Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=705https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3130Final Gamelog Part 2: Gameplay: I played the further into the main game of Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 and I found that the level got much more complex and that new elements were constantly being added. This had both good effects and bad effects. On the plus side the game was able to remain relatively fresh and challenging. On the bad side the more complex and bigger the levels got the harder the game was to control. It was mostly because the entire level could not fit on the screen and you had to tap the sides of the screen in order to scroll over the rest of the level. This made it much easier to keep track of mini Mario’s and mad it much harder to see the overall picture of the stage. In addition it was harder to control when events speed up because the touch screen was not always entirely accurate or responsive. Despite these shortcomings I actually had a better time playing the later levels and started becoming much more addicted. The addiction I feel was related to each stage being short and moderately challenging. I really like that the stages were brief because I usually play the DS when I am waiting for something, like for a class to start. Consequently I like it when I can actually play a decent portion of the game without having to dedicate a huge amount of time to it or without having to worry too much about quitting it. Also the fact that the levels were not too hard (unless I was trying for a gold medal) kept me playing because I was challenge, but I still had the feeling that each level was doable and I was never very frustrated. I also played with the level editor and Wi Fi. First, I discovered that there was a very large amount of unique stages to be downloaded online and I well I didn’t actually play many I feel that the feature will come in handy after I finish the regular levels. As for the level editor I found that it was fairly easy to use and had pretty good results. It seemed you could make a near infinite number of possible levels and you could play test the level with a push of a button. On the downside however, you could only save a small amount of puzzles and if you don’t really have anyone to share the level with it really isn’t much fun to play your own level. However, regardless of any downsides, both the level editor and the Wi Fi are good additions to the game. Design: One of Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2’s best aspects of design is its ability to create a learning experience. Most evidently, there are new elements being added all the time (like new obstacles) which keep you constantly having to learn and adjust in order to achieve your goal. On top of this the learning curve is not too steep. For example they usually don’t throw more than one thing at you at a time. Also after you are introduced to something new you are usually presented with a basic challenge of the new element first and then once you are used to the element, the challenge level is raised. Furthermore the game offers a tutorial function which you can always reference if you ever forget what a particular obstacle does. This game not only keeps forcing you to learn it also does a very good job of facilitating the learning Linked to the game as a learning experience is the many ways in which the game challenges you. Most basically you are challenged to get at least one mini Mario to the goal, but the game offers many more optional challenges. For one there are many different ways to raise your score, like never stopping the mini Marios. These many challenges to receiving a high score create somewhat of a proving ground for the better player to demonstrate their skill. Also it is good that the extra challenges are optional because players who don’t care that much about the score can still move on to the next level without having to be stuck on the same frustrating level forever. In this way it is your choice if you want to take on the impossible challenge of getting a gold medal or if you just want to focus on the basics and see what else the game has to offer. This makes the game desirable to a wide audience. Of course in a way the game does encourage you to take on the more difficult challenges because you are rewarded for completing them. Overall the game offers many types of rewards which help to motivate and engage players. These rewards include rewards of glory like earning medals and high score, rewards of access like unlocking a mini game, and rewards of facility like earning more mini Marios to use in the boss fight. The level design function is also obviously a very strong asset to the game. There are a wide variety of things to use and an almost endless amount of possible level. The mechanics of the level design could be better, but the DS touch screen does really help because you don’t have to drag and drop things, you can just tap where you want them to be placed. Furthermore the level design does not only spark creativity, but also adds a huge amount of replay value. The Wi Fi features also add a huge amount of replay value to the game. The fact that you can download and share levels adds great replay value to the game and an additional social aspect to the game. Along with this you can say that the social aspect also adds a competitive aspect to the game, because people can compete to see who can make or pass the hardest stages Finally the graphics and the sounds are a strong point of the game simply because they are executed well. The Graphic are very bright, clear cut, and good looking in general. The sound is also very crisp and good quality. Neither the sounds nor the graphics are very original, but they do a very good job of capturing the atmosphere of Mario.Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:21:43 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3130&iddiary=5819https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3130Final Game Log: Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: (Nintendo Ds) Part 1: Summary: Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 is a puzzle game in which you use the Nintendo DS touch screen to guide mini Marios to the goal. All the action takes place on a single screen, which contains an environment of obstacles and a number of mini Marios. You use the stylus to start and stop the mini Marios as well as to alter their surrounding environment. The goal is to safely guide the mini Marios to the exit (a door somewhere in the stage). You get more points for completing the goal fast, with all the mini Marios still alive, without ever stopping the mini Marios, and for getting the mini Marios through the exit in a chain. Gameplay: I basically just got this game because it was a Mario game, but when I played the game I found an experience very different from any Mario game I had played before. At first I was a little disappointed because the game seemed simple and not very lively. After all, each level was only one screen and all the player really