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Thursday 6 March, 2008
GAMEPLAY
Hmmm, the second time around I got a little bit better at playing. I've kind of gotten the hang of this whip, and it has become more fun to face the challenging enemies (now that I can face them). But I still feel like some aspects of the game rules are still hidden from me. As a basic example, I was completely avoiding the water until I got to the forest stage, when I accidentally fell in an realized that you can go in the water safely as long as you jump out again before you sink. I suppose this didn't greatly affect my gameplay, but I do feel a little gypped for some reason, as if there are still a lot of things about that I don't know about this game, actions that I could be doing right now that I just don't know how to perform. The game does a poor job of teaching the player how to play.
On another note, I really appreciate Castlevania IV's "pump-you-up" factor. The remixed music of the old themes is super-infused with energy. What can I say--the songs are catchy and, appropriate to the tone of the game, make you wanna slay monsters. Overall, my second gaming session was fun, but I feel like I'm missing out on some of the fun because of the steep learning curve.
DESIGN
Castlevania IV pulls off some mechanical feats that are pretty cool and kind of tricky to design (as I learned from GameMaker). I like the particular jumping style the designers employed--staying in the air for a second instead of rising and falling seamlessly. This suspended air time is a highly specialized feature of this game; the player wants that air time because it allows him/her to whip things at jumping level. This becomes even more crucial when you have to start grappling to rings with your whip and swinging to platforms. The grappling mechanic is another really cool feature (and another thing that I wish I knew how to do well in GameMaker), and it brings up discussion of the player's control over the whipping direction. The directional control you have over the whip is not absolute, but it is pretty good for its time. You can whip in eight directions, again making certain allowances for player behavior like whipping bats coming at you from an angle and latching onto rings to swing over obstacles.
I mentioned before that some things about this game frustrate me. First of all, I would have designed the status indicators differently; there are too manny things to keep track of. Your health, enemy health, block power (?), hearts, score...and I still have no idea what the P stands for. Besides being complex, it is counter-intuitive: Why do I have to collect heart to be able to throw daggers? Why can't I jump to a platform from directly underneath it? I would change all these things about the game, but that would leave a very different game. I've had more fun playing other 2-D platformers.
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