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Kill Knight (PC) by dkirschner (Oct 18th, 2026 at 15:28:37) |
Retiring this one too. It's a twin-stick shooter / bullet hell type of thing mixed with modern Doom. Slick, for sure, but I didn't know it would be so arcade-y. There's not much story to speak of, and it's basically a test of mastering the controls to beat, with additional motivation provided by leaderboards. It is fun, intense, for sure, but as with Civ 6 and Noita (although Kill Knight isn't long per se), I don't have the patience right now to commit to it. I might be at a point where I'm exhausted by more open-ended or twitch-based games. I could feel it with Drop Duchy (roguelite fatigue?), which I saw through to the end, but perhaps I should find something more story-heavy with a clearly defined ending for next.
Anyway, like I said, Kill Knight is slick. The controls gel really well. You use RT to shoot pistols, circle to melee attack, and LT to shoot like a shotgun spread. All the attacks synergize in different ways. You have to use melee to get shotgun ammo, for example, which incentivizes running up and slicing enemies. Each attack generates some kind of resource that you need for other attacks (or health, very important!), so you have to vary attacks. It really does feel like a twin stick shooter / bullet hell version of the newer Doom games. I think that's about it...
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Noita (PC) by dkirschner (Oct 18th, 2026 at 15:12:28) |
My first thought was "this is like Spelunky." And of course it is because it's another roguelike where you go down, down, down into the depths, and the only way you get better is to die a hundred times, learn what killed you and why, and just skill up. Also learning the wand system, which is one of the two things that make this stand apart. The other is the pixelated destructible environments.
There are huuuuuundreds of enemies, spells, and perks. I saw like 5% of stuff and made it to the third "biome" a few times. In my longer runs, I had cool wands and spells, like spells that made my projectiles home or explode or that covered a wide range. The way it works is that each wand you find has stats (which seem to just randomly vary), including some number of spell slots. You can find/purchase spells, and you can move them around between wands. This means you can load up your favorite wand with a variety of useful/synergistic spells that'll help you kill enemies, move around, and explore the biomes. Perks are also helpful, like ones that make you immune to certain elements or that give you a little ghost companion to augment your damage output.
The destructible environments are cool. Each pixel is categorized as a type of material (e.g., wood, water, coal, gunpowder...), and they have various interactions. Wood burns, for example, so if you shoot a lantern and it falls on wood, it'll light up and maybe collapse. If you're on fire, go find water to put yourself out. I don't know what "blood" does, but I saw that it ticks up to 100% as you stand in it. Acid poisons you. Occasionally stuff blew up and I wasn't sure why. I'm sure there are a lot more interactions. It reminded me of Divinity: Original Sin 2's elemental combat system.
Anyway, so what this looks like while playing is that you're zooming around (you have a jetpack and can float a bit; this replaces a typical game's jump), firing spells and getting fired at by enemies, blowing up the environment, trying to get gold (to purchase wands and spells), find secrets, do whatever, and ultimately get to the bottom of the biome, where you enter a portal and can buy upgrades and rearrange your spells, and then you go to the next biome. There is often a lot of fire/poison/projectiles/etc. on screen at once and it can feel pretty hectic.
I certainly appreciate the game and the ways that it makes something like Spelunky 2 feel traditional. There's a ton of customization with the wands, strategy in manipulating the environment, and so many things to discover. But having recently bashed my head against the Spelunky 2 roguelike wall for a while, I realize I have little interest in a similar head-bashing-against-the-wall experience playing Noita.
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Fallout 4 (PS4) by jp (Oct 17th, 2026 at 17:37:02) |
Ugh. I'm not sure I want to continue playing. We'll see.
I've hit level 7 and I would say that the experience so far is really mixed. The game seems to want to encourage scavenging all the things. But, you hit a weight limit super fast - and it becomes really annoying to manage that, especially since you can't fast travel when you're encumbered. So, why bother?
