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Mr. Sun's Hatbox (PC) by jp (Nov 28th, 2025 at 14:04:54) |
The game's premise is rather silly - you're a delivery guy who delivered a hatbox, but someone stole it, so you mount an entire operation to get it back, which involves developing an entire underground base with agents, research, brainwashing captured agents, a black market for items, and more.
What's both fun - and a bit annoying - is that for each mission you pick an agent, and they have all kinds of quirks and problems that they (sometimes) eventually lose as you level them up. But, if they die - well, that's it! Agent gone! Also, you'll often get wounded and you need to pay to heal them, and it takes time. So, I've had a few "favorite" agents that died on the job and then I'm stuck using the wonkier ones, which is harder on harder missions because of their quirks.
The gameplay itself is quite chaotic - which I deal poorly with since I'll panic - but I think more playthroughs will have me learning the quirkiness of the controls and mechanics and thus doing better? I've only played about 2 1/2 hours so far, so I think there's plenty to get through. Though, I have finished found two special hats.. as a sign of progress.
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Kirby Super Star Ultra (DS) by jp (Nov 22nd, 2025 at 17:34:15) |
I had the case and manual, but no game. So I bought the game. That seems kind of silly, but it is what it is.
So, I had to test the game - to make sure the cart worked and all that.
So far, it's pretty interesting! I played the first "mission" (it said the difficulty was easy) and it took me a bit to get used to Kirby's swallow-and-gain-special-ability power. Some enemies give you a special ability when you press a button after swallowing them. This is instead of just "firing" them. There's like three buttons and I still get them confused to be honest. We'll see what happens as I play more.
The first mission has maybe 4-5 levels. And then it rolled credits! I was surprised of course - but I knew there was more game. The credits also rolled really fast which was kind of funny. And then it played a "of its era in terms of quality" CG cut-scene/movie. Weird.
Now I need to explore all the other things that opened up. There's also a 2-player co-op mode...
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BALL x PIT (PC) by jp (Nov 19th, 2025 at 21:19:10) |
There's plenty to grind here - new characters, upgrade buildings, level up characters, etc. And it's fun - at least I've been enjoying it so far (I've made it to level 4 of the pit - the fungus world!).
I think what I enjoy the most now is that a "run" (this is really quite the roguelike) is - when you succeed ~20 minutes. Shorter if you die sooner, of course. So, it feels like a nice "snack" game experience - I harvest resources, do a run, harvest again, and exit. It hits a sweet spot for me in that sense. Shorter runs would probably feel less interesting because not enough development of your within-run build (which upgrades have I picked up, etc.), and longer then becomes a proper sit down and play session.
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Silent Hill 2 (PS5) by dkirschner (Nov 16th, 2025 at 11:56:46) |
I am sure I played Silent Hill 2 back in the day, but I only have vague memories of some of the enemies, namely Pyramid Head and the nurses, and of running around the town itself (though that was also in Silent Hill 1 and others I think). I had heard that Bloober Team's remake was excellent, and so it was. This is a game that I didn't want to put down, but occasionally had to put down because my nerves would get too worked up (and I was often playing it at night and would eventually get sleepy or know I should go to bed because I had to get up early in the morning). But my sessions were regularly 3-4 hours.
It's not a short game, took me upwards of 20 hours, and rarely dragged. The only part where I was like "okay, come on..." was the end of the Lakeview Hotel after you have to store all your equipment in a locker to ride an employee elevator. There is this really tense part where you have to navigate an employee area and solve some puzzles without equipment, while one type of really deadly enemy stalks the halls. I really didn't like those enemies! You encounter them before and after while running on grates. They cling to the underside of grates, monkey-bar-ing beneath you and lashing at you with their tongues. You have to walk on the grates, so you have to be wary of those monsters and try and avoid getting tongue-lashed. This particular time, they were walking normally in the hallways. Anyway, I had no health items (you stash those away as well) and was down to a sliver of health. I really didn't want to do the whole area again, so I looked up a puzzle solution so I wouldn't have to wander around anymore and risk dying. Right around that part, I kind of looked up two other puzzle solutions because I wanted to get out of that hotel. Every other puzzle in the game (and there are many), I solved without hints. Puzzles in this game are interesting because they often don't require a lot of thought per se; rather, they require you to collect various items, and then do something with them. The puzzles are definitely clever and mechanically intriguing though, even if solving them was usually just a matter of exploring everywhere.
