Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1508https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4904My last day playing Super Columbine Massacre! The exclamation mark is part of the title but also suffices for the use of in that sentence. I couldn’t be happier than to end my play of this game. As stated earlier the gameplay is repetitive and boring but I wont go on another rant. In this entry I want to talk about the dialog of the game and the tone. It makes it very interesting to play the bad guy in a situation and this is no exception. Seeing the shooters feelings through dialog and cut scenes really help the overall feel of the game. You feel the overall feeling of no remorse through what the characters say and the dialog associated with the fight scenes. I think it was interesting that when you win a fight it says “another win for the trench coat mafia!” It has a satirical effect in the game. As well as the dialog that says, I think, “for the brave boys,” this makes it seem as if the designer wanted the game to not be taken seriously even if it is a very serious concept. That is one of the things I found tricky with the game, the boundary between what is to be taken seriously and what is not to be. That is why I almost feel like the design is flawed. Like I stated earlier, It made it even harder to distinguish when the boys are in hell fighting demons. That part is not serious at all and almost takes away from the idea. Overall the game was frustrating to critique because its so hard to distinguish what is right and wrong, does the designer want you to sympathize with the shooters, does he want you to take it in a satirical light, does it help bring the topic more into the light or does it push it farther back. It was all very confusing to me. Overall, I didn’t like the game because of the mechanics but it is an interesting idea conceptually.Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:38:02 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4904&iddiary=9099https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4904This is my second entry to my game log on Super Columbine Massacre RPG! During this play through I focused on furthering my progress in the story. I continued and played up until the two gunmen are slain and Dylan goes to hell. To be a bit more critical of the gameplay itself, I would like to say that this run through was quite a bit more taxing on my attention span. The game continues to play out in the same exact way as the beginning, just mindless walking and blasting people away with no challenge. The repetitive gameplay really comes to light when you get lost in the school. J Anyway, as far as game design is concerned, the game holds little worth. The concept is obviously interesting but the game failed to pull off it’s potential. Back to the gameplay, I played until I entered Hell as Dylan and explored until I fought an enemy. The idea of putting hell into this game was an interesting addition because the game would have been extremely short without it but at the same time, it almost takes away from the game and it’s meaning at some level. As I said in my first entry, the game does a good job to put the events of Columbine into perspective. The addition of hell almost takes this away from the game because it adds a cartoon tone to the whole game, doing the opposite of what I thought the point of the game was. At first I was excited for this hell sequence because it was something new and my weapons had been taken away. I was excited for nothing, gameplay was the exact same. This is when I saved and turned of the game. I couldn’t handle more of it at that time, leaving the ending for my last review.Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:23:59 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4904&iddiary=9085https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4904In this set of game logs I will be reviewing a game called Super Columbine Massacre RPG! It was created in 2005 and allows players to control Dylan and Eric on the day of the Columbine. This in sort is a very disturbing concept for a game. I tried to view the game as objectively as possible but this was hard because it was a pretty significant event in my childhood. Because of the games length, and the restraints of only playing in 30 minute intervals, I tried to explore as much as possible. From the first playing there was a lot I noticed. The game didn’t play out like I thought it would at first glance. It had a lot of extra content packed into it, from flashbacks of the shooters life prior to the events, to lengthy discussions between the friends about why they felt the way they did. Although the idea behind the game is very disturbing, this is its redeeming quality. It puts the events in perspective, though trivializing them a bit at the same time. The main trivializing part of the game is the combat. The game plays out like an RPG game from the 16 bit era with the graphics and the fighting. The fighting however is completely useless. One hit kills anything in your path, meaning that you fighting is pointless. I guess this is what the message is meant to be. That these deaths were pointless and didn’t need to happen, during the events and in the game. I think the game does a good job making all of the events true to life but I am still apprehensive about the subject of the game.Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:18:52 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4904&iddiary=9074https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4845Today is my last day playing Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. I figured with my last 30 minutes of the game I would just mess around in the open world and see what I could do. I loaded up my farthest save data with a fully upgraded Carl with all of the weapons and started out. At first I was just playing with what I could and couldn't do to gain stars. Shooting a pedestrian warrants one star and shooting a police officer warrants two. Stars are easy enough to get rid of however, just by running through back yards and staying away from my pursuers. No real consequences come from any actions as long as you can escape. This makes me think a little. Is doing bad things in this game really ethically bad if there are no real consequences? Even if you get caught, all you get is a slap on the wrist and lose your guns. Little enough consequences that it doesn't stop you from doing the bad deed anyway. My question is, if they made the consequences more dire, such as losing the game and having to reload or losing progression in the story, would you be less likely to break the laws? Thinking about this, I roamed around the world being 100 percent lawful. stopping at red lights, never taking my weapon out even if threatened, and never stealing cars, only using the ones I had in my garage. This made for interesting gameplay for about three whole minutes, at which point I took out my sniper rifle and picked off a cop that was driving down the street. My point being that the game loses a lot of the fun factor when you are forced to be moral. Is it wrong that I like to do this? I don't think so. Games are meant to be an expressive media and violence and anger are something that people express. I am not saying I would ever do something like this in real life but that's the point of the game, to be able to do whatever you want and express yourself in whatever way you see fit.Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:35:50 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4845&iddiary=9008https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4845This is the second entry for Grand Theft Auto San Andres and my second day playing through it. This time I chose to load a previous save point to get a better grasp on different portions of the game. This portions started with me entering a mansion for a mission called “Riot.” The cutscene is really interesting and shows two of the main antagonist on trial via the television. Carl, Kendal, and Sweet sit and hear the verdict. You are able to see there reaction and subsequently, the reactions of all of the people of Los Santos when you head back to grove street. People are looting the town over the innocent verdict. Abandoned cars are seen on fire. People shoot at each other on every street corner. One thing that I found especially cool was seeing a random NPC running down the street clutching a TV. This level and the levels that follow are a good look into real life counterparts. The race riots in Los Angeles that took place in 1992 are hugely displayed in this section that I played. This was considered a dark time for the “hood” in Los Angeles and in the game, Sweet talks about how he needs to fight to keep the hood together and not let them tear it apart. This is exactly what happened in 1992 and it is an interesting juxtaposition to be seen within a video game. The racism and mindless acts of violence is portrayed well in the game and the developers had a clear intent for this section in the game, to show that the ghettos and hood areas needed to rebuild not fight each other. While doing these game logs, I realized that this game is quite a bit deeper than most can see and provokes more thought than just mindless violence. With one more entry, I am going to focus on exploring and checking out open world gameplay.Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:22:17 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4845&iddiary=8983https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4845The game that I will be playing for this game log is Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. I have already played through the entire game so I will use different save data for each entry to get a wide sampling. My first entry focuses on the first thirty minutes of gameplay which is full of cut scenes and tutorial missions. The main issues that I will be covering are the racism and stereotypes. Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is based in the 90’s at the height of gang violence and gangster rap within the African American community and this causes quite a bit of the racism to be portrayed within the game. Just from playing the first thirty minutes of the game showed plenty of examples of the stereotypes and racism that plagued black youth in the 90’s. When the main character Carl meets his friends mourning for his moms death, the racial slurs begin to fly and do not stop. Within the cut scene Carl’s brother uses many racially charged statements. He calls Kendall’s boyfriend a low life ese and calls Carl a nigger. The dialog throughout the game is filled with these types of terms. Another big issue I noticed within this snippet of the game was the stereotypes that are put into the game. There is one scene that shows Carl being picked up by the police. The scene eludes to the fact that the police will frame him for murder if he doesn’t cooperate with them. This shows stereotypes and racism in the regard that white police officers are taking advantage of underprivileged black youth. One more thing I noticed was that the main food chain in the game is called Cluckin Bell. Isn’t it a bit stereotypical that the main food place in a game that revolves around black culture is a fried chicken place? In my next entry I will focus on the implications of morality in an open world game.Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:15:01 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4845&iddiary=8975