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Feb 8th, 2008 at 20:51:39 - R Type Final (PS2) |
R TYPE FINAL
SESSION #2
GAMEPLAY:
As I progressed more throughout the game, I learned more of its mechanics. The orb absorbs enemy attacks, and fills a small meter at the bottom of the screen. When the meter is full, the orb's shield radius becomes bigger, and a super attack can be released. While this didn't really help me beat any bosses, this mechanic encouraged me to use the orb, and the super attacks were useful for destroying swarms of enemies. Going one step down from "Normal" mode, I played the game on the "Kids" difficulty level, which let me keep my powerups even after I died. Although this did subtract alot of challenge from the game (the powerups would never go away), it was necessary in order for me to progress. Oh I guess I didn't mention that if you run out of continues, you LOSE, and start from the VERY BEGINNING of the game.
One thing to know about R Type final is that it is relentless. Enemies will come from behind your ship when you least expect it, super lasers will go through your orb, and one hit kills combined with restarts will test your patience. You will run into walls. You will get killed by bosses seconds before defeating them. You will lose .... on "Kids" difficulty. Bitter and defeated, I swallowed my pride and played it on "Baby" difficulty, the easiest of them all. Even while bosses died within seconds, and enemies that should have been shooting remained idle, I still died. On one of the later levels, you had to shoot your way through a literal "sea" of anenome looking enemies, which was mentally overwhelming. One thing R Type does well is portray a sense of impossibly overwhelming obstacles, when in reality there is a legitimate way to get past them.
DESIGN: R-Type is well designed, as it has unique level design and gameplay mechanics that set it apart from other space shooters. The Orb is the most essential part of gameplay, as it can be used offensively or defensively. Attached to the front or back of your ship, it works as a shield that will absorb enemy fire and kill any enemies that come in contact. It also gives your ship an additional laser weapon. If you shoot the orb out, it will destroy anything it comes in contact with. For durable enemies and bosses, the orb is meant to be shot into these enemies for sustained damage. Attaching and detaching the orb is required to survive in R-Type, and this explains why you are always given an orb at the beginning of a checkpoint.
A bonus that keep people playing is the plethora of unlockable ships. There are over 100 ships in R-Type Final, and it is amazing how unique and different all of them are. As you playthrough the game, more and more ships are unlocked. Luckily, the ships that are unlocked don't seem to depend on how well you do, so losing over and over again will unlock you new ships. Overall, R Type provides a unique gameplay experience, but is simply to hardcore for most audiences.
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Jan 25th, 2008 at 23:33:01 - Super Smash Brothers (N64) |
SUPER SMASH BROTHERS
LOG#2
GAMEPLAY: Although the 1P mode of Smash Bros gets stale somewhat quickly, the versus mode gives Smash Brothers 64 infinite replay value, as playing against other people (and even playing against bots) gives the player the ability to create a large variety of different scenarios. Smash Bros has been about the multi-player battles, and playing against another person never gets old. Versus mode comes in many modes. In Time Mode, the character who kills the most wins. In stock mode, each character gets a given amount of lives, and whoever is left living wins. Items, when are various weapons/recovery items/bombs, can be set to spawn from none to very high, and you can even customize which items can be turned on and off.
The best thing about versus mode is that it can be pure, utter, chaos. With 4 players and items turned on, you have no idea who is going to come out on top. With bombs, pokeballs, koopa shells, guns, recovery hearts, and weapons spawning in random places around the map, if a player who is behind gets the right weapons, they can turn the game around and win. If the infamous giant hammer spawns, whoever picks it up first goes into a giant hammer frenzy. The music changes into circus music, and every player left tries to desperately get away from this overpowered giant hammer that deals massive damage and knockback. As one can imagine, the downside to items is that victory is not necesarrily determined by skill. The upside is that players of different skill levels all have the opportunity to win if the items go their way.
While playing with other people is the most fun, you can also fight against bots to improve your skill. The AI ranges from 1-9, and is a very good fight until you find and exploit its weaknesses. Nevertheless, I was content playing against the bots so that I would become good enough to beat my friends.
DESIGN: Smash Bros. succeeds where other fighters fail in its brilliant design. The problem with Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Soul Caliber, etc is that it requires players to memorize complex button inputs and combos. It expects the player to spend countless hours memorizing difficult special attacks, and these games like to boast their complicated fighting and blocking maneuvers. The complexity is bad because it turns off most new players, and even those like me spend hours learning the mechanics get frustrated with useless combos and unbalanced characters.
