Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=309https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1488For fighting games, I've pretty much given up swearing at the TV because I know that I suck horribly and will die 9/10 times anyway, so ignoring that, I've grueled on exploring the game features of Soul Calibur III. The store where you can 'buy' extra items and bonus features using money obtained by completing story-modes, regular matches, and levels in 'Chronicles of the Sword'. The aspect of unlockables presents nothing new, although the ability to purchase different parts and weapons etc. that you can use to make your own custom characters is rather fun. More notably unique is the 'Chronicles of the Sword' mode of play. Unlike the typical 'Story mode' that consists of select battles vaguely contextualized and interconnected by crappy cutscenes and/or text read-outs--something fairly common in recent fighting games--'Chronicles of the Sword' uses the fighting game engine as a part of an interesting hybrid RTS game structure. The player has a roster of characters that they can customize and choose who to play with for each level/round. It feels like an RTS game, with set winning and losing objectives/conditions, played out in real-time; however, movement is restricted along certain set paths, much like a board-game. What makes this all the more intersting is the ability engage in combat with enemies encountered on the field through the Soul Caliber III combat system, allowing you to play out the battle yourself rather than having your characters bash at each other in small-sprite form. While the storyline provided in the 'Chronicles of the Sword' mode is almost entirely through text, it is much more compelling and fun because it is a single extensive story, with the hero/heroine being a character custom-created by the player, making it much more interactive and compelling compared to the regular 'Story mode'. In the Story mode, each character's 'story' seems bland and uninspired, and many of the fights and cut-scene animations seem to be recycled. On the other hand, I've played through 14 chronicles in Chronicles of the Sword, I'm still not all the way through, and its got me hooked despite how horrible I am at fighting games.Sat, 24 Feb 2007 05:29:38 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1488&iddiary=3137https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1488Soul Calibur III is undoubtedly an addictive fighting game with a lot to offer; I've been playing non-stop puttting off writing this log because of it. At the same time, however, the game engine and control system follow the traditional standards of fighting games, making Soul Calibur III also another one of the multitude of games that makes me pull my hair out in frustration. While the grahpics and attacks of Soul Calibur III look spectacular, I found that like virtually every other fighting game I've played, there is no 'real' tutorial that can help you pick up and learn the mechanics of the game. No matter how many fighting games I go through, every fighting game I come across throws me into combat with nothing but the instruction manual outlining basic control features and the 'practice mode' for you to screw around with the controls in. This is where--in my opinion--Soul Calibur III fails miserably. Like other fighting game series(like Tekken), in order to learn what move combos you can use, you either have to spend a massive amount of time messing around and experimenting, or take advantage of the 'move list' provided, which no beginner player can possibly digest and use to learn to play effectively. Thus, the gameplay experience effectively hinges on the intuitiveness of the control system, which, quite frankly, is not intuitive at all unless you have extensive experience in playing fighting games with the Playstation controller. What further more makes the control system unintuitive is how the commands are broken down into A, B, K, and G, which can be re-assigned to any of the buttons on the controller, making the exact controls confusing to identify and figure out which button does exactly what. As a fighting game, Soul Calibur III fits into the fighting game genre as a game not aimed at being newbie friendly, intent on delivering maximum action to hardcore gamers who are already into the genre. However, some of the features in the game--originally intended as adding new challenges for experienced players--make the game-play experience for inexperienced players dramatically worse. Perhaps the worst was the Icey floor effect on a stage without guard rails fighting against an opponent that used a lance or spear. The enemy's weapon gives them a large attack-range, allowing them to smack me around before I can even get close enough to attack. Furthermore, I easily get knocked down and away, sliding out of the ring, unable to do anything to prevent it. To summarize what could be turned into a 20 page rant, that's just (insert cuss words here). While there is a certain progression of enemy AI and hadicaps implemented in Soul Calibur III, the learning curve remains much too steep, and the primary focus of the challenges in the game are made very difficult, targeting the hardcore fighting gamer