Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=361https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1369The combination of emergent and progressive gameplay qualities in Katamari Damacy have created a game with an addiction potential similar to that of hard drugs like heroin. The method of play is really simple: it consists entirely of the aforementioned elements. However, the difficulty levels of each level increase, and the size ranges of each level become so much more outstandingly ridiculous that it becomes difficult to stop playing due to the excitement of "how far will they go? I had better check out the next level." Also, once each level is completed, the player can still go back and try to outdo old records, which means that there is a source of motivation from the statistics and the player's own pride as a gamer to maybe skip that next class to try and roll up the biggest Katamari. In other words the reward system (usually expressed as the final size of the Katamari or the time it took to complete)is effective at maintaining the player's interest. Another point of interest is the level where you have to try and make the Moon. You get big enough to pick huge chunks of land. The sheer ridiculousness of it has had me shouting "YEAH! SWEET!" out loud to nobody in particular. In conclusion, playing this game should be mandatory.Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:35:26 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1369&iddiary=2917https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1369the hardest part of playing Katamari Damacy is getting started. To start, you have to select a file to save to (represented by pieces of the company's name "namco") and roll the ball (the Katamari) over the corresponding letters. The trick is, the only indication of how this is done (using both analog sticks at once) are little circles with arrows in them, which I didn't get at first. The storyline, while compellingly ridiculous, is not necessarily essential to gameplay. The premise is that the King of All Cosmos got drunk one night and accidentally destroyed all of the stars in the sky, and has given the task of replacing them to the prince, who is the player's character. The player is expected to accomlish this task by rolling a ball (known as a Katamari) around on the planet Earth and letting it stick to objects of like size (starting with really small objects such as thumbtacks) and gradually increasing in size until larger objects can be collected (this ranges from things like shoes, foods and small animals to such things as people, cars, streetlights, and bigger.) Once each mission is completed, the King of All Cosmos reviews your work and shoots the katamari (by now, a clump of random earthly objects) into the sky, where it becomes a star. the key factor is that you can only pick up items smaller than your Katamari, so if you find an object that is too large, you must go and accumulate more mass in order to pick it up. The tutorial for this game, while quite possibly the most boring tutorial ever, is essential for learning some key moves that will make or break a player's success. The basic movement controls are simple: the analog sticks are used like tank wheels, so pushing both of them forward or backward causes the katamari to roll forward or backward, both of them pushed to the side cause the katamari to roll sideways, and pushing them front and back in opposition to each other causes the forward direction to rotate. By pushing forward at a short enough obstacle (stairs, for example) the katamari can be pushed to higher elevations. Quite possibly the most helpful move is the one (the name escapes me) where you move the sticks back and forth in opposition to each other really fast until your katamari starts spinning and then shoots forward. This is good for clearing out large areas of smaller items more quickly. the King of All Cosmos (who speaks via subtitles, and whose voice is apparently the sound of records being scratched) adds a certain distinct charm, interrupting the game to check your progress, advise you on how to proceed, and offer several quips and non-sequiturs that make him a somewhat complex (if not just a tad silly) character.Thu, 22 Feb 2007 23:04:00 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1369&iddiary=2905https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1177The second round of Arkanoid began with the words "I will make it to level three if it kills me." I am happy to say that, thanks to determination and a little bit of luck, I did. However, I found that the most challenging aspect of level three was the proximity of the first row of blocks to the paddle. Even at the initial low speed of the ball, it was really hard to keep up with it, and the extreme angles at which the ball would bounce made it impossible to win. After I was satisfied by reaching this high level, I kept playing for the sheer addictive fun of it. I found one sneaky little rule about the boundaries that offered an interesting affordance. Along the sides, there are objacts that appear to be doors. One time, I stumbled completely by accident into a door that I did not realize was open. It then teleported me to the next level and gave me a 1-up. That made it easier to progress, because I ended up skipping the end of level one and starting level two with some lives to spare. This time around, I also bothered to watch the cinematics before the game. As basic as they were, they did introduce a sense conflict (other than simply "The blocks must die!") to the game. Apparently, the paddle is a ship that escaped from the wreck of the mothership Arkanoid, and is now trying to escape some kind of twisted scenario. So, destroying blocks is my way of escaping to safety. Overall, I found this game to be really fun, really addictive, and frustrating beyond reason. The game is so simple, which gives the player the impression that it might be easy. However, so many erroneous moves are made that look like they could have been preventible, it's hard to resist the urge to give it just one more try.Thu, 08 Feb 2007 23:00:32 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1177&iddiary=2525https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1177After the first 45 minutes of play, I found that arkanoid is as addictive