Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=435https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2955Take 2: Gameplay My second play through confirmed some of my previous notions, and dispelled some others. The challenge did increase, and some enemies turned out to be a bit more challenging than the suited security guards. Every once in a while, the game will drop a few enemies who also hold electric katanas. These guys actually have a chance to kill the PC, especially if you encounter them in groups. The trick to beating them seems to be luring them off one by one, as the AI for these NPCs has them only moving to attack Travis when he gets within a certain threshhold distance from them. So they can be separated and easily dispatched via a divide-and-conquer strategy. AI is not the hallmark of this game. As for the other, lemming-like waves of non-katana wielding enemies, they got a little tougher as well. It takes longer to kill each indivisual enemy, and that means Travis has to focus on each one longer, leaving him more vulnerable to attacks from other lemmings. The purpose of these waves is still not to kill the player, but to attrit his health before more dangerous encounters. The second boss battle was interesting, and confirms my guess that Boss battles were the focus of the game. Each boss has a unique pattern of attack, but lemmings are pretty identical regardless of the level they're associated with. The mini-missions continued after the second boss battle. Every boss I defeat 'unlocks' a new mini-mission, most recently, Travis has proven himself worthy of mowing grass. I'm slightly less annoyed by these mini-missions than before, because after I defeated the second boss, I unlocked a handful of new areas in the city, including stores where I can upgrade my katana, skills, and buy new clothes. Before, the only thing to spend money on was the right to take the next boss fight, but now you have a choice on how to spend your money. If you want to, you can zoom straight along to the next boss fight, or you can spend your money tricking out your character's skills if you don't mind doing silly repetitive mini-games. Design: No More Heroes stands out in one respect in that it innovates very little. Its game mechanics are a hodgepodge from a bunch of games that previously didn't overlap much. Collection, customizable outfits, customizable character, mini-games, and free travel in a city are not mechanics that are considered essential in the beat'em'up genre, but No More Heroes smooshes them all together. The game doesn't aspire to be very challenging. When the character dies, he's respawned from a nearby point in the same section of the level. So punishment for failure is a maximum of 5 minutes of time. Short-term rewards for success are seeing your enemies explode in various interesting animations, with the occasional reward of sustenance in the form of health power ups. Long term rewards for sticking with the game are access to the storyline, and the chance to play special encounters versus bosses.Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:30:07 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2955&iddiary=5725https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2955NO MORE HEROES Overview No More Heroes is game of games. It exemplifies and exploits all the idiosyncratic elements of classic video games, and tries to put them all into the same game-play experience. The result is a very bloody, action-packed, and somewhat repetitive game. Gameplay You take on the role of Travis Touchdown, a loser turned assassin. Travis' trademark weapon is an electrically charged Katana which he won in an e-bay auction. He meets a lady in a bar who apparently works for a shady organization that manages contracts for assassins. She determines Travis is the 11th best assassin in town, and offers him the goal of someday rising to become number 1. Travis accepts, and next we know it Travis is assaulting a mansion full of suited security guards with earpieces and sunglasses. This is where the gameplay begins, which is a shame for the story. It is a kind of interesting background, and the game attempts to shove it down your throat in a 4 minute cut-scene. I would have liked to experience the change from Travis being a loser to Travis being a bad-ass with an electrifyed katana. Instead, the game opts to throw you right into the action after a minimal briefing. The gameplay itself is extremely stylized and extremely simple. The player will tap the A button on the wiimote for Travis to swing his sword, and repeated taps will lead to a combo. Once Travis has finished a combo, an arrow will appear on the screen. The player will swing the wii remote vaguely in the direction the arrow points, and Travis will perform a finishing move, slicing his opponent like butter, butter that will erupt in a fountain of blood at the slightest knick. The style guide here is Kill Bill, where realistic physiology takes a back seat to artistic liberty. How do these guys shave in the morning?! After the initial cool factor of making a huge mess in the mansion's entry hall that you won't have to clean up, gameplay bogs down. There isn't much variety or challenge to the game, at least in the initial level. Travis gets a huge health bar, and there is practically no chance that it will