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Mar 6th, 2008 at 02:21:11 - Phantom Dust (XBX) |
GAMEPLAY:
Hooray! I get to play the game now! I can finally make decks and collect skills. The available skills were very limited when I first was able to make a deck, but the number of skills has steadily increased as I’ve completed missions.
This game is really a collectable card game in disguise. I get money from completing missions which I can use to buy a group of five random skills(equivalent of a booster pack in Magic: The Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh!). Skills even have rarity which affects the chances of getting them, means they are worth more, and roughly correlates to how good they are. My deck requires a large proportion of aura particles which I need to use skills(like land in Magic or energies in Poke’mon…not that I’ve ever played or heard of Poke’mon cards).
Constructing a strategy and seeing how it plays out on the battlefield are the biggest draw for me. Unfortunately, there are few reasonable strategies and different ones usually play the similarly. By similarly, I mean all the decks are really bad. Almost every attack has a crippling draw back. Some are cheap but are only one-time use or they deal good damage but have a horrible trajectory that makes them almost impossible to hit with or they aim fairly well but do little damage for high cost. The fact that they are all bad does make them balanced but it also makes battles tedious and long as ever, a result I hoped to avoid when I could chose my skills. That said, there are some skills I like, they are just few and far between.
DESIGN:
Phantom Dust tries to create a complex set of skills to allow for many unique strategies, but it falls short in most respects. The large amount of skills with many attributes is designed to give the player the freedom to choose whatever strategy they want. This works to a degree. By using melee skills and others that hinder the opponents defense such as preventing them from using skills for ten seconds, I created an effectively aggressive deck. Conversely, by have more aura with more powerful defenses, I made a deck that stalls until it can use expensive skills. So it is possible to make completely different strategies, the big problem is that the way the game is designed to allow these strategies also creates side effects. For one, some of the variants that the designers put in to increase the variety of skills make those skills useless. A good example is the various trajectories attacks have. Some shoot straight ahead, some arc at different angles, and some fall from above. The ones that arc are supposed to give you more choices such as allowing you to hide behind a wall and shoot a blast that arcs over the wall. In practice, most trajectories besides plain straight almost always hit something in the way. When you are inside a building some are impossible to use because they hit the ceiling before coming back down.
Later in the game, missions have rules that change the gameplay. The designers probably did this to create challenge and promote the use of specific strategies certain skills use. This works to a degree as well. One level doubles the cost of all skills, promoting the use of cheap skills and one-use skills which are more powerful for less cost because they can only be used once. The unintentional downside is that I now have to make a specific deck for each mission and I usually have to lose a mission several times before I can see what deck I need to make. It also makes my other decks useless because the rules are so crippling. The double cost rule, for instance, makes almost all decks unusable for having anything of medium to high cost.
The designer’s intentions for these game elements are obvious and are achieved through these methods, but the detriments to gameplay they make are greater that the benefits. The designers didn’t consider the side effects of these choices and the gameplay suffered. This game had potential and it was that potential that got me to play as long as I did. It’s too bad the designers left the game so unrefined.
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Mar 5th, 2008 at 22:34:04 - Phantom Dust (XBX) |
SUMMARY:
Phantom Dust is a mix between a shooter and a strategy card game. You live in a post-apocalyptic world where humans are forced to live underground due to evil dust that now covers the surface. All the remaining humans have lost their memory including the character you play, a talented young psychic who was found on the surface. Oh, did I mention the dust made some people psychic? Well, it did, and you now battle to find out what happened.
GAMEPLAY:
I choose this game because it was shown in an in-class game demo in my game design class. Being a fan of customizable strategy games, the deck-making aspect looked appealing. As always, the game starts by making you do a bunch of tutorial missions. Each tutorial mission focuses on one aspect of the game. The game is fairly complicated, but I’ve been playing for more than an hour and I’m still going through the tutorial. Personally, I’d rather they leave most of it for me to figure out and make the tutorials optional. Battles start by collecting skills from orbs that appear at your starting point and equipping them to any of the four buttons X,Y, A, or B. Once equipped, pushing the button again uses that skill. Skills have many attributes like an optimum range, energy cost, attack or defense, and more. The wide variety of attributes each attack has opens up a vast range of possible skills. I am hopefully this is an indication of what is to come later on.
The battles are pretty slow-paced so far. I spend a lot of time waiting for new orbs to appear. Also, every time I use a skill I have to wait for my energy to regenerate. Coupled with the fact that enemies are very good at dodging attacks, battles can get down right boring. The game does seem to be building up though, with each battle introducing and unlocking new skills. Eventually, according to the in class game demo, I should be able to put skills I want together into a deck, so I’ll reserve my judgment until then.
