Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1577https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5336Not too long ago, I finished my second play through of Halo 4. I can honestly say that my first review of this game was a rave due to me being a huge fan boy of the series. That is not to say that I did not like the game this time through, I still do, I just started to notice the flaws this time around. I keep getting this feeling that everything about the game seems forced. The story, I thought, was great, 343 Industries just did not do the best job telling it. There seemed to be a bit of assumption while telling it, where 343i was assuming that the player knew most of the extended Halo Universe. Unfortunately that is not the case for most players. It felt to me as though they were trying to pull of something epic but did not do it in a way that came naturally to them. To go with force story telling, the gameplay was even harder to deal with this time. Running to destination x to press a button gets old after a while. I will give them credit though, they introduced a lot of new vehicle driving and pulled it off very nicely. Lastly, the music. I guess you could say that I had super high expectations for the music. When I think of Halo, I think of Marty O’Donnell and the most satisfying orchestral movements my ears will ever hear. There is no comparison that will do Marty O’Donnell’s work any justice. And I knew that the soundtrack for Halo 4 was not going to be as good going into the game. As talented as Neil Davidge is, he is no Marty O’Donnell. My problem with the music was the same as it is with the rest of the game: it felt forced. Forced in a way where it seemed like Neil Davidge was trying to make something just as good as Marty while giving it his own twist. You just can’t do that. It was still great music; I’m just a bit disappointed. But hey, you can’t please everyone.Mon, 10 Dec 2012 12:33:14 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5336&iddiary=9755https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5319This past week I finally finished Assassin’s Creed III. I am disappointed. This game was built up to be something so spectacular, and gameplay-wise, it was, but other than that, nope. The missions and battle system were fantastic. No mission felt the same as another. The naval battles were something that was completely unexpected and it was pulled off with fabulous fashion. The animations and fighting combos were beyond amazing and incredibly fluid. But that is more or less the end of the exciting aspects. The story was at most mediocre. Connor’s story was acceptable, confusing most of the time, but it was not too difficult to swallow. Desmond’s on the other hand, was poor. It consisted of the usual “fight the Templars before they take over the world” and go here and do something real fast and then come back. Characters were introduced in ways that played them off to be really important but then left in the dust without an ending. Even the characters that have lasted most, if not all of the story, were left without a proper ending or even a purpose in this game. They were just there. The game was essentially left without an ending. There was an ending all right, but it was extremely dull. It just kind of happened and that was that. It was nothing radical or surprising either. To add to that, the ending cutscene seemed to pull a Mass Effect and offer you a choice but then completely reject the player’s existence and go about its merry way and choose for you. Now that I’m done and can form a complete view of the game, I didn’t hate it, I didn’t even dislike it. I was just hopeful and let down. Brotherhood still remains way above the rest in my book.Mon, 26 Nov 2012 12:24:11 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5319&iddiary=9670https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5358After playing Sir Benfro’s Brilliant Balloon in class the other day, I instantly wanted to try it out for myself. I’m glad that I did. The first thing that got my attention was the art style. The quirky, sketch-like, and flat art of the whole game pulled me in right away. However, after only a few seconds after launching the app, what got me really excited was not the art style, but the music. The music created this whole new mood that fit the game extremely well. It was happy, adventure music, reminiscent of Little Big Planet. It got to the point where I would play levels over and over again, especially the first level, Yellow Leaves, just to listen to the cheerful music. My main reason for continuing to play was just to hear the beautiful music. In terms of gameplay, Sir Benfro’s Brilliant Balloon is just a reincarnation of classic games such as Helicopter, and Jetpack with a few new twists. All the player needs to do is collect “fireflies”, which are just floating balls of light, to keep the player afloat all while avoiding crashing into the walls or big animals that cross your path. Just get to the end before you run out of fireflies and that’s it. Simple. But also enjoyable. By no means is Sir Benfro’s Brilliant Balloon a huge, heavy duty, iPad app such as Infinity Blade or other games of the like. But at the same time, it is just as great as its differing cousins, just in terms of completely different aspects. The game is great. Simple and beautiful and extremely pleasing to listen to.Mon, 19 Nov 2012 18:06:35 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5358&iddiary=9644https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5336There is a quote from the book 2001: A Space Odyssey where one of the characters says, “my God, it’s full of stars”. Every time I think about Halo 4, that is the one quote that comes to mind. The simple reasoning for this is that I was simply blown away by the game. How on earth they managed to make a game so visually stunning on the Xbox 360 is beyond my comprehension, but even so, they did it. Halo 4 marks the beginning of a new trilogy in the Halo universe and this game has landed a spot on top of all other Halo games. Halo 4 is the culmination of everything that has made Halo Halo and everything that has made Halo completely awesome, and it all works together seamlessly. The story has evolved into a new formula that is so much more emotional than the past Halo games and kept me on my seat the whole time. I actually played