Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=474https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3090GAMEPLAY This game does a good job making you feel like a bad-ass. The game gives you the opportunity to perform stealth kills given that you're able to get the drop on your enemy. The type of stealth kill you perform is dependant on your position in relation to your target. If you're directly behind them, you'll slit their throat, but if you come from the front and you manage to attack right before they see you, you'll plunge your blade through their heart. The coolest one, by far, is the "death from above" kill where I jumped from a rooftop and impaled the guy as I landed. Sneaking is easy enough. The camera gets in the way quite a bit, as my control over it is limited. It's really easy to get lost. Each level is like a maze. There's an item that allows you to mark you path on the map (colored rice), but you shouldn't have to rely on something like that to get through a level. In any case, I'm having fun, so hopefully, I'll learn to adapt with time. DESIGN Ah, the ninja: today's most misconstrued and fictionalized beings. A good chunk of what people know about ninjas is either completely false, or just plain stupid. Thus, a game like Tenchu, where an attempt is made to portray ninjas realistically, is more of a history lesson than a game...at least it is until the logs appear. You start every game with a grappling hook that you can use to almost teleport to higher ground. If an enemy is one the ground and you're on a rooftop, your enemy won't be able to see you, especially if the sneak button is held down. Actually, I take that back. I was running on a roof and was spotted by an enemy guard. All I had to do was press the sneak button and it was like I was like it never happened. The game's reward system is very well done. You're rewarded in small ways for almost everything you do. If you're able to perform nine stealth kills in a level, you're rewarded with new moves. If you're able to stay hidden, you're rewarded at the end of the level with new items. And it's not like you're given the key to the city for every step you take, so there's great incentive to perform well. Now to what you've all been waiting for: what's bad about it. Who the frag thought up the camera system for this game? It's like the game designer was made fun of in school and became bitter about it then sought revenge, but all they could think to do to get back at society is make it so people who play this game won't be able to see the cool stuff that happens. When hugging a wall, you're not able to move the camera freely, unlike while just walking. Instead you can only choose angles, like left, right, and ONLY if you're at the corner of a wall does the cameral focus on your character, allowing you to see around corners. Even when you're given control of the camera, you still can't see anything. You can only circle around your character, you can look up or down. The game has a view button where the stick that controls movement controls the camera...but you have to sacrifice being able to move! I guess being able to do both would have been too forgiving. Then you have indoor levels. When you're outside, sneaking around is great, but inside it's a completely different story. There's a meter that gauges how close you are to an enemy, but it's only based on proximity, so factors like height are impossible to take into consideration. This game was made in a time before surround-sound was standard, so you can't detect enemies by sound. When you're outside, enemies are far away and you can memorize their patrol patterns, but inside, confrontations are so up-close and personal that all you can do is turn a corner and eat cold steel. Mmm, my favorite...nothing fills me up quite like a sword rammed violently into my abdominal organs.Thu, 06 Mar 2008 02:11:10 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3090&iddiary=5885https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3090SUMMARY Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven is a single-player, story-based, stealth game in which the player assumes the role of one of three characters, each with unique abilities, and must traverse a level and eliminate targets without being seen. The player can employ various items to prevent them from being spotted, or in the event they are seen, use items that aid in escape or killing targets. GAMEPLAY One of the main gameplay mechanics is sneaking, and that's something this game does both well and not so well in order to establish the rules of the game. As far as I can tell, there are two levels of existance: visible and invisible. Unlike other games in the stealth genre, Tenchu features a sneak button where, when pressed, all your steps are muffled no matter what the circumstance. Remember that, it's important: ss long as the sneak button is held down, your CAN NOT be heard. Falling from fifty feet up? Hold down the sneak button. Jumping into a pool of water? Keep that sneak button held down. Walking though a forest of trees made out of rubber duckies and leaves made out of broken glass in Autumn, so the ground is covered with broken glass and the only way to avoid the glass is to jump on the rubber ducky trees but every time you jump on a rubber ducky, it squeaks, so you might as well walk on the broken glass, 'cause either way, you're screwed? If that button's pressed, enemy guards will be none the wiser. This game is an attempt at making a game where ninjas are portrayed realistically. For the most part this is true: I sneak around, I stick to the shadows, I don't disappear and reapper outta nowhere (...yet...I'll get to that in my next post). However, there are still some things here that make it undoubtedly fictional...and undoubtedly fun. For instance, there's an item that brings you back to life where you're killed instead of forcing you to do the entire level over again. Many games have done this before, but the way Tenchu does it is both clever and crazy: it's a log. After the death animation, your character turns into a log...that's right...A LOG. This is a reference to the ancient ninja art of making your enemy think they're attacking you, when they're just attacking something that LOOKS like you. Here, you just turn into a log and respawn...not quite grounded in reality, but it was still awesome. There are a bunch of realistic items like throwing stars, blowguns, caltrops, and smoke bombs, and they're cool, but...I want more logs...Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:28:26 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3090&iddiary=5779https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2737Entry #2: GAMEPLAY I’ve started to get some of the aspects of the game down. I can utilize attacks more effectively, dodging is second nature, and I’m having a great time. It’s the controllers are bulky and that makes it hard to pull of some moves, most notably dashing, but it’s something you get used to with time. I tried some of the single player features to practice, but that’s just as punishing. Who gets priority when two characters is beyond me, and I couldn’t seem to get the timing right for anything. There’s a training mode that allows you to slow the game speed down to a crawl, but after getting used to the normal speed, but this makes things worse. Jumping was a chore and I only got it right half the time. The single player game, which seems like a normal fighting game’s arcade mode, is just as difficult for me, even on easy mode. The game is difficult, but not unforgivably so, and thus I can overcome its obstacles. DESIGN The controls are simple, yet incredibly deep . The A button in conjunction with the analog stick create special attacks. The B button is your hand-to-hand attack button, and when the analog stick is flicked in a direction and then the A button is pressed, an opponent launching “smash” attack is unleashed. Then you have the Z button, which is guard. This creates an impenetrable shield around you that shrinks over time, making it finite. While shielded, you can flick the stick left or right to dodge or get behind your opponent, which leaves them open for an attack if you do it right. R button is grab, in which you take hold of an opponent to possibly use as a shield, then you can press R again to perform a high damage throw. Up and the C buttons are jump, and when pressed twice you can do a double jump. A triple jump is done by double jumping, then performing an “up-B” attack, which has an area of effect unique to each character, another aspect of gameplay that must be mastered. While playing this game, my friends and I laughed and yelled at the screen numerous times (or maybe that was just me). The game is centered around the multiplayer experience, but some aspects about the “multiple” player game make this almost unplayable. One reason is the SUPER crappy camera. SSB does its best to make sure that every player is visible on the screen at all times. The game accomplishes this by zooming the camera in when characters are close and panning out when they’re far away. Whoever thought this up needs shock therapy via Pikachu. The levels are designed on such epic scale that when two characters are on opposite sides of the map, they turn in to atoms not visible to the naked OBSERVATORY. This problem would be easily fixed if there was only some way of distinguishing between characters, such as a “1P” icon above an arrow. For the game’s sake, it does feature one such icon but it disappears at the most inopportune moments. Something like that needs to be present at ALL times in this game! That’s not the only reason the camera bites fire flower. The point of view is always centered between the two farthest players, but the game still tries to make your avatar discernable from anything else, so sometimes the game has to cut off the edges of the map. If you’re knocked away for whatever reason, but not K.O.ed, and you can’t see a platform, or yourself to save your live, you’re gonna want to suplex the cartridge. I guess that’s the only thing that hinders the game…but it’s really, SUPER significant… This game is SUPER time-based. You MUST nail the timing for your attacks, there’s NO room for error. You need to know when to attack and how. Pressing the guard button doesn’t result in an immediate shield, so THAT need to be timed. There’s another time delay when you’ve been knocked into the air and you have to wait before your character can recover. Like any game with combos, there’s a big delay between the end of one and when you can start another. This delay allows your opponent to recover, and, what do you know? You need to master more timing. But these are the rules that make the game playable, fun, and worthwhile, unlike the camera, which just decided it was gonna make its own rules… So, once you’ve got all that down, the game is SUPER fun. Making you opponent fly off screen is such a gratifying thing that I enjoyed it even when I was the one garnering frequent flier miles. The game’s developers really hit the nail on the head with satisfying gameplay that makes you cheer for your self when you do well, and if you’re like me and you’re constantly blasting off at the speed of light, you still get to witness some SUPER pretty explosions…of yourself. SUPER Smash Bros. is a SUPERfluous game with SUPER deep gameplay and SUPER easy to learn controls. Aside from the SUPER flawed camera, this game provides hours of SUPER fun for you and your SUPERb friends. However, if you’re turned off by SUPERficial timing based fighting systems, this may not be the game for you, but it’s SUPER rewarding if you master its