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Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth (NSW) by jp (Sep 22nd, 2026 at 07:38:16) |
The night before last I played some more and beat the gauntlet! I felt very chuffed about that...kept on going, got to another boss (Parn!) beat that, and immediately after was ANOTHER boss...I lost really quickly and got really mad. In my mind it was boss gauntlet + Parn + final boss...with no saves in between and the thought of doing it all over was too much. So, I put the game down pretty confident that I'd just have to watch the ending on Youtube or something.
Last night I picked it up for a "last attempt" of sorts - before that though I scoured the map and found a few secret areas I had missed! And one area that was now accessible I had forgotten about. Good thing I did, I got a new weapon (the Chakram?) with great range, for a little less damage, but just the sort of thing I'd need for the final boss fight. I then stocked up on potions, swapped my spell to one I thought might work better, and went back in.
And success! (I think I had to try twice)
And in the end, was it all a dream. Sure. With some more to it...but still. The epilogue was nice, though it was weird to going back to level 1 with none of the additional movement unlocked - not that there was any challenge.
It feels strange to beat a game like this. I usually bail a lot earlier due to my lack of interest in practicing enough to improve enough so I can clear certain challenges. This game hit the sweet spot for me - it wasn't trivial, and I felt like I improved and learned the game's systems over time.
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Please, Don't Touch Anything! (PC) by jp (Sep 20th, 2026 at 13:12:20) |
It's weird for me to think/write that the most important "contribution" this game has had for me is how useful/intriguing it's been to show students in experimental games class. The game is strange and quirky and funny and genuinely interesting as a puzzle box style game, especially once you've peeled back a few of its layers and understand how the game's support to work.
Over the years fewer students have heard of it, or played it, which is both good and bad. Good means there's more room for it to be genuinely surprising to them, bad means it's also increasingly more "strange" - I've found that students have a lot less to go on with this game since it is so exploratory in the beginning. Hmm. it would have also made a good addition to the "thinky games" cycle when we did the game design seminar...
Now that I'm at a new place with a new group of students, I wonder how it would go with them?
It's been a while since I've played it - and I don't recall which endings I got or anything like that, but it seems like I did make decent progress since I've only got 5 locked achievements. One if for every ending, the other for ending 25 without unnecesary buttons being pressed. 3 are hidden.
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Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth (NSW) by jp (Sep 20th, 2026 at 12:41:02) |
I'd been playing until I got stuck on a fight - it's a two-parter boss against a soldier guy. The second part is against a sort of zombie/ghoul version of this soldier guy who spews green venom and turns into toxic clouds.
After scouring the map for missing things - found a few new upgrades (not interesting ones at this point) and filled in the map a bit more which was nice - I finally realized that I could buy more than one health potion (up to 10!) and I've come to better appreciate how the magic select menu works. So, I devised a new strategy for the boss fight. I'd get to the 2nd phase and swap out the spell with healing potions and try to use those to stay alive. And it worked! I was down to 3 or so...but still.
Yay!
I'm now in Stage 6. I think this might be the last chapter?
So, I kept on moving through new areas...and went back to older areas too - found a few secret areas as well (null space on the map)...and then I hit what I hope does NOT become a new wall.
Maybe this is the end/last battle? It's basically been - so far - a gauntlet of all the bosses (I think all?) in the game. And, while I don't think they've been scaled in difficulty (meaning some are way easier than when I fought them originally), it is quite tiring.. I did quite well until I got to the boss fight I'd just been stuck on earlier. My hands were cramping up and I just...couldn't.
Thankfully after I forget which boss there are items between them to heal up and such...but still. I think I lost this one from nerves and cramps more than difficulty? Though, I dread to see what happens AFTER this one. Will there be another boss? Sigh. I hope not.
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The Silver Case (PS4) by jp (Sep 20th, 2026 at 12:26:42) |
As I was installing the game I wondered why I had picked it up in the first place. So, I flip the case over and read the back - nothing really stands out until I look down and see "Grasshopper Manufacture".
Ah. Ok.
Grasshopper's oeuvre is interesting in that it's always weird, and strange, and they somehow manage to stay in business which makes it also surprising to me. I think the last game of theirs that I played was "Sun Flower..something..something". A strange DS game that was strange and creepy and I don't think I ever finished. I won't open a separate tab to check my gamelog for that one...but whoever reads this might want to.
Anyways. The game has a really striking visual style - and it's really "noisy" i the visual UI sense. Lots of text coming on, and pictures of the characters in different places on the screen (not always the same place), and words that sort of float around in the background...and little animated effects. It's all very busy, attention grabbing, and just - to me - visually noisy in a way that made me less interested.
