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Mar 7th, 2008 at 03:11:34 - Tony Hawk Pro Skater (N64) |
Summary: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 on N64 is a single or two-player game where the player attempts skateboarding tricks in order to get points. There are five tapes in every level, and you can only go to the next level if you pick up a certain amount of tapes.
1st game play: For both of my game plays I played the single player version of the game. This is probably my best game as I am most familiar with it. I love this game for the progression that takes place. The game leads you to the end but the route you take is totally up to you. The tricks and routes to the tapes that you need to find vary form one player to the next as the familiarity with the level grows the lines the player chooses through the level become more complex and incorporate more difficult tricks. I love the fact that every time you chose the level something different happens, something unexpected. Even for me a veteran that already has his lines planned out encounters problems like falling which messes up the rhythm or missing a tape and having to go back to it. Every run turns out different, one of the primary reasons that game never gets boring.
I find my self getting frustrated with the games at times because some parts are difficult and even some of the tapes are very hard for me to get, for example the secret tapes in many of the levels are placed very strategically where it is very hard to reach them. I like the fact that the levels get harder as the game progresses. I’ve reached a point where I can get all five tapes in one try for each of the first four levels but after that it is impossible to get all the tapes in one try. The levels get bigger and the amount of points necessary to get tapes increases. The game does a very good job of staying difficult and always posing challenges to the player.
2nd game play: For the second game play the enjoyment only increased as I got into my groove and put together really tough lines that flowed perfectly. The idea that you have to get tapes makes it much more interesting than a regular skating game where you just skate around hurting yourself and ruining property. The tape challenges make you conscious to the time limit and having to find certain obstacles like five tables to grind or all the letters that make up the word S-K-A-T-E. This game is extremely fun and flows really well. Your skater gains experience which makes him a better skater along with getting new gear to improve skating. The game isn’t mundane and throws something new out there every once in a while to change things up. For example there are three levels where you don’t have to collect tapes but it’s a skate challenge against ten or so other computers and medals are handed out. Best 2 out of three runs makes it feel like a real competition. As much as it is possible this game does a god job of making the player feel like a skater as when big tricks are thrown screams are heard. The game does a very good job of incorporating the “Magic Circle” as when you are playing your fully concentrated on throwing down huge grabs and kick tricks and find yourself leaning and turning the controller to try and make harder turns.
Design: My favorite aspect of this game is the fact that you get to chose from real professional skaters that you have heard of before and get to use their real gear. The large variance in levels is very well achieved as levels vary from the best city in the world, San Francisco to a famous Portland skateboard to a mall. Half the fun in the game is skating around the levels and finding thing you can do in one level that you wouldn’t be able to do in another like grind a 50 stair set rail instead of taking the escalator in the mall, or adding a few points to you score by grinding a cop car in SF. The angles in the game make anything possible and it is hard to be bored by the game because there is so much to do and so many lines to take. I enjoy this game very much and is defiantly one of my favorites as it totally encompasses me and doesn’t let me do anything else while playing except for trying to crank out a perfect run.
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Feb 20th, 2008 at 23:35:43 - Super Smash Brothers (N64) |
Summery: Super Smash Brothers is both a single player as well as multiplayer. You choose a character and fight different characters on a designated platform. The more times your hit, the more your damage percentage goes up, with an increase in percentage you fly further every time you get hit. You die when you get knocked off the platform or get knocked out of the “playing arena”. This is a with out question a game of emergence. I played it on N64.
1st Game Play: For both of my plays of SSB I played the multiplayer version with three other people. I’ve been playing this game for a very long time and love it every time I play. I love the strong emergence present, as every time you play there is a different outcome. There are unlimited possibilities because movement is unrestricted. The fact that you can chose one out of twelve characters from the Nintendo series makes it so you instantly have a connection to the game without even playing it if you ever owned a Nintendo console. I really enjoy the specific soundtrack to each level as it is very nostalgic and I have flashbacks to my childhood when I would play these games all the time.
I really enjoyed cartoony aspect to the game and the animations. The fact that you get to walk around pick up weapons and try and kill your opponents is really fun and captivating. We played with 10 lives per person and every time we played a new champion would emerge. One of the best multiplayer games I have ever played.
