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Feb 23rd, 2007 at 18:23:23 - Gradius (NES) |
Yesterday, I started playing Gradius on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Looking at how the game is actually designed gave me great insight on how to create a decent shmup on Gamemaker. I've had several ideas on how they get some of the enemies to enter a certain path before exiting, and I've actually trying to see from a creator's perspective, how to do certain things that can be replicated via Gamemaker. The actual gameplay is very engaging and as soon as you start, you know you're in for a real fight. The first two or three levels are difficult to get around. You'll need quick reflexes for a good majority of trying to dodge enemy bullets, and it only gets worse once enemies start spawning anywhere on the screen. The variability of choosing what upgrades to get makes the game increasingly easy, or very, very difficult depending on what you set your weapons too. The forcefield upgrade and the multiple options upgrade are of course the best ones to get, but are the most difficult to level up to. The easiest ones are double shot and missles, and for a majority of the beginning of the gameplay, those are the first upgrades I got. The collisions in the game are a bit questionable. How come when I crash into a mountain, I die, but when an enemy hits a mountain, it just goes right throught the mountain still wanting to attack you? A few glitches here and there, but as far as I can tell a very well made game considering the year it was made (1988). Graphics aren't stunning, but there are different sprites for moving up and down. Really , the core aspect of this game is the assortment of enemy AI and the back-to- basics-gameplay style. More on this game in a bit...
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Jan 20th, 2007 at 00:38:44 - Kirby's Adventure (NES) |
I always have a tendency to forget I have to add more to this. I'm still trying to find any new secrets in Kirby's Adventure. One thing I noticed while I was playing it again was the buttons are touch sensitive, similar to how when you jump in Mario is dependant on how hard you press the button. Going through the game another time, I noticed how well designed the soundtrack is for an 8-bit system. It's actually pretty well orchestrated, incorporating different beats that are familiar to those that have played other Kirby games. I find that playing the game with even such primitive sound to be very entertaining. The levels just go by faster with all the different tracks they use. The animation in the game is amazing for an 8-bit system. When Kirby does his little dance, you can tell that the creators put a lot of effort to make him do so. It's good times remembering all the nostalgic childhood memories I had with this game. It almost spurns me on to play other Kirby games right this moment.
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Jan 18th, 2007 at 19:00:02 - Kirby's Adventure (NES) |
So to proceed with another game, I decided to go pick up my NES after shelving it into some of the unknown recesses of my garage back home and found one of my favorite NES games and subsequently considered a classic by this class: Kirby's Adventure. I've had the joy of playing most, but definitely not all of the Kirby games that Nintendo has released over the years. Ironically, even with better graphic engines and better looking models, the gameplay over the years traditionally remains unchanged. There are aspects of games that came out for the Super Nintendo and N64 that can be attributed to Kirby's Adventure. The level designs are almost always the same or similar, a great example would be the boss fight against Whispy Woods which always starts you off on top of some branches overhead and you make your way down to fight the actual boss. While Kirby's Adventure was not the first Kirby game released by Nintendo, it was probably the most influential at developing the little fluff ball that is Kirby. In the first game Kirby's Dreamland, Kirby could only suck in enemies and send them flying back at enemies. I'm assuming what HAL labrotories decided to do at this point is give Kirby some more flexibility and variety in his maneuvers for the next game. Kirby's Adventure is one of those rare classics that ended up that way by being one of the best designed and one of the last video games to be released for the Nintendo back in 1993. The level design and functionality is superb as well as the end user control interface. Even with the directional pad and just two buttons, Kirby can still float, suck in opponents, throw them back out, slide kick, dash, etc. The greatest claim to fame for this game is that Kirby can now absorb other enemy's abilities a la Megaman style, and use their powers against other enemies. Some abilities are nessecary to advance in certain levels, others are more preferred versus boss fights, but the overall idea is that the USER himself can choose which ability can suit his purposes thus seamlessly changing back and forth from abilities he has been using to