Ten Childhood Games.

Okay, i transferred this up and over from my journal - good thing too, afterall, there's much to be desired from the handwriting.

Game I.
Hopscotch!
I enjoyed the challenge of maintaining my balance with less space to navigate on the "grid".

Game II.
Hide & Seek! and Catching!
The thrill of running for an excellent hiding spot before the catcher/seeker.
Recommend only play it with good/trusted friends. Otherwise you may hide for ages on end, praising yourself for being so good at hiding/running [respectively] when in actual fact...

Game III.
Chatek!
The challenge of balancing on one foot and keeping the er, "shuttlecock" in the air - even though i can't and end up humiliating myself playing it.

Game IV.
Starcraft!
Yeah, this is to me a childhood game because it was one of the first computer games i learned to play - primary one i think. My dad taught me how to play [with cheats :p] and i proceeded to keep playing and fooling around. It also probably nurtured some fantasy concepts in my head.

Game IV.
Soccer!
It was one of my better sports and i played pretty well - i loved it, and i have scars that testify i played alot of the sport. I'm not such a fan anymore though, nor do i care about soccer teams and the like. Not my kinda thing anymore.

Game V.
Drawn Adventures!
My friends in primary one and two would draw mazes filled with monsters and dragons and tanks, and we would play the game on our way back home [on the schoolbus]. We also did some kiddy roleplaying. Im not sure how to describe it, but it was just. Fun. Afterall we technically didnt really even have any online games we played just yet.

Game VI.
Self Designed "Gamebooks"!
This, is the "upgraded" version of the above childhood "Game" and we designed from "MMORPGs" to "RTS" games on BOOKS. Dreamed of, written on book, designed on book, drawn on book, played on book. It was really popular as it was one of the few things we could do [no one really played gameboys during that time too in my school] - and i still keep those books. We tried to get each other to "register" but usually we never played the game properly, but hell, it was still fun designing etc. It kinda died out in primary six though, because during that time everyone was more into playing with gameboys and computer games. Odd, considering i was one of the few who played computer games at primary 1 - that or my school was just weird.

Game VII.
Erasers! [Flipping and Spinning Tops]
We used to buy "country erasers" or rather those rectangular erasers from the bookshop to play with, trying to design them into cool spinning tops or erasers for flipping about. It kinda became betting after people started talking about the "claim" rule where if you fought someone in a flipping match and lost, you lost the eraser you used. School of course tried to put a stop to it. Fat chance. It didnt die down at ALL. Hell, people had extra PENCILCASES FULL of them. Oh well.

Game VIII.
Paper Shuriken, Planes and Crushgears!
We folded these into existance, stapling on new parts, removing parts to get the best of each and designed them to the best of our extents. I can say alot of foolscap paper was lost to this.

Game IX.
Pokemon!
Really now, if this wasnt part of your childhood games, something is WRONG with you. GO. PLAY ONE. NOWWW. OwO

Game X.
Card Games!
Pokemon cards mostly, the TCG. I ended up being the only player by primary 4. People started playing Yu-gi-oh by then, and i couldnt afford any decks. Hell, i had to earn for that ONE pokemon card deck. Then nobody played. Blast.

That'll be ten childhood games, i guess.

Ciao.

5 Aspects Of Life.

5 aspects of my life i would like to incorporate into a game would be
I. Status Effects - environmental and aftereffects of interaction with objects.
II. Love Interests and mutual enemies - auras emitted [buffs and debuffs in AoE]
III. Alarm Clocks - Waking and sleeping times boost to stamina/efficiency.
IV. More open interaction with real life - Crowds you walk in, chatting with new people, etc, not scripted stuff.
V. Elections - Different ruling groups give different buffs and debuffs respectively-in game.



I. STATUS EFFECTS
This idea revolves around environmental and interactivity with objects and people.
For instance, environmental effects could be rain, whi Bch causes effects like Slow or Wet. Hot weather could induce Fatigue or Burn.
Interactivity would be for instance, situations like Physical Injury which reduces strength and speed, or Heartbreak which reduces all stats and stamina until given enough recovery time. Certain games like Monster Hunter have similar systems in put, but there are limits considering how they do not have more "in-depth" status effects.

II. LOVE INTERESTS/ENEMIES
This idea is based on the feelings one gets around the presence of a loved one or rival. People tend to feel more calm and composed with a loved one or more gutsy, and a rival can invoke feelings like anger or more, giving the "player" a sense of competition, boosting stats or depending on how good the "rival" is, damaging the "player"s ego.


