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Mar 6th, 2008 at 02:30:38 - Total Annihilation (PC) |
Gameplay:
Basically the game was over as soon as I built the nuclear missile silos. The sky rained nuclear fire, I racked up kills left and right, and the game was done. The lack of a great AI is the main drawback to the game. Although there are third-party AI packs for the game, they still are subject to basic flaws, and need certain allowances. This makes the AI fairly predictable, and you never truely feel frightened. Granted, on a land map, the computer will swarm you, but with tanks and guns, you can stop him.
Design:
The game presents multiple avenues of conquest. There are fully integrated land, sea and air battles. Each venue is as legitimate as the other. Some game promise water combat, but fail to deliver. Other lack in the air department. T.A. manages to come through well on all of them. Aside from some pathing issues, the ability to create massive navies and pulverize your enemies is frankly exciting.
Likewise, swarming your foes with gunships is also great fun, although perhaps not as effective unless you mix in bombers and fighters.
T.A. manages to offer you many things to try out to keep you interested.
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Mar 5th, 2008 at 22:39:33 - Total Annihilation (PC) |
Summary:
Total Annihilation is not your average RTS. Its setting is in the distant future. Two forces, the Arm and the Core, are waging a thousand year-long war over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machine. At the time of the game itself, the original reasons for the war seem to be forgotten, and the two sides are badly decimated, but still fighting. The introduction tells us that the combatants have depleted an entire galaxies worth of material to fight their war.
Gameplay:
Sadly, I only have the skirmish disc for the game, so I cannot play the campaigns themselves anymore. This log will cover my experience in skirmish mode.
The AI in skirmish mode is terrible. Theres no two ways around it. Even a blind man could manage to win against the AI in hard mode. Knowing this, I set out to find an upgrade for the AI, as well as some new units. Once the computers could finally stand a chance against me, I settled down to duke it out with them.
My favorite map is one called 7 Islands. It is large. Very large. The fastest aircraft in the game take roughly 30 seconds to travel from one end to the other, and these are jets that can out-fly missiles. It is also entirely made of metal. This last fact is especially interesting, but only if you know how the resource system in T.A. works.
In most RTSs, you have a node of resources. You go to it, spend a few seconds mining, then return to some arbitrary point and turn in the resources. Rinse, lather, repeat. In T.A. this is not so. First off, there are two resources, metal and energy. To gain metal, you must find a metal deposit, or if you're lazy (like me) you play on an all metal world so you can put metal extractors anywhere you want. Energy production buildings can go anywhere, with some exceptions, such as geothermal plants which can only be put on geothermal vents.
The best way to envision the resource system in T.A. is to envision a lake. This lake has two streams, one running into it, the other running out of it. The trick in T.A. is to always make the stream running into the lake faster thant he stream running our of the lake. Otherwise, your lake will drain.
So ingame, you have two lakes, one for metal, and one for energy. Both of your pools are being added to and taken from constantly. When you start building a new building, your demand for metal and energy go up slightly. As soon as you finish building a Fusion Reactor, your energy supply will increase dramatically, permitting you to increase your energy consumption.
Oh yeah, and you can build however much of whatever you want. You just have to have the resources for it. If you wanted to, you could build 500 Solar Collectors all at once, but I can guarantee you that your metal and energy production won't be able to keep up with it.
Anyway, back to the map. T.A. is a great game for turtling, and as I am a defensive player, it works out fine. In a way its a race. I know the enemy has access to nuclear weapons, so I have to build up my base and protect it before the nukes start flying. T.A. has a very wide variety of vehicles, airplanes, and "kbots" (essentially tiny mechs like in anime) that allow you to defend your base. I prefer mostly static defenses such as the delightful Big Bertha, able to rain down fire on the enemy from a great distance. Combined with radar, three Big Berthas can stop an invasion before it begins.
But ground defense isn't the only hurdle. The computer likes to send aircraft at you, and if your base isn't well enough defended, you'll get overrun.
Speaking of combat, I should mention that T.A. doesnt have that ridiculous "I have you targeted so therefore my bullets will automatically hit you" system that just about every RTS under the sun seems to have. It has *real* physics. With some skill and a fast computer, it is possible to navigate a single unit through an artillery barrage. Why? Because the guns at long ranges are inaccurate. You can also hide behind terrain. Why? because the projectiles follow real paths and can and will smack harmlessly into things. Planes will outrun missiles, shrapnel falling out of the sky will damage buildings on the ground. Combat is visceral and fast. Often it is over before it starts. I'd hear an alarm, explosions and by the time I went to see what was going on there'd just be some smoke and bits of enemy plane falling out of the sky. It's thrilling to see your Punishers track and rain fire down upon targets a quarter of the map away, and see radar signatures tick off one by one.
Currently, the computers are fighting amoungst themselves, any aircraft that get near my base are immediately shot down, and I'm working on building three nuclear silos. I'll take my break now.
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Feb 20th, 2008 at 00:58:49 - Super Mario World (SNES) |
Gameplay:
Gameplay eventually devolved into irritating repetition. The nuances of the game dictated that I would eventually run into something, or fall, or some other silliness that would send me back to the beginning. A certain enemy type was responsible for my death, a certain ball-throwing pitcher of some sort. The balls *always* seemed just right in my path as I jumped.
The games plot did not captivate me enough to entice me to play further.
Design:
The game, for its time, must have been great. But now, it seems to me to be more of a curiosity, or a source of nostalgia. The puzzles and jumping and dodging, at their time, were surely exciting and challenging. But gaming has moved onto other sources of challenge. Instead of leaping from platform to platform, we have grinding for items and taking cover behind walls and blindfiring.
The games artwork, however, is cute and simple. It is not particularly flashy, but conveys the idea of background and movement, etc. The animations for Mario are amusing, such as holding onto his hat during the downward leg of a jump, or ducking and covering to dodge underneath things. I was frankly impressed at the detail, for all its simplicity.
The pausing,however, was irritating. When you collect a mushroom or break open Yoshi's egg, the game pauses for a moment. I found this irritating. Perhaps I am truely a child of my era, where I need constant action, but when trying to simply get to the mid point of the level, the stops and interruptions were an annoyance.
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Feb 19th, 2008 at 23:41:52 - Super Mario World (SNES) |
Summary:
The Mario series hardly needs an introduction, but I will provide one anyway. The ultimate premise of the game is to rescue "the Princess" and to do this one must hop, bop and work ones way across a series of very odd levels. My intelligence is apparently lacking, and I must travel to a number of castles in order to locate this Princess.
Gameplay:
Mario is just as I expected it to be from what I have heard: mindless jumping and running around. Gameplay seemed to revolve mainly around avoiding things and jumping. At least the way I played it.
My emotional state was one of alternating frustration and glee. The levels were amusingly laid out, simple and colorful. Irritating because the enemies would move in an unpredicted manner, resulting in my death. Which in turn resulted in me having to repeat the same level over and over. And over.
In all, I get the impression that this would be a great game to play in down-time between classes, or assignments, or other games.
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saltedfish has been with GameLog for 16 years, 3 months, and 9 days |
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