Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=675https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3077SUMMARY Crackdown is an open-world third person shooter/driving game, similar to Grand Theft Auto 3. However, it also has strong platforming elements, because the protagonist has the ability to jump great heights. GAMEPLAY Crackdown has almost no plot. The player is a super-agent in a city overrun by criminals. The goal is to kill all the leaders of the various gangs terrorizing the city. That's it. Almost the only person who speaks in the entire game is a disembodied narrator. At first this bothered me, but after a while I got used to it. Playing Crackdown is like playing Space Invaders or Pac-Man; the lack of a story just means there is nothing to get in the way of gameplay. The jumping mechanic is really fun in Crackdown. You jump around the city to travel quickly, you jump in fights to hit enemies behind cover or to quickly get behind some cover yourself. Jumping really is a core mechanic of Crackdown, and it is the main thing that distinguishes Crackdown from other third-person shooters. An odd consequence of this is that I found myself almost never using cars, because they're just plain slower than jumping around the city.Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:55:19 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3077&iddiary=5737https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2774GAMEPLAY This play session I noticed that although the game comes with a multi-player mode, it is actually more fun to just pass off the controller in single-player. I don't think this is a game that lends itself well to competitive gamepley; when I see a big object on my friend's screen, I want to root for him to collect the object, not try to impede his progress. The game is just too fun and silly to take any kind of competition seriously. The single-player campaign has a really nice flow because the objects you roll up just keep getting bigger and bigger as the levels progress. I started out rolling up thumbtacks and legos, and now I'm rolling up cars and houses. It really makes me want to progress in the game because I am really curious what the biggest objects in the game are going to be. I think this is a great example of a game that may not have had the biggest budget, and certainly doesn't have the best graphics, but the designers still find ways to make the player feel constantly impressed because of the way the challenges are structured. DESIGN The core gameplay mechanic in Katamari is very innovative; I can't think of another game where the core mechanic is rolling up objects. I think the mechanic succeeds because there are always constant small goals the player is trying to achieve, like getting big enough to roll up an interesting object or the barrier to a new area. The core mechanic provides a very natural way of segmenting the levels based on your progression. In first-person shooters the player occasionally finds doors that will not open until they have killed every enemy in the room. This is an unnatural way to segment the level because it doesn't seem to make sense. But Katamary's segmentation based on rolling up the barriers to entering new areas seems very natural. Another thing Katamary does well is set and stick to a consistent tone. Although the game always has a surreal feel to it, it also has a light and silly feel that keeps the game fun. Every level sticks very faithfully to this tone. I think the designers realized that the core mechanic of the game is somewhat silly and nonsensical, and so decided to make the story, characters and levels the same way to keep consistency.Thu, 21 Feb 2008 02:19:01 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2774&iddiary=5399https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2774SUMMARY Katamari Damacy is a game where the player controls a tiny intergalactic prince who is rolling a sticky ball, or katamari, around various parts of the world in an attempt to stick as many things to the ball as possible in a limited amount of time. The primary mode of the game is single-player, but it also has a multi-player mode. GAMEPLAY Katamari Damacy is a weird, weird game. It is obvious that the game was translated to English rather poorly; it almost seems to be intentionally poor at points. The story is utterly ridiculous; basically the King of the Cosmos (god?) destroys all the stars in the universe on a drunken or possible just insane binge, and as his son the player must roll up items to make replacement stars. The crazy story, characters and levels actually manage to create a fun and funny mood, especially if the game is played with friends. I think the game does a really good job at being charmingly odd without ever crossing into jarringly odd. The gameplay is simple but incredibly fun. Basically as you roll up items the Katamari grows in size. Items are different sizes, and if your Katamari is smaller than an item it is trying to roll up, you simply bounce off. However, if you roll up items much smaller than your Katamari you don't grow fast enough, so you have to constantly be rolling up items that aren't too small and aren't too big. The interesting thing about the gameplay is that the player is always setting small goals for themselves inside a level. I might see something funny like a bear balancing on a ball, and decide that I want to grow big enough to roll up that bear.Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:47:01 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2774&iddiary=5188https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2173GAMEPLAY This time I played single player, and I had a lot of fun playing with familiar characters from other Nintendo games. Although perhaps not a proper narrative, I still felt more connected to the characters in this game than other fighting games, because I have fond childhood memories of most of them (I admit, some of the characters are too obscure even for me to recognize). One nice thing about the game is how trivial death seems. There is no way to die on screen (most fighting games have extreamly gruesome on-screen deaths where one character pulls out another character's spleen and feeds it to him or something), you only die by being thrown off the platform. When you die, all that happens is that your character losses 1 "life" and then reappears with full health at the top of the screen. I feel that in this way the game sends the message that mistakes are ok, everyone losses sometime, and that you can still continue playing and having fun after loosing a battle. I can't really stress enough how comfortable and friendly this game is compared to every other fighting game ever. DESIGN I think the friendly mood this game sets is a really cool innovation in fighting games. One of the ways that mood is set is by having cartooney, fun characters that video gamers associate with their childhoods. The items are also generally funny and friendly (poke-balls, flowers, paper fans) instead of traditional "weapons". The reward structure also contributes to the friendly mood. When a player wins a match they are treated to a nice victory screen where the other characters applaud them, but that's about the limit of their reward. When you lose a match it doesn't seem very bad becasue you basically forget all about it as soon as the next match starts.Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:21:36 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2173&iddiary=4319https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2173SUMMARY Super Smash Brothers is a fighting game that features popular characters from the Nintendo franchise. It can be played either single-player or multi-player with up to 4 players. GAMEPLAY The first thing one notices about any video game is the visuals, and Super Smash is no exception. Super Smash has a cartooney visual theme, like many Nintendo 64 games (Super Mario 64 for example). This theme is a pretty noticable contrast to basically any other fighting game I have played, which are dominated by things like blood, cleavage, loud rock music, etc. I noticed that this theme sets a much more friendly and less competitive mood than most fighting games. One thing this mood allows is more relaxed and enjoyable social interactions. I played multi-player against a player much better than me, but I still had lots of fun because of the sheer ridiculousness of the game. Also, the fact that it is a 4-player game, and the fact that rounds are short so it is easy to take turns, make it possible for many people to play the game at once. Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:21:19 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2173&iddiary=4317https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1856--Spoiler Warning!-- GAMEPLAY The game has followed the same basic gameplay pattern in the last hour as it did the hour before, but the level of fun has not diminished. I've caught a bit more of the story this time, but I still feel that while playing the game the story is largely irrelevant; the action definitely takes center stage. I think what makes the game so fun are the numerous small victories you win while progressing through a level. Every time you clear a building, or get past a tough group of soldiers, or in any way overcome a challenge, the word "checkpoint" comes on screen and your game is saved. Every checkpoint you hit feels like you have made significant progress towards the end of the level. The checkpoints are frequent enough so that you never lose much progress when you die, so that even at the most frustrating points it is never much more than about 15 or 20 minutes between checkpoints. DESIGN Despite the fact that every level has the player doing basically the same thing (shoot enemies until you reach the end), the game still manages to feel varied. For one thing, the environments of the levels constantly change, from the urban Middle-Eastern cities to the Russian countryside. Also, new tools get introduced, like the ability to call in air strikes, that make individual levels seem very different, even though the basic gameplay is mainly the same. The tone of the gameworld is violent, very dangerous, and rather grim. The introductory sequence places the player in the shoes of a person who has been captured by the enemy. As the player is taken through a Middle-Eastern city, they see civilians being executed by enemy soldiers. Eventually it is revealed that the player is the former president of this country, and the sequence ends with the player's character being shot in the head. This sets the tone of the game, and is not the last time that a character controlled by the player dies (not GAME OVER dead, but "really" dead, that is the story continues after that character has died). Call of Duty is a very scripted game. There isn't much, if any, emergent complexity, so all of the challenges in the game must have been explicitly put in the game by the designers. I'd like to create a game that exhibits emergent gameplay for my own project, but I'm not sure if I will be up to the programming challenge.Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:50:40 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1856&iddiary=3679https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1856SUMMARY Call of Duty 4 is a first-person shooter where the player takes the role of an American or (depending on what level you are playing) British soldier in a fictional modern day (or perhaps near future?) conflict. The player progresses through a linear series of levels fighting alongside computer-controlled teammates. There is also an online mode, although this session was devoted to the single-player campaign. GAMEPLAY What struck me while playing through the very first level of this game was how much it reminded me of arcade rail shooters like Time Crisis. While Call of Duty is not a rail shooter, so you can theoretically go whichever direction you like in the level, it is obvious that the player is meant to follow their teammates. Going in any other direction leads you to nothing but dead ends. Although it felt restricting at first, this mechanism allows the game to present a well-paced narrative with specific exciting, almost movie-like action moments, and by the end of the first level it had ceased to bother me. To the contrary, by the second level I felt excited and involved in the action. While the gameplay was intense and gripping, and the environments seem rich, detailed and realistic, I never felt any particular connection to any of the characters. The computer-controlled characters are your typical military types, and I don't think I can remember the player-controlled characters uttering a single line of dialog. This doesn't necessarily get in the way of the gameplay, and playing through the levels is certainly fun and exciting despite this, but the sequences in-between the levels seem just like excuses to get back into the action. I'm not following the plot of the game particularly well, from my point of view I'm pretty much just alternating between killing generic Russians and killing generic Middle-Easterners. A simple plot has its advantages, though. Midway through my play session a few friends came over and were watching me play, and it took them no time at all to deduce the general plot. They may not have known the characters names (neither, I admit, do I) but they were still able to enjoy the game for its sheer action, and offer me advice on how to tackle the particularly tough parts of the levels (throw a grenade, go through the other door, etc.). In general, I had a great time playing this game. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:48:29.)Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:47:48 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1856&iddiary=3645