did was start and stop the Marios. That’s when I realized that I couldn’t really expect this game to be like a typical fast action Mario adventure, and I started to see it for the unique puzzler that it really was The first few stages really were not very impressive and I felt bored, yet it still felt good to get gold medals on my first try. Once the learning curve ended however I began to feel the opposite affect; I was now much more involved and interested in the game, but I was frustrated with not being able to get gold medals. I soon realized that the game was deceptively difficult. On one hand it wasn’t to hard to get past a stage because I only needed to save on mini Mario, but on the other had it was very hard to raise my score. The challenge stemmed from the fact of having to strategize quickly and having to multi task. The strategy came from the fact that I had to figure out the best route for the mini Mario’s to go. Simply figuring out the most efficient route was not very hard; however, the fact that I was being timed made me much more anxious to move quickly. This often resulted in me failing a stage because I had started moving the mini Mario’s before I had a good path planned for them. On top of this was the fact that there were multiple mini Marios and many obstacles and enemies in the stage. I constantly ended up with one a broken mini Mario because I had been focusing on another mini Mario in a different part of the stage. Overall after playing the main game for a while I found my mood going from bored to flirting with frustration. I also played one boss battle and one mini game. To be honest I was not very impressed by either of the levels. The mini game was basically a pop goes the weasel variant which didn’t have much depth. It seemed like the designers just put the mini game just to make it seem like the game had more variety then it really did. In the boss battle basically you had to rotate a cannon to avoid falling objects and shoot mini Mario’s at Donkey Kong. Similar to the mini game the boss battle was not very deep and also seemed to be trying to add some action packed variety. In contrast to the mini game however the boss fight was a lot harder and had more frustrating controls. Essentially the boss battle and the mini games seemed to have nothing to do with the core game elements, which resulted in it seeming like you could master the essential gameplay and still suck at the boss fights and mini games.Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:20:56 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3130&iddiary=5818https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2864Game log #4: Wii Sports Part 2 Gameplay 2 The first thing I played my second time around was tennis. Like the last games I didn’t understand it well at first and didn’t really like it, but the game did grow on me. I definitely have to say that tennis is the simplest game because the gameplay mechanic is based almost entirely on the timing of the hit. After tennis I played boxing. To me boxing was a bit of a disappointment. This is probably because I knew that my brother liked the boxing game and I was expecting more. For the most part I felt that I was just flailing around and that most of my movements were not registered by the sensor. One aspect I did like was that the avatar would lean back or to the side if I did the same in real life. The last new game I played was golf. I thought the golf game was okay, but I felt that the swing usually wasn’t natural, especially when putting. Of course that could just be because I’m a bad golfer and my natural swing wasn’t good to start off with. After playing the new games I played some mini games related to all the games. These were actually very entertaining. My favorite game was the homerun derby, mostly because I would compete against my brother and my cousins to see who could hit the most home runs. I also liked the bowling games, especially the one where you have to knock down a huge triangle of pins. For some reason there is something very satisfying about wiping out a lot of very orderly somethings, like a fresh piece of bubble wrap. It’s not surprising that my favorite mini games also happen to be my favorite full games, but I also like the tennis mini game and boxing mini games, which surprised me because I didn’t care much for their full games. One thing I noticed was that some controls seems oddly unsatisfying simply because the Wii remote just couldn’t replicate the feel of using the equipment or playing the sport. Also I feel that the lightness of the Wii remote made some sports like baseball a little dangerous because at times I would move my arms very fast and I was afraid of throwing it out. This is similar to the way that you shouldn’t throw a tennis ball or a waffle ball too hard. Of course I wouldn’t really want a heavy controller either because that would just cause more problems. Probably the most notable thing I did during my second session was to play the game with other people. Playing with other people really opened up the game play possibilities and I enjoyed the competition. In addition I enjoyed playing with people who don’t usually play videogames, like my parents. Overall the game is fun to play alone, but it is a lot more fun to play in a group, even if you have to take turns. Design: One of the games biggest assets is that it is so simple. This simplicity adds greatly to the emergent and social qualities of the game. Obviously it adds to the social aspect of the game because it is open to a very wide audience. More than any other game in recent time Wii Sports has the ability to attract even the most unlikely gamer and this no doubt has something to do with that fact that the game is so quick and easy to play. Furthermore, because the audience is larger there are more opportunities for social play. For example, I wouldn’t play soul caliber with my parents because it is just too complicated; I doubt they could even do single combo. However, I would and have played Wii Sports with my parents because it is very easy to learn and play is very straightforward and short. It also probably helped that the games in Wii sports exist in real life as well. In addition to appealing to a wide audience the emergent qualities of the game also contribute to socialization. This is because any game can play out a nearly infinite amount of ways so that the game feels fresh each time, which adds to its replay value, but also adds to its value as a competitive game. The emergent qualities allow the competition to create large gameplay branches and provide unpredictable and intense gameplay. Almost any game is more enjoyable when it is competitive and competing against someone is certainly a way to socialize. To sum it up, the simplicity of Wii Sports leads to it being a very social game. On the flip side Wii sports can at times be too simple. It is so simple that in some cases there isn’t much way to get good at the game. It is so easy to play that even if you get better you are still only slightly better than a person you has