ajrich's GameLog

Gradius 5 (PS2) - Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:19:21

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:19:21 CDT

I rented this game from the JBEL, but the PS2 they have there apparently is set for the Japanese region, so I wound up taking it home. Right off, I noticed that the initial movement speed is much less crippling than in 3. This means the speed-up powerup is less powerful - I often skip it entirely now. Options are much more powerful, thanks to the option control mechanic and the fact that they are the only powerup that can persist through death (even continues). Option control is very interesting. There are 4 types, but I've mostly used the second - by holding the option control button, I can rotate the direction in which an option fires its primary weapon (missiles are not redirected). Although you can move the ship and redirect at the same time, it's still very useful to be able to fire in any direction. Furthermore, the options' laser fires continuously, and it's possible to sweep it up and down, covering the entire front end of the screen. Type 1 allows the player to freeze the options' orientation relative to the player, type 3 holds the options above and below, and allows the player to govern spacing (press and hold to move, alternately away and towards the ship). Type 4 rotates the options around the ship. The rest of the powerups come in much fewer varieties than in 3 - there's only two kinds of double (diagonal-up and back) four kinds of missile, and one each of laser and shield. However, custom equipment is no longer available: There's 4 preset loadouts (and the option type I favor is not in the same loadout as the missile type I prefer). Next post: Levels

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2) - Sun, 30 Mar 2008 06:07:28

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 06:07:28 CDT

I got a bunch more Colossi before I had to return it to the library. This was a while ago, so I forget how many, but I do remember some things. The water snake was drawn about a bit longer than it should have been - especially once all three of the electric prongs are disabled and the thing can no longer harm you. Once the last prong is disabled, it would have been good design to also disable the the part of the AI that makes it dive beneath the water for an indefinite period of time, which forces you to let go of the thing and start the climbing step all over again. The bull chased me out of its lair at least twice. At one point it was bugged and I had to expose myself to its attack in order to get it to leave a small part of the stage, and I barely made it to the lake that prevents it from following you to the surface. The hint system I praised earlier failed pretty spectacularly at the turtle colossus. There's absolutely no mention of a key game mechanic unique to this level: the stones on the creature's head can be struck to guide its movement. I had to look the damn thing up on gamefaqs, which a well designed game should never do.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (DS) - Sun, 30 Mar 2008 05:52:03

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 05:52:03 CDT

Finished it. Only four cases, although the fourth case is extra large. The only notable element from a game design perspective that I haven't already noted is the special Mason System investigation section, where the old psyche-lock mechanic is reintroduced. The psyche locks add a reward/punishment system to investigation - presenting the wrong thing damages the same penalty bar that is used in court, and clearing a witness' locks restores half that bar. It is not possible to get a game over through the psyche-locks, however. Despite the great deal of attention paid to designing the investigations in this game, I did manage to get myself stuck once. This sort of game relies almost entirely on writing - the writer not only has to tell a good story, they have to give the reader enough clues to figure out what they're required to figure out to move on without having to resort to the brute force solution (presenting everything to everyone), and when the game penalizes the player for resorting to brute force (on top of the unavoidable waste of time) the cost of failing to do this is especially high.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (DS) - Sat, 15 Mar 2008 03:22:15

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 03:22:15 CDT

I'm on the 4th case so far. It's pretty clear that this is a DS native game, in contrast to the Phoenix Wright chapters in the Ace Attorney series, which were ports. Ema Skye and her "Forensic Science" mechanic from the DS bonus case in Phoenix Wright 1 feature prominently. What I find most notable so far is a major improvement in execution of the investigation sequences - nearly every "area" gives you a conversational cue to move on once you've collected all the plot tokens. Story-wise, it's remarkable that this game so thoroughly averts the evil prosecutor trope - so far, at least. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Sun, 30 Mar 2008 03:10:49.)