be depleted by the time the character gets to the boss of the first level, but even if it does, there are copious chances to raise your health via power-ups. I'm not sure if you even need to be conscious to play this game. Just tap the A button for a while, tape the control stick to the right so Travis turns in place and you're likely to be fine. The boss fight was more engaging, though again, not particularly challenging. The boss had an Australian accent and an improbably sized sword, and would occasionally do some damage to Travis. I think this implies that the bosses are supposed to be the meat of the game, and after I beat the boss, the game somewhat confirms this by showing Travis advancing a rank to become the 10th best Assassin in town. But you need to pay the shady organization a bunch of money in order to gain the right to challenge the next higher up. This forces Travis to do stupid mini-missions, like collecting coconuts for a street vendor. I've only done one mini-mission so far, but it was so menial that I had to walk away from the game. The mini-games shamelessly extend the playtime of the game, without offering any entertainment value in themselves. I hope some of the other mini-games are more interesting.Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:44:23 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2955&iddiary=5562https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2696The second play session was a little bit more frustrating. I saved the princess, and the king is so grateful that he builds a bridge to the next continent so that I can continue on my quest. I guess he just didn't feel comfortable having 4 dudes in town that just embarrassed his armed forces. So, after I've achieved the first story goal, I'm supposed to make my way to the next town to solve their problems. Unfortunately, there's a huge forest in between me and that town, and with the random encounters found in that forest, I have to make a few trips back to the original town to heal up at the inn. This game places a lot of emphasis on levelling up, and buying gear. This surprises me, because its sequels make it very easy to advance the plot, so easy that it's hard to avoid. This one spends a lot of time focusing on random encounters, which you use to advance your characters' stats. I find it tedious, because combat is slow and a little bit clunky. After you pick your actions, there's nearly a minute where the player is not making any decisions, he's just watching the turn play itself out. This isn't awful for the first hour of play, when everything is still new, but when the game forces you to spend lots of time in battle just so you can progress the story, it becomes maddening. An option to process the battle all at once, without animations, would probably make this aspect of the game more fun. Design: The game gives you some power to customize your characters, and this lends itself to the player creating stories and personalities around the party members. (The game gave me a new appreciation of 8-bit theater, http://www.nuklearpower.com ). The party members themselves don't actually display any personality in the game, they don't have any speaking lines, and there is no dialogue between you and anybody you talk to, but giving the player control over what each character can do, and making the player invest time in “earning” those abilities, is extremely engaging. The game also does have a freeform aspect to it. The player can visit past areas, he's even given reason to, because item and inn prices in earlier towns are lower than prices in towns you discover later on. Also, each store has a unique inventory, so you can backtrack to go tweak your characters after you've gained some levels. The game mixes in medium term rewards (gaining levels) with long term rewards (advancing the plot.) But in the short term, I think it is lacking. You probably gain a level every 20 minutes of adventuring, but there isn't much to do to entertain yourself in the meanwhile. When you advance the plot, you fight a boss monster, one that probably has a fair chance of defeating you, even if your party is at near full strength. As a reward, you get access to a new part of the world, with more difficult random encounters that provide experience points enough to keep levelling at the same pace.Wed, 20 Feb 2008 08:38:19 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2696&iddiary=5086https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2696With a dozen sequels, and an ardent horde of fans, Final Fantasy kicked off one of the great franchises in video game history. The original in the series is surprisingly similar to the latest, with random encounters, epic storyline, and fight/magic/item combat decisions. You control an adventuring party of 4 characters, dubbed the “Warriors of Light,” on a quest to save the world from darkness. You'll spend a lot of time travelling between towns, levelling up, and defeating boss monsters deep in dungeons. Is it formulaic if you discovered the formula? Gameplay: You start out at the character selection screen, presented with a sample party of 4. You can modify the classes of this party, and provide names for each of the characters. You get to choose the classes of each of your characters, from hitpoint heavy fighters, to limited use black mages. I chose