Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=551https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2977GAMEPLAY: I love the Patapons, they’re so damn cute! Good thing they come in a variety of types. The player originally starts with three basic types of units. There are Yamipons, which are basically archers, Yaripons, spear wielding warriors who can throw their weapons a short distance, and Tatepons, axe and shield wielding warriors who take the brunt of the attacks by standing in the front of the army. There are other types of units too, some of which I haven’t found yet. The one I recently unlocked was the Kibapon, a jousting type unit, these Patapons are mounted on a horse and charge their enemies. However they are fairly weaker than the other Patapons but in Fever mode they grow incredibly strong and just knock out anything in their way. So the Kibapon are for advanced players that know how to keep a beat. I forgot to mention that in the village you can equip your Patapons with weapons and armor that you find on the field. This in turn upgrades their resistances and attack damage and adds a whole new level of customizability. However if you aren’t into micro managing your units there is a simple “optimize equip” button which will automatically equip the best items for your Patapons in an instant. Also at Mater, when you breed new Patapons you can “brew” different kinds as well. It depends on the ingredients you give the tree, for example tender meat is much more better than cafeteria meat which will give you a stronger Patapon if you create him with that material. And if you want to take a break from fighting you can just watch your Patapons dance around and drink at the center of the village. DESIGN: Patapon is very different from your average game. Most games seem to stay to a common formula which is action, adventure, and RPG. Patapon combines these elements while adding its authentic style, the drum beat gameplay mechanic. This game is addicting, and it has something to do with the drum beat game style. There is something about music games (i.e. Guitar Hero, Rock Band) that hooks a player to keep playing. It might be our natural musical instincts to stay near something that sounds good or there is just an addictive trait hidden in rhythm matching game mechanics. Patapon copies that addictive trait while establishing itself as a different and unique version of the rare music genre. The tone of the game world is very cutesy. Everything is in 2D and all sprites have a cartoony look about them. The level scrolls to the right as the Patapons march, I can see in the background that trees and mountains imitate that they are farther than they seem which is a good use of textures given it’s a 2D game. The colors are very bright and there are almost no shadows which can give a negative tone which means this is a game made for little children as well as adults. When the Patapons march they throw their weapons and twirl them in the air to show that they are happy when listening to rhythm of the drum beat and it really makes player feel like he is in control of them, leading them to slay giant beasts and the like, which is very satisfying I must say because some of the beasts are larger than all of your Patapons combined. This game has definitely made me think about my game design project, not for this class but for my senior game project next year. Instead of creating something formulaic like a shooter or RPG, why not create a rhythm/musical game. The only problem I can see is finding good music that is liked by a large demographic. Music is incredibly relative, and not everyone will like all kinds of music, but if I can find something that caters to most of the audience, then I can make a game that not only has a unique game mechanic but it also has music that attracts people and make them play even more. Tue, 04 Mar 2008 03:19:30 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2977&iddiary=5598https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2977SUMMARY: In Patapon, the player is assumed the role of the Mighty Patapon, the leader of the Patapon tribe of cute little eyeballs armed to the teeth of small but deadly weapons. In battle, the Patapon tribe will only react to the rhythm of a drum which the Mighty Patapon commands. The core game mechanic is to make the player “drum” to the beat of the game using the triangle, x, circle, and square buttons to command the Patapon army and lead them to victory. GAMEPLAY: I think it’s important to note that the game is only $20.00, and after playing it for the first time on the PSP, I really am quite impressed. I’ve read a couple of reviews about this game and many of them were written differently but said the same thing: this is one of the best games ever made for the PSP by far. So after assessing the price and the reviews, I was quite ecstatic when I started to play the game. The game has a small learning curve, the player is supposed to mimic a drum on the PSP so sound is obviously an important factor here. But that doesn’t mean you can’t play the game without sound, there is a small rectangular frame around the screen that appears and flashes mimicking the beat. You could beat the drum this way but I personally feel it’s better to hear your little minions dancing and fighting and going into Fever mode. The first level was also a tutorial. The player is taught two drum beats, one to make his army march forward and another to command his army to attack. It works as a call and response similar to real tribal music. The player must drum the beat that will