There is another part later in the game, when you are in the bowels of Silent Hill, where there is this (for lack of a better term) "dimensional cube" that rotates. You can rotate it every which way, and you have to figure out how to set it so that you can pass through it into the next area. You do this like three or four times and have to get through three or four areas through the cube, which are all dark, drab, terrifying places in the Otherworld. I was ready for that part to be over because I couldn't tell how far I was progressing and it was just like one brutal area after another. So, "tense" is definitely a good word to describe the experience of playing.
Gameplay-wise, it's really standard survival horror, even stripped down to basics. There are no frills. You have a melee weapon, and you get in order a pistol, a hand shotgun, and a rifle. Two different items restore health, one a little bit and one to full. You also have a flashlight. That's it. No other weapons, no special moves, no inventory. Coming off of the irritating inventory management and frustrating combat of Alan Wake 2, I loved having few items to deal with and no inventory to manage. I regularly had over 100 pistol bullets, and by the end of the game (or at least before the last bosses), I was rocking nearly 50 health items. Yeah, I was basically invincible. /flex. It's just you and your few items and the hell that is Silent Hill. Oh, and a few other poor souls you meet along the way who also are there.
There aren't many enemy types, though each type gets an additional subtype as you progress. The vomiting things later can explode upon death. The "legs" later can climb walls and ceilings (terrifying). The nurses develop a faster, more aggressive variety. Despite some lack of variety, they never cease to be dangerous and scary, especially those freakin' legs! So, the legs, imagine a pair of legs that walk with another pair of legs sewn on top of them at the hip, which can attack you like arms. These legs like to act as mannequins. They hide and jump out at you. I don't know how many times I was walking through an area and either would be totally surprised by legs jumping out at me or would spot legs poised in a corner or behind a piece of furniture or wherever, often noticing them just in time for them to jump out at me. Or, I would notice them, think I was really clever, creep up to them to shoot them, never knowing when they were going to leap for me. I think the legs were the scariest enemies in the game, followed by the monkey-bar grate creatures.
The story is presented in a rather obscure way that made it feel good when you made sense of something. Everything seems to be a representation of something in James' subconscious, so if you can think about what the enemies might mean, you can make more sense of James' emotions and the story itself. I definitely had to look up "what really happened" after I beat it though because I still wasn't quite sure. All in all, this was a great survival horror mystery to play through. Definitely a highlight of the PlayStation Plus month and a strong recommendation for survival horror fans.
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Sword of the Sea (PS5) by dkirschner (Nov 6th, 2025 at 16:25:06) |
Easily beatable in 2-3 hours, Sword of the Sea is by the same folks who did Abzu. It shows. This is another movement-focused journey (also akin to Journey) where you bring the ocean back to a desert (hello Journey), befriend a dolphin and a shark (hello Abzu), and fight an evil fire serpent (hello God of W...wait, no). Where the swimming in Abzu could be frustrating, the "snowboarding" in Sword of the Sea feels excellent. The level design is also much improved, especially readability in terms of where you need to be going. I was NEVER lost, which is saying something! I remember swimming around rather aimlessly sometimes in Abzu, though there were always beautiful schools of fish and whales and things to watch and interact with. Those fish are actually here in Sword of the Sea too, plus the rideable whales, turtles, and so on. There are flags, paths, beams of light, collectibles, good camera work in cut scenes, etc. that direct your attention to the right place.
The game is beautiful to look at, with stunning landscapes that dwarf your tiny figure. I don't know what else to say about it really. If you like the Journey/Abzu brand of chill, exploration-heavy, environmental indie games, this is a no-brainer. It just guided me along for its runtime, and it's like I was unaware of time passing, totally absorbed in it. Great experience!
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2307 registered gamers and 3322 games. 7856 GameLogs with 13339 journal entries. 5122 games are currently being played.
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God of war 3 (PS3) by dkirschner |
| Freaking amazing gameplay. I love the fighting and the puzzles. The first battle sets the bar for the rest of the game ----------------- Freaking amazing everything. Play this now. |
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most recent entry: Monday 24 March, 2014
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God of War 3 is epic. It approaches perfection as an action game. I've played all the main trilogy and this one is by far the most memorable. Kratos is still a badass, showcased perhaps more than ever here. There is a part where Kratos is trying to rescue someone, and on the way, you find one of Poseidon's (topless) mistresses. You shove her through the level and then chain her to a wheel that opens a gate so that you can go through. She's screaming the whole time, and halfway to the gate you hear a really loud scream and the gate lowers halfway. I went back to see what happened, and there was just a bloody mess on the ground. I was like "whoa." Kratos isn't as...aimlessly (?)...pissed off anymore. It's all directed at Zeus, and his goals are always crystal clear. As old gods, demigods and titans enter and exit the story, I realized that it has been long intervals between playing these games, as I frequently didn't remember what transpired between Kratos and [character], why Kratos got along with Pandora, why his relationship with Athena was ambivalent, why he hated so-and-so. I wish there'd been an in-game compendium describing old relationships and story events.