Smash bros's fighting system is so simple I can explain it right now. A = normal attack, B = special attack, yellow buttons = jump, L/R = sheild, and trigger = grab. There are no confusing combos to memorize and no advanced dodging/countering systems to learn. The attacks are designed in a very intuitive way, because they are based on how hard you hit the control stick. Tilting the control stick while hitting A will produce a weak yet fast attack. Smashing the control stick while hitting A will produce a powerful smash attack, useful for finishing off opponents. The air and on the ground, you can attack in any direction just by using the control stick. B attacks are special attacks, such as projectiles, which are especially unique to each character. Although the system is simple, it takes much practice to master Smash Bros. Shields Block Attacks, Grabs beat Shields, and Attacks beat Grabs. Knowing when to do what is key.
Furthermore, the fighters in Smash Bros are surprisingly balanced. The powerful Donkey Kong is hampered by slow movement and a giant hitbox, while the small fox has weaker attacks but greater speed. Link has great range and a plethora of projectiles, but has a horrible recovery. No characters are overpowered (not even Kirby!), some are simply harder to master. Spamming projectiles doesn't work due to the layout of the stages, and also using projectiles leaves one vulnerable to attack. Overall, compared to most fighting games, Smash Bros provides fair, balanced gameplay with any character. Although SSB might not have as much content as other fighters, its revolutionary gameplay lead it and its sequel to become instant Nintendo classics.
This entry has been edited 2 times. It was last edited on Jan 25th, 2008 at 23:42:09.
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Jan 25th, 2008 at 22:39:14 - Super Smash Brothers (N64) |
SUPER SMASH BROS. 64
LOG #1
SUMMARY: Super Smash Brothers is a 1-4 player fighting game in which players try to knock each other of the fighting stage. The fighters are all based on classic Nintendo games, and the stages take place in areas of their respective games.
GAMEPLAY: The gameplay for Smash Bros is wildly different from most fighting games. Most fighting games feature two fighters, with health bars, fighting until one or the other runs out of health. The stages are small, and rarely play a very important role in the fighting (other than ring outs, which sometimes result in an instant defeat). Fighters such as, Tekken, Soul Caliber, Virtua Fighter, Dead or Alive, etc, all fall into this category, and so the gameplay mechanics of Super Smash Bros make it essentially an entirely different genre. Each stage in smash brothers is usually a huge island, that is, there is a stage with bottomless pits on either side. Instead of inflicting damage, hits raise a hit %, which causes the player to fly farther when hit. Since the object of the game is to send the player flying off the screen, the object early on is to get the opponent to a high percentage.
In 1P mode, you choose a character and go through a series of challenges, facing various Nintendo characters on their respective stages. 1P mode is very fun, because in addition to the one on one battles, you get to play some special instances. You fight against th Mario Brothers, Giant Donkey Kong, a team of Kirbys, a team of Yoshis, and a mysterious giant hand. Sometimes you even team up with an AI teammate. In between the battles are fun little challenges, such as Breaking all Targets in a stage in a certain time, or racing past obstacles to a finish line. These challenges are a good break from the fighting, and are not required to continue (they just give you more points). Overall, 1P mode is incredibly fun on the first play through, yet interesting enough that you will want to beat it with all the characters at least once.
However, the 1P mode is beaten very quickly, and with each playthough lasting 10-20 minutes, you are done with the single player game very fast. In addition, the 1P story mode is the same no matter which character you choose, and has no story to it. The only reason to continue with 1P after the initial play is to unlock the secret characters and stages, and thus once that is accomplished the 1P mode does not offer much.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jan 25th, 2008 at 23:42:45.
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Jan 14th, 2008 at 23:35:10 - Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (360) |
ENTRY #1
SUMMARY
Command and Conquer 3 is a RTS (real time strategy) game in which the player commands an army against an opposing force in a series of missions. The gameplay takes place on a map, often shrouded in a fog of war, and consists of building and commanding infantry, vehicle, and aerial units from a battle base in order to destroy the enemy or capture key structures. An important process in order to complete missions is to harvest Tiberium, which when processed is converted into money necessary to build units or structures. C&C3 also has online multiplayer, although I will not go into that portion in this review.
GAMEPLAY
At the outset of the game, the player gets to decide which global military power to side with, the Global Defense Initiative (GDI) or the Brotherhood of Nod (NOD). The GDI represents a global military, who's goal is to stop the spread of Tiberium around the world for the good of the people. NOD represented a fanatic faction ruled by a maniacal yet charismatic leader, who uses terrorist like methods in order to spread Tiberium and help the poor and impoverished. In a sense, the player has the choice to play the good guys (GDI), who have advanced technology and better defenses, or the bad guys (NOD) who wreak havoc with exotic weaponry and offensive terrorist attacks.