as it is challenging. The object of the game is to bounce a ball (or balls-more on that power-up later) back and forth between the paddle, which serves as the player's avatar, and a wall of colored blocks. When the ball strikes the brightly-colored blocks, they disappear. When the gray blocks are struck, they remain after the first blow, and then vanish like the others after the second blow. The goal is to destroy each increasingly-difficult arrangement of blocks to advance to the next level. I really like the level-ups in this game. They make it both easier and harder at the same time. For example, everytime I got the laser powerup (enabling me to shoot twin laser shots from the paddle to destroy blocks while waiting for the ball to return) I found that the advantages of this added firepower mitigated my ability to concentrate on the most important part of the game, namely making sure I didn't miss the ball and lose a life. For a novice player like myself, the reward system of points awarded for objects destroyed seemed relatively meaningless. My main goal was to stay alive long enough to see the second level. Getting to the high score of 50,000 did not seem very attainable, since mine usually ended up around 10,000 or so. The one or two times I did make it to level 2 were fleeting victories at best, since I consistently did so with only one life remaining.Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:55:04 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1177&iddiary=2521https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=981After defeating the dragon, I wandered around the map some more, looking for more clues as to what I was supposed to be accomplishing. After going in between the green, forest-like half of the map and the barren (as far as I can tell from the NES' graphical rendering capabilities) mountainous part of the map, I found the old man to whom I was supposed to deliver what looked like some document, I made the delivery and received the first clear instructions of the game. I was instructed to take another message to an old woman. I finally found this old woman who accepted the message and then tried to sell me potions, and told me to find an old man near the graveyard. All the while, I was hounded by enemies who could burrow underground and surprise me as I was walking, by falling boulders, spear-throwing soldier-like enemies, a submarine-like enemy who shot fireballs from any nearby body of water, and countless insect-like creatures. I found one part in particular, near the upper right part of the map, where there was a lake in the middle, a door into a cave on the opposite side, and some centaur-like enemy patrolling the perimeter. I was at half-health by this point, and took several tries to defeat this guy. I eventually got him with some bombs I had picked up somewhere earlier in the game. The body of water allowed the submarine enemy to keep lobbing fireballs at me, making the task of defeating the sword-minotaur even more challenging. Once I made it to the cave, I found an old man who told me that if I could master the sword he had in front of him, I could have it. However, I never got any input on how he wanted me to do this, and never managed to get the sword. There was something in this game that led me to believe that the copy I was using was corrupted. In the mountain region, there is one staircase that, when ascended, leads to a plateau higher in the mountains with no enemies present and one exit on either side. Once on this plateau, I found that I had trouble leaving; no matter which exit I tried, I ended up coming back to the same place from which I had started. This did not let up until I had tried to leave with each exit several times, including the one from which I had just come in. Judging from the look of the map window, I might have actually failed to reach certain parts of the map as a result of what I believe to be a glitch. Either that, or this game's programmers had a sick sense of humor.Tue, 30 Jan 2007 23:56:55 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=981&iddiary=2132https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=981Up until this point, I have only ever gotten into more recent incarnations of The Legend of Zelda, like the SNES version (instant classic) or Ocarina of Time for N64. My initial reaction was one of surprise. Where I was used to some strictly narrative element between registering my name and beginning gameplay, I was instead dumped unceremoniously into the game, with no clear message as to what my objectives in this world really were. So, I wandered around the map for a while, hacking my way through enemy after enemy (getting myself killed over and over) until, by chance, I found a doorway in the side of an old, halloweeny-looking tree that led me into a seried of underground rooms. There was a puzzle that did take me a bit of work to solve. I had to find several keys and unlock a series of doors. Killing some of these enemies proved difficult, as they required several blows, and I was running low on health. Finally I made my way to whom I presume to be the boss: a large dragon that shoots 3 fireballs, all of which fly out at diverging angles. These made it quite hard to get in close enough to land any effective blows on the dragon adversary. Once I finally defeated the dragon, I was rewarded with a much-needed health recovery, with an augmentation of my maximum health capacity.Tue, 30 Jan 2007 23:38:15 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=981&iddiary=2126https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=938The second miniboss in world 3 offers a nice addition to the usual challenge of stomping on a quick-moving enemy's head 3 times. Unlike previous mini- bosses, where I was able to wait for him to stop flying and land on the ground where I could more easily hit him, this one did not land without pointing his spikes upward, meaning that not only were my blows ineffective, but they in fact caused harm to me. Fortunately, this change in the enemy's strategy was met with a slight change in the landscape. Two platforms in the middle of the room helped me get a higher jumping platform so that I could more easily do damage to my adversary. I've started to really appreciate the way that Mario can get a real, good long jump even