Battle For Middle Earth (PC) - Sun, 02 Mar 2008 03:00:00

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 03:00:00 CDT

GAMEPLAY Started in on the evil campaign this time, and I can see why Rohirrim can run over orcs the way they can: you build a lot of orcs. The very first mission is to build 100 orcs. After the first, evil missions boil down to "build a lot of orcs and kill everything." Your bases in the evil campaign are generally less secure than in the good campaign - both of the good sides get free walls around anything bigger than an outpost, and castles are nigh impenetrable without siege equipment, which the AI doesn't really make good use of. DESIGN The most distinctive aspect of this game is the building system. Buildings can only be placed on "foundations" which are created by citadels, the foundations for which are pre-placed on the map. There are three levels of citadel foundation: outpost, camp, and castle. Outposts have three foundations regardless of faction, while camp and castle foundations depend on which army you play. Resources are generated by structures, and so generating a lot of resources precludes building a large number of unit producing buildings. This system also precludes "offensive towering" - building "defensive" towers in or near the enemy base, a strategy endemic to the genre. This system also allows the pace of the game to be defined by the map - a map without castle foundations is very different from a map with camps at most. Buildings also have three "levels" - resource buildings level up automatically over time, while unit producing structures level up after building a certain number of units. Higher level resource structures produce more resources, while higher level unit producing buildings build faster and often gain access to new units and upgrades at level 2. These are innovative systems, but they are innovative ways of simplifying the genre - rather than deciding when it is time to "tech up," or how to lay out their base, players upgrades their infrastructure in the course of building up their armies and have base layouts defined for them. This, combined with other aspects of the game's design which tend towards the same end, are probably a consequence of the game's movie license - these decisions were probably made to cater to those drawn to the game by the movie brand without necessarily being interested in an RTS game as such.

Battle For Middle Earth (PC) - Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:13:45

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:13:45 CDT

A note between my assignment entries - one of the strangest choices they made in this game was to change any part of the plot that would deny you a hero unit (no dropping Gandalf off the bridge in Moria, Boromir survives Amon Fen, ect. This might be understandable if to do otherwise would cause a hero shortage, but the Fellowship missions suffer from acute hero glut.

Battle For Middle Earth (PC) - Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:27:18

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:27:18 CDT

SUMMARY Battle for Middle Earth is an RTS set during the movie version of JRR Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. It features squad units (also seen in Dawn of War), hero units (also seen in Warcraft 3), and a unique build system, in which buildings can only be placed on predefined plots. GAMEPLAY I played the first few missions of the Good campaign. The campaign starts in Moria, which roughly tracks the Moria scenes in the movie and acts as a kind of tutorial focusing exclusively on hero units. It goes well enough until the very end, in which the Balrog fight is playable. An on-screen prompt advises the player to "use Gandalf's special abilities to defeat the Balrog," but simply using those abilities as often as possible is insufficient - one must also "dance" Gandalf while those abilities recharge, giving a series of move orders that keep him just out of the creature's range. This is unintuitive, and I died twice before I caught on. For as far as I got, the campaign alternates between "fellowship" missions, which involve guiding the fellowship (which consists entirely of hero units) through predetermined hordes of normal enemies, and Rider missions, in which the player fights a skirmish as the Riders of Rohan. Only the last Riders mission I played offered any real challenge (the Balrog being a fake challenge by my lights). The Riders' cavalry seems a mite overpowered - they can simply run over any enemy infantry for instant kills at the cost of a little health.

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2) - Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:22:31

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:22:31 CDT

GAMEPLAY Only got two Colossi this time, mostly because the bird presented a step up in challenge: this one actually came close to killing me, and threw me off after I climbed on it - both more than once. It was the first colossus that wasn't effectively a puzzle - before the bird, once I figured out what was necessary, it was trivial for me to accomplish it. I also got a much better feel for the horse. Unlike most game vehicles, the horse in this game mostly steers itself. This is especially evident when riding through narrow paths - the horse will make the small adjustments necessary to navigate a crooked stone bridge on its own, and attempting to steer through them manually will only slow you down. DESIGN By description, Shadow of the Colossus at first seems to be a string of boss battles separated by games of hide-and-seek. However, the bosses are more like levels than boss battles, as their bodies constitute an environment which must be navigated in order to reach a goal point. A puzzle element precedes the core navigation which constitutes the meat of the game: reaching the navigable portion of any given Colossus' hide is not a simple matter of running up to its leg and jumping on. There is an automatic hint system, which has thus far delivered genuinely helpful advice after giving me a reasonable interval in which to figure things out for myself, not a trivial design accomplishment by all accounts. I haven't mentioned the presentation side of things at all yet, but since it appears that from the sixth Colossus on finding the fight is no longer trivial, I have to in order to make a gameplay related point. Shadow of the Colossus was made to be a beautiful game, and it is, but the aesthetic chosen for this purpose was very realistic, and so has fallen to the common fate of all realistic games: the relentless march of technological advancement has dated it. Therefore, the forced delay between battles, which was designed to show off the world, is far less justifiable than it may have been at launch. Worse, if one gets lost, the only hint available is the sword's ability to point you towards the next target, which doesn't even work in every area (it requires sunlight).

