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World of Warcraft (PC) by xl3Jessica (Feb 4th, 2010 at 05:01:22) |
(I'm doing this as part of my course, though I didn't select that option when joining as we have different course names here in England)
Design.
The user interface is extremely simple compares to most MMO's. You have your map in the corner, action bars at the bottom and player frames on the left hand side. what makes this game unique is the ability to customize your UI - mine looks completely different from the default.
The world is a fantastic design masterpiece in my opinion. The amount of zones that have their own style is staggering. The graphics are quite cartoonish, yet believable. Most online games make the mistake of trying to make the look too realistic, such as AoC. Blizzard has mastered the art of creating a world out of pure imagination - a near impossible task given the sheer size of the map.
Gameplay.
I have been playing World of Warcraft since the start of BC & I'd say I have mastered the game now. I have only ever made one character - a Holy Priest. When I first joined Warcraft - I was referred by a friend who already had been playing for quite some time, therefore I had a helping hand when I needed it. I remember entering Ragefire Chasm and thinking how intimidated I was because I understood very little of the game. I didn't even know what an instance was!
I thought the help given by the tutorials was minimal - though this has been changed since & now is much more helpful. It did not take me very long to get a general understanding of the game - for the first week I was just exploring and doing quests. After over a month of playing I was still learning - though I pretty much got a grip of the mechanics.
Now it seems a long time since I first joined, I wouldn't do anything different as making mistakes is the best way to learn. Now I am raiding end-game, roll leader to healers in the Guild, directing raids on Ventrillo, ect.
GAMELOG // 1
Tonight myself & the guild are doing an ICC10 run, trying out the new wings. Hopefully we won't wipe as much on Saurfang as we usually do! He is a Pain for me as it's a real mana drainer for priests - So I have to conserve as much as possible. The raiding system is a real winner as far as I'm concerned, it makes me wonder why I ever saw anything in Runescape (a game I used to play).
To be continued..
// Jess
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MAG (PS3) by Trey (Jan 31st, 2010 at 14:44:31) |
I played MAG for my second session today and my opinion is still the same, however, I have noticed some flaws in the gaming that I believe need to be fixed. MAG claims that if multiple people apply to be a squad leader then the highest level person will get the postion. One flaw that I see is that this principle doesn't always apply. There have been a number of times where a lower ranking person has gotten squad leader over me. There is also an issue to address with members following orders. Squad leaders can send out orders called Fragos. My problem isn't with the Fragos but with players not staying near the frago. A lot of players will go out on there own without letting anyone know where they're at or what they're objective is so it throws the whole planning and cooperation process out of synch. This makes it very hard for leaders to properly plan new strategies for the battle.
In MAG, people communicate using headsets which I believe is an effective way of communication. If things are too noisy for you then you can choose to block certain people or the whole squad. Squad Leaders also have the option of switching to a channel to where they can talk to just their platoon leaders.
There are 4 styles of gameplay in MAG: Suppresion, Sabotage, Acquisition, and Domination. Suppression is a training battle for newcomers. You must play this first as you cannot play the Sabotage and Acquisition until you're level 4 and domination until you're level 8. In Sabotage, you have 64 people on one map, 32 people are attacking and 32 people are defending. The objective is to destroy points A & B to unlock C and destroy it. In Acquisition, there are 128 people on one map so 64 per side. The objective in Acquisition is to steal two prototype vehicles from the other team and bring them back to your base. Domination is where there are 256 players on 1 map so 128 players on both sides. The objective in domination is to capture the cooling and burnoff towers which will then allow access to pumps inside the enemies main base and you must destroy those within the time limit to win. As you can see, MAG offers a variety of gameplay with new and interesting strategies that go with each side of every map.
All in all, I believe MAG to be a great game and will be one that I will be playing for a long time. The objectives may stay the same but the people you meet and the people you fight offer different challenges every time. The maps won't seem repetitive as different leaders dish out different strategies.