The main reason GoW 3 feels different than the other two are its coherent world and its sense of scale. The other games exist on massive scales too, but GoW 3 makes them look like Kratos on Cronos (ha-ha, bad God of War jokes..). You keep revisiting old areas through new entrances, modifying the old areas in some way, and finding new secrets and new paths. For example, at some point Kratos gets this super strong melee weapon that can destroy onyx. When I figured that out, I thought, "Hey, there was this onyx stuff blocking my way somewhere else." Sure enough, you'll end up going back, and it is very satisfying to see areas becoming discovered and modified throughout the game. All these areas are also linked together. You don't just magically transport anywhere. You actually climb a giant chain to get from Hades to the Judges to Olympus. You actually ride drafts of air with your Icarus wings. Each "hub" room actually connects to many places you go, and one by one, you're able to reach the different doors and portals that get you to new places.
The size of things in the world blew my mind. This is imprinted on you the moment the game begins, where the first section takes place ON THE BACK OF A TITAN CLIMBING MOUNT OLYMPUS. Yes, you run around on Gaia as she and other titans attempt to reach the summit to destroy Zeus. You fight a giant battle against Poseidon all the while, scampering around Gaia, going inside Gaia's wounds, all the while Gaia is moving, your freaking ground is shifting, talking to you. It was incredible. There's another amazing titan battle when you get to the Pits of Tartarus where you are actually trying to kill a titan. I remember in God of War 2, there was a part on a titan, but it was NOT like this. This is something I've never seen in a game before. The epic sense of scale is also apparent outside these combat situations. Climbing the chains that bind Olympus and Hades, for example, the camera zooms out in parts, showing tiny, tiny Kratos. The sequences in and around the Labyrinth have Kratos platforming and fighting on just massive box structures that move in an enormous cavernous room. For me, the scale has a humbling affect on how I perceive Kratos. In this game, he is still an angry badass, but there's some hesitation there, part of which is because I realize (and he must) how small he really is. I think this shows in his interactions with Pandora as well, and certainly plays out in the end.
God of War 3 didn't feel as repetitive or samey as the others for reasons I've stated, and also because there is less combat, which is a good thing. God of War 3 doesn't seem to throw as many endless waves of enemies at you. The ratio of platforming to major encounters to moving the narrative to regular fighting is more even.
The combat didn't feel as difficult this time around. Even the final battles I only died from screwing up quicktime events. I'll say that the hardest part of God of War 3 were the quicktime events, especially rotating the left stick. Platforming also caused a handful of deaths, just because I wouldn't know what was coming and would have to try a few times to learn the sequence. But combat itself, not as difficult as usual. Twice as brutal though! Kratos rips out eyes, pops off heads, disembowels, slices off tails and legs and arms, bashes in faces, and performs all manner of grizzly finishers. Loved it.
But Kratos isn't just a fighter. He's a lover too! There's another sex scene in this game. I thought the one in GoW 1 was funny, and apparently the designers did too, because this one is written to be funny. Instead of you seeing the action happening or looking at a bedside table, you see two other girls rubbing on each other watching. The first time you go through the scene, they say such things as "Oh my! This is mature content, for adults only!" "You should definitely not let your children watch this!" I loved how they made fun of the controversy like this. If you do the scene again, they comment on it more, like "Oh wow, if it looks that good from here, just imagine...!" and "[gasp] He's going to...! Oh my!" It cracked me up. Maybe next time they'll push the envelope and have two naked male commentators.
Finally, there are substantial extras on the disc. I watched about an hour-long documentary on the making of the game that spanned 2-3 years of development, showed the team preparing for their first media event, for E3, for alpha and beta and release. It was exceptionally cool to see. When you beat the game, you unlock about 20 more shorter videos showcasing every aspect of development, from animation to streamlining code to user experience to quality assurance. BADASS. I wish more games included things like this.
Phenomenal game, can't say it enough. 1 and 2 were great, but this blows them out of the water.
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