Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=202https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1374After getting much experience with Fox I am starting to grow more and more fond of him. Whether it is just mere-exposure or the fact that I like his play style, I am not sure, but it has led me to find more depth in one character than I thought there was. Fundamentally Fox is almost always faster than his opponents, so using his quick attacks is generally the best way to keep your foe off balance, while driving up his vulnerability to be KO’d. Besides those tactics Fox, and other characters, you will find have surprisingly strong moves that can be harder to pull off, but when well timed can be devastating in almost any situation. Fox displays this in his upward attack, where I found myself able to take out an unsuspecting person in one shot that was not at all prepared to dodge an attack. Also the smaller utility mechanics that each character has are fun to play around with and can be very powerful, like Fox’s reflecting shield. When carefully used (especially against Samus) you can send back her deadly fully charged bolt right back at her, generally with much surprise. This kind of randomness and unpredictability seems to be what success hinges on in the game. The less of a grasp your opponent has on what your next move might be, the more they are off balance, and the easier it is to deliver unmitigated damage. Of course also with any fighting game, evading and blocking becomes a greatly useful skill. Being able to roll and block allows you to easily get in attacks with ease – not to mention stopping any damage from hitting you. Unfortunately this can turn games into rolling and blocking wars, though the shield has a timer, and more experienced players will quickly jump on you and use the throw ability that cannot be blocked. All in all Super Smash showed me a new level of depth with these more thoughtful play tests. When you sit down and just focus on one character you really begin to understand the ins and outs of him, and even after all this time I still learn new things about the characters I play each session. Of course this is what makes Super Smash still one of my favorite games to play after all these years – it’s always fun and I always find something new. Fri, 23 Feb 2007 01:27:38 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1374&iddiary=2922https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1374As an old avid Super Smash player, I felt like revisiting the game to get some more focused insights into it. For me it quickly became an instant classic, and it and Super Smash Melee are still to this day my favorite multiplayer fighting game. It’s seamless ability to allow four players to fight each other makes it practically perfect and very entertaining. Super Smash even has a good amount of variability in its choices for characters, ranging from the slower stronger characters, to the quick and small. There are four main character types in Super Smash. There are the characters like Pikachu, who are quick and small, good and evading, have weak attacks, but are susceptible to being KO’d very easily. There are characters like Fox, who are quick and moderately small, also good at evading, have stronger attacks and utility abilities like being able to reflect attacks. Then there are characters like Donkey Kong, who are big and strong, but very slow and their lack of mobility makes them easily killed if knocked off. Finally there are characters like Captain Falcon, who are slightly larger than Fox, but have less mobility, but very strong attacks akin to Donkey Kong. Besides character variability there is also variability in play style. You can play where the goal is to be the last one standing with lives, or you can play where the player with the most kills is the victor. For the sake of these logs I will be focusing on one player to get a better feel for skill development with one character, to see how much depth there is to each character.Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:54:25 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1374&iddiary=2920https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1162After playing much of the same battleground I have gotten a better feel for the strategy attached to it. Seemingly there are two routes to victory, one is by controlling 3 out of the 4 towers, and the other is to control 2 out of the 2 towers, but the make sure that you control the capturing of the flag. Being a mage of my new spec, I found my job was better suited for stealing towers that were not heavily defended. Being that I can take care of 1-2 people handly with the sneak attack, I took back a few towers in this way. In one instance the same guy tried to kill me three times and only succeeded the third time with a friend. Being this new talent build is much different from my usual one. Namely it is much more burst oriented and explosive, but the second I don't have my target writhing in flames he is mercilessly beating on me, and in some cases quickly killing me. This can make it very hard to kill more than one person, as well as recover from being ambushed. All in all it is alot of fun to see the people around me light up and fall to the ground, but I see myself sooner or later going back to my frost mage ways, where I can use my better evasive skills to get around getting killed. This new talent build and other things for me has really shed light on the diversity that I see all around in WoW. In my one class I can have many different combinations of special skills and abilities that all dictate how I play - and are all different play styles. This makes Mages, or any other class, viable options for whatever you want to do - all you have to do is change around your talents and you can play exactly how you want to. This makes the game very appealing and always gives you something fresh to do. Bored with your spec? Just undo your talents for a small fee and redo them for a nice breeze of fresh air from your beaten to death class. I have found WoW also has diversity in many other aspects, namely being a player who plays to kill other players - or a player to plays to raid and kill dragons with groups of allies. Talent builds, equipment, etc. All play into this and you can set yourself up for one or the other