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Feb 9th, 2008 at 00:19:03 - Team Fortress 2 (PC) |
Game Log #2 By: Collin Berg
Gameplay:
One thing I noticed about Team Fortress 2, is that most servers have a built in respawn time of around 16 seconds after the player dies. I found this to be quite cumbersome and annoying. It is very frustrating to be killed by one of your opponents and have to sit and waste 16 seconds of your time waiting when all you want to do is get revenge. However, this may be a necessary evil. If the players do not have a respawn timer, the game would be very difficult to complete, because the players would be at a stalmate, constantly dying and respawning, preventing either of the teams from completing the objective. If I were to improve upon this game, I would try to give the player some sort of use for that necessary 16 second time. The time wouldn't have to be spent in a manner related to the overall game, but rather make the player still feel that they are kept busy. One solution could be having the dead players compete in a minigame vs each other similar to what you would see in mario party, or something along those lines.
Overall I would rate this as one of my top games of all time. It has a diverse and complex character class system, appealing aesthetics, good level design, and provides a compelling platform for player to player competition which is where I thrive. Call it my internet masculinity, or maybe my ego, but whatever it is, this game provides me the opportunity to achieve high amounts of satisfaction when dominating over my fellow gamers. Many things in life seem to be a competition between rivals and this game enables that primal instinct and transforms it into the fun game that I am writing about.
Design:
Level Design: The layout of each of the levels is well thought out and balanced. No team has a clear advantage based upon their environment when competing against the opposing team. The levels tend to be symmetrical on the Capture the flag modes, and on the capture point/terrain modes, each team has an opportunity to play offensively and defensively.
Game of emergence: For being a first person shooter, this game has a surprising amount of depth and complexity as a game of emergence. One thing I noticed while playing was that I could constantly create new techniques and styles of play to complete my objectives with each class. For instance, instead of playing the traditional role as a sniper who lays back and fires from a distance, I found it entertaining and challenging to go on the offense and shoot enemies with my sniper rifle without using the scope, and then proceeding to mow them down with my machete. Various other tactics can be utilized with each character class making this game have a lot of depth to it.
Reward Structure: The game sets performance based goals for its players, giving them incentives to perform in a certain manner, or play to a certain extent. For example, players are given an achievement when they have the best score for the certain character class at the end of the round. This built in reward system hooks players into playing the game more, and makes the user feel like they are playing to achieve a greater goal.
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Feb 8th, 2008 at 21:25:18 - Team Fortress 2 (PC) |
Game Log Written by: Collin Berg
Game Title: Team Fortress 2
Summary: Team Fortress 2 is the sequel to the renowned game Team Fortress Classic which was based on the half life engine. Team Fortress 2 is a first person shooter designed on the Half life 2 Source platform. It explores similar concepts to its predecessor, allowing players to join one of two teams and battle each other toward victory. There are several different team battle types, one is capture the flag, another is capture point, and a third is territory control. Furthermore, players have the capability of creating their own maps and hosting them on a server for other to players to play on.
Gameplay: Having been an avid gamer of the original Half-life series (Half life, Counter-strike, Day of Defeat and Team Fortress Classic), I heavily anticipated the release of the orange box (a Team Fortress 2 Bundle). With high expectations, and giddy excitement, I loaded up the game for the first time and entered the magic circle that would rock my world. Nostalgic ecstasy I think best describes my initial thoughts and feelings for the game. Fond memories of a time long passed flooded back into my mind of blazes of gunfire and glory that can only be experienced in a gameworld such as this.
Saturated in euphoria, I savoured every head shot I scored as a sniper, relished every time I backstabbed someone, and cheered whenever I captured the enemy flag (intelligence). Feelings aside, I particularly like several things about the game. One was the unique class list to choose from. There are nine classes to choose from, almost always guaranteeing the user the capability to become their own unique entity(From what I've experienced, users like their avatar to be one of a kind and be differentiated from their peers when playing games and Team Fortress 2 enables that). Each class has unique weapons, abilities and serves a different but essential role in the challenge for victory over the opposing team. Another thing I liked about the game was the skins created for the character avatars and levels. The skins are designed to look like cartoony retro military outfits as seen in older movies of Hollywood. This brings a sense of nostalgia to the user as well as a sense of mischief, acting as military personnel attempting to steal the opposing team's flag (called intelligence).
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Jan 25th, 2008 at 21:48:29 - Chrono Trigger (SNES) |
Well that's fustrating! If you spend too much time writing your gamelog, when you try to add it the site will prompt u to log in and your written information will be lost... It's a good thing I checked or I would have never known... So here goes, second time around, this will be a lot shorter since I now have a time limit.
