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Jan 26th, 2008 at 02:21:19 - Super Smash Brothers (N64) |
SUMMARY
Super Smash Brothers is a fighting game that features popular characters from the Nintendo franchise. It can be played either single-player or multi-player with up to 4 players.
GAMEPLAY
The first thing one notices about any video game is the visuals, and Super Smash is no exception. Super Smash has a cartooney visual theme, like many Nintendo 64 games (Super Mario 64 for example). This theme is a pretty noticable contrast to basically any other fighting game I have played, which are dominated by things like blood, cleavage, loud rock music, etc. I noticed that this theme sets a much more friendly and less competitive mood than most fighting games.
One thing this mood allows is more relaxed and enjoyable social interactions. I played multi-player against a player much better than me, but I still had lots of fun because of the sheer ridiculousness of the game. Also, the fact that it is a 4-player game, and the fact that rounds are short so it is easy to take turns, make it possible for many people to play the game at once.
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Jan 15th, 2008 at 00:50:40 - Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (360) |
--Spoiler Warning!--
GAMEPLAY
The game has followed the same basic gameplay pattern in the last hour as it did the hour before, but the level of fun has not diminished. I've caught a bit more of the story this time, but I still feel that while playing the game the story is largely irrelevant; the action definitely takes center stage.
I think what makes the game so fun are the numerous small victories you win while progressing through a level. Every time you clear a building, or get past a tough group of soldiers, or in any way overcome a challenge, the word "checkpoint" comes on screen and your game is saved. Every checkpoint you hit feels like you have made significant progress towards the end of the level. The checkpoints are frequent enough so that you never lose much progress when you die, so that even at the most frustrating points it is never much more than about 15 or 20 minutes between checkpoints.
DESIGN
Despite the fact that every level has the player doing basically the same thing (shoot enemies until you reach the end), the game still manages to feel varied. For one thing, the environments of the levels constantly change, from the urban Middle-Eastern cities to the Russian countryside. Also, new tools get introduced, like the ability to call in air strikes, that make individual levels seem very different, even though the basic gameplay is mainly the same.
The tone of the gameworld is violent, very dangerous, and rather grim. The introductory sequence places the player in the shoes of a person who has been captured by the enemy. As the player is taken through a Middle-Eastern city, they see civilians being executed by enemy soldiers. Eventually it is revealed that the player is the former president of this country, and the sequence ends with the player's character being shot in the head. This sets the tone of the game, and is not the last time that a character controlled by the player dies (not GAME OVER dead, but "really" dead, that is the story continues after that character has died).
Call of Duty is a very scripted game. There isn't much, if any, emergent complexity, so all of the challenges in the game must have been explicitly put in the game by the designers. I'd like to create a game that exhibits emergent gameplay for my own project, but I'm not sure if I will be up to the programming challenge.
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Jan 14th, 2008 at 22:47:48 - Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (360) |
SUMMARY
Call of Duty 4 is a first-person shooter where the player takes the role of an American or (depending on what level you are playing) British soldier in a fictional modern day (or perhaps near future?) conflict. The player progresses through a linear series of levels fighting alongside computer-controlled teammates. There is also an online mode, although this session was devoted to the single-player campaign.
GAMEPLAY
What struck me while playing through the very first level of this game was how much it reminded me of arcade rail shooters like Time Crisis. While Call of Duty is not a rail shooter, so you can theoretically go whichever direction you like in the level, it is obvious that the player is meant to follow their teammates. Going in any other direction leads you to nothing but dead ends. Although it felt restricting at first, this mechanism allows the game to present a well-paced narrative with specific exciting, almost movie-like action moments, and by the end of the first level it had ceased to bother me. To the contrary, by the second level I felt excited and involved in the action.
While the gameplay was intense and gripping, and the environments seem rich, detailed and realistic, I never felt any particular connection to any of the characters. The computer-controlled characters are your typical military types, and I don't think I can remember the player-controlled characters uttering a single line of dialog. This doesn't necessarily get in the way of the gameplay, and playing through the levels is certainly fun and exciting despite this, but the sequences in-between the levels seem just like excuses to get back into the action. I'm not following the plot of the game particularly well, from my point of view I'm pretty much just alternating between killing generic Russians and killing generic Middle-Easterners.
A simple plot has its advantages, though. Midway through my play session a few friends came over and were watching me play, and it took them no time at all to deduce the general plot. They may not have known the characters names (neither, I admit, do I) but they were still able to enjoy the game for its sheer action, and offer me advice on how to tackle the particularly tough parts of the levels (throw a grenade, go through the other door, etc.). In general, I had a great time playing this game.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jan 14th, 2008 at 22:48:29.
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