2 nd Game play: After my second trial of the game my excitement only grew as I was finally getting into my rhythm. It is easy to think that the game doesn’t really involve any skill but to this day there are still people I cant beat even when they are limited to using half of their moves. The game requires very quick reflexes and very good control skills. The noise level in the room was higher than with any other game I’ve played. There is nothing between the four different players and its skill against skill. There is no idle time as you are always fighting and most levels aren’t big enough to sit and avoid combat.
The fact that the game gives players items to try and even up the playing field makes it more interesting. The seasoned veterans take the items off to make it purely skill and no luck involved. When this happens people sit on the edge of their seats trash talk all the time and scream and whine when they get killed. Competition is sky high. You can say that the game gets “way to intense” sometimes when the characters start flying further and have more damage done to them.
Design: The most interesting part of this game is the design. The levels take a scene or image from each of the videogames the characters belong to and add their soundtrack to it. Link’s level is links castle, Fox’s level is the space ship from his game, the level takes place on top of the space ship. The game does a very good job of establishing the “Magic Circle” as the game is the only thing your thinking about is how to knock your opponent off before he does the same to you. It is really interesting as each level puts you in a different magic circle, each level brings you back to another time in your childhood playing these individual games, like Mario, Zelda, or Donkey Kong.
One of the most innovative parts of the game design is the health system. There is no health bar, but percentage. The level starts and everyone’s percentage is at 0 the more you get hit he higher your percentage gets and the farther you fly every time you get hit. As percentage goes up the intensity also goes up as you want to get one more kill before you loose a life. The ability to move is almost flawless as you are able to jump really high and save yourself from falling of the edge by jumping much higher then you would think you could.
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Feb 8th, 2008 at 21:13:30 - Mario Kart (Wii) |
For my third game log I chose to play Mario Kart 64 on the Nintendo 64. It is an exhilarating adventure racer where you find the main characters from the Mario series racing and trying to kill each other in go karts.
I’ve played this game many times as a child and loved it every time. It seems as though it would get repetitive but the fact that you can do almost anything you want in the game (except drive through walls) makes the player have a different experience every time they play. The thing I enjoy the most about the game is that the game has two main games within it, racing which is always fun on its own, but also fighting with all sorts of weapons with other players to get closer to the front of the pack. There are “question mark” boxes that when you drive over you get a certain weapon varying from a banana to a star or lightning. I played the two player version where there are 6 computers playing with my friend and me. The game is very captivating as at the end of every race I would be screaming in joy for getting first place or almost in tears for letting a computer beat me. Level design is very creative as every one of the 16 levels is different and they only get harder as you go on. The game also gets frustrating as there were certain levels that were even to a seasoned veteran hard to finish in fourth place or better, the game forces you to replay the level if neither of the human players got at least fourth place. There was a lot of positive feedback which is one of the things that makes the game fun to play like getting to start in the pole position if you win a race which gives you a clear advantage in the race. The variety of outcomes also leads to the games enjoyment. Picking up different weapons, cutting through short cuts and avoiding allsorts of obstacles like cars on a freeway make the game fun to play every time you pick up a controller. There is no story line to the game as it is a racing game.
For my second play of this game nothing changed but which levels we played. Since there is no plot you have the choice of playing whatever cup you want as there is no link between the cups(each cup has four races). The level of fun only increased as we were getting closer to finishing all 16 races and I wanted to do finish with a better record than my friend. It turns out there is a significant amount of strategy in the game, knowing when to use your weapons or knowing how to use the weapons to the best of their abilities. I enjoyed playing this game very much and will keep on playing it for the rest of my life as every time I play something will be different and every race will be at least as exhilarating as the last time I played. It might have been so interesting because my friend and I both think we are top notch players so there was a little more effort in our play. One thing I really enjoyed about this game is that I felt like I was in the middle of the magic Circle, it was very strong, very captivating and I thought of nothing but the game while playing, leaning into turns both with my head and my torso, pressing “gas” harder and harder almost breaking the button to try to go faster even though that doesn’t do anything.
