Thursday, November 30th

Again, a game light day.
Golden Sun was more of the same, and I am still trying to nail down what about their combination of simplicity and variety of puzzles makes it good.

I finished CoD2 today.
CoD2 was a very varied game. The first campaign (Russians) made me remember CoD1. Wide open areas, lots of comrades, and every building a fight to the death. A great piece of work. It is one of the few games that I had to play in chunks, simply because of how intense it was. After twenty minutes, one does not feel excited or accomplished; they feel as if they went through a war zone.
Sadly, this does not carry to the British campaign. Much of the combat took place in trenches, and becomes quickly monotonous. The tank missions were fun, but far too easy, and far too short.
The American campaign has its moments. The D-day missions are exhilarating and well paced (the falling back mission especially comes to mind.) Unfortunately, the town capture missions are all very similar, and again, monotonous by the third.
Strange note: The credits have a 'video' that plays in the background, a bizarre story of a botched rescue of a British soldier by American soldiers...

I attempted to play some BF2, but something is, and has been, wrong with my connection, and I CANNOT hold a connection to any server for a BF game. Major flaw if you ask me.

Wednesday, November 29th

Golden Sun 2: The Lost Age

GS2 is a bit of an oddity for me; the puzzles feel unnecessary, yet are enjoyable.

For example, one puzzle came up twice where you enter a room and it is partially filled with sand (which you can walk on). On one side of the room is a locked door, the switch to open it is midway through it. At some points in the sand there are invisible buttons that raise the sand level. If it gets to high it covers the door switch.

There is virtually no way know WHERE the sand raising buttons are before you step on them. But even on the second time I was not annoyed or bored by such luck and memory based puzzle.
Why?

I think it is because of two factors: First, ease of dealing with the puzzle. It is a very simple puzzle to understand, and especially important, to interact with. The player never is confused about what is going on. Second, it takes two minutes max. GS(2) is filled with these micro puzzles. They don't take huge amounts of thinking or time, but they give an instant reward that pushes the player forward.

Later posts on the same games will probably be much shorter.
Also, later posts will probably be better.

Up and running

I do not know what possessed me to think it was a good plan to start a blog. Much less one based on games.
My goal, at least until I abandon this, is to blog everyday that I play games, about the games I played that day.
Maybe once a week or something I can give a post of games long gone that deserve it.