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MAG (PS3) by Trey (Jan 31st, 2010 at 10:44:42) |
MAG is an FPS that finally accomplishes what I believe a FPS should accomplish. What I mean by this is that you finally feel as if you are apart of something bigger. In most FPS's you usually feel as if you are by yourself and you really don't need teammates. On the other hand, in MAG, there are 256 people on one map to where it is impossible to accomplish any task without coordination and help from other members and leaders.
The first thing that I noticed as I started to play this game was the way each faction had their own home base(level). Not only that but each level was designed to mirror the personality of that PMC(private military company). One example is SVER. SVER is a guerilla force that doesn't have many weapons to work with and make everything they have from scrap. So when you enter SVER's home base, you see that the terrain is mostly dirt, there is hardly any grass, the shelter around you is made of wood, garbage cans are tipped over, etc. Even their guns have duct tape on them to hold them together. On the other hand, another PMC is Raven. Raven is the PMC that has the best of everything. Therefore their home base is neat and nicely polished. Everything is made up of high tech gear. So by saying all of that, MAG accomplishes making one feel as if they're really apart of one PMC and not a stand alone figure on the battlefield. This is also how MAG gets you involved in the conflict. I play with SVER and I get a kick out of beating Raven because they are supposed to be the best as SVER is supposed to be the worst.
Then there is the matter of drive. MAG has a wonderful experience point system that you gain through killing other players, accomplishing objectives, and simply winning matches. Every level up gives you skill points that you can use to gain new equipment. This equipment can help you as a person or potentially help the whole squad or platoon.
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Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2 (PC) by supak (Jan 29th, 2010 at 01:18:02) |
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2 (MW2) is a wartime type game that immerses its players into a 3-D first person shooter (FPS) realm of modern infantry warfare. In the single player portion of the game, there are many campaigns that take you throughout the game as one of four different factions. As you proceed through each single player level you must constantly strategically place yourself in a position in order to not die to incoming fire. Although the single player game play is good I will be writing about the multiplayer portion of the game.
The multiplayer portion of the game is why most people play the game. Rather than being assigned a specific mission to complete, multiplayer game play is based on certain themes of multiplayer FPS game play. There are various themes to multiplayer game play such as Team Deathmatch, Domination, and Free For All just to name a few. All of these themes reuse the original single player levels for their maps. Since I mostly played the Team Deathmatch theme most of this log will be based on gameplay experience.
In Team Deathmatch, you are put on a team of 4 to 6 people. You have a time of twenty minutes to either get the most kills before reaching the time limit or to reach the death score limit of 7500 (100 points per kill making a total of 75 kills for one team). I really enjoyed this game theme. In this theme, MW2 forces you to pay careful attention to your teammates position and the possible position of your enemies. There is a voice communication system set up in the game to make communication easier which is essential to achieve victory. With a combination of a good user heads-up display and this communication system it is easy for one to learn how to play this game without even touching single player mode. The controls are like that of any other FPS type game which also makes it easy to pick up and learn.
The levels in the game are very well thought out for multiplayer. In all of the levels there are many types of strategic places for teams to either set up traps and ambushes or just to have outright wars on each other. With all that death being dished out there must be some system for players to return to game play. The game tries to spawn dead players based on where their teammates are on the level. Sometimes this is not quite achieved. There have been more than a few times where I felt that I had been spawned right in the middle of enemy territory! Admittedly, this may have been due to an overwhelming enemy team. Overall, the level design tends not to sway in one team or the other and is very smooth when it comes to game play. It is very easy to feel like you are really immersed in the game play world because of how realistic the placement of each finely detailed obstacle is.
This game would not survive if it was just based on regular Team Deathmatch like play alone. MW2 is very unique in its genre because the multiplayer system has a level-up system in place that allows you to unlock new types of guns, ammunition, and even earn achievements. You earn experience through killing enemy players and winning games, but you can also earn it by completing the various achievements and unlocking new things. The maximum level is seventy; however, you can go through a system called Prestige which resets everything but your achievements and allows you to earn them all back. Your level of expertise and prestige is noted in the game by an icon which upgrades per level per Prestige. Many players want to be the highest possible Prestige level so they play the game over and over again until they reach that level.
