Play Journal 4/19/2012
The game that I played for this week was Assassins Creed.
I have never completed the game all the way through. This was because I became bored with the game play. I enjoyed running around, riding horses, and jumping into hay stacks. However, after I had figured out the controls for all of it, it became old quickly. Mission after mission, it was the same thing. The story held no drive for me either. I didn’t even feel that I was playing my real characters life because you were technically reliving an ancestors life through the DNA of one of his relatives from the future.
The missions were draining, repetitive, and uninteresting to me.
Play Journal 4/11/2012
F.E.A.R.
After playing this game through a little bit more after the 5th or so time, I still enjoy it. At this point though, a big chunk of the replay value is gone. One of the things that I enjoyed about F.E.A.R. was that it actually scared me. When I was playing it through the first time, I would have to take breaks that would last for a half a day or more in order to regain my courage and make it through a potentially terrifying part. This game made me sweat and got me extremely worked up.
I really enjoyed and appreciated that kind of involvement though. It made me feel truly emerged and much more emotionally effected by what was going on. I was jumping at every small noise and I was very worked up. Even through the first and third time playing it through, I discovered new creepy things lurking around certain corners that would make me jump.
I remember that I first started to play and get into this game soon after getting my wisdom teeth pulled. So I spend the majority of my sick time sitting at home, xbox controller in hand, otter pop in mouth, running frantically through office buildings in the game looking for the next part and way to proceed with the guts that I had.
That was maybe three or four years ago, and still to today do I consider F.E.A.R. one of my most favorite games. I expect to keep it as one of my favorite for the next couple of years just because of some of the classic reactions that I remembered having to specific parts.
Play journal 3/30/2012
Games played
Computer: Portal
I was pushed into playing this game by my friend William, and I am glad that I was. It was one of the more compelling games that I have ever played, and I ended up playing it all the way through in one sitting. The computer that is monitoring you throughout the story, Glaydos, has a quirky hilarious darkness to her voice and what she says. Her snarky responses drove me to want to finish the tests and get to the end, which is what I did.
Definitely a well done game and one that I won’t forget easily. I would gladly play it through again someday.
iPhone: Drawsome
This is a simple pictionary type game that one plays with their friends on a phone or ipad. It was definitely fun for the first week or so that I would play. Most of what made it so fun is that you’re playing with your actual friends and people that you know. However, after a little while of playing, it became boring and too repetitive. You earned coins when you played, but you could not buy many extras for the game with the coins and so I was not driven so much to gain more coins.
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Normally, I do not play casual games too often. It is mostly because I quickly grow tired of them. I often do not feel that I have properly earned the goal. Or maybe it’s better to say that I feel that the goals value lessens over time because the games are often too simple and quick (when referring to iphone games and such).
Review on Past games
This is my review on the past games that I have reviewed and how they have advanced.
They have all grown a significant amount as time went on. I do not feel that text games could survive in todays technology. People are expecting to have visuals to interact with instead of just text. So in a way, those games seem to me that they are completely outdated.
However, the other games are still enjoyable. Though still, very “old school.”
They have advanced dramatically. From adding graphics, to sound, to sprites that move rather accordingly to your corresponding control motions.
Donkey Kong and Frogger
Both of these games had very simple controls, which was a new things for me. I am normally use to button mashing with all of my fingers.
Once I had figured out the control of the game, I thought that it would be a piece of cake. However, I soon found out (in both games) how impatient I can be when it comes to being tactical. I died multiple times, and soon became very frustrated. This helped me realize that the games were indeed easy to figure out, but hard to master. This is an important step to making a good classical yet challenging video game.
Specifically for Donkey Kong, I had difficulties with lining up my character with the ladder to climb and avoid the barrels. It was endlessly frustrating. While with Frogger, I had forgotten that I had the option of moving horizontally.
All in all, both of the games were fun. Still, very challenging though, and it helped me actually realize how important patience is for some video games.
DINOSAURS! Or, even better, a mix of the two.
Zork Review
Zork is the first and may be the only text based adventure game that I have/will play. I have never experienced anything quite like and, and I must say, it was frustrating.
Just from the start, with the black screen and white text, I was a little discouraged because it lacked natural visual appeal. Your character starts off by a white house. Surrounding you are various physical barriers such as mountains, canyons, trees, etc. I wandered the land for quite some time and rapidly became bored. I was not able to find out any of the tricks on my own without checking and reading other sources. Even after figuring out what I had to do, it was not very motivating for me. I had no drive behind my actions except to play the game in order to write this review. All in all, it was not very fun for me and I don’t think I’ll go and play it on my own. I may, however, send it to some friends just to frustrate them.
I suppose I can’t really say I was disappointed, because it was what I expected it to be. However it was more challenging and much trickier than I was initially expecting.
