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Mar 6th, 2008 at 02:26:51 - Weird Worlds (PC) |
GAMEPLAY
My second hour of gameplay was very similar to my first, except I didn't die as much. In my first hour, I entered into combat when I was way too weak and flew wee bit close for comfort (and, you know, life) to black holes. I also had my first *really* kick-ass mission: got the hyperdrive (so I could jump quickly from star to star), got all the allies, got all the best weapons. Yeah, I basically beat that star map into submission! Boo yah!
Even more than the first hour, I could see where this game could get real repetitive, real quick. New maps each time helps, and I discovered this neat little feature where you can change the name of planets you find, but another hour and I think I will have played 99% of what the game has to offer. The combat system would be a pretty big draw for people into that kind of thing, but beyond getting a really powerful weapon that will kill the aliens quickly and trying to dodge their attacks, I'm just not interested. It's fine as part of the mission gameplay, but I would never play the "Simulator" mode, where you just do battle... Anyway, the solution? Mods! Yay! I didn't actually try any out, but I definitely will in the future. Yay for the game easily supporting modding, too. Oh, wait. This should go into:
GAME DESIGN
Yes, easy modding. The developer even set up a website with short tutorials on the process. Man, I love this stuff! Customization, creativity, interactivity with the game itself. What's cooler?
There's also a great sense of humor in the game, through the items (and of course their descriptions) and the interactions with the alien races. It isn't slapstick, in-your-face funny, though. It's a much subtler "this-is-a-strange-universe" kind of funny that I really appreciate.
The look of the game is just beautiful. The background of your little sector of the galaxy is a stunning nebula, of the Hubble ilk. The path from your current star to your next is traced out seamlessly. Each weapon has its own individual firing pattern, some of which are striking. Even the nebula and black holes (the ones you can interact with, I mean) swirl slowly.
Two notes on noise: 1) The music is a wonderful ethereal, futuristic, and generative-sounding deal that really fits with the space theme.
2) They have explosions in the combat. As any good nerd knows, there would be no sound in space, but do you know what I say? I say, it's a video game and sound effects help to create a pleasurable experience for the player.
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Mar 6th, 2008 at 01:04:45 - Weird Worlds (PC) |
SUMMARY
Weird Worlds is a strategy/adventure game where you play the captain of a ship on one of three missions (science, pirate, and military) to explore one sector of the galaxy in ten to thirty years.
GAMEPLAY
This game is so, so cool the first few times you play it (still is after that, but slightly less so. I'll get to the reasons why later). First you choose your mission type, size of map, amount of nebulae and enemies, and your captain's name and his/her ship's name. Then, after a short debriefing, which lets you know what you have to do for the mission you picked, you're off! You play by clicking nearby stars and exploring them, sometimes encountering aliens or artifacts, or just a really cool planet. I know I'm a bit of a nerd, but I love to read the descriptions of the stars and planets, which is one of the reasons the game was cooler at first than it is now: I've read all of the different descriptions of yellow stars and toxic planets, seen almost all of the strange and wondrous items, encountered all of the different kinds of aliens (though I'm not so hot with the combat system, yet)... I guess I wish that, just like a new star map is generated each time you play, new descriptions, pictures and items were generated as well. I realize that that's not really plausible, but for a game that has "plausibly implausible" as part of its marketing, I don't really feel bad for complaining. :P
Ooo! I just realized I can turn off the debriefing screen, of which is there one variety per mission type, from the options screen. (And there was much rejoicing.)
One thing that I love, though, is that even the longest missions, on large star maps that you have 30 years to explore, take less than half an hour to play. This really appeals to my slightly ADD nature. It's just the perfect little nibble of gaming before I can get on with my life. :P
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Feb 21st, 2008 at 02:31:20 - Super Mario World (SNES) |
GGAMEPLAY
GRR AND ARGH! I couldn't get the swimming down. I know, ridiculous, right? But first I just kept pressing jump so I could swim and not drown and I couldn't figure out how to get *out* of the water, and then I figured out to press 'up', and somehow my brain translated that as "Don't press B at ALL, oooonly press 'up'!" which, of course, resulted in my dying over and over again. This is hugely embarrassing to admit, but in the interests of Truth and Justice, I admit all.
As you can probably tell, my second gameplay session was spent mostly trying to get through Yoshi's Island 4... The first water level. Let me tell you, in case you don't already know, as frustrating as it is to not know what the heck you're supposed to do, it is EQUALLY or MORE frustrating when you *know* what you should be doing and keep on failing at doing that thing. My second gameplay session pretty much looked like this: a. get through Yoshi's Island 2 again. b. Die one too many times in Yoshi's Island 3, c. have to start over from save. Get through 2 & 3 fine. d. Die one too many times by drowning again and again (and, I have been told, that that is an *unpleasant* way to die). REPEAT from 'c'.
GAME DESIGN
Well, I'm tempted to gripe about the controls for swimming, but I have a feeling that that's mostly my problem... All-in-all, I'd say the controls were fairly intuitive, for a veteran game-player at least. The buttons you press most, "B" for jump, and the left and right arrows for moving horizontally, are super simple.
Like I was mentioning in my first post, this game is all about rhythm. Knowing what's coming ahead, knowing the right moment to jump or... well, almost always you want to jump, but on occasion you'll duck or run or use your power. But even if you have a platformer with great rhythm on every level, you still need variety so that the player doesn't get bored. SMW definitely delivers on that count. Each level introduces different obstacles, from the huge freaking bombs to Yoshi, from moving platforms to water, and those are just some of the ones I encountered in the four levels I've played so far.
Super Mario World also has tons of secret levels that you can access in different ways, through pipes and vines, for instance. It's really fun for the player to try to find all of these hidden area, and it adds another layer of decision-making: "Okay, so this guy is coming towards me, should I make it down the pipe or just run?" or even more pertinent: "Even if this pipe leads me to a secret area, is it worth it? How hard will it be? How much of the non-hidden level will I be missing?" I think most players choose to find as many of the hidden areas as possible, at least when they don't know what's inside, because most of us are curious people, or at least want to make sure we don't miss something. ;)
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Feb 21st, 2008 at 01:45:45 - Super Mario World (SNES) |
SUMMARY
Super Mario World is a side-scrolling platformer, just like the previous Super Mario Brothers games. Like SMB3 (and later, Super Mario 64), the player entered various levels through a world screen. There are many different power-ups and secret levels for this SNES classic.
GAMEPLAY
Like most platformers, SMW is all about getting the rhythm down. I hadn't played this since I was eight or nine, so I needed a fair bit of refreshing. It took a good half hour to get through Yoshi's Island 1 the first time, though I breezed through it after getting the Yellow Switch Palace, or whatever it's called. (Need to get everything! Must have 100%!)
It was a little bit of an adventure remembering all of the controls, and I'm sure I'm still missing something (when you accidentally jump off of Yoshi and he starts running around like a crazy person, there must be a way to get back on, right?), but the controller, oh, how natural and *good* it feels in my hands. Like they were made for each other, crafted from one incredible piece of plastic -flesh compound...
Super Mario World, like its predecessors, has really fantastically designed levels. You find yourself (or at least I find myself) bopping my head in rhythm with both my jumping and the music. It really helps when you know what's coming ahead, though, and, again, that's really what platformers, especially these side-scrolling 2D ones, are all about.
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penryn has been with GameLog for 16 years, 3 months, and 5 days |
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