The only really frustrating thing that this game provides is the problem of not including dedicated game servers like the original did. The reason this is such a problem is because when each game is created one client computer is assigned to be the host of that game. If that player happens to leave or has a very bad connection the game will try to choose a new candidate for the host player. This feature is very irritating, mostly due to the fact that it interrupts game play much too often. There is also the problem of the game not recognizing that a new host needs to be chosen resulting in very sluggish and laggy games that are not suitable for enjoyable game play.
I think MW2 is a very good game and a must have for all hardcore gamers out there. From its multiplayer alone there are hours and hours of replay value in the game and I recommend it for anyone interested.
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Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PC) by Mindbender (Jan 28th, 2010 at 19:57:39) |
I played CoD4 for another hour this morning before class, still on the freeze tag mod, and noticed that the quality of the game and what it's about is the same but only when the server remains active. When the server has less people on it the game tends to seem less appealing at times even though the gameplay is still the same in respects to game design and physics. I believe this can be attributed to some maps being so large that if you just run around the map never finding anyone, you tend to lose intrest faster. Obviously this isn't always true, since I have had rounds with only me and one other person, and sometimes the challenge of finding that one person can be quite entertaining.
I see this game as being very well designed and thought out, giving the player many options of games to partake in (stock games such as Team Match, Headquarters, Domination, Search and Destroy, and Sabatage) and if those don't suit him you can always create more (Freeze tag, Star wars mod, Zombie, etc.). This makes the game able to last longer since the capabilities are always increasing, instead of staying constant where you can get tired of them more quickly.
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GameLog hopes to be a site where gamers such as yourself keep track of the games that
they are currently playing. A GameLog is basically a record of a game you started playing. If it's open,
you still consider yourself to be playing the game. If it's closed, you finished playing the game. (it doesn't matter
if you got bored, frustrated,etc.) You can also attach short comments to each of your games or even maintain a diary (with more detailed entries)
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1180 registered gamers and 1193 games. 4023 GameLogs with 7572 journal entries. 3196 games are currently being played.
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Final Fantasy XII (PS2) by neo31003(eddie) |
| Nice change in battle style the real time feel was great.
Liked the grid for leveling stats in FFX better but yeah. |
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most recent entry: Wednesday 20 February, 2008
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Gamelog Entry# 2
Gameplay:
I haven't learned much about the game play passed the most basic of things. At this point I don't have Quickenings and I can't use summons. I got the summons later on in the game which own. The way it works with most is that you beat the summon and it appears on the License Grid which is where you lvl some stats and learned new abilities. It gives you the ability to use the move but you still have to acquire the move itself. I didn't know this at first and had all theses spells but didn't know why I couldn't use them. It also applies to armor and using certain types of weapons as well. It was cool but what I didn't like was fact that you couldn't switch party members from within the group or during battle like FFX.
Over it had a lot to learn at the time.
Design:
The graphics and cut scenes were great. I like how the maps all connect and you can back track to almost any place you've been to in the game thus far. Also each map is so large and detailed and makes me feel like theres soo much more to explore. The real-time made it feel more realistic. Also the chaotic atmosphere during battle fit the crazy plot of this great war between nations. It all tied together nicely. I liked the summons they were cool looking and each had their own entrance cut scenes which also blew me away. The thing that bugged me was how you had not real control on how you got to certain areas with the ship. And considering how Vann was this pirate it would have made more sense to give more control over the flying. You just chose where to go and next thing you know you were there. It wasn't like FFVII but then again Iam not here to talk about FFVII. The key thing to this game of course is story. I did beat the game but not during the 2 hrs of this log so I will not include anything beyond the 2hrs that I played. The interesting design was in the Hunter side quest. I loved it and thought it was the bread and butter for this game. It was cool cause you got really useful prizes for the bounties and felt like it was really rewarding beating all theses challenging foes. I felt a sense of purpose as if my hunting and cleansing of theses hordes of monsters was really gona make the world of Ivalice.
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