Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=636https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3009Gamelog 2: GAMEPLAY: Having put some decent hours into Guitar Hero II, I found that while the challenges provided by the varying song difficulties provided ample skill challenge, the song selection was rather meager and the limited breadth of music genre left me aurally bored after a while. A larger library of songs with a wider breadth of genres of music using the guitar might have made the game provide more hours of enjoyment in this regard. Since only the most dedicated players are willing to play to purely for the skill mastery, it is unlikely that most players will progress to the 4th difficulty level, if not the 3rd (in terms of player skill), before setting the game aside leaving a good portion of the potential game play inaccessible to the player due to the time required to gain the skill to play at higher difficulty levels. There are 30 songs in the initial library, and 15 some unlockable songs. Averaging most songs at around 4-5 minutes, playing through every song would take roughly 3-4 hours. Granted that most players would probably require at least a few extra song attempts to get the hang of the game and hone their skills to a decent level (unless they’d already had previous experience from the first Guitar Hero game), and probably a considerable number of hours could be put into multi-player competition; however, regardless, this yields comparatively few hours of game play to reach a content exhaustion within the limit of player average player interest compared to other games that I’ve played. DESIGN: There have been quite a few different beat and rhythm games that have been made, with sequels and spin-offs of all sorts. The unique pseudo-guitar controller used for Guitar Hero games utilizes the dexterity of the player’s fingers on both hands to press the chord buttons and strum the toggle switch. The controller’s design requires the player to use coordination and motor skills similar to those used for actually playing a guitar. This brings the game play experience closer to the experience being pseudo-simulated by the game, much like how Dance Dance Revolution (and similar dance) games use a dance pad to detect dance steps. Following the nature of music, the core game mechanic utilizes pre-defined note-charts—effectively equivalent to specifically designed levels using notes and extended chords instead of platforms, obstacles, and landscapes. The use of pre-designed note charts thus rules out the possibility of any form of emergent gameplay, forcing the player through the designed “level” at a pre-determined rate, much like shmups, but with a much more limited range of input possibilities, since there are 5 notes with a 2 binary values based on the input: chord button depression and strum. However, the dual input usage—chord button and strum switch—gives Guitar Hero much more depth than most beat and rhythm games, which have only 1 binary value for each input type (step, note, etc.). The dual input usage allows the game to make use of different input combinations, such as holding down chord buttons and strumming while holding the chord. Thus the game play of Guitar Hero is several levels of complexity above the simple pattern recognition and motor-function mapping of single-tier structure beat and rhythm games such as DDR. This control complexity is effectively implemented through well-designed note-charts for each song and difficulty, using more difficult, complex input patterns in the note-charts for higher difficulty levels, giving Guitar Hero II a good difficulty curve. Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:04:45 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3009&iddiary=6051https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3009Game log 1 SUMMARY: In Guitar Hero II, the player uses a guitar-shaped controller to symbolically emulate the playing of a guitar through the pressing buttons (representing chord finger positions) and toggling of a switch (in place of strumming the guitar strings) in time to a moving chart of notes synchronized to a song. The player must press the corresponding chord buttons on the controller and ‘strum’ the toggle switch timed correctly as the notes move down the screen, timing the ‘playing’ of the corresponding notes as they reach the bottom of the screen to successfully ‘play’ the song. The objective of the game is thus to hit as many notes as possible in order to ‘pass’ the song, and further more, score as many points as possible. GAMEPLAY: When picking up the controller for the first time, I realized that there were 5 chord buttons on the neck of the guitar controller, and that it would require considerable skill to quickly execute a combination of button presses, particularly since the shorter 2 fingers or the hand are generally not known for their dexterity. Thus, I was pleasantly surprised when I started playing and discovered that the easiest level difficulty of play required the use of only the top 3 buttons (and thus 3 fingers on the chord buttons). In playing through the tutorial and a number of songs in career mode, I was able in get attuned to the game and acquire a decent level of skill as the songs got more difficult. After a while, thinking that I effectively mastered the easy difficulty, I skipped up to medium, which utilized the fourth chord button and presented considerably more challenging note charts. Consequently, I had to replay songs a few time before I got the hang of the more advanced input techniques required to pass these songs, such as keeping one or more buttons depressed during a streak of repeated notes, strumming the toggle switch both up and down when needed for rapid input, and strumming only once for certain indicated slews of notes. I thought that the acquisition