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Thursday 24 January, 2008
Game log 2, Session 2
Date: 1/24/08
Time: 2:00-3:00
CMPS 80k
Gameplay
After seeing just how hard Gradius III is, I decided that the best way to see most of the game was to play on the easy mode setting. However, that does not mean that this game is in any way less difficult, quite the contrary the game is still hard as hell. I have yet to see any level past the fourth and as stated above I am playing on the easy mode setting. Now that may just say something about my playing skill, or it may just tell you how hard this game really is. Now for me that is both a negative and a positive. Negative because I have yet to see new content and positive but it pushes me to see how far I can go.
One item I have yet to touch on, and will probably bring up again in the design section, is the power ups in the game. Your reliance upon these power ups cannot be overstated. It is only because of the power ups that players can get anywhere within the game. But as in most 2d space shooters the moment you die, you lose all of your power ups, which can get annoying sometimes considering just how much you rely upon them throughout the game and the levels. However, this aspect of the game is not really one you can just fix, for changing that would probably make the game not Gradius at all but some type of knock off.
Design
However the levels I have seen seem to follow the same basic premise. The first half of the level is, to a certain extent, an open play field, in the sense that your ship can move all the way to the top of the level to the screen to the bottom, without dying. This aspect changes however about halfway through the level where the addition of ground enemies appear in the forms of turrets, tanks, and various other types of hazards. In this part of the levels, going to the very top of the screen or the very bottom will result in the loss of one of your precious lives.
Now with every level comes a boss battle, sadly I haven’t seen many of these either, but the ones that I have experienced have been pretty varied. Each of the three, yes only three that’s all I’ve been able to see, has been difficult to get by, whether it be enemies distracting you from what the boss is doing, or if it’s the boss just doing serious damage and in some cases just weird attacks. In one boss battle, the boss shot out lasers that crisscrossed and required you to think ahead and dodge them. Overall the boss fights were what I expected them to be, a massive figure bigger than your ship that you simply just needed to let fly everything in your arsenal at.
Lastly the most interesting thing about Gradius III would have to be the editing system that allows you to pick and choose which power ups you can have at your disposal. These range from charge laser shots, fire bombings, to red spheres that cause close range damage to ships that get to near. The ability to pick what you wanted was a nice touch, it allowed for different experience just about every time I played. In some cases I would just pick random power ups and see just how epic I could get.
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