drundle's GameLog

Final Fantasy XII (PS2) - Thu, 22 Feb 2007 01:37:53

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 01:37:53 CDT

Another 45 minutes of fruitless hacking and slashing. This game is just not for me. I give it props for its graphics and deep backstory, but that doesn't make up for it not being any fun.

Final Fantasy XII (PS2) - Wed, 21 Feb 2007 20:21:14

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 20:21:14 CDT

I purchased Final Fantasy XII soon after it came out. I have always been fond of the series since I played FF7 back in the day, and it had been a long time since I had played a Final Fantasy game. After playing the game for about six hours, I found myself faced with a familiar problem with FF's that I had forgotten about. Here's the thing: I hate "leveling". When I play a game, I don't want to have to futz around four hours before I can continue forward with the story. So when I reach that inevitable point in any Final Fantasy game where there is an enemy who I can't beat unless I go wander around aimlessly leveling up, I tend to give up out of frustration and boredom. Because FF XII is on the classics list, I decided to go back and give it another shot. I was forced to load an old save game I fortunately made, since the most recent one put me in a position where I had to fight, even if I had no chance at winning. The old game was several areas earlier, at a point in the game where i was free to do whatever I liked in the areas I had access to. I wandered around killing enemies for as long as I could stand before retracing my steps to the enemies who had thrashed me earlier. I put up a good fight and managed to defeat the group of enemies who I had lost to. Only to lose to the group of enemies in the next room. I give up. Square, call me when you base enemy difficulty off of my party's stats. Make it an option, whatever, just stop driving me crazy! Your games have a lot of potential, I just wish they didn't drive me up the goddamn wall.

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2) - Wed, 31 Jan 2007 17:35:19

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 17:35:19 CDT

As I've continued playing, I find that I cannot remember how to defeat each colossus as easily as the first few. It was long enough ago that I originally played this game that I am enjoying discovering the enemies' weaknesses again. The visuals continue to impress as does the distinct nature of each Colossus: each boss is totally different from the ones before it. The gameplay never repeats itself, but at the same time lessons you learn from earlier bosses prove useful against the later ones. Its really quite a feat of game design.

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2) - Wed, 31 Jan 2007 16:55:35

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 16:55:35 CDT

For the record: I hate CruzNet. I just typed up a ~700 word gamelog and when i hit submit CruzNet decided I needed to authenticate my login, causing me to lose the log. Therefore this will be brief. Shadow of the Colossus is one of the most cinematic games I have ever played, and one of the absolute best titles released for the PlayStation 2 system. The controls can be a struggle in close quarters, I believe due to their being tuned to work in large scale environments (i.e. the battlefields and the Colossi themselves) and the camera has similar issues. But despite these complaints, SotC offers some of the most mind blowing player-controlled sequences in gaming. The battles are extraordinary and epic, requiring the perfect balance of deductive tactical reasoning and adept mastery of the games controls. What sets this game apart for other action adventure titles is the atmosphere that pervades all elements of the gameplay. The choice not to include any enemies besides the Colossi leaves the gameworld a stark, lonely expanse solely inhabited by the player character and his horse. Having played this game before, I know the strategies for defeating the Colossi. The battles are therefore rather one-sided, but no less gratifying. There's nothing quite like slaying a 10-story beast, which is what makes this game so freaking rad.

Super Mario 64 (N64) - Thu, 18 Jan 2007 21:05:55

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 21:05:55 CDT

Playing more Super Mario 64 only cemented the feeling i experienced with my first hour: I remember this game as being better than it is. I spent the majority of my second hour on the same level, which was inexcusably difficult and cumulated in an equally hard boss battle. Again I found myself frustrated by niggling problems in the game engine and control scheme that made this level more difficult than it should have been. As I stated yesterday, if Mario 64 was released today, nobody would put up with it.

Super Mario 64 (N64) - Thu, 18 Jan 2007 01:29:01

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 01:29:01 CDT

I, like so many others, first experienced Super Mario 64 soon after its initial release. It was one of the first Nintendo 64 games I had seen and the novelty of 3D graphics was enough to make me completely enamored with this new entry into the Super Mario franchise. I have played it on and off since then but only sporadically, never having personally owned an N64. I thought this "Classic" Gamelog would be the perfect opportunity to dive back in to Mario 64 and assess it from my more modern viewpoint. The result is that I'm torn. One part of me loves it for the nostalgia value that comes with playing a game from my youth, but the other part of me recognizes a crucial element of the game that I ignored when I was younger but can't overlook anymore: it's unbelievably frustrating. The number of times I found myself going through the same level over and over again, making the same mistake over and over again would be inexcusable by modern game standards. The issue isn't that I'm just bad at the game, either; Like all first-generation 3D games, the nuances of that extra dimension are shaky to say the least. Often the camera or the physics (things we today take for granted and raise a hue and a cry should they fail to operate) make a puzzle much harder than it actually should be and likewise the controls are similarly spotty, the concept of a joystick being unexplored in console games prior to the N64. The bottom line is that I ended up having some fun reliving this game from my childhood, but I used basically every curse word I've learned since then in the process.

The Legend of Zelda (NES) - Mon, 08 Jan 2007 19:11:56

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 19:11:56 CDT

After another ~45 minutes of playing Legend of Zelda, I was still having a great time enjoying similarities between the original and the newer Zelda games that I grew up with. Though I didn't flash on it at first, the enemies in the original LoZ have been recycled in later games, and some of the perils and pitfalls (such as falling boulders) are present in this first adventure as well. I think the fact that gameplay elements can be consistently used in a series for over a decade shows that Legend of Zelda is a masterfully crafted game that admirably stands the test of time. I plan to continue playing this game to completion.

The Legend of Zelda (NES) - Mon, 08 Jan 2007 18:43:48

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 18:43:48 CDT

I have been a fan of the Legend of Zelda series since I first played the phenomenal Ocarina of Time in 1999. For my first GameLog, I decided to go back to this series' roots and spend some quality time with the original Legend of Zelda for the NES. What strikes me most after playing for an hour are the similarities between LoZ and its future iterations. The graphics and control scheme have changed (most obviously in Ocarina of Time, which made the switch to a 3D engine), but the core gameplay elements remain remarkable unchanged. From day one you were Link, you were armed with a sword, a bow, a boomerang, and bombs, and your health is measured in hearts which you gain by defeating dungeon bosses. The game is challenging; "death" is a fairly commonplace occurance, but the game is forgiving when it comes to reincarnation - you keep your inventory and money and are transported back to the first area of the game, or the first room if the dungeon if you die while within one. Death is more of a temporary inconvenience than a game-ending tragedy. Despite its difficulty, LoZ is above all things fun, with nerve-wracking combat that requites deft mastery of the primitive control scheme, simple puzzle-solving that is still suprisingly rewarding, and perhaps the catchiest 8-bit musical score in the history of video games.

The Legend of Zelda (NES) - Mon, 08 Jan 2007 17:43:16

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 17:43:16 CDT

I have been a fan of the Legend of Zelda series since I played