Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1612https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5510This game utilizes the iPod’s ability to sense its orientation to control a man running through a maze. The touchscreen is also an integral part of the controls; the player swipes a finger to duck, jump, and turn left and right. The goal is to achieve a high score of distance from the temple by avoiding obstacles and outrunning a pack of baboon-thingies. The level design in this game is beautifully simple and allows the player to turn off their brain and get into that “zone”, like Tetris; endless mazes of jumping and collecting coins make for a mindless and fun experience. Collecting coins is part of resource management; you can buy powerups like speed and invincibility in an in-game store. Players get onto a leaderboard in the app that compares the distance that was run before falling victim to either the baboons or the obstacles. Normally, I consider a good storyline an integral part of a game. But this game story is just one sentence: you stole a gold idol from a temple, so run away as fast as you can. It gets the point of the game across in just a few words, which is absolutely brilliant. The game is challenging, but simple and clean. The tutorial in the beginning explained the controls, but the real teachable moments were more subtle: the environment in this game involves visual repetition. All of the tree trunk obstacles look the same, all of the fire bars look the same, etc. This trains a player to recognize when to duck and jump, so that the responses by the player start to become easier on him/her. Fri, 14 Dec 2012 04:33:00 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5510&iddiary=9804https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5509Guitar Hero III is a great party game. While the one-player mode is fun, it’s best played after all of the songs are unlocked so that two people can play cooperatively or competitively. Similar to DDR, this game requires the player to time their taps of a guitar-shaped controller’s buttons to match the falling note pattern on the screen. The goal is to collect points and maintain note streaks; this will result in advancement to harder songs, until all songs have been successfully played through and a cut scene establishes the player as a Guitar Hero. What makes this game unique as opposed to the first two versions of the game are the cameo appearances of two famous guitar players, who wrote challenging scores for players to duel the bosses with. A very interesting innovation that this game has to separate it from DDR is the inclusion of battle gems. These are power ups that players can unleash against each other (or the bosses) to interfere with their playing of the song and force them to lose. Another type of power up, Star Power, is used when in one-player mode; it multiplies a player’s score by two. Both types of power up utilize the Wii’s motion sensors. When the guitar-controller is held in a vertical position (in the same way that a guitarist will tilt his/her guitar up during a concert to showcase his/her virtuosity), the power ups are activated. There is scant environment development for this game; level design is not really necessary, though the background of the scrolling notes features interesting things like the band members, audience, and stage. One of the great things about the design of the background is when it shows your character playing, they are not animated to just strum over and over; their fingers actually move in the appropriate rhythm that the player is expected to perform. If a sequence is unclear or confusing, it’s helpful to keep an eye on the right hand of the lead guitarist. Thu, 13 Dec 2012 20:09:28 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5509&iddiary=9802https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5508This game is amazing. The level of detail that is put into the game environment is very stunning; this game has a gorgeous aesthetic that plays right into the story. All movement and story progress is navigated through crowded streets in Renaissance Italy, and the buildings have scaffolding and windows and other details that the player has to use to climb up and down buildings and towers. The story progresses through cut scenes that the player accesses when s/he arrives at the map point in which the scene starts. There is always something to do in the game; hundreds of hours can be derived from not only the main storyline, but side missions, lesser tasks, collecting items, or just annoying the AI populace of various cities. The story-within-a-story narrative is very intriguing, and it’s the primary motivation to accomplish missions. The overarching story about Desmond is interwoven with the main story about Ezio, and the game does a marvelous job of revealing info in small bites and leaving constant cliffhangers. This keeps the player willing to move forward. This game offers a lot of freedom despite its firmly embedded narrative. Players can choose the order in which they accomplish tasks, or avoid them altogether and mess around in the environment for a while. Within missions and tasks, there is no “right” way to do anything. Puzzles about the climbing route or timing may have a best route, but other than that, missions can be accomplished in any way as long as it gets done. This is where the emergent narrative comes; a player can create his/her own experiences. My brother likes to harass the guards and civilians when he plays, whereas I prefer stealth and avoiding confrontation. This means that we have wildly varying ideas about what makes the game so much fun, and this is a great freedom to have in any game.Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:52:43 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5508&iddiary=9800https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5507This is a platformer game in the style of Super Mario; you play as a character that runs, spins, jumps, and collects items. Like coins, Wumpa fruit (which I had always been calling ‘mangoes’ when I first got this game) can give an extra life if 100 are collected. A big part of this game is resource management and collecting; to beat a level, a purple crystal must be found within the level. Gems can be acquired if every single box in a level in found and destroyed; gems can unlock new levels. This means that the only way to 100% in the game is to meticulously hunt for boxes, and the arrangement of the boxes is often a puzzle designed to get a player to think about how s/he is going to reach all of them. For example, some boxes explode on contact; these must be avoided because of life loss, but they can be a tool for getting all of the boxes in a level destroyed. One of the best power ups in the game, the Aku-Aku mask, provides protection against damage. If three masks are collected, then temporary invincibility is acquired; this is similar to a Mario power star. There are no other power ups in this game; a player has to time his/her moves to avoid death. Checkpoints in the game provide a temporary save point that will not leave a player too discouraged after death. This game requires a very thorough knowledge of Crash’s metrics. Many of the jumps and obstacles are just barely within his reach, and many of them challenge a player to realize his boundaries. This makes the game more difficult than initially expected, and many of the extra boxes or bonus levels are inaccessible without taking a risk and trying to push Crash as far as he can go.Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:08:09 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5507&iddiary=9799https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5500Pokémon Yellow features upgradable characters, resource management, and exploration of an enormous map to find items, advance the story, and collect Pokémon. The designs of the caves in this game are reminiscent of those in Legend of Zelda games; they are designed to be puzzles for the player, with multiple levels and enemies hidden inside. My favorite part of this game is the highly variable emergent narrative that a person can experience; every time you play, different Pokémon will appear, you may get more or less lucky with the NPC’s moves, etc. I can replay a Pokémon game hundreds of times without getting bored; it’s never the same twice. A unique feature of this game is that your starter, Pikachu, follows you around in the game outside of his/her Poke ball. (Gender differentiation of the Pokémon doesn’t happen until later versions of Pokémon games.) The player can gauge his/her performance in the game by interacting with Pikachu, who will make a face based on how much it likes you. This allows the player to mediate his/her playing style to be more accommodating; not letting Pikachu faint often is a good way to get back into its good graces. Throughout the game, Pikachu’s expressions can alert the player to changes in the environment. It gets frightened in dark or scary places, and at one point runs up to a man disguised as a Pokémon and shows confusion, which can tip the player off to something fishy about that “Pokémon”. This game has no cut scenes, except in the very beginning when talking to Professor Oak; the narrative unfolds as the player completes tasks and visits different areas of the game world. NPC characters direct the player and reveal the story to the player through dialogue. The game rewards players for being “social” with the other people in the game; they often dispense advice, items, or clues to advance the game. This is probably foreshadowing Nintendo’s game-making trajectory of making gaming as social an experience as possible via the internet. Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:29:45 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5500&iddiary=9798https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5497Super Mario Brothers released this “All-Stars” pack for the SNES a long time ago; it has Super Mario Bros, Super Mario 2, Super Mario 3, Super Mario World, and the Lost Levels. This allows a player to quickly do side-by-side comparisons on all of the games. All of these games feature running, jumping, and gathering things like lives, and power-ups. The second game is a stark departure from the rest; the enemies, environment, and level design have much different properties. In SM1, 3, LL and World, enemies are goombas and koopas, led by Bowser. But in SM2, the enemies are bird things, shy guys, and bosses like Birdo. And some of the mechanics are different; in SM2, Mario looks for floating hearts and potions, and has no inventory to manage. By contrast, the rest of the games have nothing to do with potions and hearts; instead, players collect points and coins. Also, the level design in SM2 involves the finding of keys, climbing vines, and alternate worlds that come from the potions. In the other games, these mechanics are only for secrets, not for completing levels themselves. Wed, 12 Dec 2012 23:51:39 