or both. This allows the hardcore and the causual player to generally live in harmony and to both have a good time, focusing on what they want to get out of the game.Thu, 08 Feb 2007 23:07:05 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1162&iddiary=2526https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1162Being a Mage since the release day of WoW, I obviously have a large amount of playing time. I did quit for some time, but after experiencing the new expansion I was lulled into coming back and getting my mage to the next high mark of Level 70. After alittle less than a level a day I did finally get to Level 70 and am now more powerful than ever and can fly. MMO's have always been games that have been incredibly engaging for me. The constant presuit of the highest levels and the best gear have always kept me inspired to spend large amounts of time playing. Characters in their races and classes are very well defined and constructed, though there are always people complaining. Most complaints come from people believing their class is underpowered - but generally this just means that they cannot kill any other player they want in any situation. People also consistenly complain that some classes take less skill etc. But my experiences have been that relative equals in class and gear can easily be decided by skill and careful decision in skills used. There is also a great amount of debate between Alliance and Horde - the two factions - racial abilities and alike come into fiery discussion. All of these emotional characteristics debates, I believe, are what makes the game so engaging as well. I myself hold certain grudges against classes, or people from the horde, or even horde in general. When I see a horde walking next to me, I know it is just another person sitting at a computer, but my cognitive instincts quickly label the player is a potential enemy or victim. Even dinction between different races brings to light different emotions when I see one - even though they are all the same people in general. But I digress from my playing session discussion. For my session I decided to just join the constructed PVP Battleground: Eye of the Storm, with a new talent build that makes my mage use a heavy amount of fire damage. Eye of the Storm is a zone where winning includes holding a combination of 4 different towers and capturing a flag to reach 2000 victory points. As far as my talent build, I have generally been a Frost mage, so this was something new. Frost being very defensive, fire is the opposite with instant cast spells that do alot of damage quickly, but this leaves me very "squishy". So insurprisingly I have found myself dying much more often. Inspite of this the fire spec has been pretty fun to play around with. Especially in a battle against one other player I have pulled off being tactiful and being able to keep the player stuned, slowed, or rooted and killing them without them having even a chance to touch me. In my next session I'll play around with more of my options of survivablity and also how my spec helps or hurts my team in this battleground.Thu, 08 Feb 2007 14:48:49 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1162&iddiary=2491https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=989 For one reason or another my first entry for this game did not submit. I guess I will try to recreate it quickly. I played Kirby many moons ago when it first came out and it was instantly a game that I reveled in. I remember playing it over and over and still enjoying it. For a 2D platformer it is a game that gives itself alot of space in terms of Kirby's ability to fly around the screen - yet at the same time he still has the limitation of staying within the box of the screen. Regardless it still adds awhole different dimension to the game that can either give you an easy out to one situation or another, but also leaves itself to be useless in others - forcing the player to be adept in all kinds of movement. But where Kirby makes it self most appealing is in the wide range of affordances that you can gain from enemies. It seemed fun to be Mario with fireballs, or a racoon tail, but Kirby really ups the antie - allowing you to wield swords or become a tornado or a wheel. These affordances are crucial for easy manuvering and intern are a blast to play around with. Kirby really brings to life the adventures of a pink blob in a dreamland. It really lends itself to the experienced and causual beginner. Allowing exploration to be interesting with trying out powerups and wandering around, or allowing some challenge given with points and speed that one can get around the sometimes open and sometimes closed spaces that Kirby's dreamland has to offer.Thu, 01 Feb 2007 22:56:29 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=989&iddiary=2415https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=989After my second session with the game I have found some more interesting parts of Kirby. One nice tidbit is the mini-games that branch off of the game - they are a nice break from the normal game and they can give you some useful powerups that can propel you into the next levels. Speaking of the levels, as far as the level design in kirby, it seems to lack some imagination. Given it is nice to be able to fly around them, but each level is very short, and generally similar throughout. It just gave me the sense that the levels were not very important, and that I could run through them very easily - though maybe there is a difficulty level you can raise. On the other hand the enemies do not lack any imagination. There were quite a few more than I really remembered, though the images of using their powers slowly permeated into my brain as I played more and more. Each level almost seems to have different enemies with different power ups, and they are all fun or incredibly useful, both in completing levels and sometimes making boss fights almost too easy. Touching on boss fights, so far they have been very simple. Challenge can sometimes come with not having power ups, but otherwise I found myself just mashing an ability over and over and quickly taking the boss down with no real effort involved. Granted I have no completed the game - and I do remember the last boss being very drawn out and difficult - but still I would like to see more effort involved in the