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.)