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5497&iddiary=9789https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5495This game is not only very engaging, but absolutely impossible to stop; the way that this game is set up, all of the objectives and missions are continuous. There is no point at which you “complete” an objective; the moment you do, the ending of that mission becomes the start of the next one. Your brain at no point feels that anything is completed to the point of, “ah, now that this is done, let’s shut the game off.” Hours can easily be lost to the exceedingly large game field; Batman navigates an entire prison complex the size of a city. The mechanics of this game include climbing, fighting, and exploring. One thing I didn’t like was the way the game taught you to play. Most games give signs or warnings early on, and then leave you to your own devices. This is normally invaluable; when a player is confronted with a similar situation later, s/he will know what to do next time. But in this game, the tutorial mode never goes away; perhaps due to the difficulty of the game, or maybe because I didn’t set it to “expert” mode, the instructions were always popping up. If I could have turned them off, the game might have been impossible to finish, though. It is a little disheartening for a player to feel like they didn’t really accomplish anything without help. A possible fix is to include hints in the dialogue (which they did; Batman would say things like “I should use my grappling hook to climb the building”), but just leave it at that. After the first five or so cut scenes, if something previously learned needs to come up, the player can try it on their own. One strange departure from the first game is that the remote-control batarang’s movement is inverted. Moving the analog stick left moves the batarang right, and there is no option (that I found) to remedy this. After being used to normal controls, why change it? It seemed like a strange thing to change. Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:29:17 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5495&iddiary=9784https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5131Finally, an answer to the plight of every video game player with a little brother: does every two-player experience with a little kid have to be terribly unfun? No, thankfully not. Using asymmetrical gameplay, Super Mario Galaxy has solved my problem in a way that even a family-friendly game like Wii Sports could not hope to aspire to. Normally, two player games are very dreary and not fun for heavily mismatched players. In a game where the 2 players are pitted against each other, a strong player always destroys the weaker one; in my case, a little brother who protests if I go easy and let him win. This quickly becomes frustrating for both of us. On the flipside, cooperative gameplay is a nigtmare. We'll scream at each other to "Jump you moron! No, go back! Stop dying!" a la New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii. (I don't know about you, but in my family, playing co-op mode in this game dissolves into the third world war within ten minutes as we holler at each other to pick up this item, dodge this guy, etcetera.) But in Super Mario Galaxy, co-op mode involves Mario (Player 1) being followed by an anthropomorphic star (Player 2), who assists Mario in collecting health, items, and can even stun and kill enemies. So, Player 2 is absolutely beneficial, perhaps even essential, in getting through the game and the secrets in the levels. It's like having an awesome cheat code that makes the game much easier, and more importantly, makes player 2 feel like they're really doing something useful to help, which is very important when your P2 is much younger than you are. Kids like to be involved. And the P1 doesn't have to slow down or coordinate with a weaker P2 to get anything done; its all very intuitive, and P2 can hardly do anything to mess up P1's gameplay experience. There is the small issue of miscommunication; if, for example, there's a fireball that cycles up and down once per 3 seconds, I time my jumps to avoid the fireball. But the if P2 is not aware of this, he will stun or freeze the fireball, and I jump smack into it because I did not count on it freezing at any position. But this kind of error is nothing compared to NSMB, where any move off by a milisecond ruins the flow of the level and leaves that one player who is young or uncoordinated like a giant sandbag in a sinking ship, and that isn't fun for little kids to be the weakest link that makes everyone lose. I think we're both happier when a game makes it okay if a kid isn't able to play as well as older peers. I haven't played many co-op games that struck such a good balance between giving P2 autonomy, but limiting his/her range to stuff that will not interfere with the stronger players' progress. It gives the P2 plenty to do, but doesn't make him or her pivotal in winning or losing, which is very important when a small child is at the helm and may not be able to help much if s/he is too young or lacks experience. I really love the way SMG's co-op mode allows two players of wildly varying ability to come together and save a princess. The little bro and I love this game as both a bonding experience and just a fun game. I'd highly recommend it to families with kids of very differing ages. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Tue, 11 Sep 2012 00:51:11.)Tue, 11 Sep 2012 00:49:03 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5131&iddiary=9391