audience. Consequently, such additional features in Soul Calibur III result in a more challenging gameplay experience, making beginner players even more distraught than they were before. In this, I speak for myself, as I have found that I truly suck at fighting games; I simply can't perform the speedy repetitive motion in the finders needed to time attacks properly in order to easily pull off special/complicated combos. It has taken me over a day in order to get vaguely proficient enough in the controls to jump around and pull off a few select combos that I've figured out how to use, and otherwise get my ass handed to me if I screw up... Thus I still (and probably always will) face the problem of learning how to play effectively with (what I find to be) a non-intuitive control system.Sat, 24 Feb 2007 03:28:26 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1488&iddiary=3130https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1278After playing some more of Final Fantasy X, I realized how long it would take to beat the game. Even though the game is progressing through in a roughly linear manner, through the overall linear structure of the storyline, the designers hold a fairly tight reign on how fast you can play through the game, although you are free to explore areas as much as you want before moving into the next one. What I have found rather irritating is that--much like shmups and many side-scrollers--you're forced through the storyline in a similar manner; once you proceed past a certain area, you can't return to previous areas. If FFX is similar to some of the older games, it will probably have a segment that unlocks free exploration later on, but the 'invisible hand' pushing me through the game at the moment feels rather pushy, particularly when I run into event trigger locations unknowingly and get pushed into the next area before I have a chance to finish checking out the previous area... Different from every other RPG that I’ve previously played, there haven’t seemed to be any rankings of strength for the weapons/armor. Not only that, but the equipment system has been stripped down to merely 1 weapon and 1 piece of armor, largely simplifying that aspect of the game. Probably more noticeably different, however, is the level up system, which is represented as progression along a sort of board-game, with each ‘level’ you gain being a space to move on the board and getting upgrades as you go, allowing a players to form their own customized web of character upgrades/abilities. This adds a new dimension of challenge and strategy to the game, in terms of choosing how you want to play with each character. At the same time, however, it leaves me rather confused and curious as to whether there is something along the lines of a ‘level cap,’ which exists in all other RPGs (that I’ve played, any way)… Overall, in terms of progression of the game, the big ‘epic’ cut scenes and battles that ensue are definitely very exciting and fun to play with, especially when you can summon some powerful Aeons and inflict massive damage with ‘Overdrive’ attacks. However, the overall pace of the game feels very slow for the most part, outside of the big events, leaving me wanting both wanting to throw the game out because it feels like its taking forever, yet want to keep playing because the story being told is so interesting. I think much of what contributes to this is a large number of completely unnecessary cut scenes of film-like nature that drag out too long. While the character development in such cut scenes contributes to the story very well, I think that there’s just too much of it. The first few hours of gameplay were definitely by far the most exciting and inducing into the game because of the excellent integration of cut scenes with battles and its adaptation to the assumed player skill level on the standard learning curve. After those first few hours, however, the game play started to drag out and feel very slow, well reflected in the music, with comparatively very short cut scenes that actually drew me back into the game. For example, one of the boss fights had roughly 5 minutes of cut scenes, and took less than 2 minutes to beat with a double Overdrive attack using an Aeon grand summon, while it had taken hours and hours of running around and other boring cut scenes to get there. Personally, I would prefer a game that balances the cut scenes, story, and battles in a more equal manner. While addictive and fun to play, I simultaneously hate Squaresoft for making their stories so damn slow…Sat, 10 Feb 2007 02:03:50 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1278&iddiary=2770https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1278I borrowed a copy Final Fantasy X, which turned out to be the beginning of a long and arduous night. From the get go, the FFX gave a very epic, film-like feeling in the opening scene, showing what was--at the time--assumed to be the protagonist/hero party sitting around a campfire in a mysterious/magical land. This largely set the scene for the setting and type of game that it would be. The detail and quality in the graphics and animation was initially very good, setting the expectations for the game to be pretty high. Although impressed, I was