of these skills to reach higher difficulties was well curved through the career mode, keeping me inclined to continue playing rather than giving up because the scale of difficulty was steep enough to provide a challenge, but easy enough to make progress on without significant punishment for failure. This kept the game both fun and challenging to play. After a while of play, I realized that I had quite a few credits to throw down in the unlock shop, where I purchased the two unlockable characters and a few songs. I then changed the character I was playing with to the grim reaper, and realized how relatively pointless this was. While the visual graphic and animations were different for each character, since the player can’t afford to look at the animated character and crowd in the background during most of the game (since the player must focus on reading the notes of the song), there is little to no significance of the selecting of characters and customization of guitar to play with in career mode. While this kind of character customization feature may attract some people, I personally was not entertained by it, probably because I wasn’t drawn to the particular ‘rock’ artistic style used in the game. I felt the character customization might have had a greater impact if the game utilized character uniqueness in some way, but the structure of the Guitar Hero II effectively removed any and all story elements requiring identity, making the characters in the game little more than moving background animation to go with the song playing, much like the character(s) dancing in the background for DDR games.Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:28:06 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3009&iddiary=5657https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2916game log 2 GAMEPLAY Playing for a while longer, I was able to sample a bit of every game play mode of Soul Calibur III. From what I was able to play through, I found the Chronicles of the Sword mode to be the most interesting and addictive to play through. The standard arena and tournament combat modes are the classic basis of most fighting games, and offered little in terms of interesting new elements of game design to study. The "Tales of Souls" game mode was essentially the classic lame "story-line mode" using a weak variant of the general background storyline centered around the specific character you choose to play through with, loosely using the storyline as an excuse to string together a series of fights with a sad excuse for cutscenes in between certain battles, otherwise offering little new game play aspects to explore. The Chronicles of the Sword game mode, however threw together a much more interesting story line surrounding a custom player avatar, which can be customized using unlockable and purchasable items from the in-game item shop. The customizable character adds a greater sense of player involvement and closer connection to the otherwise distant storyline of the game. Additionally, I found the RPG and RTS elements of Chronicles of the Sword mode to be a unique and interesting addition to the game, giving me a much stronger desire to keep playing to unlock more unlockables (as opposed to a continuous stream of 1 vs. 1 battles against seemingly arbitrary enemies, such as in the "story mode." Without it, I could care less for the background of Soul Calibur III, as there are so many different characters that understanding the entire story by piecing together of the entire story by playing through each storyline seems like too much a chore to bother doing. Further more, since some of the characters are a complete nightmare to try and play with (due to balancing issues, discussed further down), it's even more deterring, in a certain sense. DESIGN In terms of design, I came to appreciate the control set up, which enabled the player to quickly press combinations of keys much more easily by mapping 2 of the 4 attack buttons to the L1 and R1 triggers (by default setting, too). Although not an immediately intuitive way to think of a control scheme for effectively unleashing button combinations, but after a while it really clicked. However, despite the effectiveness of the control scheme, I discovered a strong imbalance in the game's characters. The way the some of the character's move sets (compared to others) were designed is rather poor. While the move sets for "non-standard" weapons (such as the scythe, hoop-blade, and tambourines) are rather creative and interesting, not all move sets are created equal. I found the scythe especially difficult to work with, getting every other move blocked--if I can even make a move before being continuously pounded into the ground again after getting up--because the weapon's attack speed is so damn slow. I went through numerous different strategies of varying aggression, defense, and evasion, and I kept coming to the same conclusion: The balance between weapon speed, range, and power is not well balanced with all weapons. Some weapons are extremely easy to use and very powerful while others have powerful combos "in theory," but are practically useless because they can't effectively engage the opponent to begin with. However, of the characters whose move sets were well designed, the ease of use is excellent, with a smooth progression from basic moves that are easy to use to more difficult but effective combos for more advanced players to use, thus providing a decent library of attacks, but not too extensive such that the move set is ample enough for advanced players while not being overwhelming for beginners. What is unfortunate is the mismatch of difficult-to-use characters thrown in with easy to use characters, making it difficult to know (without prior experience) which characters are apt for button-mashing for 2-player mode and which characters are impossible to use for anything. A smaller library of all well-refined characters would be much better than a large mish-mash library of good and poorly refined characters. The inclusion of characters that are impossible to use simply due to balance issues is a big failure in the testing department in my opinion.Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:52:12 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2916&iddiary=5498https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2916game log 1 SUMMARY In Soul Calibur III, the player controls an avatar in a 3D environment (populated w/ the player's avatar and the avatar of a single opponent at any given point in time), moving their avatar and attacking the opponent's avatar to deplete their opponent's health, thereby defeating their opponent. The player must also attempt to block or evade the attacks of the opponent's avatar to prevent their own health from being depleted prior to depleting the opponent's health. Thus, the objective of the game is to deplete the opponent's health before your health is depleted by the opponent by executing a series of strategically planned actions with your game avatar. Each successive time period of attempting to deplete the enemy's health before your health is depleted is called a round; there may be as few as only 1 round of play, or as many as desired until a winner is decided. While there are a number of different modes of game play in Soul Calibur III, all of them implement this core game mechanic, just in slightly different ways. Thus, based on the core game mechanic, one could classify Soul Calibur III as a 2-player fighting game. GAMEPLAY When first playing the game, I was a bit confused and aggravated at first while trying to pick up and learn the controls of the game. I found the ABGK control labeling system used in the options and tutorial to represent the different commands in the game to be very confusing and misleading, as they seem to hold no representative symbolism of their corresponding functions in the game (aside from the original labels on the buttons from the original arcade version). After a while I finally gave up trying to memorize it, and started playing 2 playerable to play w/ a friend. After playing for a while, I found myself (while trying to play strategically) continually losing to my friend who was just randomly mashing buttons. This really annoyed me, especially since he was complaining to me about how incredibly boring it was and how he couldn't believe that I'd have to button-mash for at least 2 hours in order to do a game-log assignment on the game. My friend found the experience very boring, and about 3-4 games loaded with bad-mouthing, he declared he was bored and done with the game and left me to keep playing by myself. While I didn't find the game boring, it certainly gave me a new perspective as to how one could percieve the game as not really delivering that much excitement. Personally, I found the game interesting because I found it challenging to discover new combos and strategies to defeat different opponents (in this case, AI opponents since my friend ditched me). While I was able to get by mashing buttons when playing against my friend, such a button-mashing "strategy" was completely ineffective against the AI, which used intelligent move combinations and strategies against me, requiring me to learn how to block and time moves well in order to defeat the AI driven opponents. From the experience I had playing Soul Calibur III, I discovered that whether this kind of challenge will actually equate to enjoyment and invoke continued interest in the player, is completely subjective and dependant on the player(s). While the game utilizes each game mode to provide a different kind of challenge to the player using the same core game mechanic, if the core game mechanic does not appeal to the player, then it is likely that the player will not derive much (if not any) enjoyment from the game. Thus, since Soul Calibur III has a very weak story line, all of the merit of entertainment rides of the player's attraction to the core game mechanic and the technical challenge in mastering the controls and memorizing the possible combos, severely restricting the effective audience of the game.Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:58:39 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2916&iddiary=5497https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2582entry 2 GAMEPLAY Upon further play of R-type Final, I've been able to unlock quite a few ships and found a few alternate routes (stages). While some of the alternate routes are re-hashes/modifications of the original stage, some of the stages seem to have completely random themes only possibly related to the R-type storyline iyou have a very active imagination. But then again, no storyline has been explicitly been told in the game (as far as I know/can remember), so nothing cabe ruled out, I suppose; looking on the back of the instruction manual, it turns out the game is rated E for everyone because it's only "Fantasy Violence"... which might explain some of the random oddities, such as the "Mr. Heli" R-type space ship. Aside from the few random oddities, I got relatively little satisfaction from the game overall apart from beating the story mode (albeit in the easiest difficulty). To summarize, my experience was that the game caused too much frustration through much of the game in comparison to the satisfaction of completing game objectives, thus leaving me wanting more (unsatisfied with the game). The game may have been more fun and engaging if it had a co-op support, allowing players to play with the friends, adding a social element into the mix to help keep players interested. However, since players return to the last previous check point when they die, this would have to set back either both players or