A person who is seriously interested in games, game studies, and game design should play a lot of games.
To the right you will see the latest GameLog (diary)
entries I have recorded for the games I'm currently playing and my thought and feelings on the game, the experience of playing it, and so on.
If you want to see all the games I'm playing, or the ones
I'm no longer playing you can follow the "List of Games I'm Currently Playing" and the "
List of Games I've Finished Playing".
During the summer of 2003 I started a little project to keep track of the videogames I had been playing. I also wanted to keep track of my thoughts as I played them.
Thus, GameLog was born as a blogging tool for gamers. If you are interested you can hop on over and register. I personally enjoy reading about other people's thoughts
on the games they play and the more the merrier! www.gamelog.cl
I had the case and manual, but no game. So I bought the game. That seems kind of silly, but it is what it is.
So, I had to test the game - to make sure the cart worked and all that.
So far, it's pretty interesting! I played the first "mission" (it said the difficulty was easy) and it took me a bit to get used to Kirby's swallow-and-gain-special-ability power. Some enemies give you a special ability when you press a button after swallowing them. This is instead of just "firing" them. There's like three buttons and I still get them confused to be honest. We'll see what happens as I play more.
The first mission has maybe 4-5 levels. And then it rolled credits! I was surprised of course - but I knew there was more game. The credits also rolled really fast which was kind of funny. And then it played a "of its era in terms of quality" CG cut-scene/movie. Weird.
Now I need to explore all the other things that opened up. There's also a 2-player co-op mode...
There's plenty to grind here - new characters, upgrade buildings, level up characters, etc. And it's fun - at least I've been enjoying it so far (I've made it to level 4 of the pit - the fungus world!).
I think what I enjoy the most now is that a "run" (this is really quite the roguelike) is - when you succeed ~20 minutes. Shorter if you die sooner, of course. So, it feels like a nice "snack" game experience - I harvest resources, do a run, harvest again, and exit. It hits a sweet spot for me in that sense. Shorter runs would probably feel less interesting because not enough development of your within-run build (which upgrades have I picked up, etc.), and longer then becomes a proper sit down and play session.
I started this last night, finished it today - all the trophies and everything which was a surprise to me. As in, I wasn't expecting I'd be able to do that - or that I'd even do it.
It's a strange game - strange in that most of the time I'm breezing through and clearing levels, and then I get stuck. Stuck real bad, and it takes me a while to figure it out. And then back to breezing.
My first time getting stuck was literally on the 2nd level. I assumed it was a "easy this is kind of the tutorial" and it probably was - but there I was stuck like a fly on honey. It was quite frustrating!
As you'd expect the game has it's own logic, and you really need to lean on the prompt to figure out what to do. I think that where it kind of breaks the most is when there are different expectations for different characters. And the only way to find out what they are (for some, others have a name that helps) is to try out different characters in different scenes to see how they react. A different reaction from the rest means this character has some additional rule in place you don't know, but need to assume or figure out. At least, I think that's how it works based on my playing it...
So, it's weirdly a game where it can sometimes be quite hard to get to a solution just from the characters and the scene - because there'll be something that won't work and you won't know why. For example, there's some scenes with a queen - if she's kidnapped, she loses her crown and the kidnapper can crown themselves! But, if you then kidnap the kidnapper - the queen doesn't automatically let herself be crowned. She often has to go to the throneroom to see the crown there before you can do "queen actions" (like execute someone). This didn't make sense to me - but at least this difference in behavior seemed consistent. I don't know how it's encoded behind the scenes - maybe the original kidnapper has a desire/goal to be crowned, but the queen doesn't implicitly? I don't know.
So, the game's short - but it is fun - with the best part probably being the alternate stories you're sometimes encouraged to figure out, the devil levels you unlock once you finish and the stamps (which you also unlock). I could have sworn I had done some of the stamp requirements during my first playthrough, but perhaps I was wrong? Those were a bit annoying because I wanted to have the requirements to look at while trying to figure out which story page might work...and some only work with the devil as well!
In separate work I've written (with colleagues!) about game goal hierarchies (the goals you achieve on the way to achieveing a game's ultimate goal, e.g. winning, finishing) and how games have a parallel narrative goal hierarchy which is how players make sense of the meaning of the game goals they're achieving - e.g. moving your character to a certain location on the screen is how you can "rescue the princess" (or whatever). This game is a really strong example of a game where the puzzle/challenge is figuring out what the game goal hierarchy is in order to achieve a narrative goal you're given! I'm excited to dig into this game a bit more - at least in the context of the goal hierarchies and academic stuff I'm working on!
I played this for a few hours. Mostly I wanted to see where things were at with Super Monkey Ball. I wasn't expecting to find a wildly different or innovative game - just super monkey ball... which is what I found, though I did spend more time on the minigames.
I've never been a huge fan of Super Monkey Ball - and I'm sort of surprised by how little love it gets in the context of people who like to play games that are really hard. This game is like Super Meat Boy (oh wow, I just realized they're both SMB! Which is also Super Mario Bros...). I mean, clearing some levels isn't THAT hard - but to get all the bananas AND record times? This is some serious dedication IMO. Lots of practice and real finesse.
Cool stuff?
Well, I quickly unlocked Kazuma Kiryu (Yakuza series), Sonic and Tails, and "Jet"? (the skater from Jet Set Radio). I thought it was a nice touch that when you pick these characters instead of bananas you get pill bottles, rings, and spray cans! (like in their original games). The sounds are even different! (with the Sonic ring sound being particularly memorable for me).
I then played all the mini-games. Some are more fun than others - and the be fair I was either playing solo or against AI, which is probably the less ideal way to play. I was surprised by how hard some of the games were! There's one in which I was only able to score once! (forget the name, but it's the one where you roll down a ramp and then up into the air - you're supposed to open the capsule to glide/drift to a target to get points. I only landed on a target ONCE. Everything else was a splash into the water because I fell far, far, short of the intended target. So, clearly there's something going on that I didn't understand - how to glide or whatever. And, many of the games have more sophisticated/complicated control schemes than you'd expect for a "mini-game". I thought it was interesting how they're all adapted to "your character is in a ball" - while still being "true" to the original game they're riffing on (lots of sports mini-games - the baseball one was interesting because it's sort of like a pinball in that you have to hit targets to get on base and stuff like that)
Anyways, it was fun - but I decided I wouldn't spend all this time on it either...
I have been keeping track of this information for the past 22 year(s), 4 month(s) and 24 day(s).