I've also picked up all kinds of things that...I can't do anything with? Tings have "value" but I've yet to run into a store or any place where I can sell. So far everything has involved killing all the raiders/enemies - and the towns I've been setting up/helping out (two so far) don't have shops. Though I think I can build one if I get the materials? (something to try out the next time I play).
I also nearly worked myself into an unrecoverable position - I left a car manufacturing plant (running away from enemies) only to load immediately into 4 enemies right there. I don't know how I was able to survive them - a lot of luck I think, and more than a few tries. But it was really bad. I might have quit there if a few more tries hadn't worked out...
Also, so far at least, there's surprisingly little in the way of story/narrative. I'm surprised because it's a Bethesda game - so I was expecting a lot more.
I'm ignoring the wonky glitches and weird graphical things because that would be a bit unfair at this point (old game and all that, and I don't think it downloaded an update because I think the game's content servers are offline by now?)
Anyways, we'll see how much further I go...
Oh! The other thing that's really annoying is how hard/rare it is to find the item that decontaminates you such that you can heal back up. Every rad lowers your max health, but getting rid of rad has been SUPER hard/rare. Most of my time I'm running around with 1/2 health just because of the rad capping it.
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Shroom and Gloom (PC) by jp (Oct 17th, 2026 at 17:02:29) |
I played this enough to complete a full run with the starter character (this unlocked new characters - but I haven't gone back to play since). And WOW, the final boss fight was super stressful and cool. I'm feeling kind of lucky that I beat it on my first try actually. First try at the boss, not first run. I might have been 3 or four runs before I got that far...
..it's an interesting game! There's a new element in the "safe areas" where you also have a (separate) deck of cards that lets you do things in the safe areas - find new cards, upgrade stuff, and that sort of thing. When you get new cards they can either be for the combat part of the game or for the safe zones, and there's some neat interactions there. Interestingly, when you rest at a safe zone it can have negative consequences - but you only want to do it to draw a new hand of safe zone cards. I'm not sure I entirely understood how everything here worked - lots of card play reduces the "danger rating", but I don't know if it matters at all other than resting there. As in, does leaving a safe zone with a high danger rating mean harder combat later? A less safe state for the next safe zone? All of this I couldn't figure out from what I've played so far.
There was some stuff I thought was a bit unfair - there are some things in the safe zone that you can play a card to unlock, but some require multiple cards - and more than once I left a safe zone without having unlocked the thing. It felt like I had wasted those cards on a thing I didn't know I couldn't unlock - and as far as I could tell, the progress towards unlocking is reset when you leave.
Visually, the game is so cool - it's like a slicker version of Inscryption.
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Mewgenics (PC) by jp (Oct 17th, 2026 at 16:52:57) |
I've been enjoying this a lot more than I expected. It's crass and adolescent in ways I no longer find funny or even charming or endearing - but the game's design is really interesting to me. So, I've just been ignoring the representational aspects to focus on gameplay.
So, it's a turn-based tactical rogue-like game. You have a squad of max 4 cats and must fight enemies while staying healthy and alive during a "run" - basically a series of fights with some treasure and shopping and "narrative" encounters. So far I've been unlocking new locations that let you go "deeper" (it also branches) and I'm curious how "deep" (i.e. long) each run can get. It's getting longer such that I cannot play a run over lunch break any more - having to save, stop, and resume the next day.
But...here's some fun/clever game design:
1. The cats are random in their stats and so on - BUT the game layers "classes" on top of that, that really help you shape what your team can do. The classes are basically "tags" (like dog tabs, but for cats) than mod the cat - give them random within-class abilities, and off you go. I was worried that the game would be too random, but here you can adapt the roles to the cats you have and try to have a well-balanced team for the runs. I've unlocked two new classes so far (it's vanilla fantasy in this sense: fighter, mage, archer,etc.): the cleric and the thief. I'd be surprised if there aren't a ton more. We'll see.
2. Once you finish a run. That's it for those cats. You've levelled them up and so on, but they can never venture out again. Sure, you can have them stick around for breeding (I can't tell if levelled up cats with good stats because they've levelled up have kittens with higher stats)...but that's it. So, you can't stick to a team - it really forces you to experiment with new cats (with different skills, etc. - while still giving you some control, see above).
