Friday 8 February, 2008

Gamelog Entry #2:

Gameplay:

This game continues to astound me. It has not lost any of its great quality on over 3 hours of gameplay. I still feel an attachment to both of the protagonists, and the story is still compelling. The story line is great, is good as you can get for a military first-person shooter game. Im not quite sure where it is going yet because I have not gotten that much farther, but I still know that the US is trying to stop the terrorist organization in Russia from completing their goal, which is to bring back the Soviet Union.

My friends still watch me play the game, so I know that it has not lost its human to human interaction while I play the game for over 3 hours. The NPC's still interact with you also during various points of the game, which keeps you from losing all human emotion while playing this game if you do not have any friends who want to sit and watch you play it.

This game also flows really nicely. The transitions fro level to level are really smooth. The player understands where he is going to next and for what reason... and it all makes sense.

I definitely am still interested in playing out this game. I still feel submersed in the gameplay and the game has lost non of its interesting qualities I felt at the beginning. I absolutely loved playing this game.

Desgin:

This game is designed really, really well. One thing that i especially like about the game is the level design. Like I have mentioned in earlier gamelogs, I believe that an important aspect to any game is level design and that each level should bring a new element to the game to complete the gameplay experience as a whole to the player. This game accomplishes this from the very beginning. This game has a huge range of different levels. For example, the first level is a training mission, and afterwards, for the second level, you are dropped off on a cargo ship in order to capture a warhead of some kind. At the end of the second mission, two Russian Migs come and attempt to shoot down the ship and everyone inside of it, so you have to make it out of the cargo hold alive before you accomplish the mission. This is a really innovative concept and I have not played any other game on the market that has this same type of scenario. After the cargo ship, you have to rescue an important government personal that the terrorists have managed to take hostage, and this is a sniper level. There is another level where you are the gunner of an AC-130 gunship and you have to provide air support for the ground troops. These levels are very different but work together to make this game a complete and thorough experience for the gamer.

Another aspect I really liked was the level of strategy that the developers put in this game. This is not just a regular first person shooter...it takes a bit of skill to accomplish the missions. For example, for the sniper levels, some of the terrain is better suited for sniping, while other parts of the level are suited best for short burst machine gun action. There is also different types of objects to take cover behind. If you try to hide behind a hay bill or a thin piece of wood, enemy troops will be able to shoot you through it, just like in real life. But if you hide behind a tank or a thick sheet of metal, enemy troops are not able to shoot through it. The developers did a really nice job adding this element into the gameplay.

The controls for the controller work correctly. There is nothing wrong with the implementation of the controls and it seems like the developers had a really good button layout in mind when creating this game.

Multiplayer is so much fun in this game. I did not get a chance to play it online, but I did get to play it with my roommates, and each level is different and brings a new strategy to the table. The only thing that i really would have liked to see added was a co-op campaign mode. I think it would have added a lot more social interactivity among gamers, however, the versus multi-player mode is outstanding.

The sound effects if the game are right on. It really does sound like a grenade is going off, or that a helicopter is hovering 25 feet off of the ground right next to you.

The grenades design is also an awesome element of this game. The smoke grenades provide excellent cover, and how the developers implemented the flash-bang grenade was outstanding.


The artificial intelligence in this game amazed me as well. The soldiers would seem to fight each other, even if you were not in the fray. Your allies would actually help you out in all of the situations and would not leave you like a siting duck like a lot of other military first-person shooters do.

Overall, this game was amazing and if this website would have allowed me too I would have given it 6 out of 5 stars. I thoroughly enjoyed it and can not think of a single element that the designers left out.

This is perfectly acceptable, with a very good gameplay section. The design section, while lengthy, feels a little shallow, with the first paragraph being a little more about describing what happened in the game, and some of the other points needing more depth. ("how the developers implemented the flash-bang grenade was outstanding"...how did they implement it and why is it outstanding?) Still, it's all right, and right about what we want.

Amy Leek (grader)