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Feb 14th, 2018 at 23:54:13 - Firewatch (PC) |
My second session of Firewatch furthered my opinions of the first session. The interactions with Delilah over the radio are charming and add to the overall aesthetic of the game. I love how in-depth the character development and story of the game is, you feel like you are actually getting to know someone over this channel of communication that you have with them. The dialog system is also interesting, particularly because it gives you only a set amount of time to choose a given response, and in some cases allows you to simply ignore what was said altogether. To be honest I simply select what I feel I would have said if I was in the same situation, and I think that's incredibly interesting. I also quite enjoyed how easily the game was able to manipulate the perceived tonality of the game. With the drop of a hat, by the end of day 1, the forest no longer felt cozy and inviting, it felt menacing and incredibly eerie. The random man outside of your tower, as well as having the tower broken into, furthered this tonal shift. With the start of day two I enjoyed the game's acknowledgement of what route I took in the day prior within the dialog with Delilah, it's self aware, and is clearly hinting to me that my actions do have an effect on the sort of ending I get. The forest is incredibly well designed, it feels vast and alive. Walking to explore what the thin column of smoke was, as well as walking to examine the wire were fun experiences simply because of how beautiful the scenery was. It really does manage to emulate that genuine hiking experience. So far I'm really enjoying everything Firewatch has to offer.
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Feb 14th, 2018 at 23:43:53 - Firewatch (PC) |
My first session of Firewatch has been quite enjoyable. I really enjoy the art style for one, it's so colorful despite its somewhat simplistic approach to the individual models themselves. The initial dialog, where you learn about his wife and the backstory of what brought you there, was brutal. In all honesty I spent easily 15 minutes trying to think about what the correct response should be, what I would do if I was in Henry's shoes, it was surprisingly difficult and incredibly sad when I finally reached the conclusion of that dialog set and learned that she had been taken home by her family. I played a bit more of the first day and I like the gameplay, despite being very aware of the criticism that the game is essentially a "walking simulator". I'm appreciative of that approach in Firewatch, it makes the game feel meditative, and cozy, perhaps like what working the job would be like. It's actually relaxing to come home from a long day and be introduced to a game that has a nice, relaxing pace and tone.
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Jan 18th, 2018 at 23:44:35 - Shadow Of Mordor (PC) |
I finished my third gameplay session of Shadow of Mordor tonight, and I’m still enjoying it thoroughly. I now have about three hours of gameplay into the game overall and I think that I am starting to understand the sort of “flow” that the game requests of the player. I do have some critiques of the game, namely the somewhat antiquated and overused “tower” system that reveals specific portions of the map could have been made into a sort of territory competition with the captains instead. However, keeping the release year of the game in mind (2014) it isn’t quite as bad as other, more modern takes on the same system.
The combat, while very fun, does start to feel somewhat less impactful if you don’t take a stealth approach, which has really pushed me to take said stealth approach to more recent missions. I think the stealth approach is also ethically interesting, as in whether you ought to take the stealth approach to missions to minimize the unnecessary casualties to the enemy side. Other games like Dishonored have explored this sort of ethicality, wherein if you kill people on the enemy side you get a bad ending, however I don’t know if there is any such implication within Shadow of Mordor, or whether there should be. While you really can play the game as a sort of spectacle fighter, beat-em-up, I think the real fun of the game comes from running around on the top of ruins and terrorizing enemies by dropping wasp nests on their heads, or simply coming up with creative ways to sneak around the various enemies. The skills of the game, such as slowing time down before shooting the arrows, or the stun skill which can be followed up with a huge combo is quite fun.
To be honest I haven’t found the narrative of the game necessarily captivating, but I think that is mostly because I haven’t advanced quite far enough into the game to truly know what is going on. There is definitely a sense of authorial reticence within the game’s story design. Even with all of these criticisms I can genuinely say that this is a very fun game, and I’m not even upset that I had to shell out the $20 dollars to play it as I am sure that I will be continuing to play it on my own time throughout the semester.
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Jan 17th, 2018 at 23:53:07 - Shadow Of Mordor (PC) |
Today’s gameplay session went particularly well, as I played the game for roughly an hour and a half and had a genuinely hard time putting it down when it was time for me to write the game log. The gameplay is quite good, I have been having a great time running around and fighting captains, to be honest I haven’t even really felt compelled to complete the first “real” story mission of the game since I have been having so much fun exploring the map. I will say that the game does seem a bit “easy”—you can fight off 10+ enemies by yourself by simply paying attention to the counter-attack prompt which flashes on the screen whenever an enemy is about to attack you, making gameplay somewhat…stale occasionally. Some enemies in particular are harder to deal than others though, there was an archer captain who killed me three times before I managed to kill him, making him grow quite strong before I got my revenge. In terms of topics discussed in class I thought about the discussion on unnecessarily violent imagery being present in games. When you unlock the ability that lets you “glory kill” enemies you start to see some violent stuff, heads cut off of torsos, as well as a lot of insides becoming outsides. While this sort of imagery isn’t something I’m not used to, as it is present in a lot of contemporary games, it does cause me to think about whether or not this sort of stuff is entirely necessary, is there a real need to see such gore when you kill an enemy, and is it really ethical to have this sort of stuff in games?
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Alex_Tingey has been with GameLog for 6 years, 3 months, and 9 days |
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