Apparently the version I have is a remaster of an older one, so I wonder if the low-res poly graphics (e.g. car driving down an embankment at night) and such are kept in smaller windows because it wouldn't look good today and all the rest of the decorative screen stuff is what's been updated?
Anyways. There was lots of reading. Watching stuff, more reading and very little gameplay...and when the gameplay started it was "fine" (moving around a 3D environment in first-person view, but grid-based, like the old CRPGs Bard's Tale or the dungeons in Ultima and Wizardry). It didn't feel interesting - story least of all - so I finished the first chapter and called it quits.
I just bounced off the writing, the story/context seemed strange but not intriguing...so, time to move on.
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Pokémon TCG Pocket (iPd) by jp (Sep 17th, 2026 at 20:24:16) |
Hmm, still "playing" though I would very often forget to "check in" when I first arrived in Rochester. So, for a hot minute, I though I might have been done with it.
The other night I played the card game - demo at a store - and was surprised to learn that the card game is basically a super set of this game. I guess I didn't have a real conception of the difference between them - I thought that the cards were all the same, but they're not! This actually made me a bit less interested in this game, since it really is a watered down version of the regular card game.
I do think it's an interesting approach that I don't know of other examples? Because it really does seem like a subset rather than a "new" or "different" or "variant" version. I wonder if someone's looked closely at them?
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GameLog hopes to be a site where gamers such as yourself keep track of the games that
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2323 registered gamers and 3384 games. 7923 GameLogs with 13435 journal entries. 5109 games are currently being played.
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Vanguard: Saga of Heroes (PC) by Player 1 |
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most recent entry: Wednesday 17 January, 2007
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I love this game and cannot wait till its finished, and then I look forward to future updates. Today I had a lot of fun questing with a group of other players. I shouted that I was looking for a group and I was instantly invited to a group by a friend I made the night before and they were very close to where I logged in. A lot of frustration in these games comes from wanting to complete a challenging quest but needing other players to help you. Complaints about MMOs are often that the player cant find a group and thus cant get anything accomplished and spends their whole time playing by waiting for a response to their LFG message. I was fortunate to find a group so quickly and the fun was already under way when I arrived with the rest of my party members. They were killing pirates along the coast, trying to grind for experience as well as complete a quest. I did not have the quest but a group member was able to share it with me, so that I wouldn't miss out and could complete it as well for exp and loot. The sharing of quests is a helpful tool that makes this game more enjoyable because sometimes when you enter a new area you miss a questgiver, and its not as fun to be working towards someone else's goal. This allows everyone in the group to share a goal and work together. This session was a lot of fun because are group worked well together and we had excellent damage and support from each member of the group. We were able to kill many pirates at a time, and all maintain control of the battles with no deaths. This allowed for a constant flow of exp, and two people in the group including me leveled very quickly. After everyone completed the pirates quest, we stayed in the area for a "Named mob", which are unique, more difficult than the surrounding generic creatures and often drop special items. Killing these "named mobs" adds excitement to group ventures because they are more challenging to kill, have increased health and sometimes special abilities. Also everyone hopes that they will drop an item that they can use and upgrade their gear. The named pirate dropped a shield which went to the "tank", or defensive fighter type. Afterward we all headed back to town to turn in our quest for rewards. Quests are fun because they have out venture out and kill monsters for exp, and then after a certain number, you can return to the quest giver for bonus exp for completing the task. This gives you more exp for your time, then if you just killed without quests. We then collected 3 new quests and went off to a nearby area to complete them. The first one involved sparring against a monk of the drunken style. This was fun because you got to kill an non-player character who isn't a normal enemy and isn't normally attackable. Then we went off to a camp of lizardmen, where we killed the lizardmen and then rescued soldier hostages who had been kidnapped at the camp and escorted the hostages back to town. This was a fun quest, but there was one annoying part. We were assigned to kill 12 lizardmen, but there was another player there not in the group who killed some of the lizardmen at the camp. When all were slain, we had only killed 10/12. Then we had to wait around the camp for several minutes until new lizardmen spawned and we could finish the quest. Competing with other players for the same objective is a frustrating part of MMOs and can decrease the fun as you spend time waiting. With everything completed we headed back to town for our rewards and I upgraded several pieces of my armor for increased protection and stats. I had a very fun and successful group this session, which increased my enjoyment. Sometimes the group doesn't work well together and there are constant deaths and little accomplishments. I wanted to continue playing with this particular group of players, but I had to log off and run to class. Hopefully some of them will be online the next time I log on. I love playing MMOs cause you can't beat them and there is always more to do, and I anxiously await my next adventure.
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