Half Life

Title: Half Life
Studio: Valve
Publisher: Sierra Studios, Electronic Arts
Genre: FPS
Platform: PC

Premise
You are a physicist in an underground lab when aliens start appearing everywhere, and you have to do you best to survive and escape.

Character
You play as Gordon Freeman, one of Black Mesa's leading physicists. Gordon is the strong silent type, for he doesn't talk at all during the game. He is completely controlled by the player, with no self control whatsoever.

Engagement
The game is very engaging. The levels are expansive and detailed, drawing the player into the game. The enemies are creative and scary. The difficulty curve is very well balanced, with a good rate of increasing difficulty.

Story
You are Gordon Freeman, and on the day of the game, you are attempting to create a resonance cascade, which you are successful in. The bad news, is that it opened a portal to another world, and lets a whole plethora of alien enemies in. You are tasked with finding a way out, and killing as many enemies and help as many people on the way as possible.

Resources
Your Resources include various weapons you find, grenades, HEV suit power, Health, and ammunition.

Challenge
The game offers a very good challenge for both fans of FPSs and people who enjoy puzzles, as there are spectacular battles, as well as very challenging puzzles.

Metal Gear Solild

Title: Metal Gear Solid
Studio: Konami Computer Entertainment, Japan, Digital Dialect
Publisher: Konami, Microsoft
Genre: 3rd Person Stealth Shooter
Platform: PsOne

Premise
You are a secret agent attempting to infiltrate a terrorist base and take out their main weapon.

Character
The main character is Solid Snake, who is the player character. He is a legendary secret agent and has been pulled out of retirement. He uses all manner of gadgets from remote controlled missiles to cardboard boxes. Other characters include Colonel Campbell, who gives general advice and tells snake necessary information about his surroundings. Naomi Hunter calls snake to offer medical advice, Snakes old master Miller, and Mei Ling, who gives technological advice. Meryl joins you later inside the base, and she helps you get past some of the more difficult security measures.

Engagement
The game is very engaging. Right from the start you are put into the action, having to stealth your way to the elevator to progress. The game gets slightly less engaging as you progress, because of constant calls from the Colonel and the others, and regularly occuring cutscenes.

Story
Solid snake is attempting to infiltrate the hijacked FOXHOUND base and take down the terrorist hijackers main weapon: a nuclear launch enabled walking tank. Snake goes through the base, avoiding or destroying the resistance. Eventually he meets Meryl, who helps him on his way. With Meryl's help, Snake eventually takes down the terrorists weapon, and ends the threats being put on the White House.

Resources
Your resources include various weapons, ammo for weapons, different types of grenades, a cardboard box, different scopes, and various keycards.

Challenge
The game starts out fairly simple, but as it progresses, the game gets more and more difficult, requiring more help from the colonel and other supporting characters. The game tends to have a very steep difficulty curve, requiring the player to know what they are doing very early into the game.

Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards

Title: Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards
Studio: HAL Laboratories
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: 2.5d Side Scroller
Platform: Nintendo 64

Premise
An evil force has broken the great crystal and kirby is tasked with recovering all of the missing shards.

Character
The character that the player controls is Kirby. Kirby is a small round creature who can suck up any number of objects and enemies, stealing the enemies or objects properties. Kirby is not entirely controlled by the player though, there are cutscenes wherein he acts by himself.

Engagement
Using exceptional gameplay and an origional story, this game succeeds in engaging the player to a great degree.

Story
An evil force comes to dream world and in an attempt to steal the power crystal, it breaks it into many pieces that are scattered across dream world. Kirby finds one of the dream world crystal keepers trying to find the crystal shards. Kirby decides to help her, and they set off. They face many different foes, some of which are holding pieces of the crystal. Throughout the story, you meet 3 different helpers, Waddle Dee, The Painter, and King Dedede. They all help kirby to recover all of the crystal shards and banish the evil force from dream world.

Resources
Resources include the different powers that Kirby can obtain, Health, Crystal Shards, Star points, and lives

Challenge
This game has a very good curve of difficulty. It starts out very very easy, and progressively gets more challenging. It achieves this not only by adding larger and more difficult enemies, it adds puzzles and traps to the mix.

Goldeneye 64

Title: Goldeneye 64
Studio: Rareware
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: First Person Shooter
Platform: Nintendo 64

Premise
You are a British secret agent trying to stop a criminal organization from attacking the world with a weaponized satellite.