make his army respond, for example the player will drum the march beat and the army will respond to that by marching and singing along to that beat, after their response the player can then initiate another command with another beat. In the first few levels of the game I’m pretty much just marching forward until I see an enemy then I initiate the attack beat. It may sound boring just describing it on paper, but the music in the game is a mix of cutesy (think of Loco Roco or Katamari) and tribal sounds and they blend pretty well together. One cool feature I found in the game is having the Patapons go into Fever mode where they are pretty much unstoppable. Their attack power and defense increases, and if you have the archer type units, they will fire multiple arrows instead of their usual single one. To get into Fever mode you must drum to a climactic part of the drum beat or just get ten drum beats in a row without failing or losing tempo. This mode adds more dimension to the game as the player will want to use Fever mode to defeat his enemies quickly and for some boss battles, fever mode can definitely turn the tide of a losing battle. After a mission, the Patapons return to their village to celebrate and you, the Mighty Patapon can look around the village by checking inventory, creating new Patapons, or blowing a trumpet to make a gigantic tree dance (which will also give you items). One cool aspect of the Patapons is that if they die in battle, they will leave behind their helmet called a cap. Your other Patapons can grab the cap and if the mission is successful the cap will be brought to the Tree of Life called “Mater” in the village and the Patapon will be reborn ready to fight again. However if you don’t claim the cap or say a gigantic creature swallows up a Patapon whole, including his cap, then the Patapon will be lost forever. This makes fighting bosses extremely dangerous and the player needs to think strategically to slay the beast. (This entry has been edited2 times. It was last edited on Tue, 04 Mar 2008 03:24:12.)Tue, 04 Mar 2008 02:17:33 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2977&iddiary=5596https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2837GAMEPLAY: After playing the game a little bit more, I’ve come to realize that the colossi are pretty much giant puzzles each one having a distinct type of weakness that the player must exploit. I really enjoy the design of the colossi; they are giant creatures that have the skin of mountainous terrain. I feel like climbing Mount Everest each time I scale them and when I stab it with the sword I’m placing a marker saying “I was here!” It’s definitely a fun style of gameplay and I give a lot of credit to the game designers for their creativity. Agro, your trusty steed, is a great friend to have around. He’s always there to get you through the landscape faster than your feet will take you. I like the freedom that you can do with Agro; you can mount up and do a couple things like shoot your arrow, or rotate a full 360 degrees, or stand up while you shoot your arrow turning 360 degrees! These little details in a game are what usually make me happy and I’m glad to see them get implemented. The boy was well designed too. It’s amazing that someone so small can defeat such giants and I feel like the game can show this extremely well. The landscape is a sight for sore eyes. After you leave the temple grounds there’s beautiful open land of green and earthy colors. The light breaks through the clouds and shines with intensity as you and Agro stride the Cliffside. What impresses me is how far the player can see into the game world, there are loads of mountains that we can see in the distance and the clouds move realistically with the wind. As the player rides around, there are birds and eagles that sometimes come on and off the screen. This artistic design really adds to the atmosphere of the region, it’s so desolate yet so beautiful at the same time. It’s a nice lively world with just as little as two characters present in it. When the boy is just standing around, Agro will run around him or walk off screen into some place and it really gives Agro, a horse, some personality also helps to realize the world around the player. DESIGN: As I’ve said before the artistic design of the game is astonishing. By creating a large world with nothing but lizards, birds, trees, and mountains, the player is forced to find a way to relate all of these things together to create a personal story for him in the game. This lack of story was intentional because the game developers wanted the player to make assumptions about the world; I know this because I made the assumption that this was a prequel to Ico because of the ending of this game (the boy turns into a baby with horns, which resemble the protagonist in Ico). This desolate tone of the game is a well decided one because I think it helps foreshadow what happens in the end. The long journey to revive someone eventually asks for the ultimate price, a life for a life, and having a world that reflects this price of death in the end sets a good mood for the game. The colossi are well designed as well. Every time I fell a giant, I was curious to see what the next one would look like or how I would take it down. This helped keep me going even though there was a lack of story. The colossi are well varied ranging from large walking ones to flying types and even one that swims (which I thought was the most interesting because you had to hang on every time it dove into the water). Every time the player had to hang on to the colossi whenever