in the right direction for RPGS, but not that enjoyable to play nowadays, unfortunately.
This entry has been edited 11 times. It was last edited on Jan 25th, 2008 at 05:30:33.
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Jan 25th, 2008 at 04:11:11 - Final Fantasy (PSP) |
Gamelog Entry #1
Summary
Final Fantasy for NES was a pioneer of the RPG genre. In this game, four warriors dubbed the "Light Warriors" must encounter various enemies in turn based combat in order to restore the elemental orbs and save the world! Winning each battle yields experience and gold, necessary for making stronger warriors! Victory is obtained by defeating the Evil Elemental Fiends!
Gameplay
I was first excited to play this game, because I've played most of the other Final Fantasy RPGS and I love nintendo games. But after a few battles I got a little more serious because I found that this game was going to be a lot harder than I thought. Sure, I could kill imps 4 times over, but without having any means to heal my warriors, I could run into a giant pony who would destroy my weaker guys in a few turns.
The characters in the game aren't really distinguishable from each other, you just accept them as "Light Warriors," and most of the Non Playable Characters in the game are unnamed. So the story doesn't run too deep, by talking to people in town you do get the idea that you're supposed to be "Light Warriors" with some sort of magic orbs. Other than that there is not a lot to it. For its time, the story portion of the game is good, but it can't be compared to the Epic RPG stories of today's games. Something I should mention though is that you get to choose the names of your four warriors, and their classes as well, which is very cool. Each class specializes in certain things and has a different look to them.
The game was fun, and I did experience flow for the first 10 minutes or so, but almost near the end of my session I realized I was just playing for the sake of playing. It was fun because the battles were actually difficult at times, and I was eager to see what I could do with all the gold I was earning. I did play this game by myself (it is a one player game,) but I did name my warriors after my friends, and when I told them they thought it was pretty cool. (They play videogames too.)
The game was interesting to an extent, but it was full of things that ultimately turned me off from the game, which I will discuss in the next entry.
This entry has been edited 2 times. It was last edited on Jan 25th, 2008 at 04:13:18.
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