SUPERior SUPERness………SUPER…Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:07:18 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2737&iddiary=5245https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2737Entry #1 SUMMARY Super Smash Bros. is an over the top fighting game for up to four players. Players use a plethora of moves and power-ups to weaken their opponent(s) enough to be knocked off screen. Players have the choice of playing as one of several characters, each unique in move sets, speed, and damage, which they then take into several different themed levels. GAMEPLAY My first hour spent with the game has come and gone. Time flew by faster than my character, as I have yet to win a match against my friends who have much more experience than I do. This was my first time playing the original SSB, which is a shame, because had I even seen the title screen of this game previously, I bet I’d be a lot better at it. My first inclination when I started play was to mash buttons. I’ve played Melee on the GameCube, and that never got me anywhere, so it’s apparent that this game contains some considerable depth. That’s not something you expect. You really can’t anticipate how much calculation is actually required when confronted with the terrifyingly brutal materialization of malice that is…Jigglypuff… There are basic things about the game that you NEED to know before you play, otherwise you won’t stand a chance, such as dodging, guarding, triple jumping, smash attacks, dashing, and the entire item sub-category. A player who doesn’t know these things versus someone who does will lose. They WILL lose…it’s a fact…unless that person literally kills their opponent. Each level is completely different from the last, as some are harder than others. Some are simply a decorated platform, while others are multi-faceted planes of existence where background objects interfere in the fight. Some levels only have two exits: stage left and stage right, while others have pitfalls every ten feet, which ties in to the goal of the game. The goal in each level is to get you opponent to fall (or fly, as I did many times) off the screen. So far, the gameplay’s SUPER fast (hence the title), controls are responsive, and victory is satisfying…something I haven’t seen yet. This is NOT a pick-up-and-play game. You gotta have serious skill to step into this ring. I do not…yet I can’t stop playing.Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:08:39 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2737&iddiary=5140https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2372GAMEPLAY Aww, yeah! Now that's what I'm talkin' about! After getting accustomed to the rules of the game, I notice that I'm able to play it much more naturally. Combos come easy, juggling is second nature, one-hit-kills are a piece of cake (we';l get to that later). It's not hard to see why this game caused such a commotion in the late nineties. There are just so many possibilities, so many factors you need to take into account. To do well at this, you have to devote your life to it. I was forced to play on easy mode, as I wasn't as used to Tekken 3's interface as I was Tekken 5, but even on easy, the computer offered a challenge. On that difficulty setting, getting the timing down isn't as important as the harder difficulties, but the fights are still very intense. DESIGN Tekken is the pinnacle of 3-D fighting games for infinite reasons. Here's a few I noticed while playing. "Hellz yeah!" sense of achievement. It's important to make sure you're picking the right difficulty. Too easy and you'll be bored, too hard and you'll want to throw the controller at your roommate/houshold pet/self. So when you find a challenge that's just right, you're inroduced to a whole new spectrum of awesome. You feel great beating the heck out of someone and achieving the "perfect" victory, and when you're faced with a tough opponent that you can't seem to beat...but then you finally do...THAT's "hellz yeah!" Good developers, way to keep me reeled in. Heart attack inducing intensity. Punches and kicks fly like bullets and hurt like 'em, too. At times you're caught in a stalemate with your opponent with the two of you blocking and dodging each other's attacks. This leads to heavy anticipation. "Who's gonna land the next hit?!" you ask as you pound your sweat drenched controller, until BOOM! You hit him! WHOO!!! I am the man!.........Then you die with one hit in the next frame. What? What do you mean? Let's get to those one-hit-kills I was talking about. Tekken's attack damage was toned way down in later iterations of ther series, so it came to me as a huge surprise when a punch that only took away 10% of my opponent's health bar in Tekken 5 suddenly had my enemy at half strength. "Whoa, WTF?" was all I could say as I, winning with full health and my oppenent an inch away from death, suddenly was brought to the same status as the other guy in one second. LITERALLY...one second... So, once I realized that the damage was ramped up from what I was used to, I decided to test the strongest attack I'd ever seen in a Tekken game: Paul Phoenix's charge-up punch (Away + LP+RP). "PERFECT" is all I hear as my opponent falls...one hit...less than five seconds...bad developers, now I want to do that every single match...and I almost did. In conlusion: THIS GAME EFFIN' ROCKS. The characters are colorful and appealing. The gameplay's fast, responsive, addicting, and SUPER-deep. I love it. We're getting married this Spring...Fri, 08 Feb 2008 04:06:02 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2372&iddiary=4552https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2372SUMMARY Tekken 3 is a one-on-one fighting game. The player progresses through a series of fights by defeating one opponent after another. The game employs a 4-button attack