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Feb 9th, 2008 at 02:13:11 - World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (PC) |
SUMMARY
Many praise World of Warcraft as the best MMORPG of all time, and inherits the popular nickname World of War “Crack” because of it’s incredible addictive elements that makes players spend hours on end to complete just one more quest. For those of you who do not know, MMORPG stands for “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game”, which separates itself from simple “Role Playing Games” because of the huge and expansive game world shared with real life players, rather than a solo trip through a world battling just computer controlled monsters. Much like an RPG, however, the player chooses an avatar (a total of ten races and eight classes) and slowly progresses through a game world. The objective is to vanquish monsters, complete quests and even destroy players of the opposite faction (alliance and horde) to make one’s character stronger, through experience and better magical items.
GAMEPLAY
The game play is very smooth and crisp, and at 15 dollars a month, it very well should be. There are two factions, the Alliance and the Horde, each with 5 unique races. Although they each have their own benefits, they are well rounded enough where their special racial abilities are not enough to make them a “bad” or “overpowered” race. I play a melee damage dealing class called the “rogue”. The “rogue’s” unique abilities are the “stealth” feature that turns me invisible and allows me to sneak around and perform deadly surprise attacks followed by a flurry of lethal blows. The downside is the fact that I have no way of healing myself and I have fewer hit points, making me a fragile target. Each class has similar benefits and deficits, and it seems that it’s almost like a more complicated “row sham bow”. The difference is that everyone has a chance of winning, rather than a set outcome of rock beating scissors, or paper beating rock.
The single player campaign can become tedious. Most of the quests are: kill 15 imps or, collect 30 rocks. But the development of skills and new items makes the quests quite enjoyable, and there are many other things to do besides questing such as interacting with other players or leveling professions such as herbalism and leatherworking. You can gather herbs to level herbalism while you craft items from leather to improve leatherworking. These aspects of the game are well thought out and can really make the monotonous dull times worth the effort.
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Feb 9th, 2008 at 02:11:44 - World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (PC) |
GAMEPLAY
There are virtually no loading screens, which make this game, unique from other RPG’s and MMORPG’s alike. The only instances where there are loading screens are in fact, “instances”. “Instances” are also known as dungeons, or simply a small group’s effort of five players who team up to complete objectives. While the normal game can be played through as a team effort, Instances require the effort of all five team members, and it’s an aspect of the game that really makes it shine. These usually take 1-4 hours, depending on the instance. So be sure to have enough time to finish one before you start; your group members will surely become annoyed if you suddenly have to leave, and having a bad rep on you’re server is not a good thing.
The teamwork element is truly astounding. The way it usually works in a five man group is; you have three damage dealing classes such as the mage or rogue, while the “tank” of the group (someone who takes damage, such as a warrior) holds off the enemies from killing the rest of the group, while the healer (ie: preist) keeps the tank, and everyone else alive. It gets slightly more complicated than that at higher levels, and the players start to really pay attention to what is going on to complete their objectives. The “big brother” of instances are raids, the 10 to 25 man versions of instances. This is where the “tank and spank” method becomes a bit more complicated. Even if the main elements are similar to instances, strategic leadership of the positioning becomes more of a huge part of the overall success of the group.
DESIGN
WoW is simply an ingenious concept. It seems to be a game that everyone can enjoy; it’s addictive, and incredibly fun to play. Even with outdated graphics, and some tedious game play, it looks great and plays smoothly, which in my opinion is way more important than impeccable eye candy with horrendous game play.
The reason why this game appears to be addictive is the sense of challenge players get from playing the game. In truth the game is incredibly easy and requires very little hand eye coordination to really shine through as a tremendous player. I found that one exception of concept of skill is healing other players. The ability to think fast and target teammates is a difficult skill to master, and can be one of the most enjoyable classes to play. With that being said, however, there is still enough challenge elsewhere to keep even the most skilled player engaged with the instant gratification of receiving praise and epic equipment to keep them hooked. PvE (Player versus Environment) is perfect for a relaxed gamer. You slay animals and enemies for quests and items, and you slowly get stronger, you start to look better, and the world around you becomes more and more complex. If you take things slow, quests can still be difficult, but nothing will ever seem to be impossible. For players looking for a greater challenge, one can participate in PvP (Player versus Player) to compete against other players in the world. There are certain PvP games such as capture the flag and king of the hill that puts players of the opposite factions against each other. Although skill is more of an issue here, it still becomes slightly frustrating going against someone who has some of the best equipment in the game, where your skill soon becomes completely obsolete. With that being said, it is still a great game if you have the time for it, and I strongly recommend it to anyone with an interest in role playing games.