slightly annoyed that when fading between two different camera shots, the previous shot froze while fading out and the new shot was fading in simultaneously--a minor detail that left me wondering why, even though it didn’t have any bearing what-so-ever on the rest of the game experience. The game experience turned out to somewhat like what I’d expect from a Final Fantasy game, and an RPG in general. Many of the RPG standards were clearly apparent, with the tutorials of the combat interface, leveling up, and other game-specific features while assuming the player to understand the control system and basic UI, leaving it documented for reference in the help section but giving no formal instruction to the player. This poses a certain initial challenge to new players who are not yet familiar while being relatively easy for players experienced in the genre to learn--something pretty typical of the RPG genre. Progressing through the game, I found it to be extremely linear, with room for some side-tracking--which took place in the form of exploring areas other than the indicated target location, looking for extra treasure chests with some extra items in them--but remained for the most part, a game of progression, following the plotline laid out by the game designers. I did find there were a few occasional dialog options given to the player such as naming the player character and the different ‘Aeons’ (summoned creatures) as well as a few story-related options, including either winning or losing the first ‘blitz-ball’ tournament game--one of possibly several mini-games?-- which, as far as I could tell, only affect specifically related dialog or cut scenes but not make any evident change in the progression of the storyline. While FFX, as an RPG, is a game of progression, each individual battle and mini-game plays out as a game of emergence within the RPG as a sort of sub-game. However, different from other RPGs that I’ve played before, not all of the battles were spatially segmented from the visual game-world. The prior RPG standard was to deliberately cut from a game-world map where the player can run around and interact with NPCs etc. to a battle screen where both random and event battles would take place, separated by some kind of screen effect symbolizing the initialization of a battle. In FFX, this was present in all of the random encounters and some event-triggered battles, but, in addition to those battles, there were battles that took place in between event-triggered cut scenes, which essentially cut directly from a moment in the cut scene directly to a battle with a small screen effect over the view to indicate the start of a battle, but with no formal transition, cutting back to the cut scene after the battle was completed. This aspect of integrating battles into the cut scenes made the game feel like an interactive movie, where the highlights of the movie were shown in cut scenes and other smaller tasks and battles were made into intermittent activities for the player to engage in during the movie. While this was definitely an interesting concept that I found rather enjoyable, there was one thing that annoyed me to no end. The cut scenes were divided between cinematic and non-cinematic (in-game), and the game seemed to lack a distinctively effective separation between the two. This was largely because the cinematic sequences could not be skipped /sped up in any way, while you could skip through the text line by line in the in-game cut scenes. Largely this became a problem if you died in a certain part and had to repeat and view all of the cinematic cut scenes all over again, unable to skip them--and some of them are pretty long--making it rather tedious and completely unnecessary. This is predominantly the case because most of major event battles are in between medium to long cut scenes, often several sequentially. I would have included at least some way to skip through the cinematic cut scenes if you’ve already seen them before. Probably the worst case of this I encountered yet is in the tournament blitz-ball mini-game event, where you are given just a tutorial of how to play and no opportunity to practice, and then thrust into a long cinematic cut scene followed by an in-game cut scene followed by another cinematic before you can actually play the mini-game. Should you lose the mini-game, it doesn’t hold any bearing on the progression of the storyline, but in trying to win, I had to bear through the cut scenes 5 times, essentially compelling me to drop the controller and go refill my bowl of tortilla chips after resetting and loading up my save file…. Which I’m going to go do again before starting up again.Fri, 09 Feb 2007 19:40:25 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1278&iddiary=2724https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1089Wow. I have to say, music makes a huge difference in the way games are approached... I got sick and tired of the in-game music from Shadow of Colossus,so I decided to listen to the soundtrack of Tekken 5 instead... and to my amazement, I found that more action-suited music immediately got me 'into the zone' and defeat the last Colossus in less than 15 minutes, making me curse the game for the hours I spent yesterday being continually