just started the game and therefore chance can have too strong an effect on a competition. This is great for the beginner because they are not bullied around by an experienced player, but if you are an experience player it sucks to lose to a newbie. Also Most of the games are fairly short and don’t have a lot of depth to them. For example, in baseball you can’t play more than three innings, you can’t switch pitcher, and you can’t field. This is expected because of the arcade like nature of the game, but if you want a serious game then you would need to look elsewhere. The control scheme of the game has many unique qualities. For one, the control scheme actually factors into the games audience. I would argue that people are attracted to the novelty of the motion sensors controls. In a way this novelty makes Wii sports seem less of a traditional game and essential all players start off with the same amount of experience (as far as controls go). Because of this less experienced players are sometimes less intimidated or put off by the game, and sometimes are attracted to it just to see how the new technology works. Another unique aspect of the controls is that there is more then one way to perform the same action. For example, if you were simply playing as instructed you would swing your controller like a bat to hit a baseball, but if you didn’t have enough room or simply were too tired you could just flick the controller forward and you would get the same result. I would argue that this is a good feature of the gameplay because it allows you to play as you wish and allows for gameplay variation. You could say that not swinging the bat like a real bat would be cheating, but if you really thought that you could just stipulate that the bat has to be swung like a real bat in your particular competition. One neat feature is that all the characters in the games can be Miis from your system. This adds a much more of a personal touch and somewhat of a story to a game which makes players more attached to it. Most evidently you are more attached when playing the Mii that is supposed to represent you because in some way you feel like you are the avatar. In addition when you are playing baseball all the players will be your systems Miis if you have enough of them. This engages the player much more than just generic characters would because now you know all the Miis and they all have there own personalities and backgrounds. For example, when you hit a home run with a random Mii who cares, but when you hit one with a sibling or friends Mii it has a lot more meaning. It’s hard to resist the urge to tell someone that their Mii was 4 for 4 with an out of the park homerun. Sometimes you almost feel like your friends really are on your team. This could just be my experience, but the fact that you can have custom characters definitely adds to the game and more games should make use of the Miis. Wii Sports also has an interesting reward system that does some good and some bad things. The good is that you get to earn points and gain rank. This in conjunction with being able to set records keeps you attached to the game and gives you incentive to keep playing on your own. However the bad part is that you can lose points too. For example, the more I played baseball, the more ridiculously challenging the computer players got which caused me to lose more games. This was very frustrating because I would lose points in my overall ranking. This sucked even more in bowling because I could lose points just for not bowling as well as my previous games. This takes some fun out of the game because it causes the player to worry about loosing rank, which detracts from the simple lighthearted nature of the game. An easy way to remedy this would be to allow the option of gaining points or staying even, but not to allow the option of losing points so that players are not discouraged from playing.Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:42:12 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2864&iddiary=5344https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2864Game log #4: Wii Sports Part 1 Summary: Wii Sports comes packed with every Wii console and is sort of a demo of what the Wii controllers can do. It consists of bowling, boxing, baseball, tennis, and golf and some mini games under each. Each game relies heavily on motion controls and uses them to simulate the particular sport. All the games are very simple and easy to play. Gameplay: Before playing Wii Sports I watched my brother play, which gave me a pretty good impression of what to do and how stupid I was going to look doing it. In addition to that the game seems to give pretty good instructions on how to play but for some reason despite watching my brother and reading the instructions it still took some practice to get the controls right. I suspect that it is partly because the Wii controllers are so novel to me. For example, with a traditional controller I just have to memorize the control layout and then I’m pretty much able to control the game well; however with Wii Sports I couldn’t just know the button layout. I also had to get used to how fast to move, how much to move, and when to move. Moral of the story the unique controls of Wii Sports created a unique learning experience for me. The first game I played was baseball because real baseball is my favorite real life sport out of the choices available. At first I was a little discouraged because I had a lot of trouble timing my swing and couldn’t seem to strike a player out. Fortunately these problems were remedied quickly. My swing was able to improve quickly because the game would tell me if I swung too early or too late, which made it a lot easier to adjust than it would have been if I didn’t know. My Pitching also improved, but it turned out the main reason I couldn’t pitch well was because I hadn’t realized that you could pitch inside or outside. In addition my pitching improved when I realized that a flick of the wrist resulted in a much better pitch than a full arm swing. Ultimately I ended up having a lot of fun with it and I started to feel like a pretty good baseball player. After baseball I played bowling. Bowling was a lot easier than baseball and in some ways it was more fun. One thing that bowling had going for it was that I felt like my movements were more realistic. In baseball all I really had to do was flick the remote and I would swing or pitch, but in bowling I actually felt like I was going through the movement of throwing the ball. Of course another good thing about bowling was that it was not too realistic, as in I didn’t throw a gutter ball every time. Bowling was also particularly fun for me because it could be played multiplayer without needing another remote (which was good because my brother only had one remote). I had a good time competing against the rest of my family and this game was particularly good for playing against the less experienced video game players because all you really had to do was move like you were throwing the ball. In addition it was still fun for more experienced players because they could experiment with throwing the ball at different angles and with different spins. In the end bowling was a fun and simple game that could be played with the whole family.Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:41:30 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2864&iddiary=5342https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2455Game Log # 3 (Picross DS) - Part Two Game Play: The second time around I played multiplayer and tried out some of the other play modes Picross had to offer. Right off the bat I liked the multiplayer because you only need one game card to play most of the games. There were tree games that you could play with one card. All the games were a picross twist on old games. One was like pictionary, one was like hang man and one I don’t remember so it probably was not as fun. In the pictionary game one person would draw a picture and it would be translated into a picross puzzle – the other person had had to solve the picross puzzle up until they could guess what the picture was. You would think this game would be more of a turn based thing and that the person who drew the picture would have nothing to do while the other person solved it, but this was not the case. In some ways it was more fun to be the drawer because first you got to draw a picture and then you got to see how the other person was doing on the puzzle and you had the option of drawing on their screen. You had a lot of freedom to draw whatever you wanted and you could choose different colors. You could be nice and give the person hints and write them notes or you could be a jerk and draw stuff on the screen so that they couldn’t see the puzzles. One of my favorite things to do was to shade in the grid boxes or fill them with Xs, sometimes I used this to tell the people were to fill, but mostly I used it just to confuse them. The Hangman game had much of the same mechanic except for that each letter of the word had its own little puzzle and once you got enough letters done you could solve it. Solving the puzzles could also be fun because in order to solve it you had to write down what you though the answer was and the other person could accept or reject the answer. It was fun to reject all but the most specific answer, unless you were on the receiving end of the rejection. I also played the create a Picross mode which could be played in two ways. One way was just to make a picross puzzle that looked like something and the other way was to draw a picture which the game would then translate into a picross puzzle. The classic way was kind of hard because if you didn’t make a puzzle that was solvable, then the game would make it solvable and that would screw up the picture. The other way was easier and you could use color in drawing your picture but the puzzle translation usually didn’t look like the picture. It was kind of different from the regular game because the picture you drew is not really inherent in the puzzle, but you still get to see the original picture as a reward for solving the puzzle. Ultimately it was more fun just to use the second method because even thought the puzzle didn’t look right you had more freedom to draw whatever you wanted and didn’t have to worry about weather or not the picture made a solvable puzzle. Design: Picross has a very nice design which has both emergent and progressive aspects. When doing the game guide test you would immediately think this game was emergent because the key to solving the puzzles is having a strategy in which solve them. In addition there are a small amount of rules and many possible puzzles to create. However this game also has strong progressive aspects because the puzzles are specifically designed to have only one final solution. Potentially you could have a game guide for this game that just showed you the final answers to the puzzles and that would be similar to a walk through. Of course that would put all the fun out of the game, but it shows that this game is much more progressive than it first appears. This game does a good job of blending emergent and progressive aspects because you have to rely on strategy and you could make an almost unlimited amount of puzzles, but the designers of the puzzle still have a lot of control over how difficult a puzzle is or what the puzzle ends up looking like. One of the games strongest assets is its amount of replay value. For one the game has a lot of built in puzzles but beyond that you can download a seemingly endless amount from the internet (for free). In addition you can make your own picross puzzles and if you want you can share them with others. The one draw back is that you can’t save many puzzles, but since they don’t take very long to create, most people wont be too attached to the puzzles or have qualms about deleting them. There are even a few action based mini games to keep you busy. They aren’t so amazing and it seems like the designers just wanted to add some light action and additional rewards for solving puzzles, but they still add more value to the game. And of course the multiplayer modes open up the tremendously amount of gameplay. Picross does not impress much on an aesthetic level but that could be a good thing. Sure the graphics won’t blow anyone away but the important thing is that the screens are simple and clear rather than cluttered with distractions and hard to read. If you wish you can change the background patterns for the puzzles, but in my opinion that just makes the screens harder to read and it’s often preferable to stick with the default patterns. The music takes the same simple approach as the graphics. There are only 3 songs to listen to (4 if you count turning the music off), but just like graphics, complicated music would not necessarily add to the game. The music in the game is very mellow and simple which is good because when trying to solve a puzzle you don’t want to get swept away by the music: In a way you almost want to be able to zone out the music or take it in without recognition so that you are not distracted. However, it is also important that the designers included more than one music track because even if you are not really paying attention to it, a single song playing over and over can slowly suck your soul away (are just annoy the crap out of you). The game also has satisfying sounds and animations for filling in the grid. Overall the games aesthetics are simple but effective. The game also makes good us of the DS’s features and ends up with a satisfying control scheme. For example, it is nice just to be able to fill out the puzzle using the touch screen. It is nice to be able to tap the square you want to fill and to drag the stylus if you want to fill in more than one in a row. The only draw backs were that it wasn’t very hard to accidentally click in the wrong box and if you wanted to switch to a different tool like the magnifying glass you had to tap it’s icon on the side of the screen. It would have been nice if you could cycle through them with the shoulder buttons (I actually just