early stages of the game as well - if just to give a better sense of accomplishment. All in all Kirby is still an enjoyable classic, and as far as making a game of emergence, it does spark ideas. Power ups and innovative gameplay are indoubtely things that can add some complexity and remove the mundane quality of just jumping from platform to platform. Plus the playful quirky world that is Kirby Land or whatever is irresistably fun to explore.Wed, 31 Jan 2007 03:56:24 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=989&iddiary=2184https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=758 Upon playing Mario 3 for the second time, I defiently had alittle more exploration and understanding gained than I did on my first fresh start. There are certain nuances that you have to pick up to get through levels efficiently. Namely how far Mario skids when he stops running, and the height and bounds that the two different jumps give. This kind of seemless and consistent detail is what gives the game lasting appeal and some color - without that kind of detail and 2D platformer can be dry and boring. With these acquired skills and observations I found myself doing levels that I was forced to do over again, much faster. I had a kind of anticipation for what was coming next. Oddly enough I could not name for you the positioning of enemies and platforms, but if I were to start running through the level, I would be jumping in certain places because in the back of my head - unconsciously - I would know what was coming next. Kind of a tangent, but being a psychology major those are kinds of things I notice when I play games, and they have interesting implications for what skills come with being good at 2D platforms, and how many of them we are not consciously aware of. So my revisitation of Mario 3 was an interesting one. I got some insights that I never would have gotten at the age I first played it - and of course got some retrospective feedback from comparing it to games that exist now. I think it more or less laid ground work for most gaming, as it started in a time where gaming was becoming much less primitive. And also in that sense I think it is solidified as a great game of the ages - as even coming back to play it after drudging along in games ingulfed in crisp graphics - the enjoyment of seeing that little pixely Italian jump around the screen still exists and is still widely appreciated.Fri, 19 Jan 2007 03:52:02 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=758&iddiary=1721https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=419 After my second session of playing I have gotten a better feel for the game as a whole. Entering instances with many more enemies makes things more difficult and interesting, and gave me a finer view of the strategy attached with the card system. In light of that at this point in the game it seems pretty easy to know which cards to keep and which to discard because of their currently useless atributes, and moving through the levels has been pretty simple. Though I either do not understand the implications of being seen by the enemy, or they are not consistent - obviously being detected by the enemy in MGS games is something readily avoided and an aquired skill to do efficiently, but in this game I have found myself walking infront of an enemy to kill them and sometimes sounding the alarm, and sometimes just having them be ready to call for help. One thing I have found myself being alittle put off by is that the game is kind of slow and it seems alittle clunky (though that may change as I gain more fines in my play style). The virtue of a turn based game like FF Tactics was that the field of play was straight forward and open, and even though it would start slow as people went into position that was not a very long process. Whereas in AC!D, I found myself running through the maze like maps, turn by turn, having to wait for the turns of other soldiers patroling to decide to move 2 feet, before I got to go again. So if you are looking to play a fast paced game with lots of parallel movement like the other MSG games - AC!D is not the one - But it's style could be good when the opposing mood is felt. Another side note - The characters are itneresting and well developed in AC!D, but much like some other MSG games, I am annoyed by the 5 minute conversations that commence multiple times inbetween missions.Thu, 11 Jan 2007 21:12:19 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=419&iddiary=1223https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=419Playing Metal Gear AC!D for the first time was certainly a surprising experience for someone like myself that has played the past Metal Gear games. Coming from a 3rd person shooter background, AC!D brings a new RPG look to the Metal Gear series with its turn based gameplay akin to FF Tactics. Though slightly thrown off guard by having to learn a novel interface, the mystical story line filled with terrorism was something that had not changed from the past Metal Gears. Right from the get go there are children dolls hijacking an airplane with some type of paralyzing gas, and of course Snake has to somehow on his own difuse the situation. And even though I have not gotten very far yet, I can tell from my past experiences that the story will unfold in an strangely interesting manner that tends to keep me guessing and ingaged in what is coming next. I have not yet completely explored the elements of the card and turn based RPG feel that AC!D has, but so far I have found it pretty enjoyable. I anticipated frustration with the system with something like running around a corner with no turns left and instantly dying - But so far the initial missions have been forgiving to my lack of fluid understanding of the mechanics. And so even though this game only really mirrors the past Metal Gears in it's story and characters - Whom are always characters that are well developed and through through - I have found myself wishing to get further. Instead of the new system frustrating me, so far it seems well enough constructed and the levels well enough designed to keep me interested to get further through the story, and to also master this new kind of game play that I have never really experienced before.Tue, 09 Jan 2007 23:50:48 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=419&iddiary=1100