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Rumu (PC) by dkirschner (Nov 19th, 2024 at 19:06:57) |
Another excellent short point-and-click game. Rumu is a cute little robot vacuum cleaner who wakes up in a big house to the voice of an AI named Sabrina. Sabrina explains that the house's human inhabitants, scientists named David and Cecily, are gone mountain biking, to the grocery store, or otherwise out of the house. Rumu is programmed to clean and to feel one emotion: love. Sabrina teaches Rumu how to clean messes and safely guides Rumu around the house, but warns not to explore. Well, Rumu eventually gets curious and explores, and finds some things Sabrina didn't want Rumu to find.
You think it's going to be a game about sinister AI, but it's not. It does say some things about our relationship with technology, about technology and ethics, and is actually really sweet and sad. To say anything else about the story will spoil things. Gameplay-wise, you just trundle around the house in a rather linear fashion learning more about Sabrina, David, Cecily, and a couple other characters, occasionally cleaning messes, and saying silly dialogue, usually about things you do or do not love, until you learn the truth of what's really going on.
I saw this game on some list of "best games you've never heard of" or something, it sounded intriguing, and it's totally worth checking out. Also, it ends with a "Baba Is You" style sentence, so I guess I'm finally going to start Baba Is You. A sign from the universe if there ever was one.
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Genesis Noir (PC) by dkirschner (Nov 18th, 2024 at 16:22:28) |
Artsy point-and-click about love and the end of the universe. The visuals are mesmerizing, lots of black and white (film noir style) with yellows for accent, flashing lights, changing perspectives, just wildly creative. The sound design is great too, lots of jazz music that often coincides with visuals bouncing around.
The story isn't easy to follow. It's a metaphor about the main character's relationship with a jazz singer told as the creation, evolution, and destruction of the universe. I didn't care much about what was going on, but was just basking in the audiovisual treat.
Gameplay is simple. Like I said, it's a point-and-click adventure at its core, but hyper stylized. So you aren't just walking around pointing and clicking. It feels like a series of scenes with toyboxes because it's not always obvious what you need to interact with or how to do it. It was reminding me of GNOG, where you just play with a level, click around and see what things do. I read that a lot of people found the gameplay frustrating, but I never did. Again, for me, this boiled down to "oooh aaah." I couldn't have cared less about how easy the puzzles were or how obtuse some of the interactions were or how deep the metaphor was going. It's a beautiful game and not one I'm likely to forget any time soon! I saw that there is another one coming out (sequel?). If it's the same kind of thing, I will definitely buy.
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Kentucky Route Zero (PS5) by jp (Nov 17th, 2024 at 23:33:47) |
I've just finished Act IV.
And, I think I understand why so many people adore this game. There's a few things I think are really interesting design-wise, but for the most part it's not really about the game's game-ness...
a. The interface when you're moving around/driving on the map is really slick. It feels quite natural and it works well when you change roads and so on.
b. The game changes perspectives A LOT. In most games you make dialogue choices for your characters. Here it feels like you make choices for all the characters - sometimes alternating even within the same conversation. It's a bit unsettling but really interesting in a special way. I do feel like I have to pay closer attention to see who's saying what and what I want the responses to be.
c. The game really does a good job in being cinematic in the sense of having interesting camera movements and positions and framing and so on. So, it's like the photographic direction is really good. The camera pulls back after a minute in some areas, as you move around the camera follows you but may also zoom in or out and show more/less stuff. It's quite clever. My guess is that it was hand/custom coded for each scene/moment?
I have no idea where the story is going, the plot is all weird and all over the place, but I am curious to see/know where it all ends.
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Killer Frequency (PC) by dkirschner (Nov 15th, 2024 at 19:16:32) |
Cool concept, stays pretty engaging throughout. The first-person perspective might suggest more action than there is. It's totally a narrative game. Not a "walking simulator" per se, although it's true that you cannot run. Most of the game is actually you standing in place.
You play as a radio host in the late 1980s who gets a job in some small town. On this fateful night, there is a serial killer afoot, with the story rooted in the town's history. After an incident with the police, 911 calls are routed to the radio station. You and your producer take calls and, from behind the DJ booth, hopefully save some lives. Callers will ring up saying they're being stalked by the serial killer and you have to walk them through staying alive. One guy is being hunted in a corn maze; another in an office building; another needs to leave her house and go down the street; and so on. You often need to explore the radio station to find things to help you handle the calls, like a map of the corn maze to help that caller get to the exit. Your producer doles out keys to locked doors as you explore more of the station. Other callers will ring to talk or play pranks or whatever. The writing is strong and there are some really funny parts, like any interaction with the pizza owner. It's got a great 1980s slasher film campy vibe to it.
