Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=239https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1482After playing so many 3d platform games it has been a strange experience going back to play Super Mario 64 which is the game that started it all. Having played so many more recent 3d platformers it is very easy to see what Super Mario 64 does wrong but it is also easy to see what it has done so well that so many other games have followed step. The most noticeable thing is that while there are so many games out today where fighting the camera is just as difficult as fighting the enemies the camera in Super Mario 64 behaves particularly nicely and you are even able to control it and move it to a better position if it ever gets stuck on anything. Also, the formula for the way the progression in the game works has been reused in countless games...collecting items that unlock doors and allow you to move on to other parts of the level. While this method of progression worked great for when it came out, the standards have been raised some and with the more recent games on the market I got a little bored of collecting the same items over and over again although this was mostly countered by the variety in gameplay and levels.Sat, 24 Feb 2007 01:23:59 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1482&iddiary=3112https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1206After playing through a couple areas and fighting a few bosses I've got a little better hang of the dual character gameplay in this new Castlevania game. The only thing really annoying me about it so far is that buying equipment for 2 characters gets really expensive. To keep myself equipped with the best gear I have to spend some time away from the main storyline killing creatures to get enough gold. One of the really fun things about having two characters is that the game designers have used it to create some really awesome new puzzles. One recurring one is that you will have to jump one character up onto a pillar, then use the other character to push the pillar, and then use the character on top of the pillar to jump to a higher area and summon the other character. Also you must do things like put both characters on a single panel to weigh it down enough.Sat, 10 Feb 2007 03:09:52 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1206&iddiary=2784https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1206I've been a fan of the Castlevania games for a while now. I started with the Game Boy Advanced versions (specifically Circle of the Moon) and once I finished those I went backwards in time a little and played Symphony of the Night (which is probably my favorite in the series) for the Playstation1. I was never a big fan of the older games (although I did enjoy Castlevania 4) on the NES and SNES because the controls were not quite as good as what I had come to expect from playing the later versions. I'm just going to pretend that the 3D games in the Castlevania series don't even exist. Basically the Castlevania games represent to me 2d action gaming perfection. The controls have been nearing perfection over the years and far outclass anything else I have played and the level design and art direction are excellent and original consistently throughout the series even though it always sticks to the same general gameplay mechanics. The general game mechanic is that Dracula has somehow come back and you must go into his castle to fight him. His castle has multiple different themed areas full of bosses and obstacles that you must get past. To pass the obstacles you must find new items and abilities that allow you to do things like double jump or shrink down to get into passages that are too high/small. Portrait of ruin adds one big new element to the game by giving you two characters to both at once and separately. You play as Jonathan (who is a descendant of a famous vampire killing family) who is more mele focused and Charlotte who is a powerful magician. The characters are introduced in a cutscene at the start of the game with little background information besides what is revealed in the dialogue, although the information is sparse it is enough to start off the game and introduce the characters. I really enjoyed the in game tutorial that taught you how to play because instead of putting you in a separate "tutorial" area it just drops you into the game and gives you tool tips on how to use the deeper features of the simple controls. One of the first things you learn is how to switch between characters. You can control either one character at a time (and switch between them on the fly) or control both characters at once (where the second character will simply do it's best to mimic you). The advantage of having both characters out at once is that they will both attack so you can do twice as much damage, I didn't realize the drawback for a while but finally noticed that instead of taking damage my second character would drain my MP whenever it got hit (which was often because you don't have direct control over it).Fri, 09 Feb 2007 03:14:31 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1206&iddiary=2572https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1020So far Shadow of the Colossus is one of the most cinematically amazing games I have ever played. Just about everything about the game is epically scaled and amazingly executed. From simply riding through the lands on your horse to climbing larger than life creatures you feel like you are a tiny thing in a huge world. My favorite colossus by far has been the one that I fought over a what looks like