a party of a Fighter, Martial Artist, White Mage and Black Mage. You start out in a castle, with a lot of NPC sprites wandering around in random seeming directions. If you want, you can move your sprite over to them to hear their one line of dialogue, but most of them don't have much interesting to say. However, you do get the gist of the story from these initial interactions. The princess was kidnapped by a knight gone bad, and apparently the “Warriors of Light” are the only ones who can do anything about it. You leave the castle, and the game goes into a mode with your sprite superimposed on a map of the world, with forests, rivers, and towns. There's a town nearby, so I went to go investigate. This boots me back to area exploration mode, with townsfolk NPC sprites wandering around waiting for you to ask them questions. But added to this, are houses with stores with which you can equip your party. Also, in the town lies the ever important Inn. There you can save your game and replenish the health and magic of your party. Leaving town, you proceed to your goal of rescuing the princess, moving through trees, and through valleys. Along the way, you'll be jolted out of your world map journey by random encounters. You'll enter a third mode, combat mode, which shows a graphic representation of your party on the right, and the enemies on the left. You select the actions of your party, given choices: Fight, Magic, Drink,Item, and Run. You select actions for your entire party for 1 turn, the computer selects actions for the enemies behind the scenes, and you watch the turn play out. This is repeated until your party flees, wins, or is killed. Rewards for winning are Experience points for increasing your characters' levels, and Gold to improve your party's equipment.Wed, 20 Feb 2008 06:51:17 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2696&iddiary=5083https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2487Gameplay: Continuing the story, you end up stealing a premium client from your rival Domino, but when Manny tries to book a travel plan for this client, named Mercedes Columnar, he runs her name through the computer, and despite her bio indicating she lead a virtuous life, she doesn't qualify for any of the better travel packages. Before Manny can puzzle this out, he's paged to his boss' office. Manny's boss has discovered Manny's subterfuge, and threatens to fire him, until it's revealed that Mercedes has left to start her walk to the land of the dead without waiting for the situation to be resolved. This causes Manny's boss to go ballistic, and he locks Manny in a room in the Garage until the local authorities can come to question him. It is implied that Manny is in big trouble. But Manny eventually escapes the city, and sets about trying to find Mercedes so that he can rescue her and clear his own name. Design: The gameplay isn't very innovative, with the exception of the inventory system. When you press the inventory key, the camera switches to a view of Manny pulling things out from under his coat. You can cycle through his inventory in this view, Manny will put away the current inventory item and grab another from his coat. In this way, Grim Fandango avoids having obtrusive inventory screens that are common in adventure games. There's never a point where Manny is in real danger in the game, the player is always given as much time as he or she needs to think of a solution. Also, the game doesn't penalize you for making bad decisions, other than having to backtrack a bit to retrieve an item. It is impossible for the player to get stuck by throwing away a necessary item. This is a good thing, because the solutions to the puzzles in the game are strictly progressive, and the player has to solve them in exactly the way that the designers intended them to be solved. Since the game takes on a humorous tone, the way designers want puzzles solved is often in some very arbitrary way, which adds to the humor value. The reward that the game gives the player for solving the puzzles is strictly narrative. The player advances the story, and so learns more about the mystery. The player also gets access to more funny dialogue, which is the main thing that keeps players playing. I see this game as having no replay value until the player forgets every line of dialogue in the game.Sat, 09 Feb 2008 01:45:52 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2487&iddiary=4809https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2487Grim Fandango is an adventure game, where you take on the role of Manny Calavera, Grim Reaper/Travel Agent. Manny is trapped in undead indentured servitude, forced to sell travel packages to the land of the dead to newly deceased people. Manny doesn't know what he did to deserve such a dreary existence, but he tries to keep a cheerful attitude, cracking jokes and generally not taking unlife too seriously. You start out in Manny's office, after the intro cut scene. You wander around in a 3d environment, able to examine, use, or pick up items in the scene. The intro cutscene shows you that Manny is an unsuccessful Grim Reaper, because he never seems to get any “premium clients” people who led virtuous enough lives that they have it easy making it back to the land of the dead once they die. Truly virtuous clients can take a train ride to the land of the