Play game with thoghts

Personal comments for video games

[pokemonhuntera-blog]

Payday 2

This is the last blog post for this semester. It has been a great experience for me to write my feelings about games that I played and loved. And this last post will be about a game that I just got during Thanksgiving break and have been playing unstoppably for the past three days. The game is Payday 2.

The game’s story is simple but attractive. This is a maximum four players cooperative game doing heist missions. Missions include but limited to bank robbing, jewery store robbing, drug manufacturing, gold stealing etc. There are usually two ways of doing mission: stealth and loud, and sometimes there is only one way to go down. The choice is up to the crew. 

For each mission there are 5 different difficulties: normal, hard, very hard, overkill and deathwish. As the difficulty increases, the payment increases, and the more hardcore cops are. They are harder to kill, and boss level cops such as cloaker who can instantly take down criminals, heavy who are pretty much indestructable unless you have a flamethrower, and tazers who are super annoying, able to paralyze players unless teammates shoot down the tazer. 

The variety of weaponary and masks is a key feature of this game, with the most lucrative three letters of course: DLC! I got the Game of The Year edition so I own half of the DLCs. Although I am unable to play weapons such as bows, crossbows, flamethrower and heavy machine guns, I am satisfied with what I have so far. Becaues of the division between “offshore account transaction” and “spendable cash,” though I earned, saying 10000$ from a mission, I am only allowed to spend 1000 from it, and the rest is transacted. I have no idea what is it for, and it bothers me a lot. But hey, the best part of this game is to enjoy playing with your friends. 

[pokemonhuntera-blog]

Watch_Dog #1

This is the second game I picked up for my new PS4 after getting through the college application season. The first game was Destiny, and it came with the console bundle. But because I didn’t like it, so it was put on the top of the shelf until my friends wanted to play. Anyway, back to the topic. The time when I got it, it has been released for almost half a year. I only watched some youtubers played some of it, and I found the topic interesting--like a hacking version of Grand Theft Auto. In addition, the trailer looks amazing. After couple of hours of gameplay, I was neither disappointed nor excited. The game of course didn’t exceed my expectation; but it was not as bad as many reviewers had claimed. I enjoyed it after all. 

The basic story of the game is about a man named Aiden Pearce lost his niece because his identity is revealed during a crime activity. Although hacking is a big part of the game, I would hardly call Aiden a hacker, because in the game I only see that he presses the buttons on his phone, and the programms are written by others, such as a girl named Clara who play as Aiden’s assistent but died at the end. During his activity, which is the first chapter of the game, his partner goes in too deep, causing their identity disposed. As a result, Aiden’s niece died in a traffic “accident” while Adien’s car got attacked by some hired assasin. This hired assassin, however, hesitated when he saw the girl. So he only shot the tires instead of directly kill them. Sadly, the assassin’s girlfriend was kidnapped and sold as a prostitute by the hirer because of his failure of the mission. This is just a side story. The main track is Aiden, by using the aid of technology, tracing down the root of the crime and become the new “protector” of the city of Chicago.

......to be continued

[pokemonhuntera-blog]

Tomb Raider 9 #2

After talking about the basic game technical aspects, I would like to talk about the content, plots and character settings in Tomb Raider 9. One of the biggest thing, as many reviewers and players have noticed, is that in this game Laura Croft is no longer the girl we used to know--fierce, brave, agile and deadly. She is like a goddess, without any “worthy opponent.” In this one, Laura is young, just graduated from college, and this adventure should be her first adventure. Never really got into the wild nature, Laura is fragile, both physically and mentally. As the ship gets cracked in the storm and she is rushed to the shore, she is captured by local native dwellers. After she manages to get out, which functions as the tutorial chapter, we get to see lots of her inside feelings through her self-talking. Facing the unknown yet dangerous environment, she appears to be scared, upset, losing direction and orientations, and almost becomes hopeless. This is the common reflection of common people. Unlike before, Laura, for the first time shows out her true inner side. By sacrificing her “goddess” side, Crystal Dynamics brings Laura to real life, makes her more tangible, and the effects are proved to be good--players love this “real” Laura more than the goddess Laura. 

As game develops, Laura becomes more brave and more capable of adapting the surroundings. Her skills of shooting, surviving etc. increases, which functions as experience points in the game mechanics. The game is like a diary of Laura, and we are the wittnesses of the growing up procedure of her, from an amature who only read about adventure in books to a real warrior who flys through forests and fights against fierce animals and eneimes. To solve the mistery of the Sun goddess that existed in Japanese mythology and to rescue her best friend from the sacrifice ritul from the local people, which are dominated by a religious preach, Laura picks up her weapons, fights through tons of eneimes and finally uncovers the mystery of the undead sun goddess, which also bothered her father as a adventurist. This game also sets the foundation of the next game: The Rise of Tomb Raider, which I hopefully will play in the future, because I really enjoy this franchise. 