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2) - Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:53:13

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:53:13 CDT

SUMMARY Shadow of the Colossus requires the player to locate and destroy a series of enormous creatures, the eponymous Colossi. In order to do so, the player must climb over their bodies, seeking "vital points," which may be stabbed in order to damage a Colossus. Climbing is limited by a timer, presented as a shrinking red circle in the lower right corner of the screen, which is replenished whenever the player is standing, rather than holding on or falling. GAMEPLAY Having defeated the first three colossi in a little more than an hour, my impression thus far is that Shadow of the Colossus is fundamentally about navigation. You ride your horse to the general vicinity of your designated target. Upon arrival, players are either presented with a brief climbing section (which separates them from their horse) before reaching the Colossus, or the Colossus simply strides onto the scene. Once the Colossus is present, defeating is is once again a challenge of navigation. Thus far Colossi have provided feeble opposition to navigation - they occasionally shake themselves, which can throw the player off platforms or stop their movement while climbing. However, so far I've found that holding R1 while standing on Colossi platforms, which both crouches, thereby improving stability, and grabs the nearest handhold in the event that players are nevertheless thrown off their footing, is sufficient to all but guarantee that once you're on a Colossus, you won't fall off. The one true obstacle is finding a way to climb on - the second Colossi, for example, must be shot in the bottom of one of it's feet to be boarded, which is best achieved when it rises to attack.

Raidem (PC) - Sat, 09 Feb 2008 01:55:54

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 01:55:54 CDT

GAMEPLAY Made a concerted effort to clear level one, best I ever got was close enough that the screen would scroll to where the boss starts after I died (when you die, the screen keeps going for about one full screen length before stopping). Didn't really learn anything fundamentally new. DESIGN Raid'em is designed to kill the player. Although the game is not made such that it is impossible to achieve victory, there is nothing in the game's design that guides you to that end. The documentation contains this illuminating passage:

DIFFICULTY Difficulty has been implemented due to popular complaints. Don't blame me if your experience is dimished because you chose to play on the easiest difficulty. It might help to know that only a 8x7 pixel box around the centre of your ship is collidable, not the entire sprite. The eye-candy level doesn't need to be so high you know. An analogue joystick is strongly recommended.

As my Gradius III gamelog can attest, a shmup doesn't need to throw dozens of enemies into the first wave in order to bloody a new player's nose. Despite the subtle reduction in difficulty that follows from replacing extra lives with extra hitpoints (power-ups are not reset) the fact that most normal enemies also have extra hit points means that the high population of foes is only slightly diminished by the player's efforts, even once two or three power ups have been obtained. It's scarcely worth the effort of shooting at flying enemies, who generally fly off the screen only shortly after they would otherwise have died. The overall result is a shmup that takes weight off both ends of the draconian reward/punishment balance of the genre, while simultaneously tilting that balance even further towards punishment. There may be a niche market of hardcore SHMUP fans who are only interested in the most rigorous content the field has to offer, but unless Richard Stallman is one of them this doesn't necessarily equate into an audience for Raidem - such fans are almost certainly more than willing to pay for non-free SHMUPS which offer similar, if not more severe, challenges with sharper presentation and player avatars that faithfully represent the underlying game. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Sat, 09 Feb 2008 01:56:43.)