Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1919https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6660GL 3.3 I played another hour and a half of This is the Police. It seems to be falling into the same issue as Papers Please and Prison Architect where it opened with a lot of interesting events, but the middle part of the game is mostly filler and repetitive. At first there were a lot of interesting events going on and I had to make a lot of important meta decisions. For the entire hour I only got one "cut scene" which was definitely not enough to hold my attention. I still love the way that music is incorporated, but the core gameplay loop is too snowball-y and easy. During my first session I felt like I was in a negative feedback loop where I didn't have enough officers to fix all the problems in the city and please the mayor so he was reducing my budget. Now I have a few veterans which are almost maxed out and I am riding off of the positive feedback loop where I can train any incompetent workers (even the guy who started at 5 reliability) by sending them on as many missions possible with my max reliability veterans. I am not as interested in the grindy gameplay, I want more complicated situations and important meta choices like choosing who I side with or the decision to hire the 5 reliability officer to gain a budget increase. At this point I am able to solve every single issue that pops up and even when I lose a lot of officers (I lost 3 in one mission), I can always just replace and retrain them since I have so many available.Thu, 29 Mar 2018 18:43:11 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6660&iddiary=11813https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6660GL 3.2 I played a few more hours of This is the Police. I thought I was doing pretty bad with the city, but it seemed that there were a lot less events this session and I also got a lucky request that gave me 3 extra officers. So far there does not seem to be many issues with helping out the Mafia, besides getting one person to quit I have not experienced any issues from sending all my cops to help their missions and I have gotten less requests to ignore missions. I like the moral decisions that the player has to make to resolve situations, but they should probably be timed as it is too easy to find the correct one. I have only lost two officers so far to failed cases and the rest of my officers are now extremely experienced and most can complete missions with half the required manpower. There also seems to be a slowdown in the number of events I have been getting, the first few days were jam packed but I played a few in game weeks and the only event I got was a short phone call about the characters missing wife. The only thing holding me back right now is my lack of investigators, but the few that I do have are extremely reliable so it is not too much of an issue.Wed, 28 Mar 2018 20:38:56 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6660&iddiary=11782https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6587Gamelog #2 (Part 3) I played another few hours working through the main story. I think I might have broken the game a bit with a rune that gives me an extremely high level skill (infinite execution rage mode) which made both the Hammer and Matron boss fights extremely easy since I just spammed them to death within a few minutes. I felt bad for Ratbag after the Hammer killed him so slaughtering the Hammer was quite satisfying. I feel like there is still quite a disconnect between the gameplay and some of the moral themes. Talion had a quip about how mind controlling orcs for information is strange but then is fine with blowing up their heads with his ghost powers in game. I realize I am still not that far as I still haven't unlocked converting orcs to your side which I thought was a big part of the game. I also feel like there are hints towards a conflict later where Talion may have to give up his body to completely revive Celembridor which would be a fairly interesting moral quandary.Thu, 15 Feb 2018 18:58:35 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6587&iddiary=11682https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6587Gamelog 2 (part 2) I played about an hour and a half today and spent most of it on side missions. First I did the quest to elevate Ratbag to a warchief which did make me sympathize a bit with the ork since he was pretty funny and not a backstabber. I then decided I wanted to farm some more arrow capacity so I went to do some side missions. I saw that I had a quest to avenge one of my steam friends' deaths to a low level captain so I took the quest but the guy surprised me with a repeater bow and 4 other captains and killed me. I saw that the game had promoted him to the bodyguard of a warchief, which would allow me to find the identity of another warchief which was the meta-quest I was on anyway. So, I decided to hunt him down, it turned out he had retreated to an orc stronghold near the Black Gates which had atleast 4 or 5 other captains in it. I spent a good hour or so hunting down dozens of orc bodyguards that were around him since I had to capture him to interrogate him. I got him alone and got my revenge, but the interrogation caused a bug where the game would not register any of my inputs except space bar so I had to quit there. I am starting to sympathize more