it was shaking or flying or whatever, it simply took my breath away and built a type of suspense that was unheard of during it’s time. The game has no real reward structure aside from getting more grip gauge power and a larger health each time a giant is destroyed. But the feeling you get after each colossus death is quite an intense feeling and therefore is a reward in itself. This feeling also left me wanting for more as I would constantly want to kill a colossus bigger than the previous one. The one thing I would probably change in the game is the voice acting. I know the game is supposed to have a fictional language in a fictional world but in today’s day and age having a game on a home console (before the next gen systems) that doesn’t have voiced text seems rather primitive. But it’s a minor thing seeing as there is only one person that actually talks for the most part in the game, the deity that speaks to the boy.Thu, 21 Feb 2008 02:31:45 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2837&iddiary=5420https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2837SUMMARY: In Shadow of the Colossus you control a young boy who appears to be unnamed (though Wikipedia states his name is “Wander”, I truly believe it was roughly translated to be “the Wanderer”) as he ventures into a forbidden land with hopes of bringing back a girl to life. The boy and his horse Agro must travel a vast landscape to battle sixteen Colossi believing that there is secret to bringing back the dead by defeating these creatures. GAMEPLAY: When I first played this game back in 2005, I was truly impressed with the graphics. It really pushed the Playstation 2 to its limits as seen from some of the dropped frame rates in the game. I was ecstatic when I learned I had to play this game again for the classics gamelog list. After loading it in and playing for an hour, I realized that it still had that charm that most games seem to lack today. There is something magical about climbing atop a creature that is more than fifty times your size and bringing it down with a few well placed stabs from your sword. This game does an exceptional job in making you feel like a hero and that you’ve done something extraordinary. The controls were definitely unique for its time. As with any 3D adventure game you use the left thumbstick to control your character and the right to rotate the camera. There are a few buttons to switch your sword to bow and attack and jump. But when you fight colossi it was nice to know there was a button to lock on to your colossus, because at some point, you will fight flying ones and small fast ones and you need to anticipate where they will strike. Unlike most games you don’t just swing a sword at the giant and expect it to fall, you have to scale them. This was very interesting in my opinion as I had to make use of the R1 button which makes the boy grab on to any ledge, vine, or hair on the colossus. However you can’t hold on forever and this is where the simple interface comes in. You don’t have a HUD when riding around, which is cool because it really gives a cinematic effect to the game. When you fight colossi a grip gauge appears as a solid circle and tells you how much strength the boy has in him to hold on whatever he’s hanging on to, your selected weapon appears, and two life gauges appear, one for you and one for the colossus. The simple HUD is enough to display crucial information while not getting in the way of the action or the overall cinematic feel of the game. The story in this game is unique in that there are no other characters besides the boy and a god-like entity to help fuel the story. All the player is told is that, to bring the girl back to life, he must kill sixteen colossi, now go find them. This story or lack thereof is actually a good thing in my opinion. This allows to player to make assumptions about the story and hence he can actually create his own story as he battles these giants. Even though every colossus has its weakness, every player usually takes a while to figure how to exploit that weakness and hence some players will play for half an hour trying to find the weakness and others will get it almost immediately resulting in a wide range of different stories for each player. One aspect about the story that I particularly liked is that every time the boy wakes up in the temple after defeating a colossus, his clothes get ragged and his overall brightness gets darker. I originally perceived this to be a dirty effect where if you’re scaling mountainous creatures you’re bound to get dirty. However I realize that each time the colossi fall, dark energy enters the boy, and we see him inch closer to death and transform into a black shadow-like entity that we all have grown to hate in the game “Ico”. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:02:42.)Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:49:57 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2837&iddiary=5291https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2474Gameplay: After playing through the single player campaigns, some friends and I decided to play a multiplayer game to see who would get bragging rights to be a Starcraft champion. It was a three versus three match with, players Doody and Matt on my team. I must admit that I’ve played this game ten years ago and even now when I started playing again it still had its famous appeal that it had so long ago and that’s the multiplayer aspect. Unlike the computer, human players are unpredictable and I found myself constantly changing my attack strategy when I find the units that my opponents are constructing. Throughout the course of the game there was quite a bit of trash talk around the table (we had a small LAN party with our laptops). I really thought it was fun spitting out these random insults because we were all very much into the game. At some points, my opponents would spit insults and in the game I would attack their buildings and at that point they would settle down and concentrate on a counter attack. It was very fun to play multiplayer and even my roommates who weren’t playing had a great time watching us play and battle verbally. As we played more games that night, I’ve thought it was interesting to see the different strategies of my friends as opponents and those that were on my team. It was definitely fun to try and think of combinations of units that my team could use to attack our opponents. Like I would go for long range ground units and my team members would help support them with air support. This would obviously be in any RTS game but Starcraft is different because of the three different unique races as opposed to just the one human race that Age of Empires has. I know that there are different civilizations for Age of Empires but honestly they all seem the same to me even though they claim they have different bonuses such as attack or resource gathering. Starcraft is unique because of the amount of character design put into this game and these different types of races allow for a different type of play style. Like Zerg should always attack en masse or Terrans must have a healthy combination of ground and air units to succeed. These different play styles accompanied with multiplayer where your teammates can be another race to supplement yours create a unique experience every time a game starts up. Design: I give credit where it’s due and the game company Blizzard has a great motto that I believe every game designer should follow and that’s “easy to play, hard to master.” You can see this in virtually every game they made such as Diablo and World of Warcraft, they are masters at attracting the casual gamer yet they also bring hardcore gamers with the specifics of their gameplay mechanics. In Starcraft, it’s easy to build structures and units to attack the enemy, you can win this way but to be a real master at the game you need to learn to build fast and mix and match units that complement each other in a fight. This is especially true in multiplayer where there speed is key to winning the game. The level design in the game varies very little, most of the time you will get either an earth like open ground or a space station type map to battle on. The game does come with a map editor but the templates seem to suggest that the levels you make can have a mixed type of the maps mentioned earlier. However it’s the content of the map that counts and some levels have a two chunks of land with a huge bridge in the middle and this will allow for some very interesting gameplay if one can’t produce air units. The game is in 2D but it kind of adds another dimension with some terrain raised slightly higher and units on that terrain can see the ones below it but the units not on the mountain can’t see above it unless being attacked which creates some strategic play. The story in Starcraft is quite well written, and is significantly better than other RTS games that I have played. In Age of Empires, they have a few campaigns where they talk about Atilla the Hun or William Wallace, but if you’ve taken a history class then you already know what happens to these characters and what they’ve done. There are many twists and turns in the game that I won’t spoil for anyone but just know that some friends become enemies and some enemies become friends and the story was good enough to propel me to continue playing the game.Sat, 09 Feb 2008 00:48:20 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2474&iddiary=4764https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2474Summary: Starcraft is a real-time strategy game about three warring species; the human race called Terrans, the elite alien race called Protoss, and the savage swarms of the animalistic Zerg. The player gathers resources to build structures that produce offensive and defensive units to attack the other race. The game is a classic RTS and unique in the fact that the three different races that the player can control have very different play styles yet still have the basic concept of building and producing units. Gameplay: As I started the single player campaign of the Terrans, I was thrust into a tutorial on how to play the game. The tutorial allowed me to learn the tools that I needed to play the game as well as get accustomed to the user interface and the world of Starcraft. For instance I was taught how to select my marines and have them move to a location and attack any enemies they saw on the way. There’s a difference between a move and an attack-move. While the marines were marching, they did see enemies and these were the Zerg, a type of mutated alien bent on killing and eating anything they see. Surviving my first encounter with the Zerg allowed me some insight to the story of Starcraft and what it would eventually lead up to. These Terran characters resembled the human race in Starcraft. They have people semi integrated with machines and I thought that was kind of cool because I feel like in the future, as we are constantly making new technology that helps us fight our enemies, we will eventually break the line between man and machine and have a nice synthetic mix of both. So I really liked the Terran race. The