a an abandoned gated temple that has filled with water and become a lake with these deserted towers sticking up out of it. The colossus is a giant bird that you have to lour towards you by shooting at it with your bow and arrows, when it swoops down you have to jump onto its wing. There is a huge swell in the music as the flying colossus takes off with you on its back and flys in erratic patters trying to shake you off while you scuttle around on its tail and wings stabbing its various week points. One of the amazing things about the game is how attached you become to the main character without ever actually hearing him speak. All you know is that he is all alone in this forbidden land with only his horse and a dead girl who he is battling giant monsters to bring back to life. Even the horse becomes a character as he is your only company (that isn't trying to squish you).Wed, 31 Jan 2007 18:25:01 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1020&iddiary=2352https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1020After playing only the first Colossus in the game I'm pretty sure that I am in for a seriously awesome experience. The game starts with a character riding across a huge bridge towards a giant temple-like building carrying a girl. After some instructions from a disembodied voice you are put strait into the game. You have to hunt down and kill giant Colossus's to bring your ladyfriend back to life, using light reflected off of your sword you must search them out across a huge overworld map. I jumped on my horse and headed off to find the first colossus, who I found in a smallish valley. I spotted him from far off (due to the awe inspiring draw distance) and he just continued to grow as I got closer until I stood no taller than his toes. As I got off my horse and headed towards him I noticed the great music swelling up and it really helped to put me in the mood. Also as I got closer to him I noticed that the framerate had dropped considerably, but also that it took very little away from the gameplay since it almost added to the kind of dreamlike feel to the game, although the very fact that it was noticeable bothered me some. I used the light from my sword again to find the week spot on his heel. After hitting this I was able to climb onto his arm and eventually up to his head to stab him in his magical weak spot, sending huge streams of blood spraying out of his head. When he eventually fell I was attacked with what looked like spirits and woke up again in the temple.Wed, 31 Jan 2007 04:22:51 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1020&iddiary=2189https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=699Today I went back to my Legend of Zelda game and finished off the first dungeon. The boss of the dungeon is pretty standard fare as far as bosses go, a dragon. The boss was pretty easy once I learned his attack patterns and used my sword lazer to nail him in the head. After completing the dungeon I spent the rest of my time just wandering around the overworld. I remember when I first played the game I called the dungeons "levels" but now I've realized that this is perhaps one of the first games I played that didn't actually have "levels". I had been used to playing something like Super Mario Brothers and simply progressing through areas left-to-right in order untill I was done and when I was presented with something so original as Zelda I was only able to define it by what I already knew. In my game design this is the hurdle that I hope I'll be able to get over, I hope to be able to look at the medium of games in a new way and create something that is new and fresh, instead of refining the current conventions (although this is acceptable too, just look at new games like Gears of War which does not do that much new but does everything nearly perfectly).Fri, 19 Jan 2007 06:17:40 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=699&iddiary=1750https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=699Playing this game again after so long reminded me of both how much games have changed, but also how certain aspects have stayed the same. One thing that I was reminded almost immediately of is that you start the game with virtually zero description of where you are, what you are doing, or where you should go next. You are simply dropped into a plane and left to figure things out for yourself. After you walk into the cave and get the sword (one thing I remember from the first time I ever played this game is how the look on Link's face and the way he holds the sword in the air was burned into my memory, even though his facial features are made up only by a few pixels I was very effected) you are pretty much free to explore the world map. The last time I played this game was so long ago that I had not even realized the map on the upper part of the screen. The map shows only where you are on a large solid colored rectangle that represents the whole overworld map which is a method that I don't think would fly by todays standards. With no cues on where to go you are pretty much forced to simply wander around the map untill you run across the first dungeon. The variety of types of land and enemies really helped me to ignore the dated graphics and be pulled into the objectiveless exploration that I was doing around the beginning of the game. The difficulty of the game increases greatly when there are multiple enemies attacking you at once, since you can only move in four directions and only attack in one direction at a time I sometimes found myself panicking and fighting the controlls when there were multiple