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Jan 26th, 2008 at 02:58:15 - Super Smash Brothers (N64) |
GAME PLAY
With my negative comments noted above, each character also has every enjoyable aspects that although difficult to play, can be really fun to use. They designers did a great job in animating all the characters to have very unique and flashy moves that are directly from the original games they came from, such as Mario’s fireball and Yoshi’s egg toss. I find myself playing link simply to use his boomerang attack and powerful sword animations.
The arena also plays a big part in the game play. Samus’s level (from metroid) has lava that continuously rises in attempt to burn players, while Kirby’s dreamland has wind to blow players off the map. While these aspects are fun, certain players can really take advantage of dangers of each arena. Link’s jumping makes it hard to make it back when jumping against the wind, while Ness can absorb the shots fired from R-wings in Star Fox’s level.
DESIGN
I thought that the design of the levels and characters were ingeniously thought out. Who wouldn’t want to play game with their favorite Nintendo Characters? Even with the imbalanced issues of the game, there is simply so much to do that each game is never the same. The game is designed so even though some characters are “better” than others, I find myself playing the “weaker” characters for a challenge and to experience their well animated move sets and abilities. The music is also a wonderful addition. Each arena has its own slightly buffed music from their original games.
The single player is a bit weak, considering there is only about 11 levels with different bonus stages (time trials involving hitting targets and jumping on platforms). The AI can be tricked easily, even on the hardest difficulty. I found the only reason for playing the single player game is to unlock some of the bonus chars and set records for speed runs. But the real reason why people play this game is never for the single player. The multi-play is so vast and well thought out that one could spend hours thinking out new strategies and combos.
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Jan 26th, 2008 at 02:38:40 - Super Smash Brothers (N64) |
SUMMARY
“In Super Smash Brothers 64”, the players choose various characters and have them battle in different “arenas”. The game is unique in the sense that all the characters and “arenas” are based off of other games made from Nintendo, such as
Mario from “Super Mario Brothers” and Ness from “Earth Bound”. The story is slightly convoluted in the sense that they never textually tell the player what is going on, but what I derived from the opening scene is that a kid is playing with his action figures (Mario and the gang) and he or she is making them fight in his imaginary world during playtime. Since this is a “fighting game” it doesn’t get any more complicated than that, and it is simply a blast to pick your favorite character and have the ultimate faceoff in nostalgic arenas.
GAMEPLAY
What’s so unique about “Super Smash Brothers” is the game play. Even though it is a “fighting game” the characters do not have “life” that slowly diminishes over time every time they are hit by a move. Instead, the characters have damage meters that start at 0% to a max of 999%. The more damage a character has, the more the characters fly when they are hit. The object of this game is to hit the characters off the map into all four edges of the screen, instead of depleting their life.
“Super Smash Brothers” has to be one of my favorite fighting games of all time. At a certain level of proficiency, however, there are certain nuances of the game that can be used and abused to make it impossible for other players of lower skill levels to even stand a chance. The “throw” ability, is easy to execute, and some characters such as Ness and Donkey Kong have extremely powerful ones that easily dispatch other characters at 70-100% (The average % to be eliminated is around 140%).
There are also several characters that have balance issues that make them far superior or inferior compared to others. For example, Link (from Zelda) has horrendous jumping abilities that make him extremely viable to be killed at 40% if the player is not careful. Ness, (as noted above) has an extremely overpowered throw, as well as powerful jumping.
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ajlouie has been with GameLog for 16 years, 10 months, and 10 days |
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