keep the deceased player out of the game until the other player dies and both respawn together. On this front, R-type Final loses out on the possibility of co-op functionality such as that in Gradius V. Without any other people to engage with, the game lacked sufficient motivation to make me want to legitimately play through the rest of the game. DESIGN Since I've played long enough to understand the mechanics of the game, for the purpose of "study," I've let the game fly through stages w/ the invulnerability cheat on so I can safely ignore the game and occupy myself with other activities while the game burns time with different ships so that I can unlock new ships and see if the boasted number of ships if R-Type Final isn't just advertising fodder. While the ships that I unlocked in my initial play through introduced new weapon types and wave cannons (special laser attack), they did not introduce any new bits (pods that follow the player ship and provide some support function). Additionally, ships unlocked after the first set of ships turned out to be re-hashes of those prior to them, with mostly just minor changes to them. However, after cheating my way through many hours of flight time, I was finally able to unlock some new ships with new bits, and new weaponry, proving that there is at least some function for the 99+ unlockable ships. However, given the amount of time required to unlock the few ships that I was able to unlock, and that a normal player would not use the invulnerability cheat, most players would either give up the game (as I would) either after finding the game too hard or beating it once; only a hardcore shmup gamer would be able to put the hours in to legitimately unlock every ship and reap the rewards, rendering the use of the large mass of unlockable ships relatively useless except for 1 horrifying fact: the tougher difficulty levels seem to require much more powerful weapon arsenals--those carried by the late unlocked ships, turning the wheel of hardcore shmup gamers around once again, putting us back in square one again. While R-type Final does have an easy mode, most of the game content will never be accessible to casual gamers who don't have the dedication to get access to the best ships and experience the coolest flashing colors the game has to offer. To me, this game content structure (discussed above) is the greatest pitfall of R-type Final. Without a good content and reward/punishment structure, players will be discouraged from playing and lose interest in the game--the end of a game. However, R-type Final did have a number of innovative elements that make can be learned from. The 3D graphics are used well in a number of background transitions to create the illusion of moving the active game space around re-orienting it in within the game world, zooming in, zooming out, moving into objects or areas, etc. While the underlying structure of the 2D shooter interface does not change, the 3D engine's effective implementation allows the designers to create levels with shifting perspectives to better remove the effect of one-direction linear movement in the game through the illusion of 3D movement. Integrated well with the 3D graphical illusion was the level design, which utilized the 3D space to bring enemies in from different angled planes onto the player's plane of reference for combat, or by shifting the player's plane itself in several cases. The level design also implemented classic shmup spacial control and predefined enemy movement patterns with emergent attack AI script to automate enemy attacks to try and restrict the player's movement and require good tactics to and skillful movement to navigate to tight spaces and fields covered with enemies and bullets. R-type Final added the presumed usage of the Force for either lasers or remote shooting into the mix, specifically creating instances where the Force has to be docked to the read of the ship, or had to be undocked and shooting at something in an area inaccessible by the player, thus requiring the player to make good use of the Force and it's functions. While the Force pod concept, stylized weapons and level design are well done, the implementation through the poor content structure leaves the player unable to experience much of the game content, leaving many players desiring more from the game, knowing that there is more content in game, but not seeing it as worth spending the time to acquire. Without a well balanced reward system to keep the player interested in continuing the play the game, there's little point to a mass of unlockable content that the player will never unlock.Sat, 09 Feb 2008 14:36:26 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2582&iddiary=4910https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2582game log entry #1 SUMMARY R-type Final is a 2D space shooter, or "shmup", in which the player controls a space ship flying horizontally (to the right) across a moving land(or space)-scape, shooting at the enemies that fly at you from all directions while evading their onslaught of attacks. There are 3 modes of gameplay: story mode, score attack, and AI versus. In Story mode, the player's objective is to make their way through each stage all the way to the final boss and defeat it to complete the story mode stage sequence. In score attack, the player can replay any stage previously beaten in story mode with the objective of playing through again and again to achieve a new high score without having to play through the entire story again. In the game modes listed above, the game play mechanics are identical; the play controls a space ship on a 2D plane aligned to and within the visible screen area while the game forces the player through the level (stage) while throwing enemies and attacks at the player in a pre-determined pattern based on the level design--the standard of most