Character
You play as James Bond, the famous secret agent of MI6 of England. He is a smooth and silent killer, and always gets the job done. The character is mostly shown when there is dialogue between Bond and the other characters in game.

Engagement
The game starts out the player in a combat situation, instantly drawing the player in. The levels are expansive and numerous, and the various environments that the player has to play in keeps the player interested throughout the duration of the game.

Story
The game follows the story of the movie almost exactly, with the exception of a tank here and there. Mostly the story is portrayed through the briefings at the beginnings of each mission, and with dialogue from the characters in game.

Resources
The resources in this game include, time (for some levels), health, armor, and ammunition.

Challenge
The game has a very good curve of difficulty. The beginning levels are easy and help the player get used to the controls, and as the game progresses it gets harder and harder, until the player reaches the end levels, which are extremely hard.

Super Mario 64

Title: Super Mario 64
Studio: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: 3rd Person Platformer
Platform: Nintendo 64

Premise
You are trying to rescue a princess who has been captured (yet again) by an evil king, by recovering power stars from various levels.

Character
You play as Mario, a plumber-turned-hero, who arrives at the castle because of an alluring letter sent by the princess, promising baked goods, only to find that she has been kidnapped by Bowser. Mario is one of the many famous, "silent heroes". A player character who has no speaking part in the game, apart from a few grunts. Other famous ones include Gordon Freeman and link. Even though Mario never talks, he still is in control of what the main goal is in the game.

Engagement
The game is not very engaging from the story point of view, as we get no back story for Mario or princess peach and her whereabouts, but gameplay makes up for this. This game has a very many levels to play though, each one different from the last, and each time you play through a level, you can choose a different objective. This results in a very engaging gameplay.

Story
The story begins when you arrive at the castle via one of Mario's trademark green pipes, and a letter is read by Mario from Princess Peach saying that she has baked Mario a cake, and wishes him to go to the castle to view/eat said cake. Upon entrance of the castle, you learn that Princess Peach has been kidnapped by Bowser and you have to get all the power stars in order to rescue her. From then on, the story is pretty much gone from the game, and your main concern is getting the power stars.

Resources
The resources include, coins, stars, time in some levels, health, and lives.

Challenge
The game starts out at a very manageable level, with an integrated tutorial to help the player along, and then gets steadily difficult, climaxing in a very difficult end boss battle. While the player can choose their mission for each level, in order for them to get the required amount of starts to win the game, they will have to complete most of them, forcing the player to get better at the game.

Oblivion

Title: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Studio: Bethesda Softworks
Publisher: 2K games, Bethesda Softworks
Genre: 1st/3rd person RPG
Platform: Xbox, PC

Premise
You are in a fantasy kingdom, trying to close all the gates of oblivion, ridding the kingdom of evil.

Character
In this game the character is mainly controlled by the player. The player chooses the appearance, the characters race, abilities, and class. The player chooses what weapons and armor is equipped and other related items. However, the player is given a limited number of responses when in a conversation with a NPC, which gives the character some personality.

Engagement
From the very beginning of the game, it is very engaging. The story draws the player in to a fantasy world full of colorful characters and stories, and throws him into the thick of it. The engagement is someone lost because from the very beginning, the player can simply warp to any city they desire.

Story
The story is well thought out and very interesting from the beginning, making the player care about the missions, and not just go through the motions, as with many games lacking a good storyline.

Resources
Resources include arrows, weapon health, magicks, fatigue, health, strength, and notoriety.

Challenge
The game has a good difficulty curve. It starts out with a series of integrated tutorials, and from then on the game gets steadily harder, but the player can choose the missions that they want to play, and therefore can choose the difficulty that suits them the most.

Burnout Paradise

Title: Burnout Paradise
Studio: Criterion Games
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Genre: Free World Racing
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3

Premise
You drive a myriad of different cars around a city that is filled with ramps and races, and you try to win as many challenges as you can to get more cars.

Character
The only character you control is the car, and you have complete and total control over the car, and the only personality that the cars have is their various stats that govern their performance on the road.

Engagement
Paradise city is huge. It is a tremendous expanse of roads, jumps and hidden areas that will draw anyone in for hours trying to find all of the greatest places to have fun. There is always a new place to find or a new race to win, and with each road being its own time trial and the times being uploaded on the internet, there is always someone to race against. This game is very engaging, to say the least.