found out that you can use the d pad to change the tool, but you have to hold it down during the tools entire use). Even with a few slight fall backs the touch controls were very effective, especially compared to some of the online versions of this game. In addition the designers made good use of the upper screen by using it to show you the whole puzzle. This is very effective in the bigger puzzle in which the touch screen is usually focused on only one section of the overall puzzle. In addition to features unique to the DS this game also had some general features that were very beneficial to the gameplay. For one, the Xs were very effective for marking empty spaces or just for trying things without the risk of getting a penalty. Also the fact that numbers gray out when they are filled in is very useful because it reminds you of which sequences you have filled in and which ones you haven’t. Another aspect I like is that even though you are supposed to use the numbers and logic to solve the puzzles, you could potentially solve some of the puzzle just by looking at symmetry and figuring out what the rest of the picture should look like (this is sort of an artistic logic). Finally, the game does a good job of accommodating players of different difficulties. For one the game explains the rules very clearly and gives you some simple puzzles to ease you into the game and teach you some basic strategies. However if you are experience you can skip the instructions and go straight to the harder puzzles without any delay. In general the game just does a good job in upping the difficulty every few puzzles, which creates a nice challenge and learning experience. On top of this if the puzzle are getting too hard you can choose to get hints and if you fill in the wrong box the game will tell you, which is like an additional hint. Eventually you can get too many wrong but the game gives you a generous safety net. In this way you don’t really have to worry about losing, just about competing against the clock.Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:36:01 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2455&iddiary=4646https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2455Game Log # 3 (Picross DS) - Part One Summary: Picross DS is a rather unique puzzle game in which you fill in a grid of squares to form a picture. The grids vary in size from 5x5, 10x10 and 15x15 (at least as far as I’ve gotten). On the top and left side of the grid numbers are displayed that indicate how many squares should be filled in the corresponding column or row and in what order. For example 2 3 2 means that somewhere in that column you must fill in a sequence (meaning all squares connected) of 2 squares then 3 squares and then 2 squares again. There must be at least one space between each sequence, but you don’t know how many spaces are between each sequence or where each sequence starts. The challenge is to figure this out by comparing the numbers which correspond to the rows and the numbers which correspond to the columns in order to fill in the boxes logical. Once all the boxes are filled a picture is revealed and a short animation is played. Gameplay: My first time playing the game I didn’t really have any strategy and just followed the basic instructions, but as I continued the game I picked up on many little techniques that helped to solve the puzzles. It was fairly easy to get through the first few puzzles and I felt pretty good about myself until all of a sudden the puzzles doubled in size. I was defiantly intimidated by the change in size, but I soon found out that the difficulty level had not been raised too far. And shortly after that I found that the difficulty setting had been raised pretty high, and the first couple of puzzles were just to ease the transition. I had finished quite a few puzzles on level one and then decided that I would try level 2 because level one just consisted of puzzles which ended up being fruit and level two consisted of animal puzzles (which are obviously so much cooler). This is when I first encountered a 15x15 puzzles. If I thought I was intimidated by the 10x10 puzzles I really don’t know what I was thinking because these new puzzles were just down right scary. The puzzles were so big that I now had to use a zoom button so I could focus on specific sections of the puzzle. Of course my fear of these puzzles has since worn off, but it is clear that these puzzles do take more time than the puzzles of the first level and I had to use the quick save function if I didn’t have a good 15 to 20 minutes to work on the puzzles. The quick save function is good because it allows you to come back to the same puzzle, but it would be nice to have another save slot. Though, at least you can start another puzzle without erasing the quick save file, unlike some other games. One good thing about the bigger puzzles is that the end pictures look better and more like what you would expect from looking at the puzzle. In the smaller puzzles some of the pictures are really a stretch; I thought one was a penguin and it ended up being a pineapple. I also tried one puzzle in free mode that added another twist to the game. It worked the same as the other modes except for the game didn’t tell me if I made a mistake. At first I thought this was good because there would be no time added if I accidentally taped on the wrong square and so I wouldn’t have to be to careful with the stylus. Soon of course I found a mistake that I had made and I realized that I would not know when I made a mistake and therefore if I didn’t recognize it quickly I could end up doing the rest of the puzzle completely wrong. I also realized that sometimes when I was alerted of a mistake in the regular mode it would actually help me solve the rest of the puzzle. As a result of all this I was even more cautious and got less help from the computer so it actually took me more time to solve a puzzle on free mode, even though I couldn’t get any time penalties.Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:34:32 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2455&iddiary=4645https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2269Gamelog # 2 – part 2 (Super Mario 64) Gameplay: I’ve played Super Mario 64 two times now and I find that the more I play it the more I want to play it. At first I just figured I would play a few levels and then return the game to the library because I really don’t have enough time to play it, but I just can’t bring myself to return it. There is just something about the gameplay that makes Mario games so addictive and I don’t really know why, but I can hold testament to it. I would speculate that it definitely has something to do with collecting stars and achieving goal that are not too far out of reach. It seems similar to the satisfying feeling one gets when crossing something out on a to-do list. Of course there is also the atmosphere and the gameplay that are very important. Anyway, I’ll try to talk more about that later. This time around I entered a couple more worlds and played the