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Feb 8th, 2008 at 19:17:19 - Warcraft III -- Frozen Throne (PC) |
Gameplay:
after playing Warcraft III for another hour, I was very compelled to just keep on playing. I had not gotten very far in the single player campaign, because it bored me and strenuous real time strategy games don't interest me. Instead I kept on playing custom games, like DOTA, Footmen Frenzy, Wintermaul Wars, and Fortress Defense Survival.
I explained Dota before, a game where two teams fight each other, with each player controlling a single hero and no structures. Footmen Frenzy is a "massing" game (a term coined by Starcraft and Warcraft players) where each player has a base that continuously spawns footmen (close combat soldiers)
Most of the time when playing I had to change my mentality for the different custom games because of how much they vary. Warcraft is all bout which sort of mentality the player favors most. Once the player has played enough of the custom and non custom games, he/she begins to develop a certain favor towards certain ones and begins to stay away from others. In my case I stopped playing non custom games and almost exclusively play Warcraft III for the custom game DOTA.
The game play experience flows as well as you wish it to flow, meaning it all depends on the players decisions on what online games to join. My gaming experience flows well when I constantly join DOTA games, but sometimes I join random custom games, without knowing the rules of the game. The majority of the time this disrupts the flow of gameplay but it does add new flavor and lets me try out new types of gameplay when i get bored of playing DOTA incessantly.
Warcraft III is an awesome game and each time I play it, it just never stops amazing me, how well it can entertain for so long.
Design:
The Warcraft game editor is an extremely complex system that allows players dedicated enough to develop their own maps and customize the appearance of any object and the strength of any unit in the game. normal strategy game map editors usually have simple instructions so anyone beginning the game can create maps, but Warcraft III is so complex that a much fewer amount of people attempt to learn the process of map making. Although it has this drawback, the complexity of the map maker allows for much more customization and allows map makers to create more interesting maps and to create maps with objectives that the original creators of Warcraft III may not have even foreseen.
This complexity in Warcraft III is clearly an emergence factor. But the map maker allows the makers to create games of either emergence or progressive qualities. Games like DOTA are emergence in that the choice of heroes one side chooses will not always be the same, the same goes for the other side, and thus the combination of heroes cooperating and clashing together creates unique game experiences for every game. Other games classified as "RPG's" in Warcraft III are custom games where you control a hero and go through some level defeating monsters and getting stronger as you go through harder levels. These games are more distinctly progressive games.
the mixture of emergence and progressiveness in Warcraft III furthers the game play. But because of all the mixturing, I have no longer come to see Warcraft as just one game, but the collection of all these custom games. When I play a map in Warcraft III I have to not only get in the magic circle of Warcraft but also the magic circle of the specific game.
Because of Warcraft's massive variation of map selections, the gameplay is affected also through the measure of conflict and the reward structure. Warcraft III is an amazing computer game that introduces countless amount of possibilities and with its massive selection of custom games, molds itself into the form of a game likable to the player of the game.
This entry has been edited 2 times. It was last edited on Feb 8th, 2008 at 21:49:09.
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Feb 8th, 2008 at 17:28:50 - Warcraft III -- Frozen Throne (PC) |
Summary:
Warcraft III is a real-time strategy game developed by the famous Blizzard Entertainment, that came out with the Starcraft title. It is a very well balanced game that can be played with up to 16 players all against each other or on teams, where each player chooses one of four races that behold different attributes. You manage gold and wood resources to create buildings and units with the ultimate goal of obliterating all the enemies structures. Along with the multiplayer gameplay is also the single player gameplay with a well thought out story line.
Gameplay:
There are many interesting aspects of Warcraft III, making it a very good game that intrigues many people into playing it, for vastly different reasons. Some play it for the single player campaign, others play it for it's multi-player aspects. I play Warcraft III mostly for the online Multi-player custom games, which are games created through Warcraft's custom game maker, which, coming with the game, allows players to customize existing maps in the game or to create new ones from scratch. Some of these customized games are so well made that they have soon develop their own community of players that begin to play Warcraft III soley for those customized games.
When playing the single player missions, I found myself not very interested in the, although it was pretty good, but in the hero customization of the game play. In the game, players are able to create heroes which level up and can learn spells. This "hero" attribute of the game is very interesting, as it provides a very new feel to this real-time strategy game, and makes it unique to many other games of its genre. Heroes are units that are more powerful than your average footman or archer unit and cause players to invest time gaining experience with their heroes.
The hero aspect of the game also allows for the custom games to become extremely off-tangent of the original intention of the game. This is not a bad thing, in fact it is very good and many players play these custom games where you take command of nothing other than a single hero and you play through a level defeating enemies and gaining levels beyond the normal ten that is allowed in a non custom game. The center of attention is now pulled to the hero and changes the gameplay into a third person adventure/action game. The discovery of this "heroization" has provided the inspiration of popular custom games like DOTA, which is a game where there are two teams of up to five players on each team and each player commands a hero in an attempt to eliminate the other teams base and protect their own. In these "heroized" games, there is no longer any concept of building structures or massing great armies of soldiers.