blown away and tearing up my headphones. I now realize how powerful the effect of different kinds of music can be if used well, and how horrible it can be if used badly. The music in Shadow of the Colossus was very poorly applied in the final boss fight; it sounded more like of a long haunted house trek, and I just couldn't get into it. Also, the final cut scene, which ended up telling most of the story which previous cut scenes hinted to very abstractly, confirmed by suspicions about the player ‘protagonist’--the wanderer’s appearance does indeed get more sickly as you progress through the game. A minor detail, I guess, which leads me to fruits and lizards. What the hell are fruits and lizards? They’re a miniscule detail, and the only other thing that actually populate the map during the game. Apparently consuming them seems to increase your health and stamina--upgrades, so to speak--but seems to be merely a test of patience and an eye for obscure detail, much like the rest of the game. I’d say its probably a pathetic excuse for collectables and people with too much time on their hands--pathetically easy for the developers to add and insanely hard for players to find. Finally, intriguingly, the most of the cut scenes actually allowed you to manually adjust the camera within the cut scenes, allowing you to zoom in/out and pan to view within a certain extent. Not entirely useful, but an intriguing feature. Additionally, in between the last cut scenes, there were a few segments where the player got the opportunity to ‘play out’ certain parts of the scene, although the finishing conditions of the cut scene were fixed and inevitably unchangeable, which was a drag, but an interesting feature never the less. After beating the game, hard-mode is unlocked, and you can play in time-attack mode to unlock special weapons/abilities. Given the difficulty of defeating the Colossi with a total game play-time of over 17 hours, I think I can safely say that I’d find it much more enjoyable to play Tetris than endure the horrors of back camera angles again. From start to finish, Shadow of the Colossus was a big let down, both storyline-wise and game-play wise. While it does bring interesting innovations to game design, the game play--in my opinion--is abysmal, rendering it difficult and not very enjoyable to play.Wed, 31 Jan 2007 18:50:56 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1089&iddiary=2368https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1089 I heard some good things about Shadow of the Colossus, so I decided to pick it up and give it a whirl. And I have to reserve the right to curse this game and its designers/developers because I found it to really be a colossal pile of trash organized in an innovative shape (pun intended). Immediately after turning the game on, the opening cut scene gave a very ‘epic journey’ both in music and the graphical portrayal of the landscape, giving me certain expectations as to how the game would play/feel. However, broken down, the highlights of this game come down to 4 things: traversing a vast, unpopulated land by mashing the X button, climbing and jumping walls and so-forth, and pulling your hair out or putting your foot through your TV/console etc. for the genuinely shitty camera and movement control system. This game, undeniably has one of the worst camera tracking I have ever played, which really doesn’t help at all in playing the game. One could argue that it’s purpose is to increase the difficulty of the game or add to the realism, but I seriously don’t see how being forced to stare at the wall/ground/sky or some obstacle behind you adds to the sense of realism or challenge… it’s a screw-over, plain and simple. Within the game itself, the aspect of grandeur and epic -ness in the cut-scenes does in a sense reflect the struggles of the wanderer (hero/player) in defeating each of the 16 Colossi, but whole game simultaneously feels rather empty because of the lack of any sort of conflict when traversing the main map in search of the next Colossus. The story-line is very weakly told without any sense of actual story coming into play until very late in the game; the reason for the wanderer fighting the Colossi is briefly explained in a cut scene in the first 5 minutes but otherwise being very empty with short cut scenes of your character being disturbingly raped by black tentacles, hearing ghastly voices, and then being told “your next foe is…” by some godly being in between each ‘level.’ The lack of storyline via cut scenes is not replaced by story via the themselves either, as the entire map and weapons are open to the player after starting the game; the Colossi are only encounter able by playing through and defeating them in order, segmenting the game not spatially but temporally with a distinct sense of progression through the game. After the initial cut scene, you are thrown into the game without any tutorial or instruction as to how to play, leaving you to start learning the movement controls intuitively or by reading the manual. There were tool tips for the game controls, but in my experience, they continually showed up really late, long after I’d figured out what to do, giving the game a rather steep initial learning curve. This was very apparent in fighting the first Colossus. Faced with a giant Colossus to defeat without any direction, its left up to the player to figure out how to defeat it until roughly 20 minutes pass and the godly being gives you indirect hints as to what you need to do, but not how to do it, leaving the player to figure out how to defeat the Colossi as a adventure/puzzle as opposed to an enemy to defeat via hack and slash. Essentially, the colossus act not only as a sort of boss-monster, but as a ‘level’ in and of itself, with the player trying to reach and stab the critical points of each colossus in order to defeat it. In this regard, I applaud Shadow of Colossus for introducing the innovative concept of combining both the environment, a live/moving creature and utilization of the AI script and environment to create a much more complicated, challenging levels. Due to this structure of the game, I found the learning curve to be rather steep for the first four Colossi, anywhere from 40 minutes to over 2 hours on each Colossi, primarily in figuring out how to use the weapons/abilities of the wanderer and understanding the game mechanics for defeating the Colossi. The middle 8 Colossi were varying in difficulty, some being considerably easier to figure out and defeat than others, but a few stood out. The first was ‘Groundshaker,’ a sand worm, which required you to shoot the Colossus in the eye which riding away from it on your horse. This proved to be rather difficult as the controls for aiming the bow were very jolty--not so much the movement due to riding the horse but the stickiness of the thumb-stick could not be adjusted, causing the cursor to continually jump back and forth over the eye, making my attempts at aiming essentially futile; I was able to defeat it merely by getting lucky. Another was the ‘Flame Guardian,’ and also the ‘Destruction Luster’ which basically just continually tried to ram you. While not entirely too difficult to dodge, I found the frequency of its attacks opposed to the speed of recovery of the wanderer to be horribly unbalanced. Once knocked down, the Colossus would simply charge at me and knock the wanderer back down again before he could recover and be able to move; this kind of pathetic, unavoidable cheap-shot tactic made it both extremely aggravating to play and necessary to avoid getting hit at all costs. Lastly, the final Colossus, which I have been unable to defeat so far thanks to the worst case of camera angle screwing-over in this game yet. While the concept of the game is innovative and relatively intriguing, the execution of the camera control is so poor, it literally made me tear my headphones apart when trying to defeat the final Colossus, which I will reattempt after finishing writing this. Part of the problem is the sheer size of Colossi, which range from 5 to 100+ the size of the player character, creating scale/perspective problems. This can be overcome somewhat by manually controlling the camera view, but given this is typical in 3D 3rd person games, I will can acknowledge the difficulties with this. However, I found the camera problems lied predominantly in two other cases which the manual camera control could not fix. The first was automatic camera rotation, especially when clinging onto the Colossus when its swinging it’s body around, trying to shake the player off. The camera often spins on its own when moving from one part of the Colossus to another, totally throwing off the axis of the movement controls. This is most apparent when hanging onto a ledge and trying to jump across/over to another ledge; the directional controls are so picky that it becomes too easy to jump off into open space and fall back to the ground or into a canyon. This can get extremely irritating, especially on the last boss, where if you fall, you have to make your way all the way back up…. Again. For like the 50th time. Secondly, is object obstruction--ending up with something in your field of view so you can’t see where the hell you are. This is simply the most annoying camera problem ever, which I found to be largely apparent after the Colossus shakes you around when you are on its limbs. Often times you end up some other body part obstructing your view and the view will revert to the craptastic obstructed view if you let go of the manual view controls, which you can’t use simultaneously as the action buttons (jump/attack/crouch/etc.) leaving you to try and maneuver with either little to no visibility or utterly confusing perspectives with messed up movement axis. Consequently, with half--if not more--of the bosses, you end up fighting the game engine itself more than you do playing the game to beat the Colossus. So maybe I just suck with analog sticks, but words cannot express enough my sheer frustration and at playing Shadow of the Colossus. On one hand I want to beat the game so it no longer rests on my conscience, but on the other hand the aggravation doesn’t really feel worth it, especially considering how weak the storyline and lame the cut scenes are. This is definitely a game worth studying for its aspects via a few demo levels, but not playing all the way through… It’s just not worth it. And now… I’m going to try and beat that @#$% final boss…. For the sake of