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Zinn's Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
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| [January 31, 2007 02:50:11 PM]
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One thing I love doing in this game is causing as much mayhem as possible while seeing how long I can evade the cops. This time I threw in a limiting factor--my only vehicle would be a bicycle. The cops get pretty aggressive once they're sufficiently pissed off, so having police cruisers ramming my bicycle led to me getting killed / busted repeatedly. Oh well.
The gameworld is so insanely big. I took a look at the in-game map and the first city is only a tiny chunk of the whole thing. And the first city is huge. I have no idea how the developers made such a big world but it's awesome. There's certainly some motivation now to play through the bare minimum of missions to unlock all the locales. I really don't like the "gangsta" stuff, though. It feels contrived.
I spent a long time at the (in-game) gym leveling my characters physique / endurance up. It was really easy and fast to turn him into a muscle-bound hunk, but it's taking a long time to improve his endurance. I haven't really seen a tangible benefit to having the muscles, as his melee skills haven't improved. But the endurance thing is easily noticeable--he can run much farther now without getting winded. I can't say that it was much "fun" just running around in a virtual gym (certainly makes me miss the day when UCSC's gym wasn't such an insane madhouse), but I'll probably appreciate the benefit in later missions. Maybe?
Oh well. No matter how you cut it, this game is a HUGE improvement over the previous GTA games!
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| [January 31, 2007 02:05:32 PM]
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Just got a game started, So far, this game seems much, much cooler than Vice City or GTA III. First off it's based in California in the 90s so the theme is much closer to home. Secondly, there are so many more activities available to differentiate this from earlier games. A cool new feature is the ability to ride bicycles and swim (finally). Also there's a leveling system to improve character stats such as stamina and strength as you progress in the game. Customizations such as clothes, hairstyle and physique are available depending on actions you choose.
Because of these things, the game feels much more immersive when you're just running around doing stuff. I wasn't really thrilled with the missions so far because I can't identify with any of the characters, and I feel like the gang wars are petty. But the ability to run around doing whatever the heck you want is what makes this game great.
There seem to be missions available apart from the main "story" missions, but I haven't found many of those yet. Also, the game keeps you limited to a certain portion of the gameworld by having cops come kill you if you stray too far. The city you start out in is based off of Los Angeles and it's pretty big, but it would be cool to see the other places in the game without having to complete the story (this is pretty standard fare for the 3D GTA games).
One last thing: why is this the only game I've ever played with a black protagonist? Before this game, I never really thought about how pretty much every game hero is white. San Andreas is a refreshing change from the norm in a lot of ways!
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