shmups. However, in AI versus mode, the game play mechanic takes a drastic turn away from the general shmup standard, making the player give their ship(s) an AI script (specifically, a list of combat action priorities) that governs the ship's actions in an 1 vs. 1 emergent ship combat simulation, challenging the player to come up with an effective customized ship and AI script to defeat the computer controlled opponents. GAMEPLAY While I did find the game play of R-Type Final to be fun and challenging for a while, I found it quickly lost it's initial luster by attempting to make up for it's lack of game world content with 5 difficulty levels and an absurd number of unlockables. While most shmup's don't have (or need, for that matter) much of a storyline to be a functional shmup, there were only 7-some stages (initially) to play through. Instead, I found myself playing through the same levels over and over again until I figured out which ships and weapon power-ups worked best where and how to get through tricky spots and defeat bosses. While that was fine, I disliked how afterwards, I ended up needlessly dying over and over again thanks to the most minor handling mistakes (ex: flying a perfect run through a section and then grazing the edge of a platform before the next respawn point), throwing me back to start all over again once I was out of restart credits. Lame. While I have no quarrel with this as a fundamental part of what makes shmups challenging, I found that a lot of my crashes had to do with the graphical design of the player ship. Part of the power-up system in R-type Final is "the Force"--a pod which can be docked to either the front or back of the ship to take advantage of the weapon power-ups and shoot lasers, or float around freely and shoot bullets remotely. While the force pod is invulnerable and can be used to absorb weak enemies and bullets, it's large size leads to confusion (when the force pod is docked) when trying to determine which part of the player clump is the actual ship and which part is the force pod. Next to careless errors and dark brown artillery shots on almost black sky that I couldn't see, this was probably the most frustrating part of the game. Among other frustrations, the transition cut scenes at the beginning of each stage and before certain boss fights couldn't be skipped no matter how many buttons I tried mashing. While fairly short and containing brief text somehow relevant to the storyline to clue in the player on the game's background, the cut scenes became redundant, notably after having seen them quite a few times from having to restart story mode quite a few times. Of course, it may as well be my own fault for getting sick of the cut scenes by playing so many times. After finally beating the story mode once, though, I figured out that after all of the trouble I went through to get to the end, I had unlocked only 20+ ships out of a total of 99 listed in the Gallery menu. This left me wondering how long it would take for some one to actually go through the trouble of unlocking everything available, and thinking that there was relatively little replay value left unless you found the challenge exciting/stimulating in some weird way and wanting to beat the game on every difficulty level... something I surely don't want to bother doing after finally beating it on "Baby," the easiest mode.Sat, 09 Feb 2008 11:56:00 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2582&iddiary=4907https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2245Gamelog entry 2 GAMEPLAY After playing for a while longer, I've found the game remarkably easy to progress through (the storyline) with the exception of the mission of rolling the katamari to rebuild the moon. Since the mission requires your to roll your katamari all the way from 1 meters to a whopping 300 meters - roughly 10 times the biggest katamari size requirement I'd previously encountered. Even with 25 minutes on the clock, I found myself struggling to get the katamari big enough to effectively roll over islands the first few tries. Regardless, I had a lot of fun with it, since there's this bizzare joy in being able to level a city in a few seconds with a giant ball. I think one of the other main reasons I found Katamari Damacy to be so fun was that the world was fairly open to exploration, limited only by the size of your katamari, and that you could never die in a mission by hit/being hit by objects larger than the katamari (only get objects in your katamari get knocked out), thus there are negative consequenses to rolling around randomly and having fun. You can still fail the mission, but there's no penalty for failing and you can try again; additionally, each attempt you make makes you more familiar with the map and controls, making it easier to beat the mission, since the game is dependent on player skill, which is very easy to attain once you grasp the control scheme. As to this, I did find it a bit tricky at first, but I had it down within about 2 missions, so I think the simplicity of the game is part of what makes it so easily enjoyable. However, while the gameplay is fun and the theme of the game was definitely original and funny, I found the storyline a rather weak. As far as I can tell, the protagonist (the tiny prince) never says anything--even in text--but rather, is constantly ragged on by the King of the cosmos as you go from mission to mission unless you happen to do really well on a particular mission in the mission result screen; even so, he'll revert to his condescending tone again when you undertake your next mission however, making it seem kind of pointless. As such, there's essentially only 1 character that ever "talks," giving the storyline no character development. Literally too, since the protagonist prince is still a microscopic few cm when rolling a continental-size katamari (although I don't think he's still drawn at that point). DESIGN Straight up, the entire concept of the game is downright innovative. Beyond the concept, I think the simplicity of the control scheme is very innovative as it allows the player to enjoy themselves much more since they don't have to worry about hectic button mashing combos or perfect timing to make a long jump or what-not. The use of just the two thumb sticks to control the katamari means that the player never has to move their thumbs off of the sticks, and gives the player control of the camera implicitly while requiring more skill in controlling the katamari. Since the main game mechanic essentially consists only of rolling the katamari around, this could have been achieved with only 1 thumbstick... but that would have made the game too easy. The use of two sticks requires more skill, and provides a reminder that the Katamari isn't rolling by itself--the sticks control the tiny prince rolling the katamari. While the control scheme is innovative and quite easy to learn, I continue to have problems using the charge roll, which requires the player to rapidly move both sticks up and down in the opposing directions. Somehow, I can get it to initiate the rapid spin, but then the katamari stops spinning instead of charging forward. I think this could have been implemented differently making it a bit easier to use. Other than this fault, I think the control scheme was brilliant. After playing for a while, I noticed how well the game scales the player view of the world so that the katamari always appears to be the same size, and the world gets smaller, clipping out objects too small to see and not bother to take into account. There seemed to be several noticeable phases, starting with very small (push-pins, coins, etc.), then moving up to small fruits as being the smallest objects, then people and large appliances/devices (vending machines, etc.), and then finally buildings and structures being the smallest objects visible and taken into account (as far as I've progressed, anyhow). The game seemlessly phases out small objects from the gameworld as the katamari reaches certain sizes, altering the objects in the gameworld and available regions to move in while using the same world map without making any distinct graphical changes aside from clipping objects no longer taken into account. This structure gives the game strong sense of emergence within each mission. The game does have an overlaying mask as a game of progression with the storyline and the player's progression from mission to mission as he/she clears missions and unlocks new missions, however, within each mission, the game mechanics affect how the player chooses to grow their Katamari. Simultaneously, however, the size of the katamari does restrict where the katamari can go, which is controlled by the level design, a quality of games of progression. Thus, while there is no single category for Katamari Damacy like many other games, Katamari Damacy has a unique combination of level design with game world rules that open up and limit movement, as it is possible to both grow and shrink the katamari by picking up and losing objects.Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:10:17 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2245&iddiary=4302https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2245Gamelog entry 1 SUMMARY In Katamari Damacy, the player controls a tiny prince that rolls a "katamari" (translated 'lump/cluster (of objects)' in Japanese) around the game world, a ball that picks up smaller objects as it rolls over them, adding them to the rolling jumble. The katamari grows as it picks up more objects, becoming capable of picking up larger and larger objects, going all the way from a picking up coins and candy to rolling up entire islands and more. The specific objectives in each mission vary, but generally require the player to keep rolling over stuff and grow their katamari. The overall objective for the player is to complete each mission to restore a star or constellation in the sky, thus restoring all of the stars in the sky that the Lord of the Galaxy 'accidentally' shattered. GAMEPLAY From the very start of the game, Katamari Damacy made me crack up and fall off my chair laughing. It even sounded like someone's cracking up in part of the short intro soundtrack. On top of that, the opening intro sequence was so random and bizzare, that it made me wonder if the game designers were high when they came up with the idea: cows in space. ducks singing the chorus, a volcano erupting a rainbow, dancing pandas, giant mushrooms, an elephant spraying a rainbow... did I say rainbows? The bright, colorful palette gives the world an overly happy, comic feel to it, which--when combined with the bizzare character design--makes the world of Katamari Damacy absurdly more comical. The prince that rolls the katamari, controlled by the player, is only about a few cm tall, bright green with purple pants, has a head the shape of a medicinal pill on it's side with a square pale yellow face with a red antenna coming out of the top of his head... must I say more? The character design makes me think of pikmin on crack. And then the people are very square... even more so than legos. To add to the uniqueness of Katamari Damacy, the music is an interesting combination of voice-instrumentals, retro beats, and comical dialogue and lyrics in Japanese related to the theme of the game. Most of the soundtrack seems to be done in an intentionally comical way, satirizing the game, adding another degree of depth to the bizzare comic background of the game. The sound effects, are also rather comical; although the medium doesn't allow for the same level satire as the soundtrack, the sound effects as you hit people range from over-dramatized screams to a joyful "Woohoo!" depending on the