Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=226https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1365Well, I flipped a car and it blew up after I got out of it. That was my favorite part of playing this game. My second favorite was running down stoplights. Otherwise, everything seemed forced into the obvious stereotype of gang life, but it was being held back by the fact that this is a video game. I still can't tell if this game is supposed to be fun or serious. It seems serious when they talk about the "hood" being "all fucked up," but then it regresses into some strange MTV-like reality show. The game did have a redeeming quality of being anti-hard drugs, but still, I got busted by the cops for beating up a crack dealer. That makes no sense. They should have rewarded me. Not to mention I was in the middle of a mission that, if I wanted to keep playing this game, I would have to go back and restart. This game is the kind of game I would play if there were absolutely nothing else to do and no other game to play. Why is it on "the classics list"?Thu, 22 Feb 2007 22:46:06 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1365&iddiary=2902https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1365Clearly, GTA-SA is a game created for the privileged non-gangsters who want to have a taste of that dangerous lifestyle that we hear about in rap music so much. I expected this game to be much like the older GTAs that I have played, where you go around and just do random missions, stealing cars and killing people for fun. But no, in San Andreas there is a real storyline that takes up most of your playing time for the first part of the game. It felt like I was playing Final Fantasy with all the cutscenes (although the character animations were good, I thought). The transitions between the actual gameplay and the storyline is not well done either, I think. The story is a sad one of your mother dieing because of gang violence and all of your family and friends being miserable and getting killed, and then you go out on missions to go mess with random people (I guess you're supposed to be fighting the other gangs, but still). The gameplay itself is rather choppy, but it might be that I am not as adept with the PS2 controller as some are. Obviously this game is not a racing game, but the driving physics seem very unrealistic and just bad. It was practically impossible for me to make any turns that I needed to make without crashing into someone or something that completely got in my way. Maybe this is the point of the game, but when I ran someone over, I had the cops chasing me! In my experience, when the cops are chasing you, it's bad, but apparently its kind of a good thing in this game.Thu, 22 Feb 2007 22:22:48 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1365&iddiary=2899https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1174The challenges are relentless in this game. I beat Iceman and Bombman, and the bosses are easy due to the nice addition of special weapons. After you beat each boss, you obtain a part of their power, so you can shoot a limited amount (rechargeable with powerups) of whatever that boss shot at you before you killed him. Each special weapon is extremely powerful against one of the other bosses, so if you know which weapon works on which boss, the boss fights become trivialized because they die in three hits. It's relieving to kill an easy boss at the end of a difficult level, though. I forgot to mention one of my favorite "features" of all the Mega Man games, and that is the fact that if an enemy goes off the screen, it is gone forever. To complement this feature, there is another feature that allows the enemies to respawn if you run backwards in the level and come back to them. This is a nice way to get rid of enemies you don't want to fight or spend time doing some 1987 non-RPG farming of health and energy so you don't die in a few seconds. One might call this cheating, but I really don't care, because the game is way too hard anyway, and replaying the same level over and over again just makes you worse at it. It would have been nice if the makers of the game had added a simple feature that would allow you to choose between continuing a level or going back to the stage selection screen instead of having to wait until your lives run out and continuing from there.Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:09:50 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1174&iddiary=2514https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1174When I started up the original Mega Man, I was expecting more of a storyline than just title screen to stage selection screen. Just a little bit about who you are and who these monsters are that you are supposed to go kill. Other than the lack of a story, Mega Man offers a huge diversity of gameplay. Often the controls and physics of the worlds are a bit off. Mega Man slides a little bit every time you stop moving, even when you aren't on ice (although they did design the ice in Iceman's level very well, i.e. minimal glitches). Non-railed moving platforms tend to not go where they should go, or else there was some obvious secret I was missing. The shaky gameplay is even more evident because of the complex level design that require precise movements to be made in perfect timing with all of the enemies around you. I