Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=644https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3129Gameplay: Round 2, just as fun as round one! The parks got bigger and bigger and the rides got crazier and crazier. The best ride that I came across was the steel twisted roller coaster. With and inclined launch I could get the thing up to 150 miles per hour. Most guest would be too scared to ride it and the few that did would vomit shortly after. It was very fun to see what guests would be willing to do. The strategy I used was to put all the huge roller coasters in the back of the park. I would then advertise for them getting more people to come. Most of these people would head towards the back of the park to ride the rides but would almost never make it because they would stop at all the rides on the way. This maximized profit and park population. One other thing that was quite fun and worth notice was the shuttle launch style roller coaster. I was able to make a coaster that launches you at 80 miles per hour right off the bat. Then you could make a steep incline where the track would just end. Once the ride was full you could send it off and sure enough 36 people died being launched to there death. Kind of disturbing but quite funny. The game once again entertained me for hours and i never got bored. Game Design: The game design to me was flawless. My one complaint is that it took too long to invent new rides. I had the cash flow to build more rides but there was only a new one out once a month. But really that was not a huge deal. One of the coolest game design aspects was that you could see what your individual guest were thinking and if they were enjoying your park our not. If people were not enjoying your park they would vandalize it. Also, you could see if people enjoyed the ride, if they had to use the restroom, and how hungry/ thirsty they were. The absolute best game design was the roller coaster building. They had it down to a science, literally. The physics were very real with g forces and gravity being very accurate. It felt like i was actually building good roller coasters that would be fun not just in the game but in real life. This hands down is the best game I have ever played and I have never logged so many hours in one game ever. Kudos to Roller Coaster Tycoon!Thu, 06 Mar 2008 02:10:17 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3129&iddiary=5883https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3129Summary: Roller Coaster Tycoon is a theme park simulation game. You must build rides (either pre-existing ones or self designed ones), hire employees to pick up trash and vomit and fix broken rides, invent new rides, and control the prices of everything from the rides to the bathrooms. The game is quite innovative and fun bringing something new to the already vast genre of simulation games. Gameplay: I saw this game and decided to try it out. After all I love simulation games and I love roller coasters so this has got to be the game for me, right? Correct! This game was non stop fun from the time I loaded it and heard the Carousel music playing till the last second I played it. I decided to start with the first level which was more of a tutorial than anything else. The goal was to have something like 600 guest buy then end of October year 2. Within minutes I had figured out the basics of building paths, lines, rides, and changing landscape. After beating the first somewhat easy tutorial level it was off to level two. It had a similar goal, something like 1000 guests by year 3. Each level took a few hours to complete and I began developing strategy as I realized what optimized the success of my park. I literally never got bored as I sat for hours and hours playing the game. It was not until I became incredibly hungry that I had to stop to eat some dinner.Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:54:09 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3129&iddiary=5857https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2890Gameplay: Now that I was adult Link the game seemed to lose interest. It became monotonous, dungeon after dungeon and I began to get bored. Everything was so dark and I don't really like that in a game. As a child the game had a more friendly feel to it. Anyhow, I got three of the eight stones I needed this time and then just got bored and simply stopped playing. The game did provide me with hours of entertainment but I simply lost interest before the end. The graphics were great as was the initial gameplay, however it fell into a trap of not delivering new material as the game progressed. Sure I got new items but they didn't really do it for me. Overall I would say the game was quite fun and i did enjoy it. Design: The first thing that I would have done differently would have been to make it so you could cut through all the video scenes. Many of them you could however the initial ones were so long and you could not skip through the cinematics. Aside from that the game initially progressed nicely. It started off sorta easy and got harder as you progressed and gained skill. An aspect i really like was that health system. Although you could die, there were constant power ups and it was almost hard to die. It was nice to not have to worry too much about maintaining health although I found myself constantly trying to have full health. The game was clearly broken into two sections, Link as a kid, and Link as an adult. It was annoying that it was basically the same game twice back to back. The were not to many differences between the two aside from a bigger sword and a post pubescent grunt when Link attacked. All in all I would have been very content with just elongating the childhood