without the super leaf, by holding down the "B" button and sprinting until the little meter at the bottom is full, then jumping. This has helped me bypass a lot of obstacles and enemies, and when combined with the superleaf has enabled me to fly really high into the air and find little bonus shortcuts, lots of coins, and other neat bonuses. The final boss for World 3 got really tricky for me, because by the time I got to her, I would have sustained so much damage that I was left in regular Mario form, and therefore vulnerable to any attack. This made maneuvering around the hoops she threw quite a delicate procedure. I couldn't help but notice a change in this boss' attack from the previous two bosses. Whereas those two attacked by throwing a group of three rings, this one threw them one at a time, and instead of disappearing off-screen, they continued bouncing around the room, therefore never ceasing to be obstacles. My most common mistake was trying an attack and then landing right in the spot where one (or, more often, three) hoops were converging. While I think this game's cutscenes are charming at first, it does become apparent that they are pretty much the same, save for maybe some different colors or different sprites for the King in both his transformed and restored forms. While I do think that this probably had to do with limited space for data in the NES cartridge, I still must say that it wears thin after a few go-arounds.Mon, 29 Jan 2007 22:12:30 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=938&iddiary=2065https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=938There are benefits to having parents who didn't let you own any video games or systems as a kid. Such undisputed classics like Super Mario Brothers 3, while somewhat familiar, are just unfamiliar enough to be fresh and new. The gameplay for this, like other mario games of its era, is very simple 2-D sidescrolling motion. Mario is able to do all the standard Mario moves, such as jumping on enemies to destroy them and gaining new abilites with powerups like the red mushroom (always a favorite,) the fire flower, and the 1-up mushroom. There are plenty of new powerups in this game, such as the Super Leaf, which gives Mario the ability to fly, and a variety of suits that give Mario some exciting special abilities, like the ability to swim underwater with ease. Another affordance offered by the game is the menu that you can access from the map screen by pressing "B." This menu gives the player the option of selecting a saved power-up. I found that this made it easier for me to strategize for difficult levels that might require some extra advantage by picking the special ability most suited to the level ahead. For example, in levels that involve lots of swimming, I selected the frog suit before starting to maximize my ability to move through the water. I noticed one flaw in the graphics while fighting the mini-boss in world 3. When he flies up in front of the windows, you can see that the lines that define his wings and other details are transparent, which look fine against the dark background of the walls, but look light blue and a little glitchy with the windows.Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:19:13 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=938&iddiary=2063https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=929Further play of this game has led me to think that maybe the levels leave a bit to be desired, in terms of design. There are moments when the player is expected to stand on top of a floating bubble and ride it to certain platforms that are unreachable by any other methods. The part that I found problematic was that one such bubble near the end of the second level failed to regenerate. Seeing that the destination of said bubble was the only territory I had not explored on this map, it seems clear that this reclusive bubble would have been the key to capturing the last two earthlings needed to pass on to the next level. I noticed a relationship in the game's reward structure that was somewhat helpful. The amount of points rewarded for capturing a given Earthling is 100 times the amount of jars needed to catch it. For example, the little blonde girl who taunts the player with "Nya-na-na-na-nyeah-nyeah!" needs to be hit with 2 jars to be captured, and the player is awarded 200 points. More points are awarded for the capture of the big guy with the jackhammer, who has the ability to temporarily incapacitate the player's avatar. This makes for a pretty clear, fair point system. I'm really a big fan of the interface for choosing special moves like Funk Scan or Panic Button. Usually, incidents where I've had to make use of these functions are pretty heated, which means it's nice that hitting "start" to bring up the menu to choose them also pauses the game and lets you take a breather before getting back into the fray. However, this does detract from the challenging aspect of the game, because it temporarily removes time as a factor in the player's decision-making process.Mon, 29 Jan 2007 02:43:42 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=929&iddiary=2052https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=929I remember playing this game at a friend's house back in grade school, and I thought it was all kinds of rad. I thought that the gameplay was pretty simple, being a side-scroller, which is pretty typical of the era. Of course, the simplicity of the gameplay belies the complexity of the game as a whole. For example, this game has plenty of minigames, such as Jam-out, in which the player presses the A, B and C buttons in the order and rhythm demonstrated on the screen. This provided a nice break from the usual (sometimes a little monotonous) action of chasing Earthlings around the planet Funkotron and capturing them in jars. One of the elements I love about this game is that it has a very distinctive personality. The characters demonstrate a (very caricatured) sense of early-90s urban style (such as the character Toejam and his Flava-Flav style) and the artistic style of the sprites and sceneries are very cartoony and weird. The downside of this is that the colors are a little obnoxious and the busy scenery is distracting.Mon, 29 Jan 2007 02:26:46 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=929&iddiary=2051