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Kinect Adventures! (360) by dkirschner (May 22nd, 2013 at 20:05:57) |
Closing this one because I don't see myself ever playing it again. Tried it out with some friends after it'd been sitting on my shelf for 1.5 years. It's alright. Only 5 minigames that you just play over and over. A couple of them are pretty neat, like the whitewater rafting one (lean left/right to guide the raft, jump to make the raft jump, and try to collect a bunch of coins) and the plug-the-holes-in-the-glass one (position your hands and feet to stop water from flowing into your glass tank as devious underwater creatures try to crack the glass).
Actually the thing that surprised me most about playing the game was how tired my friends got. Out of shape! I figured at that point I could play it alone for exercise, but it's really boring alone. There are way more entertaining multiplayer games for Kinect. I need to get one of the dancing ones.
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Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC) by ajg993 (May 20th, 2013 at 12:26:28) |
Playing Super Columbine Massacre was not too fun today. It just involved a lot of shooting and killing without much variation. At this point of the game I really don’t know why the game was created. Is it a tribute to Eric and Dylan? Is this a way to attract even more hate against the killers? It can be interpreted in many different ways. Not to mention, many times when a gamer is playing a game, he or she will often get some kind of emotional attachment to the character he or she is using. Was this game a way to “feel for” Eric and Dylan? The game really isn’t good, I would probably never play it in my free time, yet I see it is extremely popular. I am confused about this, is it because the tragic event really happened?
Anyway, when the time came to choose to end the mission or continue, I decided to end it. The cops showed up and the mission was over. They showed pictures of the tragedy and explained a few things about Eric and Dylan how all they wanted was to be isolated from everyone. SCM really didn’t have much of an effect on me. The graphics were so low that it was somewhat hard to get into the realism of it. The tragedy happened and there is nothing anyone can do about it. I feel like because there are so many violent movies and games that this one has virtually no difference for me, even though it really happened. The media itself has taken the value out of real life situations by creating so many equal or even worse situations that are fake.
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Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC) by ajg993 (May 19th, 2013 at 20:14:53) |
I returned to Super Columbine Massacre today and noticed how much this game moved me. I researched and found out more information about the tragedy and understood the gameplay much more. It is unbelievable how close the story mode is to the real thing. Other than a few things like an unlimited arsenal of weapons or getting passed hall monitors by having them not touch you (even when they clearly see you but you are two boxes away so the game doesn't register it) the game was quite real.
I noticed that they left a message to whoever found it. They were apologizing to people they knew for what they were about to do. I feel like this was a way for them to feel better for what they were going to do, it almost seemed like the message provided justification for their actions. On top of that, they were planning on killing 200 plus people. I just don’t understand what kind of people would want to take out their revenge on the lives of innocent students and staff.
The final thing I would like to point out is that for some reason, I felt very weak when I was playing this game. As if any power was taken away from me by the developers. There was only one way to play it, no alternative conclusions. I felt myself actually wanting to avoid the story, but there was just nothing I could do about it, except of course just not play.
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Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC) by ajg993 (May 18th, 2013 at 21:53:42) |
Super Columbine Massacre was interesting. It is remarkable that someone actually recreated the event and made a video game out of it. Although the graphics are pretty low, the game was far from simple. I noticed that many random objects have deeper meanings. For example, when I was in the basement, I saw a pizza box and decided to walk up to it and hit “enter”. The pizza box took me through a flashback to explain how they were getting ready for the “big day.” The creators really wanted to show the players the entire story.
I went into playing this game without much knowledge of the actually shooting. I knew it was 2 boys, who were mad at society, who killed their fellow classmates and teachers. I was going to do a little research to find a little more background information on the even but decided to just play the game without that information. I felt like the game would do a good job in telling the story. I only got passed the cafeteria part where I have set the bombs and grabbed the guns. That mission was really annoying, it took me over 10 tries to fully infiltrate the building, and right when I finally did, I got caught again and had to start all over again.
This game obviously has a lot of ethical hazards. The idea of the game itself seems a little immoral, since it is based on a true story. I think if the situation never happened, it would lack any controversial opportunities against it. However, since it actually did happen and innocent people died, this realism truly makes the game open for discussion. I also noticed how the creators of the game were implying that the killers’ ideas of the attacks were enhanced by media. Because in the game, when I was in the basement I saw a movie that seemed like it was motivation for them. As if the media inspired the killers actions.
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Ultima VII: The Black Gate (PC) by dkirschner (May 18th, 2013 at 07:44:04) |
I'm just making this to chronicle my efforts to play Ultima 4 and 7 today. I gave both games a good-hearted run but they are so. very. old. These games are always on 'best of' lists so I finally downloaded 4 since it was free with my GOG.com account, and bought 7 because it was on sale and is usually the one people cite as the best. Surely these games have been influential to the fantasy genre in games, to RPGs, perhaps especially of the open-world variety. But I had forgotten what games were like when I was a kid I guess.