enemies bearing down on me before I got better at forcing the enemies to come at me a few at a time. I eventually moved onto the dungeon, inside the dungeon the developers use different color schemes, music, and enemies to really add to the experience of not being in the overworld anymore. Now, instead of being able to leave your square area from any open space at the edge you are forced through doors which must be unlocked by either keys or puzzle solving (such as the secret door I opened by pushing a block). Inside the dungeon you also find the dungeon specific items (that have now become a symbol of the series) which are the map and compass. The map gives you an overhead layout of how each room in the dungeon connects to the others and the compass tells you the location of the dungeons boss. Inside the dungeon I also found the boomerang weapon which greatly helps fighting multiple foes since it stuns whoever it hits leaving you the opportunity to take them out one at a time.Thu, 18 Jan 2007 02:38:58 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=699&iddiary=1584https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=472Today I played about an hour of the multiplayer function of Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. I played a series of standard "death-match" type games on the Ad-hoc setting (not over the internet). In this game each player chooses a squad of four characters and outfits them with weapons. The characters and weapons you have avaliable to you is directly influenced by how you have played the single player game, for example, if you have gone through the game "stamina killing" (knocking out a boss by depleating their stamina instead of killing them will unlock them as a playable character) all the bosses and recruiting tech experts for your tech unit you may have a team full of nothing but boss characters equiped with rocket launchers, which can sometimes throw off the balance of the game. You play your characters one at a time and as each one dies he/she is replaced by the next member of the team in line. The game controlls in multiplayer just as it does in the single player missions and many of the levels are directly based on levels of the single player campaign so they are familiar and, for the most part, very well designed. The design of the levels and the way the game controlls puts a strong emphasis on strategy and "getting the drop on" your enemy instead of simply running in, guns blazing. This counter balances one of the frustrations that I initially had with the game which is the fact that you cannot aim in the first person mode and move at the same time since movement while in first person is done with your left thumb on the d-pad while aiming in first person is done with your left thumb on the analog nub, once I developed some strategies I no longer found myself being frustrated by this. One of my favorite strategies is to equip one of the members of my team who is skilled in sniping with a tranquilizer sniper rifle, I will lie in wait and knock out the other player from a long distance and then run up and kill him with a knife (which nets you extra points). One of the interesting innovations of the multiplayer mode is the use of the sound based radar system, the player who is the point leader of the match will have a small frog above their head which will periodically make a "ribbit" noise that will show up on his enemy's radar.Thu, 11 Jan 2007 16:40:33 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=472&iddiary=1190https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=472Even with the high expectations I had for this game I was still thoroughly blown away by the quality of the final product. The game graphics are nearly on par with some graphics I've seen on the PS2 and look particularly good on the PSP's great screen. The game is a direct sequal to Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater which takes place before the original Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 so you get to see a lot of the characters that you are familiar with from earlier games in the series. The core gameplay is mostly identicle to what you would be used to if you have played a Metal Gear Solid game and the controlls map well onto the PSP even though it has fewer buttons than the PS2. Besides the core gameplay though there are a few large differences. First of all Snake is no longer alone, he is accompanied by any enemy soldiers or doctors he can "recruit" in the field (ie. knock out and put in the back of his truck) which can either be formed into a squad to accompany snake on missions (they hide in boxes around the map and you can swap places with them) where they all have different health levels, statistics, and abilities to blend in with enemies of their type they can also be assigned to research or spy groups to develop new weapons and items or collect information about certain areas. One of my favorite aspects of the game is the multiplayer which can be played either ad-hoc or over the internet. You can create a squad matched to your play style and that really adds to the experience of creating different strategies. One of my favorite neet little touches is that you can recruit new soldiers from Wifi access points so I've found myself simply wandering around looking for new access points to recruit new soldiers from. This game has all the great wackyness and the incredible amount of pollish that I have come to expect from a Metal Gear game and it's all shrunk down onto my PSP.Thu, 11 Jan 2007 03:13:42 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=472&iddiary=1173