What Game uses Flow best

The game that best uses flow is Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. The game hits on all of the criteria for hitting flow but this doesn't really kick in until a quarter of the way into the game. The beginning of the game is mainly a tutorial for newbies and a refresher for vets and lets you play around with some of the new control concepts added to the game. It doesn't take too long to get everything down pact but once you do you are still trying to discover the extent of your abilities.

After the initial chapter and the introduction of the next one you are still in the learning stage due to the new character you play as. The merging of action and awareness starts to take place as you get more items and weapons. The controls are pretty simple and once you get them you rarely have to think about it. From the get go the game has a clear goal and feedback. This is where the Metal Gear series excels at. The object of the game is to complete objectives without being noticed by your enemies. If you make too much noise or get too close to an enemy they question where the noise comes from or asks who that is in the distance. If you are caught enemies are put on alert and a search and destroy squad is sent after to you. If you hide then a breach and clear team is sent to clear the last place you were seen at which most of the time is where you are still hiding. This all helps to draw you into the world and makes you focus on the more expansive goals of the game be it bomb disposal or tracking down an informant. Once the game opens up after a boss fight with a harrier jet Flow starts to kick in which is perfect because at this point the story has really opened up and all the hooks are coming together.

The paradox of control kicks in as you get to explore more areas of the Big Shell and take in how massive the structure is and get a feel for all of the damage the structure has taken. Even though you have more freedom to explore you are being dragged along a path. It’s hidden from you because you have to backtrack through most places you see. On top of that every few rooms require a different level of security clearance that's unavailable until you defeat certain bosses or meet other important characters. At this point things get more difficult and your takes require more finesse or just smart thinking. The game does a great job of giving you the tools you need to take on a challenge and rewards you for any additional exploration with more weapons and equipment. It’s also during this point that you lose consciousness of yourself and hour of time because the character’s goals and motivations become your own. You get attached to the people you are tasked to save and in the end you just want to play solely to see whether or not you’ll really be able to stop a terrorist attack with the odds against you at almost every turn.

MORTAL KOMBAT!!!!!

The first game I remember playing regularly is Mortal Kombat. Iwas a fan of Mortal Kombat ever since I was four playing MKII on the SNES and Sega Genesis. I didn't really start clocking in hours on top of hours with the game until about '97-8. A little while after I got my own Playstation I got Mortal Kombat Trilogy which was the culmination of all MK games up to that point. It had all the stages, characters, fatalities etc. If it was in any of the original three games; was in MK:T.  MK:T was the first time I actually tried to study and learn moves for a fighting game.

 I tested out every character and learned everyone's basic moves and then got into a groove with most of the ninja and cyborg characters. My main guys were Scorpion, Smoke, Sektor, Cyrax, Baraka and Cyber Smoke. Another thing that kept me playing was trying to learn everyone's fatality in the game plus trying to beat the arcade ladder. One day a friend of mine at school told me a code for one button fatalities that made my quest to learn all the fatalities null and void but I still used it it to show off at my family.


Eventually some of my friends and I started to make neighborhood competitions to see who was the best in the game and after I won they would make it a goal to be able to beat me. We usually played two on two matches which led to me discovering my dream team of Scorpion and Smoke. Evetually one of my friends was able to dethrone me from my place as "MK Champion" and he refused to play me again in fear of losing the "title". Even after that I kept playing the game until it was too scratched from play to even be read by the Playstation.

Worst Game Evers

The worst videogame I've ever played was Wet. The game had a lot of interesting ideas and concepts but executed everything horribly. The combat system was repetitive and got boring really fast. Its said because it had some great ideas like aiming in two directions, acrobatics and had a mix of gunplay and sword fighting. The major killer was that all of the acrobatic moves initiated a bullet time mode which was the only way to make use of aiming in two directions at once. Outside of that you can only shoot one gun. Another failing of the game is that its action heavy but it locks you out of the most intense action sequences and forces quick time events on you. This is especially the case for boss fights. Every bossfight is nothing more than a cutscene with maybe one or two button prompts. Its very disappointing and insulting to kill off the final boss with this same method and then roll the credits afterward.

The story was pretty lame and the main character Rubi was funny at first but got annoying real fast. The game also forced you to run through challenge maps to unlock weapons you'd need for the next section of the story instead of just giving it to you. The main issue with this was that it breaks up the pace and takes you out of the game to stop looking for people that double crossed you to run through an obstacle so  that you can get new machine guns to kill these people. After this happened for the third time I was really close to quitting but I had paid for it so i wanted to at least finish it once.

 What sucks the most is that I really wanted this game when it came out but I had to wait for it. When I saw it for $20 I jumped on it and now I hate I spent that much. I can't imagine spending $60 on this crappy game. Since I've completed the game I haven't bothered touching it again. it has no replay value and the first playthrough was borderline torture. I think a game studio has a lot to worry about if you find a way to make over the top violence, swords, guns and bullet time repetitive and boring after five minutes.