The story combined with the well done cutscenes motivated me to continue progressing in the game. The game employs real life actors to produce entertaining cutscenes before every mission. These cutscenes put a lot of pressure on me in order to complete the mission, and often created a heightened sense of realism into the game. Plus, when all hell broke loose, the cutscenes provided a very entertaining show.
As far as the actual gameplay itself, commanding units comes with a bit of a learning curve. The tutorial helped an RTS rookie like me a lot, but covered a lot of material very fast, which was hard to remember. Basically, you use the mouse to drag boxes around units to select them, and right click on a patch of ground or an enemy to have them attack or move to the position. In missions with base building, you start out with a main building, and build basic structures in order to unlock more advanced structures and units. In the initial few missions, most of the advanced units and buildings are locked, and so I was motivated to continue playing to command the better units. One cool gameplay element was the garrisoning of infantry units inside buildings, which protected them from harm. The otherwise defenseless infantry were able to cause serious damage over time from inside buildings, and only units with flamethrowers or grenades had the ability to kill units inside buildings.
One thing Command and Conquer did very well was specifying the mission objectives by putting boxes around the buildings that needed to be captured or destroyed. Every mission, I was aware what needed to be accomplished and never got stuck at a dead end unaware of what to do.
ENTRY #2
GAMEPLAY
As the game progresses, the difficulty and complexity of the game goes up. With more units and technologies available, it was hard to decide what to do in what order. Missions would often give me little time to set up my base and build units before sending hordes of enemies to destroy me. I did enjoy the later part of the game much more than the earlier missions however, because it gave me more freedom in how I could complete the mission. In the early stages, most of the missions did not let you build your base from scratch, or they would restrict the best buildings. In the later missions, I had almost everything at my disposal, and enjoyed building up a massive army of tanks to obliterate enemy bases.
Although the difficulty level did increase, the increased challenge forced me to change my tactics and to be more efficient and effective. Also, losing multiple times allowed me to experiment different units too see their strengths and weaknesses. Missions that were not fun were ones that restricted my ability to build, while demanding me to do extremely difficult tasks using a small task force. Beating these missions often came down to trial and error, aka memorizing from which direction enemies would advance.
Later in the game, super weapons became available, adding another pressing element to the game. These super weapons, such as the GDI Ion Cannon and the NOD Nuclear Missile, are capable of obliterating any units or buildings in a large radius that are visable. They take time to use and build, but cause a massive amount of destruction in an amazing looking explosion. These super weapons added a whole new element to the game, as making a direct hit to the center of an enemy base will almost always result in its defeat. With the ability to capture enemy superweapons, and the threat of an enemy superweapon attack, the player is given even more battle.
DESIGN
Command and Conquer is clearly a well designed game. Mission objectives are clearly stated and labeled on the map. Their are primary objectives vital to the mission, and bonus objectives which give the player a better score and potentially reveal more of the C&C3 backstory. I never had trouble figuring out what I had to do, and the bonus objectives often helped me in completing the primary objectives.
As far as map layout, their were a large variety of structures and terrains. Some maps took place in cities, with civilian buildings which could garrison infantry units. Other maps had rivers, gaps, or mountains, which required jetpacks or aerial units to traverse. The units and buildings were simple enough to understand, and were not so numerous that they became overwhelming. Each unit's advantages (strong vs air, strong vs infantry, etc.) could be displayed if you put the mouse over the unit as well.
While the player was provided with an initial Tiberium field, there would often be another field in the center of the map equidistant from both bases, which would provoke a conflict to secure the vital resource once one's original Tiberium field runs dry. Later in the game, the player is presented with a moral conflict. Use of a certain Tiberium bomb would make destroying the enemy easy, yet the GDI commander warns you not to use it because it would set off a chain reaction killing millions of innocents. Whether you use it or not does not effect the outcome of the mission, but using the bomb provokes a bitter ending cutscene, while withholding it produces a joyous one.
C&C's design flaws are few. The music, while fitting, never really stood out or stayed with me after the game. Commanding certain types of infantry was a troublesome, because they were hard to manage in comparison with vehicles. Despite a number based grouping system, it was hard to select all of the units you wanted to select when you had a large army at your base. Overall, C&C is a solid RTS which I throughly enjoyed and will continue to play until I have completed every single player mission I can.
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dtonys has been with GameLog for 16 years, 10 months, and 7 days |
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