Friday 25 January, 2008

So I sat down for another few rounds of Goldeneye with my friends with a heavy sigh. As usual, I was destroyed in every round, the game making my shortcomings all the more painful by adding notes such as "Most Harmless," and "Most Cowardly" after each battle. It was annoying enough listening to my friends shreik with laughter at my noobishness, but now the fucking video game itself is insulting me?! AGRAA! This is not incentive to practice...but to smash the thing.

My incompetence aside, I can understand how the competitive aspect of the game is so engaging to those who invest years of practice into mastering it. Battles and firefights can be intense and close, often sending my friends into a manic state. It's almost worth playing just to participate in the experience... until I spawn gunless in the middle of said firefight, running around very slowly and jerkily, chopping at nothing as I'm blasted into oblivion.

Design

I played a little single player on my own and found it pretty boring. Shoot a bunch of soldiers. Shoot a bunch of scientists. Shoot a bunch of whatever. The aesthetics change from level to level, but there is no variation to the game play, which gets old quick. Like I said, people don't play Goldeneye for its single player mode; they live for multiplayer.

An interesting note about the game's reward structure I found out was that it was purely psychological (regarding multiplayer, single player unlocks levels and characters, but like I said, nobody plays the single player mode; it was beaten fifty times in fifth grade already). Players compete to win various reward titles at the end of the game, such as "Most Deadly," or "Most Professional." My neanderthalic friends always eagerly shout their reward titles after every match with glee, totally oblivious that there really is NO reward; they have all been duped by the game into believing having the title "Most Deadly" for a round of multiplayers bears some kind of significance, or that its something to be proud of, even though it vanishes after a few seconds when they begin yet another match. I tried to point this out to them, but they reacted with violence. I'm reminded of Plato's allegory of the cave, when the enlightened being tries to help free those trapped who can only see the shadows of real things. They resist, preferring their familiar lie over the scary truth. Whatever.

As I stated in my last post I hate the radar, which makes hiding or ambush impossible, There is no character customization, infact, some of the characters are badly designed: Jaws, for example, is so tall that he basically always head shots any normal character. On the other spectrum, Oddjob is so short that he's incredibly hard to shoot at all. Guns are near impossible to see against the often dark grey backgrounds. The character models themselves are hideous blocky looking things, with big polygonal heads and hands.

The unofficial sequal to Goldeneye, "Perfect Dark," addresses many of the aforementioned concerns, improving graphics tremendously, varying level play by adding co-op mode and vehicles (though its still fundamentally just shooting hordes of evil doers), and letting you model and name your own character for multiplayer play. The controls are also more responsive and sensitive. Nobody ever plays this game over Goldeneye though, despite the clear improvements. It's the nostalgic value of Goldeneye that makes people keep playing it. These kids were blown away by it in fifth grade when it came out, when it knocked all previous FPS games out of the water. Their young eyes couldn't get enough guns, blood and James Bond. To them I say, keep your memories, but it's time to grow up. Let's play some Halo.

A very...enthusiastic entry. I would have preferred something a little more...objective. You make good points; they're just buried in the rants. The point of the GameLogs are not to scream how much you love/hate a game, it's to calmly and objectively identify what makes a game fun and successful, and what doesn't. So, for your next GameLog, even if the game is driving you crazy, try and stay calm and focused.


- David Seagal (Grader)


PS
Try to curb the f***ing profanity, please. This is supposed to be academic.

Not that I disagree with you on my tone, which I admit, was rather manic, I still followed instructions. You wrote that I should write "objectively", which directly contradicts what the assignment told me to do. Here is a direct quote from the assignment, which I followed to the letter:

"GAMEPLAY
In this section, you should write 2 to 5 paragraphs about your personal, subjective gameplay experience during the first 45-60 minutes of playing the game. We DO NOT want a play-by-play description of what happened, as that is usually tedious to read and to write, and not terribly insightful.
Things to write about include, but are not limited to:
Your emotional state while playing the game (and what lead to that)"
-http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/classes/cmps080k/Winter08/gamelog.html

Though I was cleary upset, I do specify what frustrated me about the game, followed the rubric, and should be graded accordingly. I suppose you're right about the profanity (my one F-bomb), and I'll refrain from using any from now on, but I don't think that should lower my grade.


...you LOVED Goldeneye, didn't you?! DIDNT YOU?!