Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=690https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3182GAMEPLAY I found out I can Upgrade my ships with money and special points received from missions and from objects hidden all over the environment. This is always a good thing to put in a game. It gave me choices; I could upgrade my favorite plane. Its nice to be able to improve my planes fighting capabilities. Many of the missions give the option of using a turret to take out enemies. This is cool because if I got bored with the dog-fighting or my plane had low health, I could land at a nearby turret on the ground of on the blimp, and keep fighting. The turrets have different weapons, making the shooting less monotonous as it sometimes did. The battles with enemies weren’t very different. I would follow a guy, shoot him down, then repeat. There wasn’t much strategy either, just dodge when being shot at and get close behind enemies and shoot until they blew up. Maybe since the game is so easy, it doesn’t force me to come up with better battle tactics. The race missions were a change of pace and a chance to earn extra money. They weren’t hard but I could try to beat my own time so there was a reason to play tracks again. With future upgrades or a new plane I could get a better time, so that gives me a reason to come back eventually. DESIGN The level design was smart. The worlds are open and give the player the feeling of freedom. To encourage exploration, the designers added hidden rewards all over the levels. The player also has the freedom to start the story missions whenever they want , or do side quests. This lets the player move through the story at their own pace. The designers added lots of stuff to increase total game play time. The hidden objects require the player to search the entire level for them if they want to get more points for upgrading planes. The optional races have a best time record that players can try to beat. The planes ability to upgrade will keep the player occupied, even after they have finished the game’s story missions. The multiplayer adds a huge amount of game time. The game has added humor and lessened the violence so it could reach a broader audience. There isn’t the feeling of bloodlust that a pirate would normally convey. In fact, Nathan seems like a kind and easy going guy. This lightens the mood of the game, which could just as easily be dramatic and serious. When a plane is destroyed, the pilot doesn’t die, he just ejects out with a parachute, so the player doesn’t have to feel guilty about killing anybody. In reality, ejecting to safety probably wouldn’t happen very much and the goal of both pilots is usually to kill the other, not just incapacitate them.Thu, 06 Mar 2008 02:52:04 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3182&iddiary=5958https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3182SUMMARY Crimson Skies is an aerial combat game starring Nathan, a witty sky pirate and the leader of a small group of fellow treasure hunters. After a bad night of gambling, Nathan finds himself without his heavily armored blimp which he uses as a base of operations. With the help of his friend Betty, they take it back by force. With his crew, Nathan is in search of riches and a secret weapon developed by a friend of his. GAMEPLAY Most of the game’s missions are dog-fights with other planes. These fights are interesting and it was fun to see the enemy plane burst into flames when I shot them. It was kind of hard to keep the enemies on the screen though and all the turning and weaving around sometimes caused me to lose track of where I was and where the enemy went. It can be pretty hard to hit enemies with the machine gun, but it was rewarding when they did hit, with all the smoke and sparks. I found out the hard way that the planes can stall if flown strait up. Luckily, my engines started back up in time to avoid falling into a cluster of jagged rocks. I was surprised by the amount of fear I actually had when realized I was headed toward my doom. All of it plus the narrow escape was intense and made the planes seem more real. Based on the size of the hangar in the plane selection screen, there are more than a dozen types of planes to choose from. The planes are very different and can change the game play a lot. My first plane had a fast shooting machine gun with following missiles, a good plane for longer distance battles. The second plane had a very strong slow gun, and a shotgun as the secondary weapon, which is very unusual. The second plane was also faster than the first, but weaker. I went with the second one, mostly because I wanted to try out the shotgun.Thu, 06 Mar 2008 02:51:08 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3182&iddiary=5956https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2871GAMEPLAY The wii-mote in a variety of ways in these games. Many of the games are first person shooters with a plunger gun that is far too easy. Another game had me swing the wii-mote and release to send a cow on a chain flying. Some games weren’t actually fun, they just showed off an aspect of the wii-mote, like a game were all I did was shake the wii-mote up and down. It wasn’t fun, it just hurt at the end. Imagine my horror when not long after there was another game with this simple, tedious gameplay. Within the few hours I played Raving Rabbids I think I got most of what I can out of it, other than trying to get the high score on all the games. This game is best the first time around, but many of the games are not worth playing more than a couple times. There are some good ones that have a high replay value, like one where I drew the shapes of food as close as possible to the outline on the screen. The point is this game is short but sweet. DESIGN I think the developers made this game with a certain kind of player in mind. They wanted to appeal to a wider audience so they made the games easy to understand, fast, and real attention grabbers. They tried to make it so the player didn’t have to commit any time in learning the controls or starting a new game, which was good for more casual gamers who might only want a short game session. Unfortunately, what this game gained with this design, it lost in depth and replay ability. Once I got past the bells and whistles, I found that many games were overly simple. Gameplay was not the focus on many of this minigames, which shows that the target audience was not skilled, experienced gamers, but people new to games and young kids. The reward system in the single player mode was also aimed at keeping people who aren’t normally as interested in games playing for at least a couple hours. Every couple of games I would unlock new costumes for Rayman to wear, which is nice and good for a laugh, but doesn’t really affect the gameplay at all. Every