Friday 7 March, 2008

Gameplay 2
Coming back to the game, rested and more aware I attempted to do a few more jobs, but I have also discovered that other than the mini car games, there are also time trials for me to do on motorcycles, pizza deliveries on mopeds, and if I were brave enough to steal a fire truck or police car I could do vigilante work, which ended up being ridiculously fun. I also discovered gang wars, and if I was in the wrong part of town I would randomly start being shot at. One of the most fun things that I discovered was that I could do tricks and find little premade ramps to go off of with either the dirtbike or the racing bike and I would get points and money for those tricks as well. But honestly, after an hour or so of doing jobs a not exactly being the most successful hit man, I ended up going as crazy as possible. I would drive through crowds of people, do drive by's up and down the street, anything to get my stars up and get the tanks and choppers to come out. I also went online and found codes so I could get every weapon, get a tank, and find out where the helicopters were so I could fly those. The speed boats were awesome too. There was one code that allowed me to drive on water, so I would take the tank and go crazy on land, the drive into the water and do some damage to the police out there too. I pretty much liked the chaos aspect of the game because It allowed me to blow off a little steam and laugh about it. I really like taking the racing bike and driving full speed into a wall and either slamming into it or going flying through the air if the wall was small enough.

Design
I thought this game was extremely well designed. The lighting and colors made it seem like an 80's music video mixed with episodes of Nash Bridges which I thought was the funniest thing because I know how corny that show is. I also really like the different mode of transportation because each one has perks and disadvantages in steering capability, armor and speed which were all crucial depending on what kind of job you were about to do. I also think the main characters fighting style without weapons was pretty funny and I liked it when random people fought back. I thought the area was also appropriate considering Miami's reputation for drug dealers and kingpins and stuff like that and the scenery was all very nice to drive through and set on fire. The weapons were one of the coolest things about the game because there were so many to choose from and they made killing people and destroying thins in many different way interesting because you could torch things, hit thing with bats or just shoot people in the knee caps.

This is a decent gamelog, but the design section lacks depth. We're really looking for analysis of design decisions, in particular the "why" behidn them. Also, it was submitted late.

- Ian, your TA for this week