[pokemonhuntera-blog]

Tomb Raider 9 #1

At the beginning when I watched Tomb Raider movie in which Angelina Jolie plays the femal protagonist Laura Croft, I thought the movies were the original tale of Laura. However later I got to know that the fame of Laura Croft starts from video game, and movies were side products. During my high school sophomore year’s Christmas my host family gave me a xbox 360 as present, and two games come in with the bundle--Halo 4 and Tomb Raider 9. After I started the TR9, I instantly fell in love with it. The graphics are so delicate that I thought it’s a movie. So I went online to read some other people’s game reviews and reviews from professional reviewers such as IGN, and I got to know that this game is the new born of the whole sequal. It used to be a rather successful sequal, but because of lack the creativity, no significant new content were added in later games. The sale dropped linearly. At this time, Crystal Dynamics took it over and made this one. A lot of things changed besides the graphics, and these changes brought this new game a brand new feeling, endorsed by many and many players, including me. 

Besides being more realistic, Crystal Dynamics also added a new feature that no one has ever done before: the detail of Laura’s hair quality, and this feature were exclusive to PC, because the old generation consoles couldn’t handle it. Later in new gen like Xbox one and PS4, this setting becomes as default. I bought it also on PC when it was on summer sale, and although I love the effect, the game becomes really laggy, so I had to turn it off. 

This is just a short intro, and in the next chapter I will talk about my feeling about the game stories and character settings. 

......to be continuted.

[pokemonhuntera-blog]

Far Cry 3 #2

The guy introduces himself as Dennis. He was an American immigrant, but he was treated very badly and committed crime. That’s how he fled to this island. He tells Jason that the island is currenly at war, between the pirates led by Vass and the resistance formed by local native tribe warriors, led by Vass’s sister. The tatoos on the arm are recognition of the ability. The more tatoo a warrior gets, the higher the rank he is. This functions as skill tree, commonly seen in all role playing video games. The skills are basically divided into two three categories: Combat, Stealth and Survive. After unlock these skills, we can perform cool takedown actions such as chain take-downs or heavy soilder take-down, which is very important and convenient for late game play. The other important factor in this game is the weapon system. Far Cry 3 has expanded its weapon’s variety based on its previous sequels. From pistol to hand cannon; from sub-machine gun to automatic rifle then to heavy machine gun; from light sniper to heavy sniper guns. The coolest and the most useful I think, is bow. It has three kinds of arrows: regular, fire arrow and explosive arrow. It also provides great agility and stealth.The game also supports customization on weapons, including attachments and paints. Holding a bow with a highly accurate scope and wild jungle paint is so badass that I get goose pimps as I think about it. Another feature the game has is the beautiful nature settings and variety of wild animals species. From fierce tigers to powerful black bears then to agile dingo. There are also Australian birds, that will attack people if people are wandering in their territory. In the ocean, there are sharks. So randomly swimming in the ocean is not a very good idea. 

[pokemonhuntera-blog]

Far Cry 3 #1

Made by Dunia engine, presented by Ubisoft, Far Cry 3 is the first game that introduced me to the world of AAA works. At the beginning I watched my friend Jae playing it in the common room. I was attracted by several of the game’s features such as hunting, skinning and crafting. So I sat next to him and watched him playing. He just got started and hadn’t went far yet, so it was not hard for me to understand the story that I had missed. Basically a guy named Jason Brody comes to an island with his friends for a vacation. However, during the skydiving activity they land at area where was controlled by pirates, and they are captured by them, getting ready to be sold as slaves. The leader of the pirates, Vass, is one of the MOST successful video game villian ever made! He is completely insane, but he knows what he is doing. Jason is locked with his brother in a cave. His brother manages to kill the guard and gets the key. They two start trying to get out of the camp quietly. Here is the tutorial of simple moving mechanics, crotching and rock throwing that can distract the eneyme for couple seconds. As they almost succeeded, they were discovered, and Vass kills Jason’s brother with a shot on the neck. Vass, however, doesn’t kill Jason. He wants him to run, then sends out his man and dogs to chase after him. Again, he is crazy, so his behaviour cannot be judged by our normal standard. Here is the tutorail of sprinting mechanices, including sliding and climbings. As Jason runs to a suspended bridge, the bridge gets destroyed by a helicopter with a machine gun. Jason falls into the water, flowing through the wave and lost his conscieness. By the time he wakes up, he is lying on a bed in a little house. A stranger with glasses and tatoo on his arm is standing by, waiting for his awake....

to be continued.....