Link section and just making that the game. I understand that time travel was a huge part of the game but it did not really do it for me. I did however enjoy that there was so much to do aside from the main game. Once Link turned into an adult it seemed to focus more on the dungeons than the side games you could do. This was another turn off for me. Do not get me wrong I did enjoy the game but there were lots of things that frustrated me. The last design change I would have made was music. I got so sick of that damn song over and over again. There you have it my take on Zelda. Fun, yet frustrating.Thu, 21 Feb 2008 02:48:43 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2890&iddiary=5444https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2890Summary Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a very fun action adventure RPG. The goal is to return order to the land (Hyrule). The game starts in Links home forest village where link is a kid who needs to find the triforce in order to return rule. He goes from land to land guided by his fairy Navi, helping the people he encounters deal with all the bad things going on. Gameplay: This game was very fun. The best part about it was the controls were very easy to become comfortable with. As items were picked up they could be set as buttons on the controller for use. It was very clear that there was a certain order for things to be done. First, I was unable to leave my village without a sword and shield. Once I found these two items I could continue to fight the bad guys corrupting the big tree. People that i talked to would give me hints where to go next. Although the game was very open with lots of space it became quite clear where I needed to go throughout the game. I met princess Zelda where she explained the entire situation about how stones were stolen and needed to be returned to bring back order to Hyrule. It was not the main game that made the game an enjoyable experience, rather the side games that made the game quite fun. Whether it be playing in the arcade games to win prizes or trying to trade the different masks it was quite fun to have so much going on at once. The most fun thing for me was killing the golden spiders. Apparently, there are 100 of them and they all need to be killed to bring back a possessed family. The game never really got boring and i found myself playing for hours. After a great amount of time i got the three stones and returned them to Zelda but of course that was not the end. I became grown up and now had eight things to find. This was frustrating since I thought I had beaten the game but no I was not even half way. I decided to save and come back later.Thu, 21 Feb 2008 02:35:35 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2890&iddiary=5426https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2586Gameplay: The second time i sat down to play my roommate noticed and mentioned he used to love the game. We decided to try out the multi player and fight each other. this turned out to be awesome. Not only was it the same fun game, but I was fighting my roommate. We did a lot of smack talking which added to the excitement and it was overall very fun. I ended up beating him quite badly three or four times which probably made it even more fun for me aside from the fact that he wont play me until he practices more. We played the large islands map where each team was on its own island to start. I found that the best initial attack was as many ships as I could and wipe out everything within range. This meant I needed tons of wood so I had almost all my villagers collecting wood. After sending in about 15 ships I made sure I had some transport boats full of elephants ready to be sent over to destroy what was left. This proved very affective. Another strategy I used was to upgrade as much as possible before actually building anything. The only downside to this was that I was left vulnerable to attack for some time without much defense. The solution to this was watch towers and tons of them. These gems took a while to build but with enough were virtually impenetrable. Design: The design of this game was really quite good. It forced me to develop strategies to take out the enemy and protect myself. I did find it a bit frustrating once everything had been upgraded to max. I wish things had the ability to continue to get better. Unfortunately this is not reasonable. Another thing that would have been nice would be to have resources replenish over time. Once you are out, you are simply out. It would be nice to have trees regrow and gold to form over time. Overall though the game was very fun and kept me engaged for quite some time. Although not flawless it is one of the better games i have played. Sat, 09 Feb 2008 16:50:47 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2586&iddiary=4916https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2586Summary Age of Empires is a real time strategy guide. You must collect resources (wood, gold, food, and stone) in order to build things. Villagers collect these things. Buildings, as well as combat units can be built. The combat units include: catapults, chariots, watch towers, etc. These units perform as well as you have upgraded them to. Resources must be used to upgrade units. The object of the game is to conquer another civilization similar to yours. Gameplay: I have always been a fan of real time strategy games (Red Alert, age of empires 2) so i decided to play the original AoE. It was indeed very simple but proved to be quite a lot of fun. I quickly mastered the game using my skills from AoE2. I found myself advancing rather quickly to the iron age and having a much higher score than my opponents. One thing that became very