was surprised to see that the appearing/disappearing blocks that you have to jump on at just the right time in just the right place in order to progress. I was mistaken in thinking that the first Mega Man would be easier than any of its successors. I've beaten three bosses so far (Gutsman, Cutman, and Elecman) and each level took me several tries/continues to beat. At least I did beat a few bosses though. The designers of this game did an excellent job making one of the first shooting sidescrolling platformer that is extremely hard and still beatable with time (thanks to the unlimited amount of continues).Thu, 08 Feb 2007 20:35:08 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1174&iddiary=2512https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=978Continuing my Secret Agent run-through, I played the Runway, Surface, Bunker, and Silo. As I got used to playing the game again, I started to recognize some glitches stemming from the fact that this game was one of the first extensive and pseudo-realistic first person shooter. For example, if you get right up in front of an enemy who is shooting at you, he cannot hit you because his gun goes through your body and then shoots, hitting the wall in back of you. Theoretically, this should be much more painful than just getting hit, but due to the magic of N64, it is harmless. This glitch is partially countered by the fact that if there is more than one enemy in a hallway or room, they can shoot through each other but you cannot shoot through them. It is frustrating when you shoot someone in the head which should instantly kill him, sending him to the floor, and he waves his arms around and pretends to be in a lot of pain, eventually falling down to his knees, and then the floor... and THEN you can kill all the stuff in back of him. All the while they have been shooting at you, if you didn't go hide behind a wall. The pausing effect also adds to the realism of the gameplay. Sometimes pausing can save your life, if you need to gather yourself in the middle of an intense battle or string of enemies, but in Goldeneye, you have to wait a few seconds while you put your gun away and look at your watch. Luckily you never really need to pause in the middle of such encounters, but if you accidentally hit the button sometime, it can be a deadly mistake. For a game that came out in '97, Goldeneye is still stunningly real in its gameplay.Tue, 30 Jan 2007 23:51:59 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=978&iddiary=2130https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=978I started my session by attempting the very first level of the game (the dam) on the hardest difficulty, 00 agent. Having played this game in my past far beyond exhaustion, I still failed the level the first couple times. I wanted to blame my semi-broken joystick on my N64 controller, but soon I came to realize that it was hard because the makers of the game designed it to be hard. Not everybody can be 007, James Bond. I decided I was not ready for the challenge, mainly because I wasn't getting anywhere, so I moved down to Secret Agent difficulty in which enemies are easier to kill, give you more ammo, and hurt you less when they shoot you. Thus, the first two levels passed with ease and enjoyment, as a game should be. One thing that I found odd in switching between the difficulty settings, though, was the fact that your mission objectives are not the same throughout. What happens to the data that Bond is supposed to download in the first level (a 00 Agent only objective) if you're playing the whole game on Secret Agent? If you read your mission briefing, it tells you how to complete each objective and tells you the significance of that objective. Why would they tell you to do these things if you don't have to do them? They should have either not told the Agents/Secret Agents about the objectives they were supposed to do but didn't have to. Or they could have had the same objectives for each difficulty, but had different amounts of enemies in each place. Either way, Goldeneye is an excellent, challenging, and fun first person shooter.Tue, 30 Jan 2007 23:39:28 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=978&iddiary=2127https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=857This time, for my second hour, I just barely got to the end of the third world (having started at the beginning of it). All of a sudden, with the introduction of water levels and other such insane things (moving platforms, falling blocks, harder enemies, a scarcity of powerups, powerups that fall off of cliffs with you chasing after them, etc.), the game got much harder. I was on the first castle level for about ten minutes, and all I had to do was choose the correct door. I guess I just got unlucky, but a little hint about which of the ten or so doors would have been nice. Since I was dying so much, I was perpetually the little Mario who dies in one hit, and since I am used to SMB2, I forgot about the powerups I had won in the minigames along the way. I wish I had remembered, they would have been extremely helpful. Again, another reason to go back and play the game again. SMB3 gives just the right additions of character customization and level diversity to the simple sidescroller to make it a very entertaining game with a high level of replayability.Fri, 19 Jan 2007 19:34:51 