dead, whereas people with no redeeming qualities get issued a walking stick with a compass. Interesting to me, is that you're never actually told why going to the land of the dead is a desirable goal, you are just shown the alternative, purgatory, which is Manny's fate. Apparently, if Manny sells enough insurance, he can work off his debt, and eventually make the trip to the land of the dead himself. The first task you're given arrives via the message tube in Manny's office. There's been a mass poisoning at a diner, with so many deaths that clients will be handed out according to whoever meets them first. The problem is, that Manny's rival, Domino, has told Manny's regular driver to take the day off from work, as a way of insuring that Domino gets first pick of the clients. Manny meets Glottis, the mechanic elemental, who would love to drive Manny, except that he's too big to drive any of the cars in the garage, so he has to get permission from the boss to modify Manny's transportation in the form of a signature on a work order. Manny confronts the boss' secretary, Eva, and they have a funny conversation. Manny: Any messages for me? Eva: Besides the one about the poisoning? Manny: Yeah Eva: I only have one other message for you Manny... Eva: I'm not your secretary! Eva: I don't take your messages! Eva: So get it through your thick skull, and stop forwarding your phone to me! Manny: Alright, but that sounded more like FOUR messages to meFri, 08 Feb 2008 22:30:26 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2487&iddiary=4683https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2087Part 2: Gameplay: I've explored a little bit more into the world, and noticed the difficulty does increase over time. In order to make progress through the game, you have to find the items that allow you to open doors to find new items. This starts out easy, as items are “hidden” in rooms with doors in them. You open the door, collect the item, and move on. Later on in the game, they hide the doors, so that you have to shoot some flooring to reveal a passage to a door. Sometimes, these secret passages are marked; there will be a cracked stone or a scorched tile. Other times, they won't be marked at all, and you'll have to infer the location of a secret passage by the fact that you're trapped in a deadend. Sometimes, you get stuck, and you'll have to do a brute force search, blasting every stone on every wall, ceiling and floor in your immediate area. This is a bad thing, I think. Sure, it sells more issues of “Nintendo Power” when you need to look up walkthroughs to find that one stray tile that is holding your progress back. But to me this is pure frustration, and takes me out of the game. I can imagine a person who disagrees with me, and doesn't want to be hand-fed the game. I feel the ability to progress should not be treated as a reward, or if it is, the goal should be made clear. Design: The game fools the player into believing it's freeform, when actually there's a very linear sequence of events that the player needs to accomplish before advancing to the next area. The game doesn't really have levels, but instead has areas, each of which has its own art style and set of dumb minions to challenge the player. These areas are backtracked through a lot, and this is provides the main illusion of non-linearity. Sometimes, the path will feature different enemies on the way back than on the way in, and these scripted events emulate the feeling that Samus is having an effect on the world, and that the world is reacting to her. Point A to Point B is the main challenge of the game, finding secret passages and avoiding pesky minions while doing so. The player isn't told what Point B is, but often you'll pass by an inaccessible door on your way to an item, and it's likely that the item you get will be of immediate use in opening said door, so it isn't necessary to keep notes. The game does provide you with some information on your progress by keeping a map of rooms that marks areas you've been. Every once and a while you'll meet a boss, which distinguishes itself from minions by having a slightly more complex behavior, with one obvious weak point that will allow the player to defeat it. Bosses are also special in that the player will only face them once, so the player will need to learn a new trick for each one. Bosses often reward players for beating them with a new item, which also reinforces in the player the idea that they've accomplished something. New items are the primary reward to players. They offer you new access to the world, and maybe an easier time vanquishing the minions in the world. Some items are more interesting than others... the morph ball changes the way you view the world, with every cranny a possible location of a secret. The spazer makes it easier to dispatch minions. This contrasts to the Varia Suit, which changes Samus' color scheme and lets her explore hot rooms without dying. The Spazer and the morph ball change the way the player looks at the game, while the purpose of the Varia suit is effectively to unlock doors. (Though, I do prefer its color scheme)Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:17:35 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2087&iddiary=4140https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2087Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:17:25 