[pokemonhuntera-blog]

Mass Effect 2 #3

After recruiting Dr. Mordin and Garrus, we complete the major mission on Omega.Then we are heading to the citadel, begin our real galactic journey. The game can be divided into three main layers. First layer, recruit all the teammates. Second layer, complete all the loyal missions for each member. Third, head to Omega 4 Relay and blow the collector’s base sky high. Among the first and the second layers I have some favorites missions, those either include super hardcore combat or really interesting plots and interactions.

One of my favorites in the team recruiting stage is recruiting Grunt, a clone Krogan that was made in an experiment tank. The reason why I like it is that this mission has the hardest combat in the whole game in my opinion. Even the last boss fight of the last stage can’t compare to this. In this mission we have to face multiple Krogan mercenaries when we are trying to get Grunt’s tank onto the ship. Krogan is lizard like brutal warriors. They have thick skin that can help reduce the bullet’s damage. They also have health regeneration, while they are not being attacked. What’s more terrifying is that their culture worships war and combat, pretty much like ancient Spartans.Their thick armor or barrier are also troublesome for commander Shepard. Shepard has to move swiftly between obstacles and dodge their charges. I remember I spent half an hour just trying to pass this part. But after defeating the last warrior, I felt joy and a feeling of accomplished. Here I have to praise the rhetorical technique that the developer used here. One of the most important elements of video games is that players have to feel satisfying or a sense of accomplishment, so that players will keep playing it until finishing the game, or maybe even play the second round. The trick is to make some of the critical mission hard, but not impossible to beat, or it will be the sense of frustration rather than accomplishment to emerge. 

[pokemonhuntera-blog]

Mass Effect 2 #2

As the Cerbrus--a extreme military group led by a man called the “illusive man” that tries to gain humanity advantages against other races from other galaxies and planets--retreived commander Shepard’s body from an anonymous planet after a long space search, the operation begins. It cost totally billions of credits(currencies in the game). However, the facility became under attack while Shepard hasn’t filly healed yet. Fortunately, she is able to move around and function. From the radio Shepard hears a woman’s voice, telling her where to grab pistol and thermal clips.(Basically function as ammunition here.) The first level is just the introduction, telling players how to control and play the game, mechanics such as sprinting, hiding, melee attack, aiming and shooting and weapon’s swapping. In the middle of a fight Shepard counters a man who manipulates biotic power called Jacob. As they together fight back the merc(defensive robots,) Shepard asks the basic information. They move on together, until they met a wounded doctor. Here is a demonstration of how to use med-aid, though I never use them later in the game. After healing his wound, they all get up and keep moving. Suddently a door opens, the mysterious woman finally shows up again. Her name is Miranda. She pulls out her pistol and shot the doctor. She explains that this doctor is the one who causes the chaos, since he overwrites the programs of the mercs. They leave and step on the ship. Despite the notoriousness of Cerbrus has gotten themslves stuck with, Shepard finally agrees to work with them, in order to find out the reasons why human colonies keep getting attacked and colonists keep getting abducted. 

The tutorial hence is over. Now we enter the real game play. Overall speaking, this game focuses on gathering awesome teammates around the galaxy. Then we need to explore and mine the planets to upgrade our ship and weapons in order to get ready for the final suicide mission. First mission happens at Omega Relay, a dirty, chaotic place filled with mercenaries and mafia and gangs. The leader of Omega is an Asari called Aria. After talking to her, we know where to recruit our first two teammates--doctor Mordin, a salarian who will be in charge of out technology advancement, Garus, a Turian who has been the best teammates in Mass Effect 1, thought at this time we don’t know the “Arcangle” that we are going to recruit is Garus. 