first level for a second time. I was surprised at how much harder the second world was because I thought that I had gotten a handle of the controls. Something about the new enemies and obstacles made Mario want to run off the side of the cliff about ten times. I also enjoyed how each world had a distinct feel to it. I liked the ice world just because for some reason I like the idea of snowy places and because I was fun to slide down the hill (at least it was fun when I intended to slide down the hills). Playing through the fist world a couple more times I realized that the world changed a little bit and I realized that some task were much more difficult then others. It’s was interesting to see how many different task there were to do in the world and things that seemed to have no purpose in the first run through were suddenly keys to unlocking stars. I thought that this added a lot to the replay value of the game and I could see myself trying to get all the stars on each stage. As far as general gameplay goes I did have some more experiences. For one thing it seemed like the enemies became more of a challenge. Another cool thing was that I learned that I could dive and snatch up small enemies, it didn’t mean much but it was fun. Also I found that if I paused the game I could get a good zoomed out view of the surrounding area. I did have some not so exciting experiences the second time around. For example, I constantly found myself accidentally sliding and not being able to get out of it and my joystick had sensitivity issued because it is old and worn down. Also I still found the bosses and most of to be fairly easy to beat Design: Most gamers would agree that Super Mario 64 has excellent game design but it is hard to pin point exactly what makes it so good. I would argue that the key elements to the games success are its atmosphere and its gameplay. One of the game strongest attributes is its ability to set up and maintain a powerful atmosphere or tone which ensnares the player. One of the ways the game does this is with its graphical and audio style. For example the game immediately starts off with a positive tone by showering you with color and familiar upbeat music. In addition, through having slightly less detailed and unrealistic art the game gives off the feeling of a surrealism and fantasy. Believe me when Mario is drawn in full detail it is really creepy and so by not including creepy details the game designers are able to make Mario’s world feel light hearted and charming. The style of the artwork generally stays the same throughout the levels, but through exaggerated colors and shapes each level is able to pull of its own unique atmosphere. For example, the ice world is showered in blue and has very steep inclines and sudden drops which can’t help but give you the feeling of being high on top a mountain; even though a real mountain would look nothing like that. The music is just as important if not more important than the graphics. The music can make you feel happy go lucky like it usually does, but it can also give you a feeling of urgency and importance, like it often does in boss fights. The sound effects are also very good as conveying atmosphere and emotion, whether it is the diabolical sound of Bowser laughing, the simple sound of you sliding down a slope, or the pleasant sounds related to getting a star, all the sounds put you deeper into the world. Other key parts of the atmosphere are the story and the characters. The story is one part of the atmosphere that his mixed results. On the one hand its simplicity allows for it to be understood and followed by a large audience. On the other hand you could argue that the story is to simple and subsequently not very engaging. I feel that one way the game could improve on this would be to put some more story based cut scene into the game and to at least make the text bubbles more readable by using a bolder font and a solid background, if not spicing up the contents of the text. Of course just because the story is not very engaging it does not mean that the characters are not, in fact the characters are very engaging. The characters are able to show a great range of emotion through facial expression, body language, and sound effects. All of these aspects add up to create very realistic characters which have personalities other their own. Ultimately this game makes great use of graphical, audio, and character design to create an engaging atmosphere. But of course if atmosphere was all Super Mario 64 had it would just be a movie. What make Super Mario 64 a game is its superb gameplay. One of the best aspects of Mario’s gameplay is that it has very simple control mechanics in that it only uses a few buttons, but when you combine the buttons you are able to create many different outcomes. The simplicity makes the game accessible to people who are not very apt at gameplay and the possibility for complexity gives experienced players more to learn from the game and more options for play style. Another factor that leads to a wide audience is that many of the obstacles require both mental and gameplay skills to overcome. Along with the gameplay comes the gameworld design. The gameworld often feels free and wide open because of the 3D graphics and the seemingly extra areas of land, but when you examine the game closely you realize that there is really one route to progress through the game. However more freedom can be seen within the path in that the player can get past obstacles in more than one way. This gameworld approach has multiple benefits because it gives the player a feeling of freedom and choice, but the game designer still maintains most of the control on the overall gameplay experience. In particular the levels of the game maintain the same core gameworld foundations and gameplay, but somehow every level seems fresh and varied. Part of this is due to the different atmospheres of the levels, but a lot of it has to do with the fact that in every level there are new obstacles and enemies introduced that challenge the player and require them to learn more about the game. The levels also do a good job of pacing the difficulty, each level seems to get harder at a steady rate and there are no huge jumps in difficulty. The only problem I did have with difficulty was that the bosses seemed a little too easy, and therefore more of an afterthought than an actual challenge. Another good aspect of the level design is that each level has multiple goals that have to be accomplished this is definitely a good economic use of the levels and adds to the replay value of the game. Also when you see how many different things there are to accomplish in a world it makes the world seem very large. The game also has an excellent reward system which makes you feel good when you succeed and reinforces you with consistent victory animation and sound. The reward system also keeps you hooked because you want to keep getting stars and unlocking new stages. Also you get smaller rewards such as coins for smaller task such as defeating an enemy which makes it seem like almost nothing you do in the game is unproductive.Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:28:30 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2269&iddiary=4324https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2269Gamelog #2 – part 1 (Super Mario 64) Summary: Super Mario 64 takes the idea of a 2D Mario platformer and make it 3D. Similar to the 2d games Mario is required to run and jump past many obstacles. He may have to jump from one platform or another or he may have to run under a falling block. Mario also encounters many enemies which can be dispatched in a variety of ways, like jumping on their heads or punching them. You first have to make it to a certain point in a stage, which is usually straight forward and then you have to fight a boss. After you clear the stage you get a star and you can then reenter the stage to face another challenge to get another star. The more stars you get, the more worlds you unlock and the closer you get to saving Princess Peach. I haven’t gotten to the end but I assume there are a limited amount of stages and a particular final boss fight with Bowser. Gameplay: This was actually the first time I played Super Mario 64, which is surprising to me because it is know to be one of the best N64 games and I love the N64. Despite my sin of never playing Super Mario 64, I have played many other Mario games 2D and 3D so I am not a complete Mario newbie. One of the fist things I noticed about the game was how similar it was to Mario Sunshine for the Game Cube. It has very similar controls and graphics and this gave me the impression that Super Mario 64 was way ahead of it’s time. The other thing that struck me right of the bat was that even though the game was in 3D it still felt like it’s 2D platformer predecessors. I was pretty amazed at how a game could feel both traditional and ahead of it’s times. Now let’s talk about the actual gameplay: So I’ll admit that I really am not the best Mario player and I didn’t make it through many levels on my first run through, but I was still able to experience a lot. I spent the first 20 minutes just exploring the area in and around the castle. The area around the castle felt very serene and I was drawn into the game by the bright colors and the familiar sounds. I like how the tutorial basically consisted of signs that you could read if you wanted some instruction or hint. This open ended tutorial system allowed me to experiment with the controls and to take things at my own pace. I spent a lot of time just jumping around and was caught off guard when I jumped up and then started climbing a tree. The tree climbing ability didn’t seem very useful at the time, but it had an oddly pleasing mechanic in its motion and sound effect. Another thing that seemed rather useless, but was fun to watch was Mario falling asleep when I didn’t play the game for a minute. It worked out pretty perfect because as I was making a note about how climbing the tree was fun Mario went to sleep against the tree and then as I was writing a note about Mario falling asleep he then fell to his side and went into an even deeper sleep. I know that the last two things don’t seem very important to the game, but I really enjoy it when game designers put in those little details. I feel that the little details add a lot to the game and make the game world feel more real. The First Stage: Eventually I did get board of just wandering around and I started the first world. I wasn’t very impressed by the enemies and found that you could easily dispatch them with a simple punch, but the obstacles turned out to be much more challenging than I expected. I figured that I could just run through the stage full speed but it proved more difficult to avoid rolling balls and cliff edges than I had previously thought. Once I got a hang of avoiding the obstacles I was surprised by how many more options 3D game gave me. It is true that there was still really one main path, but there were many different ways you could avoid the obstacles. For example, in a 2D game you would have to jump over a ball rolling at you but in the 3D game you could jump over it, run around it, or just hug that wall as it passed you harmlessly. The First Boss: When I reached the first boss I was at first unsure how to fight him. This was probably because I had stopped reading the full contents of the text bubbles, which actually revealed how to fight the boss. There were two reasons that I did not read the text bubbles. One reason was that they were hard to read; it might have just been my TV, but the text seemed like small white scribbles. The other reason was that I know from experience that the stories of most Mario games don’t really mean that much beyond the overall concept of save the princess. Anyway I figured out that you had to throw the boss and from there on out the boss battle seemed fairly easy. And then of course I got my first star and it is always fun to watch the animation of success (it’s a good example of positive reinforcement)Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:26:12 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2269&iddiary=4321https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1903 (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Fri, 01 Oct 2010 15:51:54.)Tue, 15 Jan 2008 01:26:52 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1903&iddiary=3698https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1903GAMELOG #1 – Part 2 (Master of Illusion) Gameplay Upon playing Master of Illusion for a second time I have learned a lot more about the game. For one I have tried some solo magic and some magic training. The solo magic can be entertaining diversion, but many of the tricks are easy to see through and most of the tricks seem to rely solely on mathematics. Relying on math isn’t a bad thing, but I found myself often disregarding tricks because I had the feeling that math is no problem for the DS and that I could do the trick to if I was a computer. The magic training also had some mixed results. For example, most of the games were fairly fun to play, but I didn’t really have a pressing urge to play any of them, besides for the fact that they were an easy way to gain magic points, which unlock new tricks. I was also disappointed to realize that there were not as many games as I thought because many games were just more difficult version of other games. In some ways it felt like a bit of a copout because what would look like a spot for 2 more games ended up just being 2 more difficulty levels of the same game. One thing that was fun was the rating system, which rates your performance as being a certain animal. This was much more fun than simple high score board and lead to many suprises because you don’t know what animals they use until you score in that range. In addition to all of this I also tried some more magic tricks. These magic tricks where much more complicated than the earlier tricks and relied heavily on the use of the games card and the touch screen. To lower the difficulty many tricks have cues on the