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Solid Clank

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For several months, one of my coworkers has insisted that I need to play Ratchet and Clank. I put it on my game rental queue and forgot about it until recently. I was able to borrow it from a friend and finally began the famous platformer.

As a fan of the Spyro the Dragon games, I was hoping that Ratchet and Clank would deliver the same solid gameplay. Fortunately, I was right. The game was clever and fun, filled with characters that were quirky without being too annoying. Unlike Spyro, which seemed geared toward a younger audience, Ratchet and Clank was a little more gritty. Enemies exploded and you got to shoot with a gun. It felt more like a PG movie rather than a G movie.

I breezed through the first few levels. There was not quite enough story to compel me to play past two hours at first, but that two hours was a lot of fun. I didn’t seem to have too much trouble with the jumps (a common trouble spot for me) or locating necessary items. Ratchet can glide like Spyro, helping the game to feel familiar simply through its mechanics.

I had a lot of fun playing Ratchet and Clank today. Compared to games like Jak and Daxter, where the voices grew annoying and the game had some ridiculously hard required tasks, this game felt very well-balanced. Diligence in collecting the currency around levels would help you get the best weapons. It felt rewarding in all the right ways.  

I Hate Dugog

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There are few points in a game like Puzzle Quest where you get so frustrated that you stop playing. My experience fighting Dugog was one such occurrence where I took a break from playing. I had to regroup and develop a strategy.

Before Dugog, I had been following the main storyline and paying little attention to the additional side quests and other opportunities to boost my character. I hadn’t developed my citadel, which allows you to learn spells from captured enemies. Certain spells, such as Regeneration, can become invaluable. It allowed me to cure myself with one simple spell that didn’t change the board at all (unlike the previously earned cure spell).

Initially, Dugog seemed unbeatable. The AI seemed to “favor” him, allowing him to get two or three “4 of a Kind” matches as I watched in distress. Some of my friends shared my frustration – the AI enemies did seem unusually lucky.

However, I soon realized that I could gain a much greater advantage by a perfectly honest method – leveling up. At its heart, Puzzle Quest is largely an RPG, so it is only natural that increasing your characters’ abilities is essential to moving ahead. I stopped ignoring the side quests and soon had a much stronger knight. When there were no more side quests to complete, I decided it was time for a rematch.

It still took me a few tries to beat Dugog, but I was much closer to winning each time. Considering the fact that Dugog was the first major boss, it should come as no surprise that he proved a challenge. I was glad that Dugog was difficult, because he taught me to explore the game and enjoy the journey.  
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Chocobo’s End

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I finally decided that it was time to stop avoiding Chocobo Tales because of one silly race. After all, I was close to the end and I couldn’t let it hold me back. I had really enjoyed the rest of the game and wasn’t ready to give up yet.

I began the race and found myself much calmer. While I didn’t win the first time, I was consistently improving and beat it shortly. Without my emotions running high, my hand was much steadier and it made all the difference.

While the game had a little twist at the end that kept it going a little longer than I expected, it only took me a couple of hours to beat the entire game. The final battle was a mini-game much like hockey. True to the rest of the game, nothing was too difficult after that one race that held me back.

As the credits rolled, I was surprised by their length. Instead of normal scrolling credits, each name or names appeared separately with a screen for each person’s title. I didn’t want to touch the screen for fear of missing some “reward” movie for sitting through the credits. However, I touched the screen by accident once and was surprised to see a letter turn a color and make a noise. After a few screens, I figured out that, if I touched all the letter O’s, the whole credit would turn rainbow colors and I would hear a happy chocobo “KWEH!”

When the credits finally ended, I saw a score. The credits themselves were one last mini-game. I was impressed by the creativity in using the credits as something more than another movie to sit through. My final play time was eight hours and 25 minutes.

Looking back, I really did enjoy Chocobo Tales. Aside from the two mini-games where I was temporarily stuck, I had relatively few problems. The card battles, which had a large chance element, were often very close. I almost always won, but the opponents seemed well-matched to my level and created a challenge. I hope that I will soon be able to try out the multiplayer mode and play it in a new way.  
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Barriers to Play

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My family was in town this weekend, as my sister was graduating. They love to ask me questions, especially about the game industry. I have a lot of support from them for my chosen profession, but it is interesting to see how my perceptions have been shaped from a very different society.