...to be continued

[pokemonhuntera-blog]

My First Experience With Mass Effect 2 (My favourite)

Before playing the game, my friend suggests me starting directly from the second one, because the graphics of the first one is terrible. According to his knowledge about me, as he said, I definitely would not like to play it. So I decided to follow his idea, fearing that the crappy performance will destory my interest then I would just end up wasting 30 bucks. At the beginning it asked some basic info about your gender, face and bornplace. Later I realized its for the calculation of regenate and paragon. Then game starts, a vivid story telling by a mysterious women, walking around the holograph, chatting with a man sitting in the chair. They are talking about a man named Shepard, and things I don’t understand at all. Although after completing the whole sequal I know what they are talking about, at that time I had to ask my friend for help to explain things to me. George did a really good job providing me information without spoiling. Here I present my gratitude to him. :)  

After couple exchange of conversations the scene switched to a space ship, a pilot driving while chatting with an officer, saying that their months seraches for geths, which I assumed are enemies, has been futile. All of the sudden, a huge thing that looks like a space station just appeared from nowhere and shoot a lazer at the Normandy(the name of the ship where Shepard is on. I know it because the name was printed on the outside) Then the scene switched to commander shepard, talking to her crew to abandon ship then walking in the hallway of the ship trying to get to the control room, because Joker (the pilot) refused to abandon the ship. After walking out of the hallway full of fire, Shepard came to another hallway where roof has been teared apart. There, her walking speed becomes slow, meanwhile we can enjoy the beautiful view of the outer space, a bright moon-like planet above our head, and remanents of ship floating around remaining stationary. Finally we make to the control room, after talking Joke to leave, another heavy hit from the giant station-like ship. Shepard fall into the space, and the suit starts to leak oxygen. Her breathe becomes heavier and heavier, vision starts to become blend, further and further. She falls into some random planet and her figure begins to fade.... End of prologue

...to be continued.

[pokemonhuntera-blog]

My absolute favourite #1

Having playe so many video games so far, I liked really a lot of them. From pokemon games I started playing when I was a little boy, to AAA games when I owned a real console, each one of them has brought me great pleasure and invaluable memory of time that has passed. But speaking of my favourite, so far I have a choice thats has remained the first place on my list for quite a while. It is the Mass Effect Trilogy. The reason why I didn’t start this blog with this sequal is that I didn’t really dare to write it. I liked it so much with so many reasons that it becomes extremly hard to organize it into a smooth blog which can fully expresses all my emtions and thoughts. But I decided to do it anyway, mainy because I feel that if I procrastinate it more, I will eventually not write it, and that will be a shame for myself. So let’s begin our journey, with commander Shepard and his awesome crew, on the ship name the Normandy, through galaxies and planets. 

The first time I had a glance of the sequal is by watching YouTube videos when I was a junior in high school. A channel called WatchMojo ranks video games based on some specific topics. Somehow I saw the video that displays the romantic scene of characters, and one of them was an alien looking gril with blue, shining skin. I was like: hum... interesting. I wonder what this game is about lol. My roommate who just passed by, saw the video, and told me that game was called Mass Effect. It is one of his favourite games as well, though he usually hates shooting game. He told me some breif mechanic, which includes awesome story tellings, choices makings, and the combination of shooting and role playing. I became even more interested. During that Christmas, I spent 30 dollars getting the trilogy for my XBox 360, and began to explore the mystery sequal...

.....to be continued...

[pokemonhuntera-blog]

Max has became old #2

After playing the game for a while, I strongly feel that Max Payne is not the strong young police officer who singlely takes down a whole team of drug dealears and a whole mafia group, standing on the skyscrapper alone with that badass leather jacket with that grenade launcher, or flying out of the window from the third floor of the building but still rushing to enemies and shooting the gun. He is an old man now, who becomes dizzy while taking a couple of painkillers. He used to be able to jump out of the edge of the building, with a 360 degree turning and land on a running train. Now its even hard for him to jump over a couch. He used to be able to carry all kinds of weapons, from pistols to rifles to machine guns to grenade launchers to assult rifles. His fire power will make enemies scream and hide. Now he can only bare two single hand weapons and one long weapons such as a shotgun or a mini-submachine gun. What is more absurd, he runs out of ammo all the time, and is forced to hide in a corner, waiting for the bad guy to come closer and melee him to get the weapon. He used to be able to stand against the intense attack from the other side, taking a pain killer while health bar is low and keep fighting. Now when he gets shot by a couple bullets he begins to faint and scream. Painkillers are harder to find, and the amount of healing they do is much less than before. I feel sad and sorry for him when I clicked the button, ordering him to move around, dragging his wounded leg or wounded arm, mounting. I feel sorry when he cannot do the mission alone as usual. Now he even needs an assissant called Passos, who later turns out to be a traitor. After completing the game, I am speechless. I still love the sequal. It reminds me of my childhood a lot. But it also leaves me many emotions that are hard to be expressed in words. 

[pokemonhuntera-blog]

Max has became old #1

After completing the first Max Payne game, it had been a while until I touched video games again, because of stressful school work, standardized tests preparations and upcoming college applications. After everything was done at senior year, I picked up video games again to kill leisure time, and I got Max Payne 3 when it was on sale. I haven’t got the chance to try the second one yet, but I will definitely do it when I have the chance.