type of person you pick up. However bizzare and crazy the background may seem, I actually enjoyed playing the game very much. I was continually amazed at the innovativeness of the game and the sheer awesomeness of discovering that I could roll over essentially anything if the katamari was big enough. For that reason, I found it very addictive, as I kept discovering new, bigger objects to roll into the katamari. At first I thought it would be rather boring as the game started with you rolling over push-pins, candy, and erasers, but found that once in the open world area, the designers didn't hesitate to add in more and more bizzare/crazy/random objects to roll over as the katamari got bigger, to shortly find myself addicted despite the very simple gameplay (I shall refrain from saying more in an effort not to spoil the fun for those who haven't played). (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Sat, 26 Jan 2008 01:19:43.)Sat, 26 Jan 2008 01:15:13 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2245&iddiary=4258https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1800Gameplay (second entry): After the initial glory of the game started wearing off, the combat system did start to feel a bit repetitive after a while, after figuring out generally effective tactics for each character in my party. The storyline held up well, keeping me interested and wanting to play through to the end, but I eventually stopped for a while to further explore the depth of gameplay available. The storyline actually forces you at one point to experience the item world system by requiring an upgraded item to be held to unlock the next stage. At that point, I was a bit discouraged, as the last time I'd jumped into the item world, I'd been slaughtered in seconds. However, upon re-analysis, I figured out there was a small bar at the bottom that showed you the level of monsters you would encounter in each item (yes, you battle monsters 'in' the item to upgrade it) so I picked a low-level item for my second attempt at upgrading, with better results. After a successful run through 10 stages to upgrade my weapon, the unique weapon upgrading system had me hooked. The ability to unlock upgrades on low-level weapons and carry them over to higher-level items made my efforts seem much more worth it -- a refreshing change from constantly upgrading every new piece of equipment. Furthermore, the battle stages for upgrading presented new challenges as many of them had absolutely wacky terrain filled with Geo (modifier) panels with everything from powerups to damage to random teleporting, making battle much more interesting. On top of that, there seemed to be a limitless supply of different stages in the item world system. Suddenly, Disgaea had somehow invented "fun" grinding with seemingly limitless replay value. Of course, chances are high that each and every stage was specifically designed so I can't say limitless, but it sure felt like I'd stumbled upon a diamond in the sand... I could probably keep rambling on about other features that make Disgaea a unique tactical RPG, but that starts treading on design territory. Design: Disgaea brings quite a few innovative elements to the tactical RPG genre. Firstly, party characters come out of a portal on the ground, so there's no set battle formation to begin with, allowing the player much greater flexibility, both in bringing party members out when needed, but also enabling the player to send party members back into the portal, keeping dying party members out of harm's way. Among other key unique features is the lift & toss ability. This enables humanoid characters to pick up and toss both friends and foes and throw them around the battlefield. This can be done to prevent annoying foes from attacking, or to keep weak allies out of danger, or to give party members a boost in getting across the battlefield either into or out of the fray. I incidentally discovered that by throwing enemies into other enemies, you could get them to fuse together and level-up considerably, although I haven't really figured out what use this would be... Also unique on the battlefield are the Geo panels / blocks (or whatever you want to call them). Many of the maps have at least a few of these panels if not completely covered in them. Working in conjunction with the colored panels are colored blocks that modify panels of the same color as the panel it rests on with a certain effect. These effects range from stat increases/decreases, extra attacks per round, damage infliction each round (much like poison or burn status effects), other status-effect-like states such as silence(inability to use skills), extra EXP or money from kills, or even random teleportation at the end of the round. As is, it makes the game more challenging... but Disgaea takes it a few steps further, in conjunction with the lift & toss ability; Geo blocks can be thrown on to other panels, changing where the effects take effect. Or, they can be destroyed simply by attacking them or picking them up and throwing them at enemies. Simple enough, right? But Disgaea makes it even more crazy/fun--destroyed blocks change the color the panel they land on (and all panels of the same color) to it's own color upon destruction, unleashing a chain reaction that damages everyone standing on those panels affected. Furthermore, if the player manages to get all of the panels to be the same color and then destroys a "null" color block on the panels, thereby removing the Geo panels from play, the player recieves a considerable bonus upon beating the stage, adding a whole new depth to combat by integrating these puzzles into the battlefield itself. The integration of the Geo panels and blocks into the levels takes the level design to a whole new level (pun not intended). I previously briefly described the weapon upgrade system, and how it entails