five games or so I would win a plunger that Rayman stuck to the wall to make the next step in a latter to an open window in his prison cell. This instantly showed me the main goal of the game and how far I was to reaching it. But I don’t get why Rayman didn’t just stand on one plunger, take one below that and put it above, get on that one, and repeat the process until he reached the window. He could have escaped with just two plungers! Oh well, I guess Rayman isn’t that smartThu, 21 Feb 2008 01:57:16 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2871&iddiary=5371https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2871SUMMARY Raving Rabbids is a party game, much like Mario Party, and consists of a couple dozen minigames. This one is different though; The games are played with the wii-mote, some better than others. The main character is Rayman, and in the story mode he is captured by a strange society of rabbits who make him participate in the minigames for their amusement. Rayman must win all the minigames to escape his prison. GAMEPLAY The game starts quickly and got me playing within minutes. I was always curious what the next minigame would be, and they were always a surprise. Most of the minigames are very bizarre, and very funny. Almost half the fun of the minigames was just seeing the start and end of the games, because they were so interesting and unique. In one game, I poked the exposed brain of a rabbit to make him do one of four things. The goal was to remember what part of the brain did what and to poke it in the right order. The game was simple and challenging, and the results were hilarious! The rabbit would be screaming, or bashing himself in the head with a club, or his eyes would pop out. When the game’s time limit was close to running out, it got frantic and the rabbit was spasming like he was having a seizure. It was so wrong and funny at the same time. That game took me a few tries to beat because I just began hitting the different parts of the brain as fast as I could, laughing my pants off.Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:56:05 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2871&iddiary=5369https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2567GAMEPLAY The units I had at my disposal were very customizable. New legs, arms, weapons, and more could be bought from a store with the money I earned. My squad gained experience and leveled up from destroying enemies, increasing their skill with weapon types, dodge chance, etc. There was an arena in the towns that I could enter and bet money on. It was with this that I figured out how to gain as much money as I wanted early on in the game. All a did was pick an opponent I could beat a lot and win a decent amount of money and in 15 min. I had so much money I bought all the best stuff for my units and had plenty left over. The story line isn’t the greatest, it just ties the missions together as best it can. There’s some evil, super-powerful guy who “killed” the love of your life and you want to get revenge. There’s not much else. The other characters in your squad have even less background. They have some personality, but it’s not enough to make me care about them. There one other thing that’s been bugging me about this game. The characters look like they were taken from a French fashion magazine. They’re all really pale, long and skinny, and they have this pompous, aloof look on their faces. Not the kind of people I think of fighting in a war. DESIGN The fact that I could kind-of cheat and get a lot of money quick and easy was a big flaw in the game. The value of the money to me in terms of effort needed to get it was near nothing and I could have got much more satisfaction from the money rewards of the missions and from buying new gear for my units. They should have put a limit as to how much money I could earn in the arena or something like that, in order to prevent this. I didn’t like the four life bar system very much with little control over which bar damage went to. It just decreases the skill of combat and increases randomness. I would have preferred one life bar or more control over the what bar is damaged. At the start of the game I thought I would specialize each of my units by giving them certain parts and weapons for a certain job, like long range attacks or close combat, damage absorbing units, but the game doesn’t provide parts that allow for much specializing. Usually, there is just a certain part that is the “best “ part of its type and there isn’t any reason not to get it. This led to all my units having the same gear. That’s just boring. They should have made parts that were meant for a fast, agile unit, and parts for a slow tough unit, and so on. At least then there would be some variation in my units.Sat, 09 Feb 2008 02:27:56 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2567&iddiary=4847https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2567SUMMARY Front Mission is a Turn-based strategy game, like Advance Wars or Final Fantasy Tactics, in which the player moves their units around on a map that is a grid of squares and attacks enemy units. The protagonist, Royd Clive, was a in the army but left after he lost his fiancée in the war going on with some other country, but gets his chance for revenge when he is offered to lead a group of mercenaries against the enemy nation. By the way, this war is fought with giant humanoid robots, like Armored Core. The game consists of a two campaigns( one on either side of the war), and the player’s team of mercs does a series of missions for cash and, most of the time, payback. GAMEPLAY The combat system was pretty simple, but different to what I am used to in a couple ways. The attack types were split into three categories: melee, short and long. Melee and short attacks required that I be right next to my enemy to use, and long range attacks have ranges that vary from weapon to weapon. Also, melee and short weapons allowed the defending unit to counter attack the attacking unit with their own weapons. Some weapons had a certain number of times they fired when I attacked. The more times the weapon fired, the less damage that weapon did per shot, on average. This wouldn’t matter that much except that each unit (excluding a very few) had four life bars: the legs together, each arm, and the torso. When damage is dealt to a unit, it is dealt randomly to one of the life bars. So a weapon that fires more would have its damage spread out among the four life bars generally. When the legs life bar was brought to zero, that unit could only move half the distance it had before. When the one of the arms’ life bars was taken down, weapons on that arm could not be used. Finally, when the torso’s life bar was depleted, the unit exploded, making it the most important life bar.Sat, 09 Feb 