It was a Sunday, and I spent the whole day completing the story mode. Overal speaking, the graphics have made huge improvements, so do all the AAA games at that time. The game is like a movie, with many CGs. Many people dislike it, but I think its a personal preference thing. From my perspective, CGs are both entertaining and relaxing. They provide the smooth link between chapter plots, and also a rest between chapters and episodes. However one consequence is the super big memory requirment. The game itself asks for 30 GB; more is required after all the other plug ins. This definitely raises the requirment of hardware. 

Another thing that people complain about is the graphics requirment. Even my laptop which has a GeForce 860 graphic card and 16GB RAM cannot handle the high quality setting. I can play smoothly with only medium setting. But aside from these,  the game runs pretty well. 

Max Payne is back, after the first two games! Although I didn’t play the second one, I read about the plots. Basically its another tragedy happened to him--he fell in love with an assassin whose name is Mona Sax, the woman we met in the first game who drugged Max and let he fell asleep with illusions of the long endless corridor and his baby and wife crying. She works with Max to revenge her family, but she gets killed at last. So its another beat on Max’s nerve. This time Max fleed to South America, addicted to alcoho and painkillers, stuck in his past...

to be continued...

[pokemonhuntera-blog]

My eternal Max Payne(#2)

Although the style of the game is kind of simple: just running round shooting different kinds of guns, there is an awesome element that everyone who has played mush talk about--the bullet time. Firstly created in the movie<the matrix>, the bullet time can slow down time, while you can dodge bullets and make more accurate shot. One of typical badass move is you jumping out of the corner, starting bullettime, doing a 360 degree turn in the middle of the air and shooting every enemy in the forehead. Similarly awesome dodge moves such as front dash, backflip, slide are all possible, thanks to the advanced engine. 

What also amazed me was the physics effect. The interactions between characters and objects were really realistic. For example, when you throw a grenade when the enemy is so close that your grenade hit him on the head, he actually dies because of the hit, and the grendage will bounce off and then explode. In addition, you can break some boxes and shoot the televisions etc. All these small details make the game really great. 

Besides game mechanics, this game is good at building up the atmosphere. The whole theme appears to be dark, depressing and sad. Among them there is also a strength. These elements are expressed through theme music, pictures, background soundtracks. Some of the missions, for example, two nightmare scenes after Payne was drugged, all reflect the complicated and unstable mental states and activities of the protagonists. 

The last element I want to talk about is the multi-weaponry system. Although this game is the first one of the whole sequal, it has the most kinds of weapons. From the beginning berreta to powerful desert eagle then to dual-berreta pistols; from rifle to shotgun to assult rifle; from grenade to molotov to grenade launcher. Oh and also, you will have a bat or a pipe too, just in case you run out of ammo and have to melee some bad guys. Different types of weapons create different styles of game play, and these differences have made the game great and interesting. 

[pokemonhuntera-blog]

My eternal Max Payne (#1)

Max Payen and Call of Duty 1 were the first two games I encountered when I stepped into the world of video games. I rememeber I was around 6 or 7 year old, watchingmy father played them on our PC. So I present this first blog that I have ever written so far to the game developed by Rock Star--Max Payne, not only as a nostalgic reflection to my childhood, but also to express my thoughs about this game. 

Overall speaking, I am deeply found of this game. It is the one of best I have ever played. I have played through all modes (including New York Times) on PC, and I did the same thing on my iphone when the IOS format came out. The first thing this game has that attracts me so much is its plot setting. 

The game starts with a NYPD officer named Max Payne coming home, calling his wife but recieving no responce. As Max walking upstairs, he hears his wife’s screaming. Entering the room, he spots his dead child (who is about couple month old). He knows something is wrong, so he pulls out his pistol. After killing couple enemies in green shrit, he breaks into the main bedroom and kills the last mad guy. But everything is too late--his wife has brutally murdured. Her body lies on the bed, with blood all over her. Hugging the body, Max Payne screams with pain, swearing to revenge for his family. Just like his name, he has fell in to the maxium of pain. He changed his job from a police officer to a D.E.A agent, after he finds out that the mad guys who break into his house are under the effect of a misterious drug. Meanwhile, his wife used to work for D.E.A. Max believes that there must be some kind of story behind this whole thing. Prologue done. After stepping out of the subway (chapter 1 episode 1), Max Payne has entered a journey of revenge without returning...

....to be continued