frustrating was that no matter how much better than the other civilizations I was it still took forever to destroy them. I found that catapults destroyed buildings the best but the were easily destroyed by the enemy. My solution was to get a ton of archers to protect the catapults. This was a very successful technique. After a while it appeared that this strategy worked very well. The next problem i ran into was running out of resources. Not only was I out of gold but there was no gold left on the map to be mined. This posed a problem since most everything takes gold to build. The solution was ships. Ships only take wood to build and i have yet to use all of a maps wood. Forests are everywhere. This worked really well aside from the buildings that were to far from the shore for ships to reach. Lastly, I brought in everything I had and just cleaned up. Priests worked really well to convert things to mine also. This whole thing took a surprising amount of time. I ended up playing for more than 4 hours before being done. Time flew and it was kind of embarrassing how much time i spent playing the gameSat, 09 Feb 2008 16:38:03 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2586&iddiary=4915https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2282GAMEPLAY: The second round of play for me did not get old at all. More and more laughs were to be had. The regular game play did not tire but we were still able to find more fun things to do. One thing that became more fun than the game it self was the making of the Mii. With limited options we were able to create a cartoon version of ourselves to play with. Every person that entered the house had a character made for them whether they wanted or not. Of course we made sure that everyone was unique and funny. For instance we made sure to "accentuate" all features of the Mii. My Mii, had a goofy smile and was very tall and lanky. All in all we had quite the motley crue of Miis running around the baseball diamond or hitting up the links. Another feature I found fun was the fitness test. Playing various one player games you could test hot fit you Mii was. The would measure it by giving you a corresponding age. It seemed that 85 was about the oldest and most out of shape and 18 was the youngest and most in shape. First time i took the test i got a shocking 85. Of course this was good laughs for everyone that was watching who tested far better. The neat thing about the test was that you could only take it once every 24 hour period. The goal was to practice all day and night and hopefully test better the following day. Well, we saw this as a challenge and played pretty much all day and sure enough tested again and was about 40 this time. The game was awesome, never were we board, it kept us engaged the entire time. DESIGN: The design of this game is close to flawless. one flaw we found is that the Wiimotes need to have better attachments to ones hand. We now have a hole in our ceiling from a tennis serve going a bit crazy. Even this "flaw" seemed to bring us more joy than any video game ever has. We ended up rolling on the ground laughing for a good 10 minutes before realizing the money to fix it may be coming out of our security deposit. The game design in general is so fun because of its new concept. Instead of pushing the A button to swing the bat i simply swing the remote. The harder you swing the harder the Mii swings. We did however find ways to beat the system. a simple fast flick at the wrist saved us the energy of taking a full on baseball swing. This was good news because the next morning when we all woke up our shoulders were sore. It would be great to see more games available like basketball, volleyball, or really anything. Another frustrating thing is the price of everything if you want to play four player. The game only comes with one Wii mote and you have to buy 3 more and 3 additional nun chucks (used to box with two hands). This totals well over 100 bucks which is pretty steep. Although expensive it is well worth it. The game design of this game is unlike any other as we have yet to become bored of it.Sat, 26 Jan 2008 11:21:26 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2282&iddiary=4382https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2282SUMMARY: Wii sports is a game that is included when you purchase a Nintendo Wii. There are five games you can play: golf, tennis, baseball, boxing, and bowling. Using the Wiimote players must mimic the actions used when playing the sports in real life in order to control the character. The game is a great virtual reality simulator. GAMEPLAY: This game was brought home by my roommate and we began playing. From the very start it was clear that this game would not help our study habits out at all. The game was so fun and interactive that the four of us found ourselves playing for hours. We played tried each of the sports and enjoyed them all. After about thirty minutes it became clear that each of us had a sport we were better than the others at. This made it fun to challenge each other or make bets that revolved around the game. For example: Loser does dishes. My strength was the golf. Right off the bat i was hitting birdies and gaining Wii points. Wii points were gained based on the success of you player and once you got 1000 you became pro. This game literally never got old. As long as someone was home there was someone standing in front of the television playing Wii Sports. The most fun four player game was by far tennis. All four players are on the screen simultaneously playing at the same time on the same court. unlike the other games where you must take turns to play (i.e. take turns batting, bowling or golfing). Unlike those games tennis had all