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Feb 21st, 2008 at 02:17:08 - Shadow of the Colossus (PS2) |
GAMEPLAY:
After my second session I am still impressed with this game. I’ve heard before that this game is the closest thing to a work of art in games and I’d say that’s a fairly accurate description. Every colossus is like a level, and each one has something different. The environments, for one, are unique and beautiful. One “level” is themed around ruins half submerged in a lake. Another takes place in a field of grassy hills. It was a pleasure discovering what was around the next corner.
It wasn’t all good though. For one, it was sometimes confusing as to how to kill the monsters. I realize they are puzzles and the fun is figuring out what to do but once or twice I spent a long time doing something completely wrong. It seems like the game sets up wrong paths, which I can see the benefit of having. It makes the game feel less linear that way, but it did cause me to think I was on the right track and lead me to continue to try doing something I couldn’t because of it. Another thing was that some monsters required you to think of something really strange that most people wouldn’t. For instance, the third monster(spoiler alert!) required you to stand on a metal disk and make it hit the disk with its club, causing its wrist armor to break, allowing you to climb up. I did not think of that at all and kept trying to climb its club and jump over the wrist when it raised the club back up. It was sheer luck I happened to be on a metal disk one of the times it attacked. These are not major flaws, though they do take you out of the mood somewhat. It was important for me to mention the downs to be fair, but I hope I don’t deter anyone for playing this game, I’d definitely recommend it.
DESIGN:
It’s obvious that a great deal of work was put into creating the atmosphere of this game. The appeal of the game comes largely form the curiosity the game instills throughout. The developers designed the game to draw on the player’s desire to explore and discover. Other games do the same but in a different way. Other games give you shiny things to collect, upgrades and points but Shadow of the Colossus does it much more covertly. The game almost seems like it wants you to like without noticing.
Breaking the game into 16 “levels” was a nice touch. I remember playing Ico and feeling like it just went on forever there’s no distinguishable break points aside from save points. Have the game segmented gives you a sense of accomplishment throughout, and makes feel like you are actually progressing.
The developers did a lot of unique and interesting things with this game. The monsters, for example, are bosses, but they’re also levels in themselves. You can get more life and more grip to on to things longer, but for the most part your character stays the same. I think they did this to keep your focus off of the character.
This is a game you recommend to people not because it was really fun but because you feel you it will better them in some way, not that it wasn’t fun. The game clearly tries to touch you on a deeper level than most. All the aspects work together to that end.
The I can see how this kind of thing may not appeal to some people. This game requires you to be drawn in by the atmosphere. If the mood doesn’t grab you, there’s little chance you’ll like this game
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Feb 21st, 2008 at 02:18:59.
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Feb 21st, 2008 at 02:16:07 - Shadow of the Colossus (PS2) |
SUMMARY:
Shadow of the Colossus is puzzle/platformer. You run, jump, grab, climb, slash, and shoot. You play a young man who has traveled to a strange land to ask a god to resurrect a girl you brought with you, I assume me loved her. The god tells you it will bring her back to life if you kill 16 monsters that roam the strange land. You have a special magical sword which has the power to kill the monsters. With your loyal horse, you ride off on your quest.
GAMEPLAY:
I’ve played Ico, which is made by the same people as Shadow of the Colossus, and it shares many qualities. The scenery is, as with Ico, very important to the experience. The land is vast and riddled with huge chasms, wide open plains, and ancient structures. It makes you feel tiny and isolated. Also the scant, mysterious story is similar to Ico. All you know is you are trying to bring some girl back to life. You have no idea where you came from, what happened to the girl, or what the land you’ve gone to is. The physical abilities of your character emphasize that you are an average human, which adds to the feeling of being small and insignificant.
The game consists of two main parts: getting to the monster, and killing the monster. The first part you do so by using your sword to reflect light. You hold the sword to the light and beams come off it. Then you turn in any direction and as you move in the direction the monster is in, the beams of light focus to one point. When you are getting close, you’ll come to a place where you have to leave your horse and traverse an obstacle course of ledges, walls, ropes, ladders and so forth. When I reached the first monster, there was a short cutscene showing it walk into view far away. As I ran up to it, it becomes increasingly apparent how gigantic it is. I really enjoyed the sincerely daunting scene as I stood in its shadow, wondering how I could possible kill that.
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