III. ALARM CLOCKS
Many games refuse players the option of when to wake up or sleep, only giving fixed times. If such an option was implemented, it could be set up to give players boosted stamina and vitality on certain days through more sleep, or getting fatigued/sick by not getting enough rest.

IV. HIGHER LEVELS OF INTERACTION
Friendly chat with strangers and the like are hard to find in games, usually because of the amount of coding and the like it entails, but it would increase interaction levels. Such interaction is present, but it is predictable and horrible in how they are done. For instance, in certain games, you just completely pass through characters, without affecting them. In games like GTA and Assassin's Creed, people may stop to scold you, attack you or even just simply flee screaming from you. It is limited to how you can interact with the environment. Prototype is a perfect example of this. You can absorb random people and take their forms, but usually you need to do something like CARRY them first, instead of luring them away from the crowd and taking them out. This is an aspect the game industry should work on next apart from main storylines.

V. ELECTIONS
Players may vote for certain parties in the game to be the ruling party. Such parties could affect the game like shop prices, changes in NPC behavior and more.A party may end up making NPCs more aggressive or more calm. It could also affect environment or looks. For instance more clean building or run down buildings, more NPCs in shabby or rich clothes, etc.


Nicholas
NYP DMD[G]

Hello there - Rockman Zero/Megaman Zero series.

On an entirely unrelated note to what i'll be talking about today, here's Black Mage i found in my dots by accident. I realized my dotting was forming a silhouette of him and i proceeded to finish him up a bit. >:D



Right. Back to the point of this post.



THE MEGAMAN ZERO SERIES [HOW AWESOME IT WAS UNTIL IT DEGRADED INTO A MONEYMILKING SERIES BY CAPCOM]

Today, i'll be in straightforward terms, bashing the hell out of Rockman ZX Advent.
But first, i shall begin with a bit of "prologue".



See this video here? This is the sequel to the Rockman X series, Rockman Zero. This game was released on the GBA. Despite the low graphics quality comparing it to the Rockman X series, it still was considered excellent gameplay, even better than the X series. You roleplay as a Reploid [a form of cyborg] - by the name of Zero, who has awoken from deactivation to help an organization named the Resistance, comprised of reploids AND humans, rebelling against the iron fist rule of Neo Arcadia, lead by Copy X. The story deepens game after game, with several twists, giving the game also not excellent gameplay, but one of the best plots Capcom has come up with. My personal favourite was Megaman Zero 3, for in my opinion the 1st and 2nd focused too much on gameplay.

Here's a video of the bosses in the final stage of MMZ3.
However, i am coming closer to the bit about MMZXA, the latest in the series [even though the ZX series is considered a spinoff, it actually is more or less a sequel to the MMZ series like the MMZ series being a sequel the to MMX series.]
In Rockman Zero 4, gameplay became complex and fun, but players felt that the game was starting to get too crappy, due to the fact that most of the things in the game began to make less sense and seemed horribly designed. But nevertheless, it was the end of the MMZ series, and it was received well.

A while later, the MMZX game was released, sequel to MMZ series, onto the Nintendo DS. You were able to choose the gender of your character, which only made minor changes to the plot and sidequests, but it was a good option which Capcom finally incorporated. The gameplay was decent and the story good, but once again, players felt that it was getting lousier, and suspected Capcom was using the MMZ series as a cash cow.


Megaman ZX Advent - Buckfire's Stage.


Megaman ZX Advent proved this.
First of all, to sum up the bosses, it took under 30 seconds to beat the first boss on normal mode, on the first playthrough.
Secondly, the system of getting about now required money. Gameplay was changed to force you to change forms [and take note that changing forms was pointless as very few were any good at all], in the form of making areas impassable without a certain form and that in future, it was likely you would never ever touch that form ever again. Storyline was brought TOO far, too warped, and left more plotholes than a bucket full of swiss cheese.



MMZX Advent Prometheus & Pandora fight.

Certainly, Capcom did improve graphics. But they either went too far, or just tried everything they could to continue milking money out of the MMZ series. In fact, it's been found several times that there were sprites completely ripped from the previous game, sometimes without touchups, and these werent even cameos, but part of animations and more. For instance a form's transformation animation had a sprite which came from the MMZX game, showing that the game was just tossed up together. All in all, a disappointment to many of the fans. It was noticed by people that the amount of fans and revenue of the MMZ series decreased ever since the 4th of the Zero series - proving that people knew Capcom was just trying to get money without much effort.
It's hard to describe how bad the difference was, but if you had ever completed the Rockman Zero series and then played the ZX series, you would understand what Capcom was doing. In fact, the same thing went for the Megaman Battle Network series, which was then continued in the spinoff Megaman Starforce/Ryuusei No Rockman, which too, became horrid games in the databases Capcom rockman fans.