players engaged until the end of every point. Sometimes there would even be some contact between players by the "accidental" hitting of opponent with the Wiimote as they serve. All in all this game was awesome and did not disappoint.Sat, 26 Jan 2008 11:04:12 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2282&iddiary=4381https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1814For my second session of SimCity 2000 game play things began to chance. With a steady cash flow and an increasing population the game was still very fun. Once I got to 120000 people Arcologies became available. These are huge buildings that house 65000 people. They were pretty neat for a while but this is where the game became boring. I had seemed to reach the end of development. I just kept building these arcologies as my budget let me. My population soared to over a million people. At this point I felt like I had done all I could do. I saved the game and decided to test out the disasters. Although destructive, it was still very fun. I started off with an earthquake. This caused fires and a change in topography. I had to place my fire engines to deal with the problem. Another problem arose when I never seemed to have enough engines to deal with all the fire. So basically a quarter of my city burned. After that got boring I decided it was time to try the UFO disaster. A huge thing hovered over my city zapping buildings leading again to flame. It became clear that I was losing interest as I began chatting more with friends on line and just letting the UFO do his thing. The game overall was very fun. I enjoyed playing it trying to get as many people in my city as possible. Not only is the game fun but it let’s users get a beginning course in city planning. Dealing with budgets, city ordinances, and citizen complaints became challenging and rewarding when finally I got a steady income of money and happy people. A flaw in the game is that once you get a ton of people it starts to slow down. Also, non zoned buildings like police, arcologies, and schools get less options and act more like the zoned buildings. It seems like programmers did not test the game at high populations because the game begins losing complexity as you get up in the millions. Also, once arcologies are invented the game becomes less realistic. After all, there is no such thing as an arcology. Anyhow, the game was very fun, keeping my attention for quite some timeMon, 14 Jan 2008 14:44:59 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1814&iddiary=3597https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1814SimCity 2000 is a simulation city building and planner game. It is the second version of the Maxis original hit SimCity. The object of the game is to build a successful city with a large population. Obstacles include a lack of fund and disasters (Riots, Earthquakes, Floods, etc.). The player must zone land (industrial, residential, commercial) and add buildings to meet "the sims" needs. This includes power, water, transportation, social services, etc. SimCity 2000 was a game that I loved to watch my father play growing up. After playing the more recent SimCity3000 and SimCity4 I decided to go back in time and give SimCity2000 a try. The first difference I noticed was the lower quality graphics. The game was released in 1993 so I decided to let that slide and proceed. I played the easy mode which allotted me 20000 dollars to play with. The medium mode gave 10000 and the hard mode gave 10000 that I would have to eventually pay back to the bank. As I played I became clear what worked and what did not. I quickly realized the two most important things were power and water. With out these things no people moved to my city. Power was the most frustrating thing because the plants cost about a forth of my entire budget. Once I had power, water, and roads, I looked at the zoning meter to see what zone was in demand. Industrial was in high demand so I began building. A problem that arose was determining how far away from a road could I zone and still have it build. After lots of trial and error three became the magic number. I continued by creating six by six zoned regions surrounded by road, adding different zones as the meter indicated. My population grew to a meager 1000 people when things started to fall apart. Apparently cities need police, fire, schools, parks, etc. By the time I realized this I was out of money. I had to wait for years to go by as I acquired tax money to build the necessary buildings. This part of the game was not fun so I decided to take out a loan. I was unaware that this was the worst idea only leading me further into debt to pay off the loan. I decided to simply start a new city. I had gotten the gist of the game and was ready to build a metropolis. After a while the game became quite fun as “gifts” were given for achieving a population goal. For instance, at 5000 people I got a mayors house, and at 10000 I got a city hall. It took me about an hour to get up to roughly 50000 people. At this point I had learned a lot about the game. People really annoyed me constantly complaining about high taxes. Because my city continued to grow I simply ignored them. Traffic also was a pain to deal with. I was forced to add railways which were a pain because I had to demolish existing stuff to add them. Eventually subways were invented so I could add them underground which made it a lot easier and more fun. The game, although simple, was fun and kept me interested. I found myself playing the game and ignoring all the flashing Instant Messenger boxes at the bottom of my screen.Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:31:27 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1814&iddiary=3594