configuration: left punch, right punch, left kick, and right kick, whick, in comination with the 8 D-Pad buttons, can be strung together to attack the opponent. GAMEPLAY: Tekken's gameplay was the fastest 3-D fighter on the market when it hit the scene in 1998. It's hailed as the original Playstation's number one fighting game, and it's easy to see why. After almost ten years, Tekken 3 has aged surprisingly well. This game is FAST. The key to nailing a speedy fighting game is responsive controls, and Tekken has always been known for this. If for any reason, your character doesn't do something the milisecond you hit a button, that fighting game is as good as dirt. As such, Tekken is pure gold. The game starts out with the player selecting one of about a dozen characters. Each character has varying levels of attack speed and damage. So, naturally, faster characters do less damage, while slow characters make up for their lack of speed with sheer power. One facet of the Tekken games is that every character has the ability to string attacks together for up to a 10-hit comination attack. It's up to the player to find the right chain of buttons that leads to this kind of attack through trial-and-error. Another gameplay feature of Tekken and every other fighting game is juggling. Juggling is a technique in which the player launches their opponent into the air, and by attacking correctly, they keep their opponent airborne, leaving the victim defenseless until they land. I found juggling to be a difficult technique to learn, as the timing required to attack your opponent has to be immaculate. Speaking of timing, all fighting games are based on it, and this game's no exception. The player has to learn a boatload of techniques regarding time, from when and how to attack given the distance between your character and your opponent to what action to take the moment the fight starts. Here's a word of advice: When the annoncer says "FIGHT!", you better have made a decision. "Should I advance? Retreat? Attack? Jumo? Crouch? Do nothing (characters automatically block when standing still)?" All are possible solutions, so you need to do something EXACTLY when the match starts, and not just anything...it has to be perfect, because the computer knows exactly when the match starts, you don't. By the time you make a decision, you're 2-feet deep in fist through your stomach... Great game. It's awesome. Gonna go play some more.Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:02:58 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2372&iddiary=4517https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2004Entry #2: GAMEPLAY: Once I decided to check the options screen to see if there was a way to adjust the difficulty, the game became a heck of a lot more fun. The gameplay was changed considerably. On easy mode, many of the enemies that were at your throat on normal simply fly by as if saying "Hello, player whom I'm supposed to kill, how are you today?" Dodging projectiles became simple. Attaining power-ups was no longer a chore. I was able to get to the third level without losing a single life. I wouldn't have even dreamed of doing that on "normal" mode. Pfft, normal...more like "nor-hell"... DESIGN: The designers of this game must've had a field day on the testers. I feel sorry for the guy whose job it was to play it on hard mode. The game requires the ability to look in more than one direction, which human eyes simply can't do. Enemies mostly come from the right of the screen with a few exceptions. Unless you completely destroy every last one, you've got a lot of work to do. If you, by chance, let an enemy get past you, you have to contend with the enemies coming at you from the right, and the enemy that got past you along with his bullets. Let more than one enemy get past you, and you've ruined your life. The thing that makes this a prolem is that a collision with enemy units results in instant death. At this point in gaming history, they didn't like the idea of a "life bar" or a "health system" because that would be too FUN. So you can't go back to kill the guy you missed, you just have to grow another set of pupils. Sounds easy right? With design like that, there's no skill involved, only memorization. A monkey can memorize stuff (not as much stuff as in Gradius, though), so all you have to do to be good at this game is memorize the locations of all the enemies, when EXACTLY do they appear, and what do I need to have to kill them. The power-up tree is the unholy union of genuis and "effing retarded". The first branch is always "Speed Up", and without that, the game would literally be impossible. You have to be at a certain speed to get to the enemy locations on time in order to prevent them from getting behind you. And if you suck too bad, the game will highlight the Speed Up brach when you restart, because the game knows that if you don't speed up at least once...YOU HAVE NO FRIGGIN' CHANCE! The first boss on normal mode CAN NOT be defeated unless you've earned the laser weapon and a couple of "options" (little balls that mimick your weapons). Well, it could, it would just take a little less than a MILLENIUM. The object of the game then becomes "speed up" or "get the laser", instead of "get to the end". Gradius has a lot of things going for it. Even though it's completely unforgiving, it can still be pretty addictive. I still think Contra's Konami's best shooter series, though.Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:52:23 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2004&iddiary=3969https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2004"$#*%!", "%$@*", and "$%?@!