it straight through just because I couldn’t turn it off. It was extremely engaging. That is not to say it is perfect though. I found only a few slight annoyances such as the numerous occurrences of situations where it was a “run here, shoot some guys, press this button, go here, shoot some guys, press this button” and so on. The multiplayer, as with all of the other Halo games, is a separate beast. In Halo 4, multiplayer is back and bigger than ever. It even has a story behind it. 343 has taken everything that made Halo multiplayer great in the past games and put it into a giant pot along with what makes multiplayer great in other games. Sure, people complain that it is becoming too much like Call of Duty, but the point is that what Call of Duty did worked. What Call of Duty does is what people want from multiplayer in first person shooters, and Halo 4 has simply agreed to play along with what people want. What really stuck out to me right away was the rewards system in Halo 4’s multiplayer. The game literally starts you out with nothing extra (you even only have one emblem option!). As you progress your Spartan career, you gain more items, which keeps the player coming back for more since they desperately need that awesome helmet. It works. That is the simplest way I can describe this game. It works, and it works great.Sun, 11 Nov 2012 13:54:44 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5336&iddiary=9623https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5319This past week was blessed with the release of the third numbered installment in the Assassins Creed series. It’s great. It’s huge. It’s beautiful. When I first started playing the game, I instantly noticed how amazingly fluid the game was. The previous Assassins Creed games have had a pretty expansive animation system, but Assassins Creed 3 took the animation system to a whole new level. It was the subtle things that got me really excited, like how the character’s walk changes ever so slightly when going up or down stairs or how the run at the very beginning is combination of different steps to gain momentum followed by the occasional burying of the head. And the tree climbing. I was quite skeptical as to how they would pull this off but after finally trying it out, I am extremely impressed. To add to the super robust animation system, is a game that is so massive in scale that it is very intimidating at first. Think Skyrim big. I was initially shocked at how this game felt less like Assassins Creed and more along the lines of a Skyrim type RPG. It is an open-world action/adventure game that allows the player to travel between a massive frontier and big cities, with countless side quests, hunting, a trading/resource system, and many others. It is a bit overwhelming, much like Skyrim was at first. I was a bit disappointed at first because the Assassins Creed games have always had this feeling to the game that put them away from most other games, but it was pretty obvious that AC3 was heavily inspired by games such as Skyrim. But in the end, I won’t complain too much about that because Ubisoft put their own spin on it, and it is a fantastic game.Mon, 05 Nov 2012 12:13:36 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5319&iddiary=9606https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5297This past week, I replayed a bit of Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, a game that, for me, is filled with huge amounts of nostalgia. Over the past two summers, my friend and I have played too many hours to count of this game. Much of the high playability of this game has to due with the fact that this game is based off of the players own imagination. Nuts & Bolts is a game where one of the main goals is just to create vehicles with various purposes to complete different kinds of missions. The game is supplied with a large enough palette of vehicle parts that the player is able to create countless different vehicles. While the parts palette is quite big, I felt as though it was still lacking a few pretty important items. To get around this however, my friend and I just exploited glitches and other problems in the physics system and used it to our advantage. Most of the time, these exploits turned out to be hilariously awesome. For example, there is a part called the “tow bar”. This parts main purpose is to, as its name says, tow other objects by some magic beam that grows in length as it needs to. However, instead of towing objects, we somehow figured out a way to use it to emulate joints. We ended up creating a massive mech where the legs we’re attached using the tow bars. My friend and I were able to have this giant mech walk just by rotating/ turning the upper body. Did the developers plan for this to happen? Most likely not. It was awesome. On the topic of tow bars, many of the exploits we found in the physics engine revolved around the tow bars. Another example, which was not very beneficial, just fun to watch, resulted in a vehicle that we built which included multiple tow bars connected to each other in a very narrow tube. After a few seconds, the vehicle, without moving at all, would eventually destroy itself in a huge explosion of lights and parts. There was absolutely no reason for this at all. Overall, the game is extremely fun. It was a huge step away from the typical Banjo Kazooie formula. However, I think I would rather have a typical Banjo Kazooie game rather than one that follows the formula for Nuts and Bolts.Sun, 28 Oct 2012 15:40:04 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5297&iddiary=9583https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5275In these past few weeks, I have been playing a lot of the Witcher 2. It is a good game, and “good” is the most I can give it at the moment. I am not that far into the game and I feel as though this game has loads of potential. The problem is that the Witcher 2 is not performing at its highest potential. The Witcher 2 has its highlights such as a deep story and stunning visuals. The game’s story is actually based off of a series of books published years ago. So far, from what I can tell, it is an incredibly rich universe and the developers have done a great job adapting the stories into a game format. That being said, I’m completely lost. It might have to do with the fact that I stopped playing this game for a few months, or it might have to do