Gameplay: So I finally figured out how to get the quest line moving. I had to trigger the event of moving the guards out of my way so that I could speak with and find my friend by talking to a random dude at the fair. Great, I wasted a good amount of my gameplay time exploring every nook and cranny of the accessible gameworld only to find that all I needed to do was talk to that guy. Here is a timeline of the goose chase I went through because the game didn't have a clear enough quest line for me: talk to mom who tells me to find my friend->explore the every house of the game and every respective room-> find my friend's house only to find that she isn't there-> talk to her mom who tells me to go to the fair that I had already visited-> talk to everyone in the fair-> get the guards to move out of my way-> find and talk to my friend. As you can see, I wasted a lot of time doing footwork and talking with people when all I really wanted to do was get out there and start killing monsters! Just kidding, I'm not a violent person...
Once I finally got the game moving, things started brightening up a bit for me, and I enjoyed the experience more than I had been. I entered my first dungeon , found some sweet items, and killed my first boss (which was actually a lot harder than I thought it would be). Surprising to myself, I actually liked the turn based combat system that I was playing, and was extremely satisfied with the massive amounts of damage and cool abilities I was using.
Design:
Some parts of the game were designed magnificently while others were lacking.
For one, I really like the way the game world made me feel. It was designed in such a way that I felt that I was part of a limitless world and could explore many different regions of space within it (mainly every forest, house, room, and cranny). Also, the user feels that they have an impact on the environment and are given a sense of time. For example, the guards that were initially blocking my path told me that an event was being set up and that I should come back in a little while to get past. Of course all I had to do was talk to the right person to trigger the event, but it still gave me the sense of passing time. Another example is when I was exploring the gameworld I came across a broken bridge. The guard that was standing by told me that it had been destroyed in a battle and would be repaired after a certain amount of time, signifying that as I advanced through the game, new content would be unlocked and the environment would change.
What I didn't like about the game was its lack of direction. I felt that as soon as I started, I was given a vague set of instructions by my mother and was supposed to figure everything out from there. I went through hoops figuring out what to do from there, and wasted most of my gameplay time messing around doing nothing. I believe that the designers of the game assumed that many of its players were RPG vets and didn't need to explain the game mechanics of problem solving and controls. Lucky for me I randomly stumbled upon a soldier who taught me the mechanics of fighting, but it was merely by chance that I went upstairs in the random room to talk to him.
Another bothersome aspect of the game design was that it rewarded the user for excessively exploring. On the surface that seems like a good idea: encourage the user to extract every ounce of dialogue and see every corner of the game, but quite frankly I have better things to do. I just wanted to move along the story line, but instead, I felt compelled by some instinctual impulse to visit every unexplored room and path available to make sure I didn't miss out on my next sword upgrade. The game should have had most of its rewards come with quest line progression for the casual gamer, instead of for the over acheiving gamer.
Finally, the combat system was designed well. Party members and the main character can work together to perform special, highly effective attacks. You don't see that much anymore in today's games, and I think that it would be seen as innovative and highly successful for a game to reward its players for working together to perform successive actions in sync. Overall a good game, has its kinks, but hey, its old.
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Jan 25th, 2008 at 13:54:57 - Chrono Trigger (SNES) |
a Collin Berg Game log
Game: Chronotrigger
Summary: Chronotrigger is a classic RPG game for the SNES. It is set in 2D from a birds eye view of the gameworld, that zooms in and out depending on the situation. The user starts out alone in the gameworld but acquires companions along the way who help him/her throughout their adventures. The combat system is turn based for the most part and the user can choose between different attacks and abilities learned while adventuring, to destroy his/her enemies.
Gameplay: Wow, where to begin. Let's see... Well first of all, I had never played this game before but had heard many things about it when SNES was the system to have (sadly my parents never bought me one ;) .
I must say, I had my doubts starting this game because I have gone back and played old games before that I used to think were awesome, and been sorely disappointed when compared with today's standards. Fortunately for me though, the game is far more advanced than I had expected! From the minute I entered the world, my intelligence was challenged. I was thrown into a house, where I met my mother who told me to find some girl. Well... thats great, but I don't even know how to leave my house. And by the way, I got to name my "friend" whatever I wanted which is awesome, so of course I chose a dirty word that fit in perfectly with the dialogue making me giggle. Finally, when I figured out how to exit the box that had contained me (don't judge me for having problems >_<), I was put into a birds eye view of an entire city and country side. At this point I was overwhelmed by the gameworld, which I should have been, because I soon found out that it was easy to go astray. The very first building in the gameworld that I entered turned out to be the fair which got me very distracted because it was full of great content. I was doing soda chugging contests, dancing with natives, watching a foot race and so much more. Out of the 45 minutes that I was supposed to spend playing this game, I felt like I got nowhere, but at the same time it was time well spent. Everything was rich with dialogue, and the atmosphere was very immersive. Overall, a good first experience.
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