Story
The game has virtually no story, the little bit being the host of Crash FM, the radio station playing the music, who tells you of new cars to take down, new races, and hidden areas. The lack of story does not take away from the gameplay as much as one would expect though. The game is still very engaging and entertaining to play.

Resources
The resources the player has are the car health, the car's boost, and time, depending on the challenge that the player is completing. Car health is taken down whenever a player crashes, and damage is increased depending on the severity of the crash, and can be replenished by driving through repair garages. Car boost can be replenished by driving aggressively, doing stunts, or driving as fast as possible. Time is sometimes limited when doing time trial races or stunt runs.

Challenge
The challenge in the game is very well controlled. In the beginning, the player goes through a simple tutorial, and the races and challenges are easy, and the amount of points required for the next level is low. These factors steadily increase in challenge as the game progresses, and if a player feels it is too difficult, they have a whole city to practice in to get better.

Fallout 3

Title: Fallout 3
Studio: Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks, Zenimax Media
Genre: FPS/RPG
Platform: PC, Xbox 360

Premise
You are the son of a scientist who has run away from your home, and your mission is to find him.

Character
Your character has very customizable facial features, colors, and hairstyles, as well as skill points and special perks. you can add skill points and choose one new perk every time you level up from experience points, gained by killing enemies or completing missions.

Engagement
To say the least, the game is very engaging. Through its various cutscenes, sprawling, 16 square mile landscape, to the apocalyptic scenery, to the colorful NPCs, the game does an excellent job of engaging the player on an emotional level, making them feel as if they truly are trying to scavenge a living from the nuclear wasteland.

Story
Hundreds of years in the future, a nuclear war threatens to end the human race, but they are saved by Vaults, man-made caverns that were designed to give us a second chance in the even of a war. A long while after the war ended, you are born. You are born inside vault 101, where you grow up, and then, for no apparent reason, your father leaves the vault. It is your undying quest to follow and try to locate him.

Resources
Your resources consist mainly of healthpacks, ammunition, books to gain skill, food, anti rad syringes, anti damage powerups, action point power ups, and experience points.

Challenge
The game succeeds in keeping the game in the flow most of the time by having an innovative tutorial stage that most players wont even realize is happening, and the challenge increases steadily from there, making sure that the player is not breezing through the missions, but is not being killed at ever turn, either.

Ristar

Title: Ristar

Studio: Sonic Team
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Side Scroller/Platformer
Platform: Sega Genesis

Objects
The objects in Ristar would be the character that the player controls, Ristar, the various enemies the player fights, and the health and point power ups the player gets throughout a level.

Properties
Each enemy that is not a boss, has just 1 health, that is taken away when Ristar attacks them. Ristar starts out with 4 health, that can be replenished with power ups.

Behaviors
Ristar can walk to the left and right, and jump and grab onto enemies and other things, such as trees and ladders. The enemies follow a repetitive path of going back and forth or up and down or in circles.

Feedback
Every time Ristar is hurt, or you run out of health, the game lets you know by either a sound and Ristar flashing, or a game over screen.

Halo 3: ODST

Title: Halo 3: ODST

Studio: Bungie
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Genre: First Person Shooter
Platform: Xbox 360

Challenge
The challenge in ODST is fairly manageable, even to a beginning player. With four levels of difficulty, the player can easily find their comfort zone, and still be challenged and entertained by the gameplay. Whichever difficulty level the player chooses, the difficulty curve starts out the same way. When you begin the first mission, you are given a breif tutorial on how to do basic actions, such as jumping, turning on night vision, and so on. From then on the game gets steadily more difficult, by adding more enemies, giving them better armor, giving them better positioning, and things of that nature. The challange level continues to increase until the climax of the story, at the last level.

Play
Halo 3: ODST is more suited towards players that enjoy a certain level of freedom. The map starts out small, but as the player progresses, the city lockdown doors open and the map size increases considerably. In contrast to this, there are parts of the game that are quite linearized, forcing the player to take 1 path through the game. These parts are the parts of heavy combat as well.

Premise
The year is 2552 You are a new member of the elite forces of the United Nations Space Command, the Legendary Orbital Drop Shock Troops, or ODSTs. You start a mission to liberate New Mombassa, a mega-city on earth, from the genocidal alien forces of The Covenent. There is a massive explosion, and you are seperated from the other members of your squad. Your task is to retrace their steps in order to regroup with them, and finish the mission you were assigned at the start.