Protoss were an alien race with advanced technology. Instead of building their structures and units, they would just “warp” them in. Their builder unit, called a probe, would just start a portal that would automatically move in the structure and during this warping time the probe can still gather resources and go about its business. But the warp would have to be in the radius of one structure called a Pylon to be able to transport the building. I particularly liked the design of Protoss characters because they didn’t have any mouths, to talk they would just their natural psychic powers to link their mind with another person or to a group of people. The Zerg were the most interesting to play as. Their builder units would not build or warp in structures, they would mutate into the structure! This also means that all the Zerg buildings were alive and would be able to heal over time. Also, like the Protoss, their buildings must be built on a purple slime called “creep” seeping out of their starting building called a hatchery which expands the more creep colonies and hatcheries are built. Each race still had the same "build this structure to produce this unit" kind of scheme but each one was completely different to play because of their narrative background in the game world. (This entry has been edited2 times. It was last edited on Fri, 08 Feb 2008 23:44:38.)Fri, 08 Feb 2008 23:40:25 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2474&iddiary=4726https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2104GAMEPLAY: So basically now I’ve gotten a little bit further into the game where I gained a few party members and am now going the Bhujerba mines to rescue Vaan’s girlfriend Penelo. I’ve got few more things at my disposal now. I am now able to use gambits which are like scripted actions for my party members during battle. Say when I enter battle, if I originally put Vaan’s gambit to “attack nearest foe” then that’s exactly what he will do. I can also have another gambit where Ashe will “heal” an ally when they are below 70% hit points. And we can basically prioritize the gambits so that the character will heal first instead of fight. This whole system is very intuitive and I was able to fight battles without having to waste time selecting an action and pausing the whole flow of the game. What’s also a neat trick that I can do is change the party leader in enemies, in the previous Final Fantasy’s you’d be stuck with the main character throughout the whole game but in this game that’s not entirely the case. It’s a minor thing but it’s a welcome change of pace to the traditional RPG game. So as I was on my way to the Bhujerba caves, my party met with a character named Lamont and he for reasons not entirely clear he needed to go there as well. This was also neat aspect that I saw, usually a party can only consist of three party members, but Lamont entered my party as a guest. This means that he entered my party and will fight along side me but I can’t control him. This makes part of the battles easier as another character who can damage enemies and heal your characters is always a welcome addition. As I entered deeper into the cave, my party eventually met with the kidnappers after a small argument, my party was forced to run out the cave with the giant lizard humanoids on our trail. This was an interesting event because the I was in direct control of my character and the game gave me a choice to fight or run. I could’ve fought them but I didn’t save recently and I didn’t want to lose my progress. I should probably stop at this point because I could potential just lose track of time playing this game. DESIGN: The game sets a good level design and this provides a nice mood for the game. Take Rabanastre for example, the city is overflowing with life, the market place has people in stands talking and trying to sell their products other traders and merchants. In the gutters below the city, there are many, many people sitting around and living the poor man’s life. And if you leave the city gates, you see a long strip of desert and sand all around with the strange wild life walking around. This creates a sense of desolation that contrasts with the city’s vibrant life. The game also has a bunch of innovations over the previous Final Fantasy’s . The new battle system that removed the use of the battleground speeds up the game play, no longer will the player have to run and get into a fight randomly and load to the battleground unintentionally. The use of the gambit system helps to speed game play and allows the casual gamer to set up his battle plan as he sees fit. The license point system was also a good move by the developers, besides the traditional kill and gain experience/level up system. The license point board allows the player to customize their party members and so the characters who were originally meant to weild a sword and shield can be magic caster, and it's a great way to give freedom to the player and his characters. As with all Role Playing Games, the story and character development also contributes to a good RPG. The story in this game about the war torn country to trying to redeem itself is pretty good and can almost rival a script written by Peter Jackson! Well not really, but it’s decent enough to keep the player interested in the game and helps motivate him to progress further. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:34:11.)Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:25:25 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2104&iddiary=4181https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2104SUMMARY: In Final Fantasy XII the player controls a main character Vahn, a gutter boy who lives in a city Rabanastre recently occupied by a warring nation Archadia. The other nation locked in a losing war with them is Rozarria and the princess of that nation Ashe is slowly building a resistance to fight back. Vahn eventually meets with Ashe and gathers a band of adventurers, a sky pirate, a viera (humanoid rabbit),and an ex-captain and travels the world of Ivalice to find a way to defeat the armies of Archadia. GAMEPLAY: As soon as I selected "New Game", I was greeted with a beautiful computer generated video depicting the recent history of Rabanastre, where Lady Ashe gets married to a prince, Rasler, who leads the war against Archadia. As the cutscene unfolds Rasler is killed and the ex-captain I mentioned earlier, Basch, brings his body back to the country of Dalmasca where Rabanastre is. As the cutscene ends, the in-game engine takes over and I control a character named Reks, who is evidently Vaan's older brother. This is where the “tutorial” part of the game begins and the player is then forced to read text on how to operate Reks and how to interact with the environment. This is also the part in the game where it teaches you how the battle mechanic works. This is quite interesting because in previous Final Fantasy games and other RPGs there would be a game world with enemies, but as soon as you make contact with the enemy, the game would change “modes” and the player would be transferred to a battlefield where the main character draws his weapon and fights his enemy in this field. In this game, they completely remove the battlefield and you can fight the enemies in the game world that you are already in. As I defeat my first boss fight, where the enemy has a larger amount of hit points than ordinary minions and can execute special attacks, the game’s story unfolds during this tutorial with Basch assassinating his king and killing Reks in the process. The game then tells the story of how Dalmasca falls under Archadian rule and Lady Ashe takes her life. The game shifts over to Reks brother Vaan, and I am then tasked with cleaning the sewers of rats using the new battle system I just learned. At this point the game keeps going in and out of cut scenes explaining how Vaan is sick of the gutter boy life he lives and one day wants to become a sky pirate. I basically kept running around town enjoying the scenery and did my first hunt, which is basically like being a bounty hunter where I look for a specific animal, which will turn out to be a boss, and kill it to gain a reward from the person who posted the bounty. I think this is a good point to stop for the first session and next log I will try to get as far into the game as possible. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Fri, 25 Jan 2008 21:50:10.)Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:41:21 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2104&iddiary=4055https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1670GAMEPLAY: I brought Rock Band to my house in Santa Cruz and played the game with my house mates. The two house mates that I played with have had less experience with making music and music instruments so I thought it would be a good idea to write about them for this entry. One of them Brad is a gamer and the other nicknamed Ninja, has had little experience with video games. At first they were skeptical to try the microphone, I was always the one who had to sing for the band which I didn't mind because I was pretty comfortable with my voice. But over time I kept urging them to sing and eventually, with the help of certain beverages, they started to hold the microphone and sing with confidence. They weren't the best singers in the world, but good thing is that they were having fun and the next day they continued to battle for the singer position sober. I've also noticed that with my other three roommates who were watching us play started singing along with the lead singer and it shows that even if you're not playing the game you can have fun listening and singing along to the music. If you had little game or music experience, Rock Band is still a fun game to play. Even Ninja who had never heard of any of these songs started to like the music he was hearing. Video games is one way to get music to reach more audiences and I think that was likely MTV Games goal which is probably also why they decided to publish the game. Design: The game makes the players feel as if they were in an actually rock band playing for thousands of fans. They start off with zero fans and one gig to play at and over time successful gigs earn more fans and this helps buy roadies, audio guys, jets and other important staff/items needed to travel the world and play at large venues. To help set the atmosphere of a rock band on screen, behind all the commands to strum the guitar, sing, or drum are the virtual characters and avatars the players have created. They are all dressed in rugged yet stylish clothes and later on with more money from gigs, the players can buy expensive armor (for metal rockers), leather clothes (for goth musicians) and other women's clothing as all rock stars tend to do. This process of dressing and creating the player's virtual character creates an emotional link. If the avatar runs off stage to go crowd surfing, the player will say "That's me going crazy!" if he made the character to mirror his real-life self. Even if he made an exaggerated version of himself he will still feel a connection to that character because he created