I grew up in a time when multitasking was incredibly common, if not required. Often when I play games, I do something else at the same time, such as reading a strategy guide, talking to my sister, or even talking on the phone. I always try to show respect towards the people I am talking to when multitasking, and never attempt to play when someone is having a serious conversation with me.

It did not seem unusual to me to bring my DS to the graduation ceremony. I had to be at school at seven in the morning, a full two hours before the ceremony began. I was tired and cranky. I had had little time to play games in the past few days and my family wasn’t talking to me very much. So I pulled out my DS and began playing Puzzle Quest with the sound off.

Puzzle Quest is the type of game that doesn’t require my full attention every second. I find it relaxing to work through a puzzle while doing something else, like talking to people. Also, I have no time limit for my turns in the game, allowing me to respond to the outside world when I want. I thought it wouldn’t be a problem to play, as I felt I would be a more attentive listener later if I had a little time then to enjoy my game.

Unfortunately, playing my DS caused a fuss. Suddenly I became the center of attention, and all my relatives wanted to talk. I would listen and respond like a normal participant in any conversation, but my family kept teasing me about playing games. “We’ll have to take it away from you,” they joked, even though the half-hour marching of the graduates was still a good 20 minutes away.

I grew frustrated with the lack of acceptance for my game at that particular moment and put it away after only 15 minutes. I began to wonder why I was so frustrated. If my family supported my interest in games, why were they offended that I would take a few minutes to play around them?

I soon realized that my relatives weren’t as familiar with the idea of multitasking. While multitasking has become a necessity for me, the idea that I could play a game and still pay attention to my family was foreign to them. They saw me as actively ignoring them and rightfully felt upset. I realized it was probably a mistake to play in front of them.

However, my sister’s boyfriend understood how I felt. He also has Puzzle Quest, but his version is for the PSP. At one point, we left my sister’s graduation party for a few minutes to see if we could play against each other. Unfortunately, the PSP and the DS are not compatible for wireless multiplayer functions. I had no idea the PSP version was set up so differently but, with only one screen and no stylus, it makes sense that it would look like another game.

I did find some time to play Puzzle Quest later, but it was mainly on my own. People like my sister’s boyfriend understand the desire to play, even in the company of others. Yet many people, like my relatives, have not been around games long enough to see how much they have become a part of our culture and a major component of my life. I hope that someday, in the near future, playing games in public will become mainstream and people will understand the how games can help calm and exercise the mind.  

One Addicting Quest

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When my sister, who doesn’t play a lot of games, tells me I should get a game, I tend to believe her. She had tried out Puzzle Quest on her boyfriend’s PSP and had fallen in love with it. She told me I would love it because it was like Bejeweled crossed with an RPG. I was sold. I picked up a copy shortly thereafter.

As I have been actively avoiding Chocobo Tales, I needed something new to play, so I finally opened up Puzzle Quest. I wasn’t impressed by the opening credits (in place of fancy cutscenes), but the game itself was incredibly addicting. I was going to play it as I got my lunch ready, which turned into playing during lunch and for most of the afternoon. Surprisingly, one of my most difficult moments was trying to get past the training level, but I shortly developed a strategy for battles and beat it.

Strategy is a large part of the battles, which are basically puzzles like in Bejeweled. You take turns moving pieces in the puzzle, so you always have to think one or two moves ahead. For example, matching three skulls causes damage, so you have to be careful not to create a match that would allow your enemy to match three skulls on his or her next turn.

However, even the most sophisticated battle strategy can be ruined in an instant due to the large influence of chance in any battle. There are a large number of pieces above the board that fall in as other pieces are matched and removed from the game. These can be in any order, and your enemy can suddenly do massive amounts of damage or get three extra turns in a row despite your best intentions. More clever strategists plan with this sense of chance, such as matching pieces only in certain rows where it is highly unlikely for a large number of skulls to fall into place and harm you.