finding out the ending so I can see the ending and finish/close this bloody log. Wed, 31 Jan 2007 17:31:19 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1089&iddiary=2331https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=742My final thoughts on Mario Party are that although it lacks a strong story or narrative, the gameplay is fairly well tuned and easy to pick up and learn while remaining difficult/challenging to master the mini-games that you play throughout the game. In this regard, the gameplay is well balanced (with the exception of the thumb-stick rotation mini-games which are outright). However, I dislike how time-consuming the game is; the main board game can only be played with 4 players (people or the computer) and requires a minimum of 20 turns, which can easily exceed an hour if not two or more for a single game of Mario Party; I would have hoped that Nintendo would try and streamline the game a bit more so it goes by a bit faster by cutting redundant/unnecessary dialog or cutscenes/animation. Also, the reward system of obtaining stars and coins for unlocking extra features is too much in favor of playing multi-player, making it all the more tedious and massively time-consuming to rack up a decent amount of coins if you don't have the people or controllers for 4 people to play at once. The slow reward system and sheer time-consumption has discouraged me from wanting to pick up board-game type games for a while because of the lack of enthusiasm and time for getting people together to play such a game makes it a tough game to pick up and actually play through and enjoy it to its fullest potential. Thus, while an innovative idea, I think it takes 'too much effort' to actually enjoy it, giving it more shelf-space value than game-play value.Fri, 19 Jan 2007 19:26:49 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=742&iddiary=1906https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=742I remember first playing Mario Party back in elementary school with my friends, but for this replay, was unable to obtain multiple controls for the N64 that I borrowed, so was unable to play multi-player games, so this log is based entirely off of single-player gameplay experience. The defining game structure of Mario Party is that of a board game presented in video game environment, taking advantage of not only the 3D graphical capabilities of the N64 system to a large extent, but the video game media to implement the astoundingly large collection of mini-games. Along this line, it reminds me of some of the other early N64 games like Super Mario 64 and Star Fox, which took games previously designed in 2D and turned them into ground-breaking 3D games (of their time). The game controls were extremely simple, making the game easy to learn how to play, but hard to master, particularly with the mini-games. The main feature of the game was the virtual board-game, in which players moved around the board trying to collect stars and coins until the last turn (pre-specified) was reached, which a random mini-game taking place between each turn, giving an additional opportunity to get more coins and adding to the mix in the gameplay. The sheer variety of mini-games made it all the more interesting; there were single-player, 1 vs. 3, 2 vs. 2, 4-player free-for-all and cooperative mini-game types that evoked a much wider range of approach to playing the mini-games in attempt to be the supreme victor. I was surprised not only at the number of mini-games, but that they were mostly very different, and well designed, displaying/testing the capabilities of the N64 system. The mini-game where you get to tweek the features on Bowser's face to try and get it to match the example picture--actual polygon modification in-game--was very intriguing. While I was able to get a god glimpse and the technical innovations of the game with a single-player play-through, I was unable to experience the multiplayer aspect, which Mario Party was really geared for; if my knowledge serves me correctly, all coins and stars earned by all (human) players are counted towards. This leads to the next major component of the game: By playing through the game, players unlock, or gain access to more maps (game boards) to play on, which follows a rough story line of 'trying to become the biggest superstar by collecting stars.' Additionally, players can unlock or purchase new mini-games or random game-events from the item and mini-game shops to add new dimensions of difficulty to the game. As a part of this there is the Mini-game Island, where players have to try and play through and meet certain winning conditions on all of the mini-games to unlock access to most of the mini-games for play in the main board-game and also individual mini-game practice or the mini-game-only board. While the overall game concept by Nintendo (of a video-board game) was novel and unique, it failed to compel me to keep playing to unlock the majority of the remaining mini-games for practice-mode due to the rate of star/coin collection when playing with only one controller/player. By picking up the game, its instantly obvious that it was intended as a multi-player game, and performs as such. I found myself constantly struggling with/against NPC opponents