upper screen to help the magician remember what to do, but at some level this seems like training wheels and an insult to your abilities. However the cues do help because you don’t have to waste time thinking and therefore look suspicious, and it helps if you haven’t done the trick for a while or haven’t done it much. The packed in cards also add a lot to the game because it makes a trick even more impressive when the DS is able to predict a seemingly normal card without any clear input as to what the card is (one person actually thought the cards of having microchips in them). The only problem is that the secret of the cards is not well hidden and people can figure it out if they know that there is a secret (my girlfriend figured it out). So it is important to assure the audience that they are normal cards, which can be hard because the ace of spaces says Nintendo on it. Another problem that arose for me was that since all the tricks are performed with the DS, one person accused the DS of doing everything and me not being able to do a trick without it. Luckily I knew a normal card trick so I could get around it, but I could see where this situation could be a problem. Design As far as game design goes, Master of Illusion definitely has a unique concept. I don’t know of another video game that is used to perform magic tricks. Some people may argue that it isn’t really a game, but there still are traditional game elements in it, like unlocking things and raising levels. Also, I feel that to have an innovative game you often have to push the limits of what counts as a game. Either way Masters of Illusion is at least a unique and interesting piece of hardware. One of the biggest strengths of the game is its’ use of the DS hardware and the ability for tricks to be somewhat customized. For example, many tricks involve the audience drawing a face or a hand and it is often fun for them because after they draw the necessary template they can add as much to the drawings as they wish. Also is makes good use of precision movements on the touch screen. Many tricks require the magician to touch certain specific areas or to draw things in specific order. For the most part the touch screen mechanics work well, however, there are cases in which the DS does not recognize something you have drawn and it can get very frustrating (especially in the “mirrored letters” game). The tricks also make good use of the microphone, especially in the two candles trick in which you blow into the microphone to blow out candles on screen. On the downside some of the voice commands seem too robotic and if you don’t speak loudly enough or if some other loud noise occurs during the trick, the DS can end up doing the wrong thing. Also you can customize how some tricks play out. For example by choosing how the DS will respond to certain voice commands or by choosing the message at the end of a trick. The customizable effects make the game open to different outcomes and this can increase the replay value. Overall this game would not be nearly as interesting without the DS features and the customization aspects. Another big part of this game is the social aspect. The game argues that magic can be used as a way to socialize and because there is no technical multi player, most of the interaction is based on the assumption that you will perform the tricks for someone. When you do perform the trick it is definitely a good way to socialize, but only with people you already know. It is very fun to perform tricks for people, have people perform tricks for you, or even to take turns playing some of the shorter solitaire games, but the fact of the matter is that if you are by yourself the game does not offer nearly as much. In addition the game suggest that you can use some tricks to meet people, but I know that I would be kind of weirded out if a stranger came up to me to show me a magic trick. Ultimately this game is great fun when experienced with other people, but the success of the game may rely too heavily on this socialization aspect. I had trouble thinking about the level design of this game until I started thinking of each trick as a level. If the tricks can indeed be considered levels then this games level design has one major flaw which is lack of variety. I say this because many of the tricks rely on essential the same gimmick. All of the tricks had different outcomes and setups on the outside, but the magician would rely on the almost the same rules to perform the trick. This makes it fun for the audience, but not very fun for the magician because once they learn one trick they have essential learned the core elements of about five other tricks, which leaves you with little to learn from the game. One possible reason that the cores of many of the tricks were similar could have been so that the cues on the top screen did not change too much, which would make the cues more obvious. For whatever reason the tricks did seem very similar; however, they were varied enough to at least be called separate tricks. Another area of the game design that yielded mixed results was the difficulty level. The game does a good job of giving instructions and it often gives very helpful and practical tips for performing tricks, however they don’t give good strategy tips for many of the solitaire games which could be challenging if you have never played them before. The game does get progressively harder, but most tricks are not very hard in general and most contain the same core elements; this often results in some tricks seeming too easy. In opposition to this some of the solitaire games seem too hard. For example in one game you have to count to ten without using a clock and until you can get within about 0.15 seconds of ten seconds you will receive the lowest ranking. I am also not a huge fan of the reward system simply because you are only allowed to gain a certain amount of points a day. You could argue that his hooks people into the game for longer, but it often seems like a tactic to simply make a short game look longer. The game does not offer much in graphics or sounds, but they are not horrible either. The backgrounds are generally bland, but there are some interesting effects and they do a good job of making characters look like cartoons (which adds a little charm to the game). Also it doesn’t seem like that really had two much to work with as far as graphics go because most of the tricks involve drawings by the magician or the audience and others simply use the screen to display cards or lists. The music is not bad, but there is not much variety and it gets boring fairly quickly. One part where the sound does seem good is when shuffling or flipping cards; for some reason these sounds are very satisfying, like the sound of a swish in basketball. I feel it may also have to do with the familiarity of the sound. In general this is a unique and fun game to play with friends, but does not offer much from a single player perspective and can get boring.Tue, 15 Jan 2008 01:19:52 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1903&iddiary=3691