Design: Out of all the Mario Kart games this is the first one in 3d. I really enjoyed level designs as levels varied from deserts to snow plains to Choco Mountain to castle and rainbow road. No level looked like another and everyone was harder to master than the one before. Different backgrounds and different racetracks lead to the variety in levels in addition to the weapon selection. I think the game is kept interesting by the variety of outcomes different tracks different weapons and the unlimited freedom of movement. In certain levels there is more then one path to take so by trail and error you figure out witch is the shortest route. This is a fully progressive game no emergence present. I found ourselves always screaming and yelling at each other, trash talking when we would shoot another. The fact that you will always face 7 different opponents each having their own strengths keeps the game from being mundane. I enjoy the difficulty of the game as in the hardest mode I don’t always win, I also enjoy that there is some connection between what place your in and what weapon the game will give you. if your in first they will probably give you a banana or a single green shell, while in eighth you’ll get stars and lightning to give you a chance.
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Jan 25th, 2008 at 20:44:23 - Super Mario World (SNES) |
Summery: For my second game log I played Super Mario World on super SNES. The idea of the game is that you (Mario) and your friend yoshi who comes and goes as the game progresses try to rescue the kidnapped princess toadstool, from the evil king bowser. This is a side scroller a 2-d game. I played the two player version where the only difference is that Luigi also plays the game, but one at a time. This game is animated.
1st gameplay: As the first level commenced I noticed that I had a huge grin on my face as this is in my mind the best game ever made. The typical Mario music brought me back to my childhood years as I would play the game every day, and back then my system wasn’t so old and worked properly I could save the game and turn off the consol and then come back to the saved game, now I turn off the system and it restarts. I had a smile on my face for the whole time I was playing because it is an extremely fun game to play. No one can have complaints about the most classic siblings in video games to date, Mario and Luigi. The idea of the game isn’t anything special just trying to rescue a kidnapped princess. The thing that I really liked about the game is that even though there is only one finish line, there are multiple ways to get there as long as you are moving more right then left as it is a sidescroller. The thing I love the most about this games Is how hard it is. Of course the first ten or even 15 levels I can play almost from memory, just knowing each little secret and such, where to get power ups and stuff. As the game progresses it gets much more difficult, as levels that you do not know very well take caution and time to complete which is challenging with a time limit of 300 seconds for every level. Ive played this game very frequently as a child and still have trouble at certain parts of the game.
2nd Game play: Nothing changed after I played it for another 45 minutes. Although I noticed that I would scream when I fell through a crack or get killed by an enemy. Another thing I like about this game is that there are only three buttons to use, one to jump, one to run, and one to jump off yoshi/ do a spin move. I could play this game for the rest of my life. So simple but yet so much to it.
Design: the design of the game is very interesting. All levels move from left to right although some of the castles,(the bosses) change after you reached a certain point in the castle. Another interesting point in the game is that for some levels the screen makes you move as in the other ones you could stand in the same place as long as you want, in others the screen would push you off whatever object you were one and you can not run through the level as the screen would not move as you moved, but you must move as the screen moves. Another thing I noticed is that there are constant rewards, not only coins which give you an extra life every time you collect 100 but growing mushrooms, feathers to fly, and flowers to turn into fire Mario where you can throw fire balls. I also enjoy how after you finish a level it goes back to a map of the imaginary world and you can choose which level you want to play. The enemies in this game come in waves, if you kill one it wont be there next time your in the same spot. The last thing I would like to mention is that as you get more familiar with the game it seems as though more rewards are thrown your way, as you know where more of these rewards are, this is very cleaver as it keeps people who have been playing for a while still interested. The last thing the game is is boring as the levels change from sky high levels to underground cave leves, to water levels, and normal surface levels. i really enjoy the variety of secrets that you can find in the level, the solid clouds you can land in f u can fly, the tubes that take you to places you wouldn't normally see or further into a level or into a secret bonus area. I don’t really know what I would change as if anything changed the game wouldn’t be the same and I love it the way it is, this is my favorite game of all time.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jan 25th, 2008 at 20:46:19.
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drozen has been with GameLog for 16 years, 10 months, and 17 days |
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