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Mar 6th, 2008 at 02:24:36 - Super Smash Brothers Melee (GC) |
DESIGN
This game, as opposed to the original Super Smash for the N64, has dramatically improved graphics and gameplay, as well as a much wider variety of characters, levels, and special features. The one player game is also much more involved and now includes levels in which you must not only fight enemies, but also navigate maze platform stages. The premise for this game is also slightly modified. In the last game, It was a pair of master hands that controlled the gameplayer dolls to fight eachother. Although the final boss for this game is as in the last the Master hands, you play the role of fighting trophies come to life. Also, as an added twist, the final final boss ends up as a double giant "Giga Bowser."
I like the quick reflex dynamics of this game. It allows you to rely on timing more. You also have to make a larger effort to pay attention to all the factors included in this game. It begins to get a little chaotic if you are unaware of everything going on at once. You must be more conscious of everything going on, which adds many more elements to the game. It takes longer to get tired of it, bottom line.
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Mar 6th, 2008 at 02:12:46 - Super Smash Brothers Melee (GC) |
GAMEPLAY
Returning to this addicting game after not too long of a reprieve, I started again all by my lonesome. This time I wanted to try some other characters after I realized that there are too many other Smashsketeers who enjoy Falco's quick and powerful moves as much as I do. I started with the character that I felt most embodied awesome badassness: Bowser, king of the Koopas and nemesis to Mario. At first his moves seemed sluggish and I felt like I was being hit by every attack that my opponents threw. With more practice, however, I was able to realize his powerful Smashing potential, and I especially began to appreciate his fire breath, with which I was able to rack up damage to my enemies quickly.
I still wanted to try others though. So, appealing to my old favorite Link, I decided on his quicker counterpart, Young Link. All clad in red. Picking up his moves came easily to me with my previous experience. He had some nice added move too, including a powerful flaming arrow. I was even surprised at how able he was to knock other larger opponents off the edge. Soon I was ready to fight real people with my newfound players.
Playing other people with my new guys proved slightly more difficult, but against my inexperienced opponents I eventually was able to regain my dominance. That is until another of my friends joined the game, with considerable more practice than even myself. And with my own original character's rival, Starfox himself. Fighting against him with Falco, I lost hands down. Afterwards, the game seemed to lose its luster and again I put the cntroller down.
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Mar 6th, 2008 at 01:48:05 - Super Smash Brothers Melee (GC) |
SUMMARY
This game is the ultimate Nintendo fighting game, and in my humble opinion is one of the greatest games I've ever played. You choose from a variety of classic Nintendo characters, including of course Mario and his whole crew as well as several characters from a wide variety of games like Link from the Legend of Zelda or Fox and Falco from Starfox. This is actually a sequel game to the original Super Smash Brothers from the N64, except updated with a host of new charaters and levels and a variety of new moves. The object of the game: do enough damage to your opponent so that they fly farther when you attack, resulting eventually in their falling off the edge of the level.
GAMEPLAY
I still remember my first experience with this updated version of the original Super Smash Brothers, and returning to this game after a couple years of rust brings back those memories. In the old game I used to play as Link, Hero of the Zelda series of games. Returning as him in my first play experience with Melee, I was quickly able to notice the considerable changes in the dynamic of the game. The fundementals are the same, as the object is still to deliver as powerful a smash move as possible to knock them off the edge of a precarious sky island of your choice, but there are many new techniques and the speed and timing of all of the attacks are much different. I later realized that Link was no longer my favorite character, and I moved on to give others a try. I eventually settled on Falco before I finally put the controller down for a while.
But not for too long! I returned to the game for the specific purpose of giving it another look from a game maker's perspective. I started again with my go to guy, Falco, and soon I began to remember several of my old move sequences. I started by playing against several computer characters, namely Yoshi the Japanese Dinosaur and Samus from the Metroid series. But it seems as if I picked up a few of my old tricks a bit quickly and I was able to fling the "level 7" computers off the edge with relative ease. In five minutes the game was over and I came out on top. The scoring system takes a point off of your score every time you fall off the edge, and gives you a point every time you kill another player.
This short game made me only want to find some human opponents to Smash, which adds a whole other level of richness to the experience. Finding a couple of friends from down the hall, I went head to head with them for a solid hour, where I began to solidly dominate my opponents. I began to get tired, but I still had the desire to compete with more advanced players. Not too much though.
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Feb 22nd, 2008 at 18:01:17 - Super Mario World (SNES) |
GAMEPLAY
My second experience with this game, at least since I last played it when I was a kid, was even more crazy, and took me deeper into the strange yet almost sensically insane world of Mario. The world does follow a set of rules that seem ridiculous as compared to our perception of reality, but everything starts to almost make sense in you head as you play. You start to expect the most unlikely things, which makes the experience rich and stimulating.
As I got into the third world of Mario, I entered an underground world that within it contained the stars. I found in one particular secret the portal to the first corner of star world. The star world contained strange levels each of which containing a different color of Yoshi with another power. The first Yoshi I met was blue, but I caught him underwater. One would think his power might have to do with water, but once you get out to other levels with turtles, You realize his power is correlated to the blue colored turtle shell. Whichever color turtle he eats, he grows wings with which you may fly around. Similarly there is a yellow and red Yoshi with powers equivalent to their color in turtle shell; earthquake stomp and fireballs respectively.
With the flying abilities of Blue Yoshi, I was unable to unlock a whole other world within star world called simply "Special." It is just a series of the strangest levels the creators could think of, each named another colloquial term associated with hippies like "Gnarly' and "Tubular." I can honestly say I think this was my favorite part of the game.
Between the levels of Star World are the warp stars at each corner of the star-shaped land mass. At one warp star, I was able to warp directly to Bowsers castle. After several tries, I was able to beat not only the difficult emergent style Castle level but Bowser himself beating the game. It was honestly very satisfying witnessing his defeat by my own hand.
DESIGN
This game is meant to be a visual trip and journey for the player. It takes you through and introduces you to the wacky world of Mario, which from the traditional sense would make no sense, but as you gain experience you realize that there is a method to the madness. You expect the least expected thing because at each moment the creators are trying to inspire a sense of wonder. It is a truly unique experience you can get nowhere else.
This game also seems to have many other implications that are much more ambiguous to the player. If one see the game from the psychadelic perspective it makes an extraordinary amount of sense. Apparently, psychadelic psylocibin mushrooms are used often recreationally in Japan. The reoccuring use of mushrooms in this otherwise nonsensical world suggests that the creators may have been influenced by cultural understandings of mushrooms less understood in the United States. If the game is taken in this light many other correlations make themselves obvious. It almost seems as if the Koopas and Bowser are symbolic of power hungry characters, and Mario takes on the role of hero saving Peach, the innocent virgin princess.
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| AlecChristensen's GameLogs |
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AlecChristensen has been with GameLog for 16 years, 3 months, and 4 days |
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| Entries written to date: 12 |
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