him. While playing at the gig, the camera moves in such a way that imitates a live stage concert of real bands. These positions resemble the music videos that we've all seen on MTV at some point. The video will fade to grainy black and white, or the camera will attach itself to the base of the character's guitar and show the intricate finger movements fretting the string. All help serve to make it feel like the player is there filming and playing in a virtual rock concert. There is one con about the game is that it is truly meant to be a multi-player game. Even though there are modes that allow solo play, the game can get pretty boring playing by yourself. I haven't played the game without someone playing beside me with the only exception being to practice a difficult song. And another point is a small problem with the drums. I've actually played drums before and the thing about being a drum player is that you can make a few mistakes and people really wouldn't notice it. This is because as long as you are holding a constant beat, you can free style at any point in time. This is specially evident in the kick pedal. Usually when I drum I use the kick pedal to hit the bass drum and hold the beat by constantly stepping on the pedal, but at lower difficulties the signal to use the kick pedal because irregular and doesn't do a good job of imitating the drum beat of the song. This is probably personal preference but I decided to include it as my three friends who are drummers complained about it. But in all fairness, it is still a video game and if the kick pedal must be pressed on only at certain times, then I must follow that rule as defined within the game. (This entry has been edited3 times. It was last edited on Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:43:52.)Mon, 14 Jan 2008 03:10:34 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1670&iddiary=3558https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1670SUMMARY: Rock Band is a revolutionary game that puts the player and three other friends in the role of, well, a rock band. Each of the players can be designated a microphone or three of the instruments that were included with the game: guitar, drums, or bass guitar. The goal of the game is to go on a world tour and gather as much fans and 5 star ratings for each gig they do by playing extremely well during the gigs and if you have internet access you can compare your band's progress with others who play the same game all over the world. GAMEPLAY: When my cousins and I first opened the giant box of Rock Band special bundle, I was excited because I've been following this game during it's creation and I knew there was a drum set that came with the game. The idea of having a drum set in a game just piqued my interest and I just had to play it. Setting up the drum set wasn't difficult and I was soon holding the guitarist position with my cousin Stan on microphone and my brother Justin on drums. Mind you we are amateur musicians ourselves and have knowledge pertaining to the songs that are featured in this game as well as some instrumental expertise but remember that you don't need any previous music skill to play this game and still have fun. The way the guitar controller works is similar to the Guitar Hero series. There are 5 colored buttons on the fret bar and a strum switch on the base of the guitar. The idea is to match the colored button on the screen by pressing down the same color button on the guitar and flicking the strum switch when the colored button on screen reaches the "strum point". This is the same concept for the bass guitar and the drums except for the drums you just strike the matching colored drum circle with your drumstick. Also there's another difference with the drum. Instead of a fifth circle, it is replaced with a kick pedal for a bass drum, which does require skillful coordination as most drummers would need. For the singer, he doesn't need to be a good singer to score a lot of points in the game. All he or she needs to do is match the pitch the screen as the song indicates. The first song was played by one of my favorite bands Weezer, and needless to say I was ecstatic playing it. My previous experience with Guitar Hero helped me adjust to the guitar controller easily even on "hard" difficulty and my cousin Stan had no problems singing the song. My brother Justin however had some problems using the drums the first time but after adjusting the game settings to fix the timing of hitting the drums correctly, we were touring our home town of San Francisco in no time. The songs have a wide range featuring classics like Black Hole Sun by Sound Garden and Suffragette City by David Bowie and contemporary artists such as Weezer and The Strokes so there's a lot to like for any music style. While playing the game my band and I were constantly spitting out rock star references like "I gotta have more cowbell!" from the Saturday Night Live sketch with Christopher Walken imitating a famous music producer. Whenever we fail a gig we would make joking remarks at each other saying "I'm quitting the band!" or "Mess up again and I'm gonna have to find a new drummer!" And this is where the game is most fun: interacting with your peers and pretending like you're a real rock band, hence the game name. This is the end of my first game log entry, I will make my second entry detailing my experience with my college house mates soon. (This entry has been edited4 times. It was last edited on Mon, 14 Jan 2008 03:23:09.)Sun, 13 Jan 2008 17:21:39 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1670&iddiary=3392