Week 7 Practical: Review on Encounter of Typhon

Review on Our New Quest and The Encounter on Typhon

by Edmund Phoon Jian Cheng

A week after the first Microlite20 quest was completed by our team, we went on to create our own quest as part of the design to broaden up the RPG adventure in Microlite20. There, our customized quest summarizes on the players in a need to escape a castle owned by a pixie character, which turns out to be a relative of the slain pixie in the first quest that we did last week, hence serving as its sequel as a continuation. In this quest, treasures lie within the castle and the players have to go into the depths of the castle and obtain the gold while fighting against the orc and goblin guardians and avoiding traps and solving puzzles. The final boss is the pixie who shapeshifts into any powerful creature to match against the players, but it was not the main focus on our game. Instead, our team made it such that only one playable character would manage to get over the game’s outcomes and become the sole survivor. This is true since we have set the difficulties of the enemies encountered and traps hidden in the puzzles to be challenging to the point that the players’ Hit Points (HPs) gets depleted upon damage and unlucky fate.

This ‘sole survivor’ game is play-tested by another group in our class, so I could not explain how it went for the game, but I thought the gameplay turned out well for that team. However, our team played the other team’s own storyline termed “The Encounter of Typhon” and we get to review it too. In the game, playable characters enter a temple to retrieve a stolen sacred sword that has the ability to seal the monster named Typhon who lie dormant in the temple.

It was the playtest of “The Encounter of Typhon” that enabled me to understand more of the stats of my Microlite20 character and clarifying how to use the moves properly. The use of the dice roll, which is accompanied by the character statistics, will determine if the resolving of conflict is successful, making it a bonus in the attack. Dice rolls of different numbers are also initialized, depending on the type of weapon used to resolve the conflict; for example, a short sword requires a dice with 6 sides, and the number rolled represents the effect of the attack on the opponent. With this knowledge and the aid from my team mates, the conflict becomes more accurate and the opponent also has a chance to bring harm to the playable characters, depleting their HP.

The ‘Encounter on Typhon’ is somewhat better than our prototype storyline since most of the playable characters wouldn’t get killed off right at the end of the game. Still our team enjoyed the antics we did in the role-playing game, especially this time round I defeated several enemies of the game through strategy. It just takes a matter of luck or fate to determine the outcomes of your actions in the game, which makes the adventures in these customised quests more exciting.

Super Mario Bros 3 Review

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Review on Super Mario Bros 3

by Edmund Phoon Jian Cheng

The Mario franchise has been the most successful and well-received video game collections since its introduction of the arcade game Mario Bros. in 1983 and its successor Super Mario Bros. in 1985. As a 2D side-scrolling platform game, the Super Mario Bros. series live up to the standards of the original Mario Bros, following the adventures of Mario by playing as the character to run and jump across obstacles to progress through the levels and rescue Princess Peach from the evil Bowser. being critically acclaimed as one of the top game franchises of all time. The series’ gameplay and story elements have made itself known as one of the greatest video game franchises of all time.

Super Mario Bros 3 is the third title of the series to be released (i.e. Japan in1988, North America in 1990 and then worldwide the next year), and it already has become clearly understood why it was critically acclaimed to be the third best-selling game in the Nintendo Entertainment System. While the classic old nostalgia of the gameplay, visually appealing graphics, and the iconic soundtrack since the previous games appear in the game to recap us on the world of Mario, there are also new elements implemented such as power-ups, challenging levels, secret locations, and mini bosses which get us even more hooked in beating through the stages while comprehending and admiring the variety bestowed during gameplay.

http://www.angryzeusgaming.com/home/2016/9/8/top-5-sidescrolling-platformer-levels

The player starts off as a miniature sized and vulnerable Mario in an overworld map who must progress through running, jumping, flying, or swimming across the linear playfield of each stage of the map in the game to finish without getting damaged by enemies. Points are obtained through collection of coins hidden in bricks interacted by the player to retrieve them, and defeating enemies by squashing on top of them or swiping them with a raccoon power-up. Power-up items (e.g. in the form of a mushroom or a feather) can be obtained from bricks and upgrade Mario to be bigger, gain the ability to fly in the aforementioned raccoon suit, shoot fire or just don fanciful suits that can even protect Mario from harm. Harnessing these abilities out of the power-ups gives the player the advantage to explore secret areas that are unreachable to others. Players, who have four lives, would lose a life if Mario (in his small state) takes damage from enemies upon touch (except coming on top of them or ) or fall off the platform, but they can still continue from the last level they played. If all four lives are spent, the game is over and the player is given a choice to restart the game from the beginning level. Once players have progressed through the level they are playing, the next stage is unlocked for them to carry on.

Super Mario Bros 3 is a fairly simple platform game to play and to enjoy the visual graphics that we all find appealing, but I found that it requires patience and timely strategy on the plans to move Mario to the designated location and when to hit the enemies at the right time. I managed to get through the first two levels without getting any damages, due to the fact that the difficulty increases after each stage. I found that I had put on a bit of haste to do a speed run to get the level done which ended up getting Mario killed by enemies or falling off early and losing lives, topped up by the use of the NES controls since I have never played using this system before. Additionally, since I haven’t seen the advanced gameplay of how other people play Super Mario Bros 3 before I played it myself, I would not have known how to make use of the additional abilities from the power-ups to fly or attack.

Any Mario fan is sure to fall for Super Mario Bros 3, for it has captured people’s essence with its popular theme and gameplay, along with the new aspects that improve the adventures in the game. Those who play it would be promised with hours of fun, and given the opportunities to replay the scenarios from the old Mario games with extra aspects for gameplay enhancement, people would call the game worth the experience, regarding it as the greatest thing ever made in gaming history.