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2087&iddiary=4139https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2087Summary: Today's game was Super Metroid, for the SNES, which falls into the 2D platform genre. You control Samus Aran, jumping from one rocky ledge to another, avoiding enemies or blasting them from a distance at your pleasure. The setting is a sort of science-fiction horror, with detectable influence from Ridley Scott's Alien. What sets it apart from other platformers is that the world is a little more open, and there are exploration and collection aspects to the game. Gameplay: The intro cutscene is clearly cut from a horror movie. The screen pans over a closeup of a lab, too close to really make out the entire room. Dissonant synth strings provide the background music. Eventually the view settles on a alien creature, which I recognized as a “Metroid.” Slowly the camera zooms out, so we finally get a view of the entire room, which contains the Metroid in a glass capsule, flickering computer screens, and 3 corpses surrounding the Metroid's container. The actual playing of the game begins by Samus tboarding a research space station to investigate an S.O.S. She enters the station via a lift, and navigates a bunch of platforms. This part of the game is clearly the tutorial mode, as there are no enemies, and the player is being taught the movement mechanics. Jumping, moving, crouching etc. Samus passes the room displayed in the intro cutscene, only the metroid is missing. One room deeper, and the metroid is found lying on the floor, but as you approach, a pteryldactl looking creature swoops in from the background to grab the Metroid away from you. He then lands, and you have your first boss fight of the game. The first fight of the game is a bossfight, which is unusual in any genre. The boss fight is abbreviated as the pteryldactl retreats, and you're given a timelimit to backtrack through the spacestation to your ship before the station self-destructs. The screen is shaking all during this portion, and some of the stages are rotated a bit off center from when you entered and the station was not falling apart around you. Pieces of the ship falling from the ceilings and vents of gas make getting back to your ship somewhat more difficult than just backtracking.. Next the real game starts, where you set down on a planet, and get to do some quasi-free-form exploration. The planet consists of a bunch of interconnected rooms, with platforms inbetween. Little creatures inhabit the rooms, they impede your progress without actually seriously threatening you. They exist just to make it somewhat challenging to move from point A to point B. Some rooms are currently inaccessible, I will need to collect power-ups to circumvent the obstacles preventing me from access, before I can explore further. This annoys me, I feel it contradicts the free-form feel the game seems to be trying to push by limiting my freedom to explore. I might as well be collecting blue, red and yellow keys. But on the other hand, the items I collect have functions in the game outside of opening doors, and this is sufficient motivation for me to seek them out.Fri, 25 Jan 2008 06:28:39 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2087&iddiary=4028https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=18072nd look Gameplay I did a few more levels, and was pleasantly surprised by the variety. My impression of the game before doing this was that all levels would be about moving from planetoid to planetoid. But I'm pleasantly surprised that they have levels with 1 direction for down. Feels more Mariolike. On one level, I found a Bee suit, which allows Mario to fly around for short periods of time, and to climb on specially marked walls. This changed the nature of the gameplay, as Mario could no longer jump, and traditionally Mario games have been all about the jumping. On another, I raced a manta ray through a water track hanging in the middle of space. The controls for this were radically different from the main game, twisting the wii remote turns the manta ray in one direction or another. Design: I mocked it in my first post, but collecting star bits is awfully addictive. The game throws them at you like candy on halloween, but I still like collecting them, even though I don't have any real use for them yet. It's just the simple pleasure of pointing at things on the screen, and being acknowledged with a sound effect. The game opens up new levels as you gain power stars from old levels. But you don't need to collect all the stars from an old level before you move on to new levels. This keeps things fresh, because if you're bored with one level design, you can move on to one you like, and not have your progress impeded. This adds a casual dimension to the game... play it however you want to play. The unlocking mechanism motivates you to collect that last extra star to unlock a new level, and then of course you have to test out the new level, and if it's a level you like you collect a few more stars from the level, until you're about to open up a new level, and the cycle repeats. This fury of short term rewards seems to be the main addicting factor to this game.Tue, 15 Jan 2008 02:51:32 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1807&iddiary=3779