Puzzle Quest is very engaging and seems well-designed. It is a pared-down RPG that makes a great game for a portable system like the PSP and Nintendo DS. I can pick it up for five minutes and solve a puzzle. Unlike normal RPGs where it’s a hack-and-slash battle, the fighting system is good for my brain. I play Puzzle Quest to relax and take a break. I really enjoy it and I’m excited to see how it progresses as I continue to level up.  

Adamantoises are Not Cute

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I was really excited to play Chocobo Tales the day after I beat that pesky Leviathan. Once I had regained my gamer’s enthusiasm, I set off to gather a couple of items. These items unlocked the final level and soon I would complete the game!

Soon, I had obtained the final items (energy cells) that allowed my friend Cid (who appears in all Final Fantasy games) to reboot his airship. We sped off to a remote tower in the sea and I jumped into the first picture book. It was The Cactuar and the Adamantoise, Vol. 2. I passed all levels up to level three with relative ease. I unlocked a card, but I could not move forward in the level until I had beaten the racing mini-game on level four.

I raced over and over again, but soon I had plateaued. I was consistently coming in half a second to one full second behind Volg, an annoying black chocobo. Once again, I would turn down the music and shout at the screen in frustration. In the race, my chocobo was riding on the back of an adamantoise, who you would steer by moving the stylus clockwise or counterclockwise on the lower screen (around an image of an adamantoise body that moved with the stylus). The adamantoise was slow to respond and the dual screens were distracting. I found that if I messed up in the slightest, I would lose the race.

After my recent frustration with the leviathan mini-game, I promptly quit. After seeing no improvement during the previous four attempts, the happy music and bright colors only served to annoy me. This time, however, I did not come back to my game after an hour. I haven’t touched it for a few days now.

Given the friendly nature of the game, I find these two difficult mini-games to be horribly frustrating. Unlike many longer games, I didn’t need a guide to help guide me along my way; all I had to do was eat one of many red apples scattered about the base level to get a hint. Friendly features like those apples were very helpful, but a couple mini-games exhausted my patience for this otherwise enjoyable game in a short amount of time. I discovered today that even the best design in a game is wasted if someone becomes so frustrated that they quit.  

The Girl and the Leviathan

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Over the past few days, I have been whipping through Chocobo Tales. I sit down to play one or two mini-games and soon discover that I’ve been playing for an hour. I have been moving the story forward without too much difficulty. That is, until I reached the Boy Who Cried Leviathan.

Most of the mini-games are exceptionally well-paced. I generally like to play mini-games no more than four or five times in order to beat them. This had been the case for most of Chocobo Tales. Only rarely did I find myself shouting at the DS, feeling cheated or angry. There is a large number of mini-games, all of which use only touch controls, so some of the games fit the controls better, making them easier. It reminded me of playing Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz on the Wii. Some things work well with unconventional controls and some just don’t.

One game that is very unusual in its control scheme is the Boy Who Cried Leviathan. The point of the game is to get a far as possible through a tunnel without touching the edges or other obstacles. The premise is that your little chocobo is outrunning a leviathan. However, you cannot control the chocobo's speed, only his depth. You can do this by moving the stylus up and down vertically on the lower screen, while watching the chocobo move through the tunnel on the upper screen.

The controls seemed simple enough and I had few problems with the controls themselves. However, the chocobo was supposed to be underwater, and the simulated physics meant that he sunk gradually which was slow enough to be annoying. Most surprising was the fact that I could not get past this level. I tried again and again, losing over ten times. I had worked my way up through the easier levels, but, for whatever reason, I just had a horrible time with that particular level. I grew so angry that I would turn down the volume right after I lost so I wouldn’t have to hear the chocobo theme in minor yet again. I began to feel that there should be some flexibility in the game, such as allowing you one free pass to skip ahead if there was some mini-game that was giving you an awful time. Each player is naturally going find some games more challenging than others, and it’s aggravating to get stuck on such a trivial level.

Finally, I decided to take a break. I came back about an hour later and beat the level after three tries. My final record was 15 losses, one win. (This was displayed, which didn’t help improve my morale earlier.) I was so excited that I continued forward and played a few more mini-games. However, my patience had worn thin from the frustration of continually losing, so I quit shortly after.