battling foes "inside items," winning the upgrades by defeating the skill guardians on the randomly selected stages. These 'item worlds' seem to be heavily riddled with Geo panels and their puzzles, providing rich rewards on top of upgrades if you can figure them out. As previously described, the equipment upgrade system enables virtually limitless upgrading to items by transferring conquered upgrades to your new/current items rather than leaving them stuck on your old items. This sense of unlimited growth also pertains to character growth. Disgaea features a mentor-pupil system that allows a party member to sign on new custom characters as pupils (students). The mentor-pupil relationship enables higher percentage chance of team attacks, but more importantly, enables the mentor to use the magic skills of the pupil when standing adjacent, and permanently learn them if used enough. On top of this, as custom characters level up, new classes are unlocked, and characters can change classes while retaining a certain amount of their current skills, allowing for extensive character growth. Although I haven't played enough to see how many different class lineages are possible, it should be possible to create a heroic character with an absurd arsenal of skills at their disposal. Alongside the equipment upgrading, this ability to create an awesome aresenal on the same save game gives Disgaea a ton of replay value (for those interested, at least). Another notably unique design element in Disgaea is the castle council (or senate). Since you play the leader of the castle, you can take various "topics" such as shop item unlockables or character upgrades to the council for "debate". However, since everyone these is a nefarious demon, the "demoncratic" voting system consists of trying to garner votes by bribing council members with items or forcefully keeping them in line by defeating them in combat. The variety of different challenges Disgaea has to offer has kept me continuing to play much longer than I should have, as there is so much, maybe too much to explore and play with. While complete character development is an unrealistic feat, and not everyone can be bothered to try and clear every Geo panel puzzle that comes along, these design elements are integrated in such a way that everyone can dabble in them a bit as they add to the depth and style of the game making the game unique without requiring the player to develop a deep understanding for and complete every puzzle that comes their way. Thus, I think Disgaea is a great game overall because it caters to a wide audience, allowing pretty much anyone to pick it up and enjoy playing through, while additionally offering tons of continued play for enthusiasts who love getting every last skill and powerup.Tue, 15 Jan 2008 07:35:10 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1800&iddiary=3816https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1800Summary: In Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, the player commands a party of characters through a series of localized battles (stages) in a turn-based combat system on isometric grid battlefields. The player must strategically plan out each turn, moving their characters across the field to do battle, taking advantage of terrain, character skills, team attacks, combos, lifting & throwing (player characters or enemies), and Geo effects (modifier panels and blocks) to defeat opponents to win each stage. Beating a stage unlocks another stage, allowing the player to progress in the main general objective of advancing through and storyline through to the end. What primarily sets Disgaea apart from other Tactical RPGs is it's unique theme, storyline, and characters; the 'protagonist' is a young demon prince in a quest for supremacy over the Netherworld after his father (the previous Overlord) died by chocking on a pretzel... not your typical RPG. Gameplay: It took me less than a minute to get a kick out of Disgaea, with the dialog filled with dark, wacky humor. However, I was quickly disappointed with the English voices and translations, but was pleased to find Japanese voices available for the cut scenes. The English translations and voice actors did not really stay true to the original dialog and character personalities at all, which are very strong anime stereotypes; not what most American audiences would quite get, but I found that to be the charm of the game that makes it so captivating and amusing. Although I haven't gotten very far through the storyline yet, it's very comical and charming -- a fresh and different flavor from the all too common overly-serious 'save the world' concept that seems to permeate many (classic) RPGs. Since Disgaea is a single-player tactical RPG, it holds little opportunity for social interaction unless you've got some friends that want to think out tactics and strategies out loud along with you -- not something I'd personally do. The game feels a bit laid back for hectic commentary, but not too complex to merit deep discussion -- complex enough to provide challenging gameplay, but simple enough to have a nice learning curve. For a yet unknown reason, I've found Disgaea to be very smooth and relaxing to play, even though I'm not a huge fan of tactical RPGs... The controls, speed/timing, and collision detection seems to be very well refined, making it a breeze to pick up and learn. Oh, and you can spin the map around in battle (albeit 90 degrees per clip, but still)... I still can't seem to get over how cool it is to do that. The difficulty curve is so far a bit unchallenging, but started off with an excellent, easy to follow animated tutorial for beginners, so I'm hoping that the difficulty picks up as the story unfolds more.Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:38:42 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1800&iddiary=3580