with the fact that the story is presented in a way that is a tad overwhelming and I am inclined to believe the latter. The fact that this game is a bit hard to follow is definitely a turn off. Other than that, the only other problem I have with the game is that it often throws the player into dead ends, or situations where the player cannot continue. Of the few hours I have played, I have already come across two of these (the first was the reason I stopped playing and the second one I just came across before I wrote this). It is incredibly frustrating. To show an example, the one I just came across has me locked in a room where I only have the options of paying a guard, or being killed. Of course, unfortunately for me, I don’t have the money, so really my only option is to die or revert to an older save. Like…what? This isn’t fair. I could easily revert to an old save, even though I really do not want to, but the point is, a game should never put the player in these kinds of situations.Sat, 20 Oct 2012 15:49:04 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5275&iddiary=9556https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5256I recently started playing Mirror’s Edge this past week, and I am really not sure how I feel about it yet. It is a game that is different from anything that I have ever played. It falls into the category of a first person platformer. It is a risky genre to approach as the game could either be disastrous or exceptional. However, I have not played enough of Mirrors Edge to come to a conclusion. I like the idea behind it, but I also have my doubts about it. First of all, a first person platformer makes it very difficult to navigate, especially at higher speeds like in Mirror’s Edge. The game requires you to make quick reaction decisions based on your surroundings to determine where to go. The problem with this is that having a first person view limits how much of your surroundings you can actually see. Where in comparison, you can see a lot more in third person. This makes it extremely difficult to see where you have to go and decide quickly where you need to go at times. Secondly, the first person view effects combat greatly. Not only is it difficult, but it also feels awkward, despite it being more “realistic”. The combat has the same problem as the navigating does. It is hard to fight quickly in situations where your sight is limited. Fighting in real life would be a lot easier if you could see in third person, but, alas, we can’t. In theory, this game is great. It is a radical idea that could be presented very well. I just haven’t played enough to figure out if it does.Mon, 15 Oct 2012 20:59:50 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5256&iddiary=9535https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5245These past few days I have returned to a great childhood pastime: Pokemon. I never played any of the games before when I was younger since for some reason it never really interested me. I’ll be honest, all of my friends were getting Black and White 2 and I felt extremely left out. So I pulled out my classic top view strategy game, Pokemon Yellow. I’m a bit confused as to why I didn’t fall in love with these games before. A lot of it probably had to do with the fact that this was a top view game, where you look down at the player from up above (see Zelda). This style of gameplay has always felt awkward to me so I steered away from it. However, as I throw down hours upon hours of Pokemon, this top view style is really starting to grow on me. Game Freak, the developers of Pokemon Yellow, also implemented a leveling/difficulty system that made the game flow very smoothly. You start off battling low level Pokemon, often bug types, considering they are generally the weakest Pokemon (come on, Caterpie is a joke). As your Pokemon level up and as you progress through the story, the difficulty of the Pokemon that you encounter also increases. It is a system that works. It is safe to say that no one would ever want to battle a level 100 Zapdos with a level 1 Pikachu. As far as the battle system goes, it is pretty straight forward. It is a turn based battle with the player choosing an attack which is then followed by the CPU attacking and then the player or vice versa. I’ve never really been a fan of this style either, but again, like the top view camera, I’m slowly being brought over to the other side.Thu, 11 Oct 2012 07:29:21 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5245&iddiary=9519https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5210This past weekend, I finally got around to finishing Crysis 2 for Xbox 360. I am still not entirely sure how I feel about it. I suppose, at the current time, I could give it a solid “meh”. Crysis 2 is beyond beautiful, as was it’s older brother at the time, but looks do not make a game. I feel as though the quintessential Crysis experience is all about pretty graphics, big explosions, and a lot of shooting. That is totally fine if that is what you are looking for, and Crysis does a very good job at giving the player that. Maybe you have to finish the first game entirely to fully understand the story and characters for Crysis 2, or it is actually just that mediocre. When I finished the game, I was left with a few pretty big questions that should definitely have been answered before. I was really unsure of what exactly had happened the entire game. I really had no idea what I was doing or why, I just ran forward and blew stuff up, which I figured I was supposed to do anyway. Then I reached the end, stuff happened, people died, enemies died, and I was just standing there in the center of a huge mess utterly confused. To add to that, often during cutscenes, I was left wondering who the character that was talking to me even was. Most of the time, those characters were pretty important and had an essential role to the story…at least I presume. Overall, I was left feeling really empty and confused after I finished it. Pretty graphics and big explosions (see Call of Duty, minus the pretty graphics) do not make a great game, mediocre at best, at least in my opinion. I want story, I want characters, not some silent dude in armor who doesn’t even know anything except that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Meh.Mon, 01 Oct 2012 12:50:34 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5210&iddiary=9484