Characters
You play all of the characters of your squad except the captain. Each of the characters have their own personality, that is revealed to you as you play them, which gives the player a deeper emotional connection with them, and what they are going though trying to get to their other squad members. The cutscenes give the characters free will, while you control them completely when you play as them.

Story
The story is told through a series of cutscenes, in game dialogues, and in game scripted actions. The scenery and extremely detailed environments help the player become immersed in each of the different roles they play.

Worms World Party

Title: Worms World Party
Studio: Team 17
Publisher: Titus Software
Genre: Side Scroller, turn Based Shooter
Platform: PC

Players

This game can be played with anywhere from one to six people, and can be a free for all with everyone or can be 2 or more large teams fighting against the other teams. This game can be configured to use any one of the player interaction patterns.

Invitation To Play

This game has a very strong invitation to play because to a lot of people it is extraordinarily fun to control small cute worms and try to blow the crap out of each other with all manner of weapons.

Roles Of Players

The roles of the players are simply to kill as many of the enemies worms as possible in order to win the game.

Rules

The rules are simple, but can be changed to a degree to the suit the players' needs. You can only move and attack with one worm per turn, you cant choose your worm that you play with that turn, unless you change the rules, and you cant kill your own worms, or else you will lose points.

Procedures

To begin a game, first you choose the rules of the game you want to play. The number of teams, color, and number of each worms per team is set, the weapons set is chosen, the map is decided, and the special factors are picked. Then, the game begins, and the first player takes their worm, chooses their weapon, moves into position, and fires. The players take turns doing this, until all but one of the teams has been eliminated.

Resources

Depending on the weapons set, each player has a limited number of ammunition for each weapon. Ammo can be replenished by crates found around the map. Worms also have a set health at the beginning of the match, that they lose when they take damage, which can also be replaced in medkits found around the map.

Conflict

Inventory

Your inventory consists of all of the different types of weapons that the worms can wield, from grenades, to sheep, to shotguns, to mini-guns, to old ladies, to the holy hand grenade.

Obstacles

The obstacles that a player faces can include scenery, the map itself, other players, and crates.

Opponents

Your opponents consist of all of the worms that are not on your team.

GTA: San Andreas Crazy Glitch

I was playing GTA today and was using the flying car cheat along with a monster truck, and I was coming in for a landing on a road, a station wagon pulled under me and got stuck in the ground. The perspective also got skewed, which is something Ive never seen before in a glitch.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Title: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Studio: RockStar North
Publisher: RockStar Games
Genre: 3rd Person Shooter
Platform: PC

Premise

You take the role of a ganster in a fictional state which shares a lot of characteristics with California, who is trying to take back his city from rival gangs, and the corrupt police force.

Character

You are Carl Johnson, CJ. A gangster from Los Santos. You return to your home to find that your gang has lost all of its power, your mother was killed in a shooting, and you are no longer a respected member of the gang.

Play

This game is very well rounded. It has almost every genre of video game out there somehow incorporated into the play, either in main missions, or optional side missions. There are various types of planes that can be found at the 3+ airports throughout San Andreas, all of which can be piloted. The flying is not flight simulator quality, but then I feel that flying would lose it's fun in the game, becoming challenging to all but the most skilled pilots. There are stealth missions, where you have to raid various buildings, and in one case a cargo ship. There are racing missions as well as side missions, where you race to each waypoint, the course being set up like connect-the-dots. It has full on action shooter missions, where all you have to do is kill all the policemen/rival gang members/innocent bystanders/etc. etc. There is even a puzzle aspect when you have to use a radio controlled helicopter to protect a radio controlled car on its way through a small map. If all you're looking for is fun, though, all of these elements can be ignored. The map, which is the size of a state, begs to be explored and demolished. Easily obtainable weapons from cheats lead to unstoppable rampages throughout the city, destroying everything in sight, which can keep the average person occupied for hours.

Engagement

The story is fairly engaging, if you let it be. There is the option to skip most of the cutscenes for those of you who want to get to the action, but if you watch the cutscenes you will see a well crafted and original story play out, that will make you want to help CJ out with his problems.

Challenge

GTA: San Andreas starts out with the simple tutorial missions, bike riding, car driving, shooting, and so on. As it gets more and more into the game, the missions get increasingly complicated and challenging. The learning curve is a tad steep when it comes to a few levels, and some levels are so easy you think they should have been placed earlier in the game, but all together, this game's difficulty curve is better than most games.

Gameplay Video

(In future posts I will have a video of the game here, but today my computer decided it wasn't going to let me.)