with the orcs, and I did see there was an upgrade that I will get further in the story which recruits drained orcs to my side which is where I assume more of the moral issues will lie. I spent a lot of time killing orcs in this section and I feel like the game definitely lightens their deaths especially in many of the cinematic with Ratbag which are pretty brutal but are accompanied with one liners and lighthearted music.Wed, 14 Feb 2018 18:45:32 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6587&iddiary=11649https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6587Gamelog 2 (part 1)- This is the first time I have played the game although I picked it up for a few bucks during the last Steam Winter sale. I played for about two hours and got to the part where we learn the wraiths real identity. The gameplay is very reminiscent of the Batman games, especially the combat which is very flashy without requiring much player input. I would say the the game definitely falls under gratuitous violence. The orcs are so ugly they are hard to feel sympathy for, but some of the "stealth" kill animations are so brutal they would definitely be counted as gratuitous. I haven't gotten very far into the orc mind control mechanics so I can't say much about those ethical implications. I thought that working with orcs would be more of mind control, but currently I have only worked with one orc and it was without any wraith mind control magic. The only current ethical implication that I have encountered is the sheer brutality that the player character slaughters the orcs and steals their souls, but I wouldn't say it is so bad to be of note unlike games like Manhunter (the fact that you are murdering orcs rather than humans definitely has a part in it).Mon, 12 Feb 2018 23:05:40 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6587&iddiary=11601https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6533OPA #3 I got in a short session of play before class, I overextended a little bit at the end of my last session and took in a few too many prisoners. One started a fire and in one of the cell blocks which spread to the showers and the canteen, and I had to call everyone into lock down to get everything sorted out. I am pretty sure I was about to have a major riot due to unhappiness before I had to stop ti write this. To be honest this last session has made me even less sympathetic to the prisoners as they are the ones who caused the fire and now they are unhappy about it? I will probably start a purge of all the gangs tomorrow.Thu, 18 Jan 2018 10:56:01 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6533&iddiary=11548https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6533OPA #2 For some reason I kept getting the same issue of the second tutorial level, or maybe I was just misunderstanding something so I gave up after getting stuck two times. I decided to move to the sandbox mode and started up a small prison. I remember the game was a lot less challenging when I originally played it. It started quite easy at first and I got a good start by building all the necessities and I was keeping all the prisoners happy and well fed. As my prison expanded and I had more high threat prisoners I had to pivot a lot of my resources and technology to building guards and checking for contraband. While the story chapters showed a morally grey system and had key prisoners, I found it hard to sympathize with the npc prisoners. They were just too inane and similar for me to care about each individual and they often acted very irrationally by attacking my guard or trying to break free in hopeless situations. I found that the best option was harsh punishment in solitary or just by killing the problem prisoners and then asking for more. While this is an extremely immoral act I feel like the simple graphics and overhead management style view really desensitize me towards my actions.Thu, 18 Jan 2018 01:09:46 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6533&iddiary=11528https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6533OPA #1. I chose to play Prison Architect because I bought it on early access right when it was first released and only played it for a few hours. It seems to have a lot of new features, when I first played the game it only had 1 story mission and did not have as complicated of a tech tree or job management. I started with the missions and breezed through the first one as it was basically exactly the same. The second mission was surprisingly long and I am pretty sure I was all most all the way through it. I as not able to finish an hour in because the mission required me to start a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program, but the game would not allow me to do it even though I had all the requirements fulfilled. It seemed like it was bugged since I could briefly see the quest finished in my quest log every time i clicked the checkbox, but it would then immediately reappear and the box would become unchecked. Besides that the game was fun the second mission basically game you infinite money and access to most of the systems so I spent a lot of time building cells and yards. The story is a lot darker than I remembered but definitely makes prison seem extremely terrible, especially when I run it.Tue, 16 Jan 2018 19:10:31 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6533&iddiary=11455