The "heroized" custom games is one of many examples of how Warcraft III has extended its gaming lifespan among its players.
When playing online, I talked to random players at times in order to create effective teamwork. And just like in any other real time strategy game, Warcraft III players are hard to predict; sometimes players are cooperative, other times they ignore you and sometimes they like to work together but hate to be told what to do. Overall, the online talking experience didn't mean a great deal to me, except for the occasional spam across the screen.
This game was extremely fun to play. It is an easy to learn, difficult to master game. The concept of the game play is simple: maintain resources by mining gold mines with workers and chopping down trees for lumber, and using these resources to create buildings like barracks in which you train soldiers like footmen. But the strategy behind the game is difficult. Once you have over forty men, your miners and wood choppers will now work at less efficient speeds. And they will work even slower once you have over 70 men. Maintaining an army is supposed to be a heavy burden on your civilization.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Feb 8th, 2008 at 19:12:42.
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Jan 25th, 2008 at 19:12:46 - Chrono Trigger (SNES) |
Gameplay:
After playing two hours of Chrono Trigger I came to the solid conclusion that this game was so good that even some recent, high-end graphics games couldn't compare to it. The game made me very attached to the characters, totally immersing me into the game environment, as if I were reading an interesting book and I couldn't wait to get to the next chapter. The story is filled with interesting twists and discoveries. You meet new characters that join your party and some leave your party along the way. (so don't equip them with your good stuff, cause they jack it when they leave)
As my characters level up, become stronger, and obtain new techniques, there is a further development in the characters through the combo techniques. These are attacks performed by two or more party members simultaneously to deal more damage than the characters would separately. This aspect of the game allows the player to develop certain connections to certain combos he/she likes or dislikes, pairing up certain characters together. Chrono Trigger in a sense, causes the players to make their own character development, extending the game play.
As an RPG, Chrono Trigger allows the player to select up to three different characters with which to use in a battle. This lets the player selectively choose certain characters to use more and some to use less, developing attachments to some and less to others.
Design:
Chrono Trigger is a very interesting game that continually keeps the player preoccupied with new developments and surprises that the present themselves in unique fashions. There are experience points with which one gains levels and new spells, and techniques. there are new combos along with the new spells and new characters, and new items, equipment. And development in the story every now an then, to keep the player intrigued.
Even though the game is purely fiction, it holds realistic aspects in it that many video games of its genre do not. There is drama in the story and that drama allows the player to develop a sense of history behind each of the characters. At one point of the game you meet up with a great wizard named Magus, and you can attempt to either befriend him, in which case he joins your team, or you can defeat him. By that point of the game, you have certain characters already in your party and one of them was turned into a frog man by the wizard, and he holds a certain grudge against Magus. If the player chooses to defeat the wizard there is a sense of retribution accomplished, but if the player befriends the wizard, the plot eventually develops and the mage and frog learn to trust one another.
The most noticeable "bad" elements of the game are the confusing destinations. There were some times when I was playing and I got stuck. I didn't know where to go next so I just wandered around the map. Sometimes, the player has to read carefully everything that occurs in the dialogue, because they may give hints to your next destination to continue the story.
This game was good and it deserves a gold medal for goodness.
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Jan 25th, 2008 at 18:46:08 - Chrono Trigger (SNES) |
Summary:
Chrono Trigger is a long-time classic 2-D RPG. Like any RPG, you control multiple characters with which you fight and defeat enemies in battles, gaining experience, gold, and equipment. The main characters travel through time and have strange encounters and ultimately fight the last boss, who, in the future, destroys the world.
Gameplay:
This RPG at first glance holds great resemblance to the early Final Fantasy 2-D RPG's, in that the graphics are low end and the game relies on the story element of the game as a crucial factor for capturing the attention of players. But Chrono Trigger turned out to be vastly different. The battles are not turn based but time based, which means during a battle each of your characters has a meter that slowly fills up by itself, and when fully charged, that character may then perform an action: attack, spell, item, etc. The same goes for every enemy you encounter, greatly increasing the different amount of difficulties the game can introduce. Where a game like Final Fantasy 2 could either have enemies that could attack as often as your characters, or twice as slow, or three times as slow, or four times and etc. Chrono trigger battle system is designed so enemies can have even more varying speeds of attack like being 2/3 faster than one of your characters and thus this creates more variety in the types of enemies, and allows for a unique use of slow and haste spells.
Aside from the battle system, Chrono Trigger has an amazing story aspect of the game, which kept me attentive during dialog sessions and cut scenes, despite their pixelation. The music in the game is very well made and it plays at the right time to accentuate the mood. And rather than simple one note melodies, the music complexity is rather pleasant and not something a player would have to withstand.
The difficulty of the game is extremely well made. The game is designed for those who have already played RPG's before and are used to making basic strategic decisions. The first boss you encounter is particularly difficult, but at the same time not impossible. This sort of difficulty setting is made perfect for gamers who like challenges, but hate impossible ones where you get stuck and can't continue.
Chrono Trigger was a very fun fun game. I would recommend it to almost anyone.
This entry has been edited 2 times. It was last edited on Jan 25th, 2008 at 19:13:31.
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