even when they were set to easy difficulty because they already know and understand the rules of the game, giving them an unfair advantage against me. While the AI was challenging, it was still defeatable once I started to master the mini-games. However, while the more strategy and skill-oriented mini-games were more interesting, there were a few 'button-mashing' games such as the balloon burst. The worst of all, however, were the 'palm-grinding' mini-games that required you to rapidly rotate the thumb-stick several times per second--constantly. Not only did I feel very stupid playing those mini-games, but it started killing my wrist after a while because of repetitive strain. It probably isn't all that great for the controller either, although it may have been a conspiracy by Nintendo to get you to destroy your controllers to get you to keep buying new ones... There was one thing from Mario Party that remains even more heavily on my mind about Mario Party, however. Despite the game having an 'E for Everyone' rating, I found the mini-game Grab Bag (a game in which you try and steal money from other players by running up behind them and looting from their money sack) to be rather... disturbing. Call me sick/twisted, but the characters looked like they were actually humping each other. Perhaps its just poor animation or my lewd imagination, but I found it both irritating and disturbing to keep getting 'raped' due to my difficulty maneuvering around the npcs. Overall, I'd say I found the game challenging to play and interesting to study as an example of innovative game design, but not really very fun to play single-player because it is really a game that's only oriented towards social multi-player play.Fri, 19 Jan 2007 15:11:59 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=742&iddiary=1809https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=582After further play and review of the Double Dash, I found a few more subtle things to note about the game. The first was the audio (music/sound effects). The music nicely complements the cheerful, child-friendly 'happy' theme of the game which is well accomplished in the graphical style. However, after playing through the full-cup tournament (16 races from the 4 cups), I realized exactly how repetetive the music feels, despite there being different soundtracks. A wider variety of music might have made it more enjoyable. To play, rather than turning on other music to listen to while playing. Along the lines of theme, I developed an appreciation for how well the the levels are designed. The obstacles and item placement greatly add to the complexity, challenege, making it more than just a simple racing game. The 100cc and 150cc (and mirror) add more obstacles and increase the speed of the race, making it even more challenging, particularly with the mirror mode, which forces to literally look at the courses in a new way. I did not really notice how well the obstacles were implemented previously because they thematically fit so well into the course that it seems only natural that they be there; take for example the obstacles suchas the falling blocks and jumping lava balls in bowser's castle and the moving cactus-balls and sand-pits in the Dry Dry Desert are game elements drawn from some of the earliest classic NES games that have persisted in what could be called "Nintendo Culture") I also made several interesting 'discoveries' about the co-op play mode which make it a bit more interesting. When both players hit the accelerator (A button) right as the race starts, you get a super boost instead of the regular boost which you get when only the driver presses the accelerator. Further more, the slide-attack for the person in back, although useful for making opponents 'within melee range' to spin-out, I found the effect it has on steering--particularly when powersliding--to be very irritating. Oh, and switching places while driving around corners is not a good idea... While the co-op mode provides its advantages, it emphasizes the inherent inability for (most, probably) players to simultaneously strategize and play in a complementary way. Thus, as co-op mode did generate much frustration, the fact that it proved to be challenge to try and play cooperatively with another person than trash-talk and beat them. However, the co-op play ultimately proved to be not as exciting and fun as I hoped it would be, simply because it lacks the competetive nature that the vs. play draws out. Overall, my analysis of this game has given me an number of things to think about regarding game design, notably music thematics vs. repetitiveness, co-op play vs. versus play, and thematic level design.Fri, 12 Jan 2007 14:55:44 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=582&iddiary=1414https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=582I've been playing Mario Kart: Double Dash on and off since last quarter on one of my apartment-mate's Gamecube, typically competetively, so I decided to pick it back up and play some more to analyze it more in-depth. As far as racing games go, the graphics are good, and well adjusted to the comic Nintendo style of 3D adaptation of old NES game characters, nicely setting the tone/mood of the game as light and fun, yet