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Friday 8 February, 2008
Gamelog entry 2, metroid prime pinball
Gameplay:
This time around, I was a little bit more on the lookout for new and more interesting types of missions and found a few that appealed to me more than the others I had tried before. One specific mission - Phendra drifts - was a lot of fun because it incorporated a lot more elements into the gameplay rather than just being a standard pinball game. For example, it allows you to control two sets of clackers (one on the top screen, one on the bottom), there's a boss type monster, and the ability to regenerate your health, activate force fields, etc.
Of all the missions available in pinball, I thought that this one was the most fun and it was the one that I played the majority of the time, because the other missions are very easy to get bored with as there is no need for concentration or strategy.
Design:
I thought that one of the best elements of this game was the way that it makes use of the DS's two screens, and it would have been better if more of the missions could complicate the gameplay in the same way as the Phendra drifts mission did -- by allowing you to play on both screens rather than just watch on the top, play on the bottom. It also made good use of the hand controls of the DS, because the right and left buttons on the top of the DS are really similar to the hand position you would use if you actually were playing pinball in an arcade.
The game was also pretty interesting because of the use of space and the graphics. Since the DS is so small and uncomplicated, I pretty much assumed that the graphics would be similar to a gameboy or something. But, I actually thought it did a pretty good job of giving the player a sense that he or she is interacting with the world of the game, which is especially nice because it actually is a world - there are little bugs, sometimes it rains, there are bridges, etc., rather than just presenting you with a screen that looks like a pinball machine from the arcade. All in all, this game was pretty good for what it was, but still not great because in the end I don't think there's any way to make pinball that interesting. But the DS gave it a good shot!
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