Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1312https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4431My 3rd play through as a lot like my second one. I wandered through the halls of Columbine, killing all of the stereotyped NPC's. One thing that I found interesting about the NPC's where the attributes that some had connected to them. For example, the Holy Girl was able to pray, raising her health. The Prom Queen girl was able to cry, raising her health as well. Another characteristic was that the Black Boy's had a higher health rating then everyone else. I wrote about the "Black Boy," NPC in my last game log, but this even furthers the stereotype against black people. This game makes it seem as though black people are stronger then everyone else within a High School. I did not finish the entire game, mostly due to the fact that this game was extremely boring to me. It was an extremely repetitive game, that could be very frustrating at times. There is no guidance within the game. It can be easy to get stuck because you don't know exactly where to go at all times. Also, if you or your partner loses all their Health Points, you can simply just walk back to your car and reload your guns, and regain your HP. That doesn't seem very fair to me.Wed, 27 Oct 2010 10:58:37 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4431&iddiary=8324https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4431My second play through began outside of the school, as I was waiting for the bombs that I had planted within the school to explode. The bombs were supposedly on a timer, but they never ended up going off. Instead, we waited for the school bell to sound, and started killing everyone that walked out on to the school parking lot. After they were all killed, we made our way in to the school and this is where an interesting ethics problem was raised, other then the obvious. All of the students within the school that you can kill are stereotyped in to certain categories. Within the school, a few of the NPC's names are "Openly Gay Men," "Pretty Girl," "Popular Girl," "Preppy Guy," and "Holy Girl." The game creators narrowed down High School students in to these few categories. The one that was the most interesting was when I approached a "Black Boy." Why does everyone elses name not include the color of their skin? Is a black person that much different, that you have to put the color of their skin in their name? Why was the jock not named, "White jock?" I found this to be very unethical. From a game play perspective, one thing that stood out to me was the sound track. They used a program called Mario Paint to create the video game-like sound. They played artists such as Marilyn Manson, Muse and Ramstein. All three of those bands I like listening to on occasion, so the sound track kept me interested in the game at the very least. One big negative about the game is the fact that if you fail the mission, you have to restart the game from a ways back, unless you have a saved game. With that said, you have to go back to the parking lot to save which can be a pain most of the time.Tue, 26 Oct 2010 17:04:17 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4431&iddiary=8285https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4431I’m going to first start off by saying that the Columbine shootings had a big effect on me because I lived in Colorado at the time of the shootings. Although my middle school was about two hours away, it was still extremely frightening for me to be so close to something so tragic. For the most part, I have gotten over this incident and playing this game wasn’t too hard for me, but it’s hard to ignore what had really taken place. When I first started playing the game and I was asked to walk around to gather the “goods” one thing stood out to me. I was wandering around the basement, when I came up to a Marilyn Manson album. When I tried to pick it up, a message came up and it made comments suggesting that music like this got them angry, and in a mood to kill. This was interesting to me because I enjoy some of Mansons music, and I never once got angry, or thought about killing someone, or even hurting anyone. Another gameplay aspect that was interesting to me was when you are wondering the halls in the school, and the hall monitors are trying to talk to you. When they catch up to you, they make comments about how you are dressed in a long, black trench coat, and that you look suspicious to them. You immediately fail the mission, and are forced to restart. Basically, the game is saying if you wear long black trench coats, you are a dangerous person. Up to this point in the game, I have not endangered anyone yet, so my next play through I will be actually causing violence.Mon, 25 Oct 2010 14:05:40 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4431&iddiary=8253https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4346As I write this GameLog, I realize that I am a few hours late. I forgot about writing about it this morning, so here is my entry. I played the game for longer today than I had on any other day because of the fact that I really go in to the missions. I started to focus less on killing and robbing people, and more on the missions that I was given. I was doing missions for a guy named Mike Toreno. The bulk of these missions took place in a desert, so there was a lot of room to ride with a car of your choosing. On one of the missions, I was asked to chase down an airplane which had tons of illegal weaponry on board. This was interesting to me because here I am, killing and robbing a ton of people, and I am trying to stop someone else from doing the same thing. I think that this shows that CJ is someone with morals, even though he is someone who doesnt care to see someone die, unless its a family member or friend. I also wrote about the comedic relief in my last entry, and this was more evident in this session. Since I rode around a lot in the desert, I listened to a lot of the radio and some of it was really funny.Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:08:51 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4346&iddiary=8124https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4346When I loaded up the game for the second time today, I decided to actually play the missions this time, and not just aimlessly kill people. I have a buddy who played the game a lot, so I loaded up his game file and it was at the mission “Amphibious Assault.” In this mission, you have to swim above and under the water and plant a bug, or a virus, on this boat for your ally. You find out that your ally is blind, so you are forced to do the mission even though you have a fear of swimming. This brought up an interesting question for me. If the price is right, would you do something that you are scared of doing, or that you know your safety is at risk? Obviously the easy answer here is, it depends on what it is. In the case of CJ, the playable character, he is risking his life doing something that he is afraid to do. However, his award is $11,000 so the reward is worth it. As far as the swimming mechanic as a whole, I must say it is pretty weak in this game. The player swims much too fast, especially for someone who hates it. Also, the player’s clothes barely even get wet after he comes out of the water. The AI in this level was pretty funny though, and I think that is important in a game like this. As serious as the game can be sometimes, there should be some comedic relief for the player. These AI demonstrated that, and I liked that part of this gameplay session.Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:56:01 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4346&iddiary=8102https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4346Let me first start off by saying that I am not a huge fan of the Grand Theft Auto series as a whole. I have played nearly every one of them, however I have never completed any of them. To me, the game drags on and it is the same stuff over and over. With that said, when I played San Andreas for the second time, there were a few things that stuck out to me. As soon as I picked up the controller to play the game, I had a choice to make. Should I play by the rules, and do all the missions or should I just go haywire and kill people and steal cars. Since I don’t plan on playing the game that much, I opted for the second option. I started this playing session from the beginning of the game, even though I did have the option to play it from much later in the game. At the start, I ran around until I found a sweet looking car to steal and drive around. Once in the car, I sped around and ran as many people over as possible. One thing I noticed was how many taxis were in the game. We live in Chicago, and there are nowhere near that many taxis. The driving itself felt pretty good for a PS2 game, especially considering this game is not primarily a racing game. One thing that got me thinking occurred in the middle of the night (game time), when I ran over, what appeared to be a homeless person. Whether or not it was an accident doesn’t matter. What matters is was it ethical for me to run this man over, and keep on going like it never happened? Well, according to the Utilitarianism theory, it was ethical for me to do so because as far as I know, nobody is saddened by this news. My character was happy about it because he is just a killing machine. That’s more happiness than sadness.Mon, 20 Sep 2010 14:44:16 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4346&iddiary=8080