Thursday 6 March, 2008

Game: Grand Theft Auto San Andreas was pretty entertaining. The constant crashes and roaring of the engines made the game very intense. It actually took a while for me to understand how to move the joy stick when driving the car, but the fact that I could try over and over again after dying every time made me enjoy my constant car blowups. It made me addicted to the game. I liked the variety of different types of very stylish cars. Design: The style of the game would suggest a San Andreas “image” or should I say a stereotype embedded in the video game. The storyline of the game was not necessarily coherent. Carls Johnson comes home to San Andreas finding his family and friends ruined and he even gets convicted of homicide. He sets on this long “courageous journey” to save his family ands friends. The storyline is an embedded narrative, but after much interaction with the game, I found that the emergent narrative was nothing more than just thugs with flashy cars with a back round of pimps and street races. Although I find this entertaining, I also find it very autotelic. The idea of integrating the world of the game into reality would be very scary. It is possible it might make younger players presume fabricated identities of race and culture. What seduced me into the game were definitely the shiny cars. The idea of actually having a pimped-out car and a criminal record is a fun fantasy.

I'm not entirely sure of which gamelog you wanted us to grade, but I'm going to hope it's this one, since it's the last you updated.

This is a pretty shallow post, plus you're missing the required first entry. While there are some decent ideas buried in the design section, they aren't elaborated on. Some better organization and more thought-out entries would definitely help.

Amy Leek (grader)