3. There's durability on all the gear you find. Again, you can use stuff a few times before it breaks/runs out - but mostly you'll be using new things and such. Again, encourages experimentation. I don't think I've seen a duplicate item yet?
Things I'm not so sure about...
1. There's base building, but it seems REALLY slow and grindy. Mostly it involves donating cats to NPS, but the 2nd round of donations all need at least 10 cats...which seems like a lot to me.
2. You also have to provide for "happiness" in your base - happier cats breed more often, unhappy ones get into fights - and they can (and do) kill each other! (winner gets a buff - but if it's a veteran, the buff doesn't matter? or maybe it does for breeding)
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GameLog hopes to be a site where gamers such as yourself keep track of the games that
they are currently playing. A GameLog is basically a record of a game you started playing. If it's open,
you still consider yourself to be playing the game. If it's closed, you finished playing the game. (it doesn't matter
if you got bored, frustrated,etc.) You can also attach short comments to each of your games or even maintain a diary (with more detailed entries)
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2323 registered gamers and 3391 games. 7931 GameLogs with 13446 journal entries. 5111 games are currently being played.
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Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2) by Snaggletoofers |
| Fun, but the story is meh. It's showing its age. |
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most recent entry: Thursday 19 April, 2012
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Upon my third venture into the game, I decided to actually buy some clothes (since I had ignored Smoke earlier and stuck with my whitey tighties and my birthday suit). Browsing through the choices, I came upon a “joke mask” and some green track pants. These combined together along with my bare feet, chest, and afro/beard combo, to form a new persona to play. I embodied an amalgamation of the Green Hornet Bruce Lee meets Game of Death Bruce Lee, and with a touch of a 70’s Blaxploitation action hero. No longer was a knife my weapon. My fists and my feet were my weapons. With the newly unlocked gym, I pitted my skills against the boxers inside.
Upon getting my behind handed to me, I decided to turn back to the story since punching random bystanders gets old quickly. In today’s episode, my irreputable fat friend and I needed to load up on guns from a very tweaked out man. Apparently, these guns are “older than something you’d find in a museum.” (I can’t attest to the accuracy of that quote what with all the slang thrown around) This little detail reminds me of a point I wanted to make about this game. Due to the hardware limitations (and even the story limitations), in the first few hours of this game, I’m already noticing a trend of details pulled out of nowhere. The guns function just as any other pistol or gun used in the game so far (including the firearms the police wield) yet they’re supposed to be accepted as old and therefore terrible from the characters tones. In terms of story, Smoke (I think. The fat one) mentions the leadership skills of CJ, my character. I was completely lost on what he was getting at, since for the most part, CJ had come off as someone who just followed the orders of those around him. Yeah, he’s a skilled driver (well, assumedly they don’t know that I’ve killed them on several rides home in explosions resulting from my terrible driving skills) and has a proficiency for being cold-blooded, but those traits don’t necessarily translate into leadership.
This makes me wonder what the developers think of their audience when they implement details such as these without thinking about how the rational stacks up. Should I be expected to just accept it and move on? What more can I do than just complain and keep playing? Well, I could stop playing, but what if I were needed to keep playing for other reasons than enjoyment (not to diss the assignment, but this homework is a case in point)? Would this moral dilemma be on the shoulders of the game makers who made the game or the teacher who assigns it? Perhaps it’s my own problem, as opinions of the game are relative, and from what I’m’ reading in other gamelogs, it’s a generally appreciated game among the others. Are developers responsible if they disappoint a gamer who may have paid for the game and doesn’t find it enjoyable? (granted, I didn’t pay for this one, but I have paid for games I’ve regretted) Should they have to please a minority, or just ignore it and cater to the fans? When it came to this game, making money most likely wasn’t going to be an issue as the previous iteration was a high selling one, and this one was much anticipated. As such, they probably didn’t need to cater to all crowds just to increase revenue. I guess in the end, the game is not for me, but I can see how others would find it enjoyable.
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