It's less scary than I thought it would be, though there are some tense moments. Eventually, though, you'll realize that it doesn't matter if callers die. The story keeps going, and I'm not sure if there are multiple endings. It seems like there's just one. And since it is campy, sometimes it is kind of funny if someone dies. This game may not be the best at promoting ethical reflection, though there was one poignant caller who talked about beating addiction and gaining a new outlook on life, which was very touching. Eventually, you will get into the basement of the radio station, which was a little creepy. It felt like it went on a little long because you're not really doing a whole lot. The radio station is really small, you'll collect the few extra records and tapes scattered about, you'll play the same records 3 times each, you'll toss dozens of paper balls into a wastebasket basketball goal while you're listening to people talk. If the writing and voice acting wasn't on point, this would have been a swing and a miss, but luckily it was a fun several hours!
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Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved (PC) by dkirschner (Nov 12th, 2024 at 21:38:31) |
Cannot believe I beat this. What a fun twin-stick bullet hell game. I set out initially just to beat Adventure mode. At some point, I dabbled in the other modes, one of which added more enemy types and game types and the other of which stripped the game to its core--no special weapons. It was so fun, and there were so many variations on the core gameplay, that I ended up beating every single level in the game. But I tell you what, although there were definitely some challenging levels, the last boss fight--Topaz--was a massive difficulty spike. Topaz is the last boss in both Adventure mode and Hardcore mode, and both of those levels have been all I had remaining for weeks. I played some other games in the meantime, and periodically tried to beat Topaz, but never could. Tonight, sitting up in my friend's spare bedroom, I got frustrated and looked online to see if other people were having just as much trouble as I was. I was not alone! Dozens and dozens of forums complaining about this boss. And lots of encouraging posts. I decided I'd give it one more shot. And I beat it. That was probably 30 or 40 tries in total. Then I thought, "What the hell, let's give Hardcore Topaz another go." And I beat that too on the first try tonight. So, after 30 or 40 losses, I beat both Topazes back to back. The Steam achievement for Topaz on Adventure mode is 6.2%, so I'm feeling pretty smug at the moment.
Topaz has six or seven phases, and they're all pretty easy once you memorize the patterns, except the last one or two. So, I was getting right near the end of the fight like every single time. At the end, he starts spinning around and moving toward you. The level is bordered by red walls (you touch, you die), and Topaz itself has red walls circling it. Enemies spawn along the wall, usually blue diamonds (which move toward you at a moderate speed) and a couple colors of purple (which slowly move or stay pretty still). At one point, these yellow balls start spawning randomly on one side of the level, then another side, then another side, and they fly quickly across the level. It's super annoying because they can spawn right on top of you if you're near an edge and will kill you before you have a chance to move. So, don't be near the edge in that part, avoid the yellow balls, and move the boss quickly into the next phase. At the end, the boss gets larger and its red walls take up like 1/4 of the screen, plus enemies are spawning along the edges of the screen, so you really don't have many places to move. I regularly died here if the yellow balls didn't get me because I'd get trapped. I think the trick is to stay calm (obviously) and focus more on staying alive than attacking the boss. You'll have plenty of time to attack Topaz in between waves of enemies. But if you're dead, you can't attack, so stay alive! I used the "fire" weapon, which amplifies your frontal attack, and the turret special, but I actually didn't set off the turret or my bombs, beating the Adventure Topaz with no special weapons (which deserves another, even rarer, achievement, right?!). Now that I think about that, I'm definitely feeling smug.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Nov 12th, 2024 at 21:49:03.
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2257 registered gamers and 3210 games. 7733 GameLogs with 13218 journal entries. 5097 games are currently being played.
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Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas (PS2) by kittydepaul |
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most recent entry: Sunday 25 July, 2010
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Gamelog has decided to keep logging me out as I try and write my final log for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, but this isn't even half as frustrating as all of the difficulties I've had with the game itself. Day three of playing was, admittedly, the easiest of my attempts at this game. But this was not because of the game itself, more a personal choice I had made. I decided that there was no way I was going to continue trying to do that first mission again because, well, quite frankly, it just wasn't going to happen (me getting past it that is) so I felt like spending another few hours toiling away at just trying to beat that first mission would be a huge waste of my time.
With this in mind I decided that I was going to go back to the roots of what GTA was made for, I was going to beat people up, steal their guns and money, and commit some good old fashioned GTA. At this point I had at least gotten down how to beat people up and take their guns and money, that was probably the only thing I had gotten right in the whole game so far. Stealing cars was just has hard as the missions were for me, no matter what I did I seemed to get caught by the cops, no matter that not a single time had I seen any within sight before I started! It was really quite annoying andmade me miss the older versions of the game I had played as a kid.
While I did have all of these problems trying to figure out the game, I did try and keep in mind that this is for an ethics class and I did try and take in all of the things going on around me. After about 10 minutes into this third playing of the game, I finally got so fed up with how repetitive and eye-roll worthy all of the comments being made by the various hookers and drug dealers were and put the game on mute. I wish I wouldn't have been so distracted by figuring out the game as to have spent more time thinking about the actual ethical issues within it, but in the end they just became an annoyance instead of anything that actually actively upset or bothered me. They became a distraction from me actually being able to figure out the game itself! I guess all that does is proves that often you'll hear something in a movie or game and it will effect you entirely differently than it would if you were constantly hearing it in real life. I know if I constantly had anyone cat calling or yelling at me in real life I'd be more much upset and insulted and a lot less merely annoyed.
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