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Jan 26th, 2008 at 03:54:25 - Katamari Damacy (PS2) |
Gameplay:
The second time I played Katamari Damacy, I started to get really good, really fast. As someone who generally sucks at this sort of thing (any video game ever made) it was actually kind of nice to make some sort of progress. In general, even though the missions get harder, you get better at finding things faster. It actually takes a lot of strategy to find things in a certain order.
My favorite part about playing again is that I could pick up bigger and better things. Cows and other miscellaneos barnyard animals, for instance, are fun because they make barnyard noises. People, too, make horrified sounds that are hillarious because some of them are Japanese and some American and some you cannot even tell. They also flail around and look ridiculous. My favorite things to pick up were watering cans, bits of sushi, crabs, fish, sumo wrestlers, street lamps, gasoline pumps and fireworks.
Design:
The most prevelant innovative part of this game, to me, is that when your Katamari gets lopsided, it actually stays lopsided. You wouldn't think that would actually mean anything, but as silly and unrealistic and positively ridiculous as this game is, the realness of the crazy rolling makes it kind of like real life. You feel like if you were rolling a giant ball over random parts of Japanese homes in order to remake the stars that your effeminate father, the king of the universe, illiminated, it would look just like it does on the screen.
The downside of the graphics is that they're a little blocky and sometimes they block the screen. This, since its a time sensitive game, is hugely frustrating. One of the neat things about the graphics, and the game world is that almost anything short of absolute vertical walls is possible to roll up, even if it seems improbable. This makes the game pretty interesting because it seems like there are many places to go even though each level only has a few rooms.
To make the game more interesting periodically, different things hit you or run into you and stop you or knock things off of you Katamari. This makes things really frustrating because you work so hard to get things to stick on you and they're knocked off by a at driving a baby carriage with an alligator in it. I understand that it has to be that way because the game would be pretty boring without it. However, they warn you, but it seems a little odd because its like a five second warning that doesn't even give you enough time to react.
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Jan 15th, 2008 at 06:29:52 - Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2) |
Summary:
This game is essentially a main character, “Snake”, that is a secret military agent for the US performing top secret missions during the cold war. The object of the game is to be noticed as little as possible and at all costs not be detected by the Russians. Many of the missions have to do with kidnapping/saving Russian or American scientists or destroying artillery bunks or military posts. In addition, there is a more complicated plot having to do with the same game versions one and two. These extra characters add a few plot twists.
“Gameplay”
While certainly not hard, this game was very challenging because of my inexperience at the art of shooting people. Even gathering fruit, normally an easy task was geared for those with good aim because instead of climbing the tree, I had to shoot at it, which in itself took a good five minutes. My emotional state, though glad to harm communists, was still a little reluctant to shoot people. The only part that saved me, in fact, was the fact that my gun was a tranquilizer and didn’t actually kill anyone.
The characters were perhaps the most interesting part of the game. Part James Bond, part Call of Duty, the characters are also part fantasy. There are some characters, for instance, which can control electricity, hornets and even visibility. In this historical game, that was a surprising twist.
My only complaint about the game is that the narration was often long winded. Even though the plot was interesting, I found myself very bored after the 10th interruption and it didn’t even stop there. Some characters I skipped through and wasted a lot of time that I could have been playing.
Overall, I enjoyed the game despite the long interruptions and killing people. The best part about it, mass-market wise is that it’s also somewhat historically accurate. I like knowing that I’m not totally wasting my time when I play video games and this game did the trick.
“Design”
The design of the game was very interesting and somewhat realistic. The best parts, graphically, were the narrated parts with real footage from the cold war and the beginning where they did a long song in a Bond theme. It was beautiful and a little reminiscent which gave it some integrity.
The plot and random-ness of the game was fantastic and very suspenseful. However, this was my first time playing it and I heard from several other people that the more you play it, the more predictable it is. However, you can usually choose so many different missions that you never have to play the same way twice, in fact that’s impossible.
An interesting and slightly annoying touch is that when spotted, the game alerts you and instead of being able to complete the mission and get out of danger, the alarm doesn’t let you do anything but hide and kill. So if you’re collecting something, someone or something else, you can’t do it for a whole minute and it’s really annoying.
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sfaulkne@ucsc has been with GameLog for 16 years, 10 months, and 6 days |
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