Thank you Capcom for ruining one of my favourite series.

- Nicholas

Playtest - Patapon 3!

Patapon 3 Playtest.



Above : Uberhero Yaripon.

Gameplay Trailer + Impressions from IGN.


To begin for people who have never played the game before:
Patapon has released the third in it's series at long last in english, also being one of the most anticipated games of 2011. People rapidly grew to love the little characters you control that went be the name Pon Pons, who appear to be little eyeballs with small, thin hand and legs. The objective is to lead an army in battle with a series of commands done in 4 beats in rhythm to catchy BGM. Graphics have always been vibrant, being more so in each new release, upgrading the system more and more to be more friendly to new players. In this version, instead of controlling the original array of Pon Pons to form a giant army to send into battle whilst overseeing the thing as a "god", the player plays with his main character [Uberhero] leading three other units into battle. In the start of the game, you can select from three basic classes to train from - [Yarida the Yaripon [Spearman], Taterazay the Tatepon[Swordsman], or Yumiyacha the Yumipon[Archer]]. From there, you start of with one Yaripon, Tatepon and Yumipon regular Pon Pons. As you level this party of four, you can unlock new "advanced" classes to change your battle style, gain powerful weapons and gear and develop skills to help you in battle. Older players may be familiar with Miracle, which has been this time, replaced with Summon which enables a Hero to revive in Dungeons.

As soon as i found out Patapon 3 had been released, i rushed to get it. Gameplay has barely changed from the past two games and in fact has improved to also become more beginner-friendly, with notes on the difficulty of the level and what you would encounter and in fact, become more adorable and fun. I started off with Yarida the Yaripon Uberhero, and shortly after i was hooked. EacH time i struck a beat i bobbed my head to keep into sync with the rhythm so that i could get into FEVER mode, where certain abilities are boosted and Summoning is enabled, and each time I lost my "Combo", i would wince and hastily rush to regain FEVER mode. Overall gameplay has become easier apart from the Summon/Miracle commands, which tend to give you too tiny a time window to input the commands and grinding is still noticeable, though not as bad as the previous games where you had to train in a map for over five times[each map being considerably lengthy] to advance to the next story mission.
I've only played this game for 8 hours or so, and it is AMAZING. Fun, cute and ADDICTIVE.



Left: Typical gameplay in Patapon 3. This shows a advanced class of the Tatepon Uberhero.




I also appear to have fired off a trend to make several others play Patapon 3. It appears i'm not the only person to be bobbing my head or tapping my foot as i play, and people groan with me when we lose FEVER status in battle. A few of my friends tried playing Ad Hoc and it was amazing, apart from the fact that Ad Hoc seems to be as glitchy as ever, but it is still a wonderful game to play with friends where you stay focused to never lose the beat without getting overly stressed - and as we all finish the mission, we slump back and breathe a sigh of relief, followed by picking up the PSP again to compare gear followed by starting a new mission.


But i've said enough. I have much more to add, but that would make this draggy.
To simply summarize this game?
Get it. If you've never played Patapon before just get this game and play it once, you can even borrow it from a friend, and i promise you, you WILL be hooked with it's vibrant graphics and fun gameplay.


And if you do, i have basics tips for the beginner to Patapon

I. Stay calm, don't just fire off random buttons. Wait for the beats to sync. If you ever forget the commands, they're all listed on the bottom for easy reference.
II. If you find yourself failing too much? It could be because you need to train a bit more. It could be that you don't upgrade your gear enough. Or it could be you don't have a shieldbearer. Take some time in gameplay to analyse what you're doing wrong. Is your Hatapon [Flagbearer] dying all the time? You need a guard like Tatepon to protect him from offense.
III. Have fun.



Nicholas Yu
DMD[G] 2011 NYP

good day.

over here i will post up whatever i feel that creates ideas in me, and the ideas formed.
most of it will be hard to make head or tail of, but i will do my best to explain what i visualize in my mind's eye.

i hope these ideas may inspire you, make sense to you and more. Welcome to my blog.