something new. I can't remember for sure, but I believe it is somewhere along the lines of 28 abilities to choose from. They're all fun to play around with too, like tornado, fireball, beam, spark, and my personal favorite, UFO. This is also the first Kirby game to introduce mini-games which can benefit the player by giving him more life or more points if he does well in them. Some mini-games are things we're familiar with like the claw game, others are kind of intuitive like the Quick Draw game, where the objective is to push a button the second an indicator flashes thus trying to beat your opponent on how fast you can react. If I had any real gripes with this game, it would probably be the brevity of the game. The levels fly by exceptionally quick and you can beat it within two hours of play. I only played it for an hour, and I'm already half-way done. The length of the game is in part due to the memory storage limitations on the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Another small flaw in this game is you have to go through a process of trial and error to see which enemies have abilities and which ones don't. This can be quite annoying if let's say you had a certain ability with you that you really liked, and you curiously wanted to see if your enemy has an ability, only to find that it has nothing after discarding your previous ability. They of course managed to fix this in future games by giving enemies a yellow glowing overtone to indicate that they had abilities versus other enemies, but if they included that in this game, it would 've made the game less annoying to play. As for me, I still need to see how this game holds to further scrutiny once I'm done beating it.
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Jan 18th, 2007 at 16:38:14 - World of Warcraft (PC) |
Seeing as I did my assignment incorrectly, I at least have a chance to recorrect myself and do this efficiently and more importantly, properly. After playing World Of Warcraft for several hours now, running around deserts and jungles killing a whole assortment of random beasts and humans, I've come to realize that the one of the key aspects I enjoy about World Of Warcraft, is just that...it's a world. The areas are in rich in detail and artwork that if you actually focus on the landscape and the objects you can interact with, you can tell that amazing amount of effort and detail was put into everything as you immerse yourself within the game. The fact that the world is so vast coincides with the idea that even with certain objectives in mind (get to level 60, wear some awesome gear, beat the game, etc.) there are so many different paths you can choose to do so. You can fight monsters constantly to level up, you can do small quests, you can enter massive dungeons, (you can hack if you're brave enough)...all in all, what gives gamers "freedom" is the amount of choices one is given to make the best overall decision in that gamer's mind. Kind of like the real world. Minus the fact that you can't resurrect when you die in real life, among other things. The story itself is one most people don't pay much attention to, but I'm surprised how closely the folks at Blizzard decided to keep in line with the lore of the Warcraft series, albeit with a few confusing twists and turns. They went back and looked at the storyline from Warcraft One all the way to Warcraft Three, and managed to integrate so seamlessly, even if you've never played the other games, you feel like an expert in Warcraft lore (which is not something to be terribly proud of but oh well). Regarding my gameplay experience:
I'm currently in the desert known as Tanaris, which for some odd reason reminds me of the Kevin Costner movie Waterworld. The area itself is difficult for me right now because I finished a majority of the quests and yet I can't take down some of the higher end monsters located here. I usually opt to get experience by entering massive dungeons where I work in groups, but unfortunately, with slow internet speed, it makes being an effective party member impossible. So usually I'm just stuck with grinding the monsters in the area, and I actually hate that aspect of this game: the solo aspect. True, I usually don't have to worry about loot being handed off to other players, but loot doesn't drop often enough when I go around and kill things by myself. Regardless, I might hit up a dungeon later on if people are willing to invite me using the new LFG or Looking for Group tool. Not many people use it since it's more effective to just speak via in-game chat channel and just yell "LFG for such and such place!". I need a new pet, since I play a hunter in that game. Something that can divert the attention of the enemy while I sit way the far back and shoot at a distance. I think i'm gonna get a turtle, arguably because of the high defense. Anyway, that concludes this entry. Now to write another entry for FFXII.
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Booze 4 Babies has been with GameLog for 17 years, 3 months, and 13 days |
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