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Mar 6th, 2008 at 02:52:04 - Crimson Skies (XBX) |
GAMEPLAY
I found out I can Upgrade my ships with money and special points received from missions and from objects hidden all over the environment. This is always a good thing to put in a game. It gave me choices; I could upgrade my favorite plane. Its nice to be able to improve my planes fighting capabilities.
Many of the missions give the option of using a turret to take out enemies. This is cool because if I got bored with the dog-fighting or my plane had low health, I could land at a nearby turret on the ground of on the blimp, and keep fighting. The turrets have different weapons, making the shooting less monotonous as it sometimes did.
The battles with enemies weren’t very different. I would follow a guy, shoot him down, then repeat. There wasn’t much strategy either, just dodge when being shot at and get close behind enemies and shoot until they blew up. Maybe since the game is so easy, it doesn’t force me to come up with better battle tactics.
The race missions were a change of pace and a chance to earn extra money. They weren’t hard but I could try to beat my own time so there was a reason to play tracks again. With future upgrades or a new plane I could get a better time, so that gives me a reason to come back eventually.
DESIGN
The level design was smart. The worlds are open and give the player the feeling of freedom. To encourage exploration, the designers added hidden rewards all over the levels. The player also has the freedom to start the story missions whenever they want , or do side quests. This lets the player move through the story at their own pace.
The designers added lots of stuff to increase total game play time. The hidden objects require the player to search the entire level for them if they want to get more points for upgrading planes. The optional races have a best time record that players can try to beat. The planes ability to upgrade will keep the player occupied, even after they have finished the game’s story missions. The multiplayer adds a huge amount of game time.
The game has added humor and lessened the violence so it could reach a broader audience. There isn’t the feeling of bloodlust that a pirate would normally convey. In fact, Nathan seems like a kind and easy going guy. This lightens the mood of the game, which could just as easily be dramatic and serious. When a plane is destroyed, the pilot doesn’t die, he just ejects out with a parachute, so the player doesn’t have to feel guilty about killing anybody. In reality, ejecting to safety probably wouldn’t happen very much and the goal of both pilots is usually to kill the other, not just incapacitate them.
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Mar 6th, 2008 at 02:51:08 - Crimson Skies (XBX) |
SUMMARY
Crimson Skies is an aerial combat game starring Nathan, a witty sky pirate and the leader of a small group of fellow treasure hunters. After a bad night of gambling, Nathan finds himself without his heavily armored blimp which he uses as a base of operations. With the help of his friend Betty, they take it back by force. With his crew, Nathan is in search of riches and a secret weapon developed by a friend of his.
GAMEPLAY
Most of the game’s missions are dog-fights with other planes. These fights are interesting and it was fun to see the enemy plane burst into flames when I shot them. It was kind of hard to keep the enemies on the screen though and all the turning and weaving around sometimes caused me to lose track of where I was and where the enemy went. It can be pretty hard to hit enemies with the machine gun, but it was rewarding when they did hit, with all the smoke and sparks. I found out the hard way that the planes can stall if flown strait up. Luckily, my engines started back up in time to avoid falling into a cluster of jagged rocks. I was surprised by the amount of fear I actually had when realized I was headed toward my doom. All of it plus the narrow escape was intense and made the planes seem more real.
Based on the size of the hangar in the plane selection screen, there are more than a dozen types of planes to choose from. The planes are very different and can change the game play a lot. My first plane had a fast shooting machine gun with following missiles, a good plane for longer distance battles. The second plane had a very strong slow gun, and a shotgun as the secondary weapon, which is very unusual. The second plane was also faster than the first, but weaker. I went with the second one, mostly because I wanted to try out the shotgun.
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Feb 21st, 2008 at 01:57:16 - Rayman Raving Rabbids (Wii) |
GAMEPLAY
The wii-mote in a variety of ways in these games. Many of the games are first person shooters with a plunger gun that is far too easy. Another game had me swing the wii-mote and release to send a cow on a chain flying. Some games weren’t actually fun, they just showed off an aspect of the wii-mote, like a game were all I did was shake the wii-mote up and down. It wasn’t fun, it just hurt at the end. Imagine my horror when not long after there was another game with this simple, tedious gameplay.
Within the few hours I played Raving Rabbids I think I got most of what I can out of it, other than trying to get the high score on all the games. This game is best the first time around, but many of the games are not worth playing more than a couple times. There are some good ones that have a high replay value, like one where I drew the shapes of food as close as possible to the outline on the screen. The point is this game is short but sweet.
DESIGN
I think the developers made this game with a certain kind of player in mind. They wanted to appeal to a wider audience so they made the games easy to understand, fast, and real attention grabbers. They tried to make it so the player didn’t have to commit any time in learning the controls or starting a new game, which was good for more casual gamers who might only want a short game session. Unfortunately, what this game gained with this design, it lost in depth and replay ability. Once I got past the bells and whistles, I found that many games were overly simple. Gameplay was not the focus on many of this minigames, which shows that the target audience was not skilled, experienced gamers, but people new to games and young kids.
The reward system in the single player mode was also aimed at keeping people who aren’t normally as interested in games playing for at least a couple hours. Every couple of games I would unlock new costumes for Rayman to wear, which is nice and good for a laugh, but doesn’t really affect the gameplay at all. Every five games or so I would win a plunger that Rayman stuck to the wall to make the next step in a latter to an open window in his prison cell. This instantly showed me the main goal of the game and how far I was to reaching it. But I don’t get why Rayman didn’t just stand on one plunger, take one below that and put it above, get on that one, and repeat the process until he reached the window. He could have escaped with just two plungers! Oh well, I guess Rayman isn’t that smart
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Feb 21st, 2008 at 01:56:05 - Rayman Raving Rabbids (Wii) |
SUMMARY
Raving Rabbids is a party game, much like Mario Party, and consists of a couple dozen minigames. This one is different though; The games are played with the wii-mote, some better than others. The main character is Rayman, and in the story mode he is captured by a strange society of rabbits who make him participate in the minigames for their amusement. Rayman must win all the minigames to escape his prison.
GAMEPLAY
The game starts quickly and got me playing within minutes. I was always curious what the next minigame would be, and they were always a surprise. Most of the minigames are very bizarre, and very funny. Almost half the fun of the minigames was just seeing the start and end of the games, because they were so interesting and unique.
In one game, I poked the exposed brain of a rabbit to make him do one of four things. The goal was to remember what part of the brain did what and to poke it in the right order. The game was simple and challenging, and the results were hilarious! The rabbit would be screaming, or bashing himself in the head with a club, or his eyes would pop out. When the game’s time limit was close to running out, it got frantic and the rabbit was spasming like he was having a seizure. It was so wrong and funny at the same time. That game took me a few tries to beat because I just began hitting the different parts of the brain as fast as I could, laughing my pants off.
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mesofunny has been with GameLog for 16 years, 3 months, and 3 days |
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