@#$%&~!!!" That's all I found myself saying while playing Gradius III. This game is HARD. Unforgiving. Unrelenting. Almost impossible. Before the start of the game, you select your power-up tree. Throughout play, you receive a power-up that highlights a branch on the tree. When a branch you want is highlighted, you have the option to either activate it or wait for another power-up that highlights the next branch in the tree. The game lets you create a custom tree or select from a few pre-made templates. At first, I went with the custom method in hopes of picking the best weapons possible. Selecting from the templates forces you to compromise, so I thought this was the best option. I THOUGHT WRONG! The game starts off slow. Your ship moves pretter solemnly, and there's a lot of empty space to just flutter around in. Then the game throws the first set of enemies at you, and they move ten times faster than you do. If you defeat the line of enemies, they give you a power-up. My first instinct was to save it, as the more powerful weapons occur later in the tree. However, this puts you at a huge disadvantage, because your ship wont move fast enough to even get past the first minute of gameplay. I die over and over again. Creating custom power-up trees became tedious three lives ago, so selecting from a template is now the way to go. By now I've memorized the locations of the enemies up until before the first boss, because by then, the game sends SO MUCH STUFF at you that you have no idea what's going on. You have to dodge bullets, other enemies, even the environment (when present). That's not a big deal, I've dodged all that stuff countless times in the past. The problem is that Gradius III sends this stuff at you in such grand quantities that the game can't even keep up with itself. At times this is a welcome defect, because when this happens, human reflexes are finally enough. I played this game for an hour. Why? Because I hate myself...Thu, 24 Jan 2008 01:01:07 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2004&iddiary=3892https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1781Entry #2 GAMEPLAY: By now, my time spent with Cooking Mama have left my hands raw and worn. 90% of the minigames included come with a time limit in which the task at hand must be completed. Some games I've been able to complete with a lot of time left over, which I think garners you a score bonus. Other minigames I can only complete with a fraction of a milisecond remaining. As such, each action must be done FAST with a capital "F". For the most part, the game only requires moving the stylus side-to-side, up and down, circles, and tapping the screen. This makes the gameplay both easy to learn and easy to master, making a satisfying game expersience. DESIGN: Cooking Mama isn't the first game that makes the player a master cook, but it's as innovative as it gets. Many of the design choices are great, while others are just plain baffling. A few minigames require you to keep an eye on both of the DS's screens. A few, not all, require this, so you don't get used to playing that way. This makes the game challenging in a wierd and unwelcomed way. Many of the design choices are similarly unexpected. Some minigames give you all the time in the world to do a task that only takes a second, while other ones give you very little time to complete a very complicated action. While some of the design choices are frustrating, most everything else is an accomplishment. The look of the game is the greatest achievement because of the friendly and spritely characters. Even if you do fail a minigame, Mama will console you. "Don't worry, Mama will fix this," she'll say, which isn't too harsh, and not too lenient. You're constantly striving to earn Mama's approval, and when you do, the fruit is shaw-weet. The main innovation that Cooking Mama brings to the video game industry is that the titualr Mama is gaming's very first MILF: Mom I'd Like to Filet with. Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:30:58 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1781&iddiary=3673https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1781Entry #1 SUMMARY: Cooking Mama 2: Dinner With Friends is a collection of minigames, each of which mimich cooking. The object of the game is to perform the task for any given minigame successfully to create a meal chosen at the start of the game. GAMEPLAY: Cooking Mama for the DS starts you out with a list of foods that you're able to make. My first experience with the game was making a pizza. The entire game is played with the DS's stylus, and no button presses are required. This makes the game much more interactive, to the point where I actually felt like I was learning how to cook. The thing about the game that catches your attention is the color scheme. Cooking Mama is presented in a very cartoony style, with very bright objects that seem to be made to induce seizures. However, the cartoony look of the game keeps you constantly set in a good mood, so even if you fail one of the mini-games, you're not discouraged from continuing. Speaking of failure, as a first time player of Cooking Mama, that's something I was introduced to many times during my first attempts at kneading dough or tossing crust. The learning curve is by no means steap, as anyone with the ability to write legibly will have no problems adjusting to the style of play required. Some of the minigames are over too quickly, and the descriptions of how to do it correctly are sometimes too vague to understand. Fortunately, the game features a practice mode for all the main dishes included, and that's where I'm spending the majority of my play time. So far, I'm hooked. This has been the first game I've ever played that actually made me hungry, and that's saying a lot when all the food looks like they were made at a restaurant for Looney Toons. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:35:27.)Mon, 14 Jan 2008 02:27:13 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1781&iddiary=3531