Saturday 9 February, 2008

Game Log #2 By: Collin Berg

Gameplay:
One thing I noticed about Team Fortress 2, is that most servers have a built in respawn time of around 16 seconds after the player dies. I found this to be quite cumbersome and annoying. It is very frustrating to be killed by one of your opponents and have to sit and waste 16 seconds of your time waiting when all you want to do is get revenge. However, this may be a necessary evil. If the players do not have a respawn timer, the game would be very difficult to complete, because the players would be at a stalmate, constantly dying and respawning, preventing either of the teams from completing the objective. If I were to improve upon this game, I would try to give the player some sort of use for that necessary 16 second time. The time wouldn't have to be spent in a manner related to the overall game, but rather make the player still feel that they are kept busy. One solution could be having the dead players compete in a minigame vs each other similar to what you would see in mario party, or something along those lines.

Overall I would rate this as one of my top games of all time. It has a diverse and complex character class system, appealing aesthetics, good level design, and provides a compelling platform for player to player competition which is where I thrive. Call it my internet masculinity, or maybe my ego, but whatever it is, this game provides me the opportunity to achieve high amounts of satisfaction when dominating over my fellow gamers. Many things in life seem to be a competition between rivals and this game enables that primal instinct and transforms it into the fun game that I am writing about.




Design:
Level Design: The layout of each of the levels is well thought out and balanced. No team has a clear advantage based upon their environment when competing against the opposing team. The levels tend to be symmetrical on the Capture the flag modes, and on the capture point/terrain modes, each team has an opportunity to play offensively and defensively.

Game of emergence: For being a first person shooter, this game has a surprising amount of depth and complexity as a game of emergence. One thing I noticed while playing was that I could constantly create new techniques and styles of play to complete my objectives with each class. For instance, instead of playing the traditional role as a sniper who lays back and fires from a distance, I found it entertaining and challenging to go on the offense and shoot enemies with my sniper rifle without using the scope, and then proceeding to mow them down with my machete. Various other tactics can be utilized with each character class making this game have a lot of depth to it.

Reward Structure: The game sets performance based goals for its players, giving them incentives to perform in a certain manner, or play to a certain extent. For example, players are given an achievement when they have the best score for the certain character class at the end of the round. This built in reward system hooks players into playing the game more, and makes the user feel like they are playing to achieve a greater goal.

This is all right, though the design section could definitely be longer and more in-depth. The gameplay is good, and you're certainly enthusiastic for the game, but more analysis of the game would be good.

Amy Leek (grader)