competitive, and the innovative features add some interesting twists to the gameplay experience--namely the co-op play (hence the title name). While an interesting idea to play with, the co-op play is very chaotic and challenging; while items can be employed more effectively/strategically (ex: it's kind of hard, although not impossible, to take out homing shells/eggs following you while driving), you can't really directly control your partner's action directly, placing you at a disadvantage at the same time (i.e. you can't immediately activate a mushroom/boost right whe you need it). Never-the-less, it was rather fun and interesting to play with. The variable speed (difficulty?) modes 50,100, and 150cc and then mirror (150cc but everything mirrored left-right) presented a challenge, allowing for a relaxed learning curve for new and casual players while also offering a challenge for more experience/skilled players. As of now, I can take the gold 90% of the time in 100cc, but 150cc and mirror is still rather difficult... only 50-60% of the time do I manage to finish in the top 3 when playing agsint the computer. Along the lines of multi-player play, I had a lot of fun racing against my apartment mates and with the battle-mode mini-games, especially Bob-omb Blast in which we would hoard bombs and then go on bombing sprees against each other. I was rather disappointed however that there are only 4 maps available for the battle-mode games, since each round feels so short to play. On to the mechanics of game-play... The car (or car-like thing... o_0') selection is fairly typical of racing games, although in multi-player races, I was disappointed that it does not show the vehicle statistics during vehicle selection (it only displays them for single-player games) which was a drag since most of my apartment mates play the game as a social activity, not bothering to play or practice in single-player. While experimenting with different vehicles, which had the typical range from light-weight (high acceleration but low top-speed) to heavy-weight (high top-speed and low acceleration), I found that certain car types performed significantly better or worse on certain courses (ie. the light-weight go-cart was very effective on more technical courses such as Bowser's Castle and Wario Colloseum and relatively poorly on courses with long straight-ways such as Waluigi Stadium and Mario Circuit. Of course, this isn't unexpected, but the results change entirely when racing in Grand-prix mode (Computer fills empty slots so a total of 8 racers are on the track). While the light-weight cars could excel in cornering, I found that it was only easy to win with light-weight vehicles if I stayed in front and key a massive lead the entire way--the high acceleration enabled fast recovery from any shells etc. coming from behind; however, the trick was trying to get past the mass of opponents, because the low weight of the car made it easily get knocked around, and once knocked back, it was difficult to gain ground with the low top-speed . On the extreme opposite, heavy-weight cars could easily knock-away other cars, but when hit repeatedly by a flurry of shells etc. (as I love to do with the Paratroopa/Koopa triple homing shell special) is rendered as pretty-much out of the race because the acceleration speed makes recovery extremely difficult; thus, unless you're either very lucky or have awesome countering skills, keeping first place, especially on technical courses is downright hard, if not impossible at the 150cc. In this regard, I think the game balance is a bit off, particularly since power-sliding, which is vital for skilled players, allows retention of vehicle speed while turning, rendering the light-weight car's acceleration rate practically useless so-long as the heavy-weight car doesn't spin out. However, when I compared the regular cars to special unlockable cars such as the Parad Kart, I found there to be little reason to go back because the over-powered stats made it an obvious choice as being all-around superior and having a better chance at winning, seeing that luck tends to play in as a big factor in addition to skill. (ex: on some races, I got nothing but bananas when I really needed something--anything really--other than bananas... while on other races I got just the right items that I needed to pull off an incredible last-minute win) All-in-all, I'd say as far as racing games go, Mario Kart: Double Dash is a bit more intriguing than say a more realistic simulation-based racing game such as the Test Drive series because of the features it offers, but lacks the depth of game-world sophistication of a back-story or storyline--but then again that's probably just the genre or my narrow opinion of it. I wouldn't really see much point in playing much more single-player beyond unlocking all of the unlockables or practicing so I can beat my friends in multiplayer because the game structure provides little more enjoyment (in my opinion) other than those two aspects. I will probably continue to pick it up and play it occasionally in the future, but not very often, seeing how there are many more interesting games out there.Fri, 12 Jan 2007 05:55:28 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=582&iddiary=1373