2008 02:26:34 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2567&iddiary=4844https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2264GAMEPLAY The longer I play, the bigger the levels get and the stronger my gun gets. Its a good progression and I like lifting stuff I couldn't before. The first boss battle was fun and not too easy. All I had to do was shoot him a bunch, no trick to it. I was a little tired of the story mode so I tried the edit mode. It's pretty good. I especially liked the option of having no gravity, so I made a surreal house with lots of stuff suspended in the air. There was some levels that had restrictions to them like not breaking to many objects or not making too much noise. These game variants didn't make the game any more enjoyable. They were just annoying and limited the chaos I could cause. DESIGN This game is obviously aimed at a younger audience, with such a wimsical mood, and is extreamly mild for a shooter, but I guess that's exspected from a game on the Wii. The game doesn't force the player to complete certain quests to finish levels. It tells the player how many watts they need and leaves the rest to them. At the same time there are definate steps reached in each level, which are when the capture gun reaches new levels. When a new level is reached, the possible places to search increase untill the player is not limited by any objects. Power ups were added to give more strategy, like learning the best time to use certain ones. There were a lot of aspects of this game that give the player a reason to replay the missions and give skilled or bored people something to do. First, there's the time trail and other variants added to the story levels. These optional modes make a new goal for the player to acheive and really tests the player's skill. Second, there's the editor for all those creative aspiring game designers. Combine that with the online map sharing and there is sure to be some clever maps to download and play, plus theres always new ones being made. As I said before, they added a gravity modifier that increases the diversity of player's maps. I didn't like the layout of the turorial at the start of the game. It went really slow and taught each aspect of the game one at a time. It also asked me if I wanted to take the tutorial every time. There was about ten of these, and there were loading screens inbetween all of them. They could have just had just one tutorial that taught the player everything in order, not segmented, instead of saying "success!" after every little thing (I'm not sure if it said "success!" but it was something like that).Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:26:54 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2264&iddiary=4322https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2264SUMMARY Elebits is a first-person shooter for the Wii. You play as Kai, a young boy who feels neglected by his parents. They're too busy studying a tiny magical species called elebits, which power all electrical devices in the world. When a big storm takes out all the power, you must use a special capture gun to harness the power of the elebits that infest your house to regain power. GAMEPLAY The gameplay is easy to learn and simple. You shoot the elebits to gain watts. When the watts get high enough, appliances become active. Use them and they release power elebits, that increase the strength for the capture gun so it can pick up heavier objects. Each level has a time limit and the goal is to get the highest wattage before the time runs out. It is very remenicient of Katamari Damaci. The levels aren't too hard to pass, but do require some skill to get a higher score, and has good replay value. It gives me an evil pleasure to ransack the house and catch the fleeing little elebits. Everything in the house can be picked up, if you power up your gun enough. There are some problems with the game. sometimes when I moved a smaller object it would push a larger object and block a door or a drawer, then i wouldn't be able to open it untill my gun got upgraded. Another problem is when there is an object that requires that I put something in it, like bread in a toaster. The bread has to be the proper orientation to go in the toaster, which can be preatty hard. Also, opening doors can sometimes get frustrating. If you don't twist the Wii-mote right the door won't open and sometimes when it does, the door bounces back closed. Objects can prevent a door from opening as well, even small ones. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:32:00.)Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:18:41 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2264&iddiary=4311https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1878SUMMARY This game is about a plucky young girl named Jade, who lives in a small yet futuristic town on the planet Hillys. The planet is under attack by the Domz, an evil group of monsters from space. Jade must defend her home and all the poor orphans that live there from alien bombardment. How? By taking pictures with her camera, of course! And beating up things with her staff. GAMEPLAY The game starts with a few short cutscenes about the war with the Domz to give some backround info, then gets right to the fighting. After the first five minutes I had mastered the simple combat system. Aim in the direction of the bad guys and push the x-button a bunch is all it takes, but I guess it is the start of the game, so it should be easy. I was joined by a pig-man ally of mine named Pey'j. together we fought a boss that required I use a charge attack to break its defenses. All that was the intro to the battle system, so I had hoped that enemies afterwards would pose more of a challenge, but all the enemies I fought could be dispatched quickly by the x-button combo over and over. I used Jade's dodge move on a couple enemies to try it out, but it was never actually needed. Pey'j could help Jade againts some monsters with a super ground pound, making those baddies even easier to destroy. I had more fun with Jade's camera, which is used to take pictures of any animal species you find on your adventures. You get rewards for every new species you find, so I liked searching the pretty fantasy environments like glowing caves and and rocky islands for all the litte buggers. Some required a trick to get a good shot of them, and others (like a spongy section of ground) didn't seem like animals. The camera had to be zoomed to the right distance for an acceptable shot, increasing the difficulty. Even the bosses can be photographed, giving you a hefty bonus if you manage to capture them on film. Its a nice touch and I wouldn't mind seeing more games with this enjoyable distraction.Tue, 15 Jan 2008 01:16:29 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1878&iddiary=3689