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=857&iddiary=1908https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=857I had never played Super Mario Bros. 3 before this, even though I have played the first two, so I was familiar with the controls and interface, but not with all the items and various other new and innovative aspects of the game. Being able to move around in the world screen makes for a much more interesting game. The bonus games and extra mini-bosses change up the gameplay so you are not always just running through a level. Even though some levels are optional, I chose to beat all of them because they were fun. The various different kinds of Mario and diversity of monsters make each level a new challenge. Even the levels are made unique by their setting and whether or not the screen is automatically scrolling. The minigames and minibosses that give prizes are a great break from a long string of difficult levels. The bosses of the castles themselves, though, are far too easy given the difficulty of each level. I got through the first two worlds in my first hour and was thoroughly enjoying myself. The secrets make the game much more fun, even if they only give you rings. Rings eventually lead to extra lives, which are always helpful, but just the satisfaction of finding a secret is enough to be worth getting it. Unfortunately, I only found a few, but I know that if I really spent time on each level, I would be eternally entertained, or at least until I found all of them, but at least I would be able to move on to the next level and do the same thing again, or even go back and play the game again.Fri, 19 Jan 2007 19:24:14 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=857&iddiary=1902https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=444I continued on my Fighter's Guild quest line, but the next step in the series was an odd quest. I had to collect five ectoplasm for a person in Leyawiin so that she would employ the other Fighter's Guild members in that city. This was the first time I was given a quest that did not guide me to the place I needed to go. I knew I needed to find ghosts because they drop ectoplasm, but I did not know where to find any ghosts. I had only encountered about three in my entire experience with this game so far. Thus, I did what any lost gamer would do (besides flip out and kill his computer). I turned to the internet. It told me that in the city of Anvil, there were a couple quests that would provide me with more than enough ectoplasm. I ventured there and talked to a few people on the streets. I discovered that a man was selling a house for "cheap". Unfortunately, cheap meant 5000 gold coins, of which I only had 7800, so I grudgingly paid him the sum, since the title of the quest had something to do with spirits. I figured I could kill some ghosts, get some ectoplasm, and be out of there. Little did I know, the ghosts in the house appear three at once after you sleep in the bed. I was completely unable to kill them all, so I had to run around and close them behind doors in order to single them out to kill them. It was extremely arduous, time consuming, and not a fruitful use of my time. Next time, I intend to research each quest and the level required to complete it before embarking on such an adventure. Sadly, I believe there is no way to judge the difficulty of quests in-game. I foresee a windowed Oblivion in my future.Thu, 11 Jan 2007 16:03:26 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=444&iddiary=1187https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=444I'm probably about 10-15 hours into Oblivion now, and I have barely scratched the surface of the game. My character is a custom class that is basically a cross between a rogue and an archer. I spent this time today working on my speechcraft skill and doing a Fighter's Guild quest (retrieving a journal from a cave near Skingrad). I finally discovered how to use the speechcraft wheel to always work for my advantage, which is both good and bad. I am only an apprentice (skill ~30) in speechcraft, but I can easily get any character's disposition over 80, but I still feel like I'm at the beginning of the game, and I want to advance my character evenly. Speaking of advancing in this game, it is entirely based on increasing skill levels, not gaining experience, which makes for an absurdly complex attribute system. Every time you gain 10 points total in any of your seven major skills, you can rest on a bed and level up. In order to gain those 10 points, all you have to do is practice your skills. For example, to raise marksmanship, you shoot your bow. When you level up, you get to choose three attributes to raise, which can be raised by up to five points instead of the normal one point if you have significantly raised the minor skills that are governed by those attributes. Therefore, in order to obtain the maximum attributes in the game, you have to start planning out you plan for raising your skills for your entire game before you even start your character. I guess that is a challenge that another person would welcome, but it's not for me. Next session I shall continue the Fighter's Guild quest line without being so sidetracked by speechcraft and such things.Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:08:39 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=444&iddiary=1132