Playing Ultima 4 was like attempting to read Chinese. I haven't played a text-based role-playing game in such an unbelievably long time that I've forgotten how they work. Moving north, south, east and west, pushing T to talk to an NPC then typing north to talk in that direction. The NPC greets you and says nothing else until you ask him about specific things: "job," "look" and so on. I had to look these interaction words up in the manual because I couldn't figure out what I should say to him. Then I couldn't figure out how to disengage from the conversation, so I was stuck. Oh, maybe "bye" would work...
Anyway, I couldn't deal with that, so I installed Ultima 7. Ooh, point and click, sort of. Uses mouse, plus 10 points. Ooh, inventory screens and character panes from 1992. The first thing you have to do is investigate a murder, which was surprisingly gory. I figured out how to pick up items (hold right mouse and drag & drop them onto your character), so I guess I investigated the crime scene. I was supposed to go talk to the mayor, who was *just* at the crime scene before I went in, but he seemed to have disappeared and I wandered all through this city looking for him. Dunno what he got up to.
When I talked to the NPCs this time, they have the interaction words like "job" and "look" as options to choose, like a dialogue tree. I noticed the "murder" option and thought I might see what happened if I murdered a citizen. Alas, I could only *ask* about the murder, not murder anyone. I retract my praise about this open world! Anyway, I never did find the mayor and the text really hurt my eyes. It's in yellow, on multicolored background, so it's kind of like reading a highlighter. Also ye olde font and olde English style of language really bothered me after a short time.
I'm sure these early Ultima games were amazing decades ago. I'm sure some people can enjoy them today. I appreciate them, but cannot play them. And that's my uncritical review. Oh, but all the manuals and extras from GOG.com were neat to browse.
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GameLog hopes to be a site where gamers such as yourself keep track of the games that
they are currently playing. A GameLog is basically a record of a game you started playing. If it's open,
you still consider yourself to be playing the game. If it's closed, you finished playing the game. (it doesn't matter
if you got bored, frustrated,etc.) You can also attach short comments to each of your games or even maintain a diary (with more detailed entries)
for that game. Call it a weblog of game playing activity if you will.
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1661 registered gamers and 1789 games. 5596 GameLogs with 9916 journal entries. 4331 games are currently being played.
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Half-Life 2: Episode 1 (PC) by wolfmanbsam |
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most recent entry: Saturday 9 February, 2008
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GAMEPLAY
I made it out of the citadel eventually but, to my dismay, the escape route was through pitch black, underground, zombie infested, parking garages. This provided a complete shift in gameplay from the soldiers I was fighting in the high tech environment I was in previously. These underground areas were so dark, it was completely impossible to see anything without using the flashlight, and even that did not reveal much of my surroundings and would turn off every so often to recharge. I would often find myself turning off my flashlight and then finding a zombie right in front of me once I turned it on again. When I said earlier that the collapsing environment made me edgy, that was nothing compared to how I was in this area. It was even worse when my flashlight turned off while I had to fight off a whole army of zombies while I was waiting for an elevator.
While I mentioned before how Gordon Freeman's experience also becomes the player's experience, The reverse also seems to happen. That is, the player gives their own specific experiences and reactions as well. This is done, in part, by Valve making Freeman completely mute. The mute main character with no personality is the perfect blank canvas for players to relay their own personality into the game. This was very apparent in the zombie part. Had someone with more nerve than I been playing, they probably would have kept their cool and taken out the zombies like they would any other enemy. I, on the other hand, was completely freaked out and I found myself running around like a scared little girl and nervously fumbling around with my weapons. Had Freeman actually stated in the game what he thinks of zombies, the player would probably take that as what they were supposed feel about zombies as well, and their reactions would no longer be their own.
DESIGN
Despite having the same weapon and setting (and not to mention nearly the exact same game engine) as the end of Half-Life 2, the citadel part of Half-Life 2: Episode One manages to mix things up considerably by designing new scenarios in which the repeated elements are interacted with in very different ways. The citadel, which was spacious and sleek before, now has falling rubble and electrical fires everywhere and looks very run down in general. The gravity gun which was previously used to tear the citadel apart, is now used to solve puzzles and, ironically, to put bits of the citadel back together.
Another very clever design element that made me feel like I was in Freeman's shoes was that there were no discernible levels. That's not to say there weren't different areas with different gameplay elements to them, but no matter where I was in the game, I could always trace a direct route to where I was from the very beginning of the game. There was a loading screen every now and again, but once it stopped loading, I'd be in the exact same spot as before with the exact same items and people in their exact same spots also. By doing this and using techniques I previously mentioned, Valve did an excellent job in making Freeman and the player feel like the same person.
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