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Sid Meier's Civilization VI (PC) by dkirschner (Oct 16th, 2026 at 14:13:25) |
Eh. I played for a couple hours and was bored. I know this is one you have to sink time into to learn and thoroughly enjoy. But I'd just rather not, now that I see just how expansive it is. I did enjoy the option to be Teddy Roosevelt, after whom I named my cat. Bully! I got this in a massive Civ Humble Bundle a while back and gave most of the expansion pass keys away. Should have given it all away! On to the next thing!
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Fallout 4 (PS4) by jp (Oct 13th, 2026 at 10:30:59) |
For some daft reason I was sure I had played this - a bit - way back when I was at DePaul on an Xbox 360. I remember starting inside a vault, designing my character, leaving the vault, and then wandering around in the wasteland for a bit. I was also confused by the VATS system, which I thought was cool - but I had trouble with the UI/understanding the controls. And then, I didn't play again...
...and now I realize, having played the beginning of THIS game, that I was confusing it with Fallout 3! Wow. I've never played Fallout 4 prior to a few days ago..which seems kind of wild to me.
I've been having fun so far, and I'm learning how to work the UI - I have to stop myself with the VATS since I often, by mistake, switch between enemies instead of between locations on an enemy. But, think I'm starting to get the handle of it. It's a neat system and I just learned (realized) that you can lock in several shots in a row, which is nice.
I did struggle with the "base building" because it took me a while to realize that when building stuff at the workbench you have to WALK AROUND to place the things - I was just frustrated that I had all the items, but the "x" (to buy/place) was disabled.
I hope to play more over the coming days...having sort-of-recently seen the show, I feel like I'm ready to dive into Fallout more than I have in the past.
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Drop Duchy (PC) by dkirschner (Oct 12th, 2026 at 18:12:59) |
This really grew on me. It's a clever blend of Tetris, a city builder, and a roguelite. There's no story to speak of, so I can just explain how the game works. You choose a faction, say, The Duchy (there are only three aside from DLC). You have a few starting cards. At first, cards are either production buildings or military buildings. Production buildings generate resources (you start with the basics: food, lumber, gold), while military buildings generate troops (archers, axemen, swordsmen). You'll start on a standard roguelite map, the Slay-the-Spire-type three-lane path, and choose to move along it from encounter to encounter. You'll land on resources, peaceful regions, or battles at first (more types get unlocked).
Here's how battles work. You're on a Tetris grid. Tetris pieces appear, just like that game, and you rotate and place them, just like that game. Except the pieces are different types of terrain (say, forest, plains, and rivers). And your production and military buildings are also Tetris pieces that appear. And your enemy's military buildings are also in the deck of Tetris pieces. Buildings have various conditions and results. For example, the Farm (production building) turns nearby plains into fields and generates food. The Watchtower (military building) gives an archer for each plain in range and three archers for each field in range. You already see the synergy between these two buildings! When you complete a row, it is considered "explored", and you get resources for every terrain tile in the row (food for fields, lumber for trees, etc.). The row doesn't disappear (as in Tetris), so you have a limited amount of space to place the blocks in the deck before the round ends. If you explore multiple rows at once, you get bonus resources. So, every match is a game of managing terrain, production, and military buildings to generate resources AND to limit your opponent from generating soldiers. That is, when their Watchtower piece comes up, you want to place it next to some woods or some rocks, definitely not smack in the middle of a bunch of fields, where yours hopefully is.
You are always trying to minimize the army the enemy can raise because at the end of the round, you fight. Battles are a rock-paper-scissors affair between archers, axemen, and swordsmen. You basically move groups of units into other groups of units which stacks groups and sends them into battle. This is kind of hard to explain, but the game provides clear rules for how it works based on the size and type of groups that you're moving around, and the order in which battle happens. Just know that you want to be on the winning end of those rock-paper-scissors battles and you want to really, really think through the order in which you group your troops. One miscalculation can ruin the whole fight and lose the game.
When you complete an encounter, you choose a new card, and are thus always growing your deck. You use the resources harvested during rounds to upgrade cards. So, at the larger deck-building level, you're looking for synergies between cards, building a deck with some sort of theme, and balancing production and military. Not enough production and you can't upgrade stuff. Not enough military and you can't win battles. In my last game, my first full win, I actually had the fewest buildings I'd ever had. I'd unlocked "technology" cards, which are passive (e.g., every time you explore a field, gain 4 additional food; or, all military building upgrades are 20% cheaper; etc.). I was able to synergize really well and build a deck focused on fields. Fields all the way! I turned woods to plains, plains to fields, got food bonuses for fields, had buildings that created plains and fields when placed, military buildings with bonuses for fields, etc. I pretty much annihilated Act 3 and the last boss.
Speaking of bosses, I had no idea how they would do this. I thought bosses would just be like regular battles but with buffed cards, or maybe with more cards. But no! Boss battles fundamentally alter the grid in some way, alter your typical strategies, etc. For example, the last boss (who had killed me once before) requires "bribes," or else it'll throw you military buildings to deal with. To bribe it, you have to generate x resources over y turns and keep it up throughout the match. Every time you don't meet the bribe amount, the enemy sends a military building. And, every time you place a piece, there are squares on the grid that will automatically generate enemy troops if you place a piece there, and the squares change every piece, so you're constantly working around restrictions on the grid too. The first time I fought this boss, I got overwhelmed and lost. This time, the boss didn't send a single military building and I beat it by almost 100 troops, which is a lot.
This was inevitable, I think, because there are a ton of upgrades in the meta-progression. Tons of new cards, even new mechanics. For example, you can unlock religious buildings and the "faith" mechanic, unlock mercenaries, unlock the "constellation" mechanic (which lets you manipulate a piece every 10 or so pieces, depending), you can unlock technology cards, "noble" cards, and so on. You also upgrade your starting decks and resources with each faction as you play them. I am really tempted to win with each faction before setting the game aside, but I have so much other stuff to play. I'll keep it installed and probably come back in the future!
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Beacon Pines (PC) by dkirschner (Oct 9th, 2026 at 11:18:41) |
Cute little narrative game with a good, darker-than-expected story. The art style is excellent (I love the different ways that tears come out of the characters’ eyes) and the sound and music perfectly complement the setting and story. You play as Luka, a kid in Beacon Pines who discovers that some strange things are happening, and all the adults, including his grandmother, seem to be involved. Hmm…! Pal up with some friends to uncover the town’s secrets.
It features a mechanic where the narrative branches based on words that you discover (e.g., shame, fight, flight, chill, etc.). In certain situations (“turning points”), you can select from some words to use, which will change the course of the story. This was intriguing, but wasn’t used to its full potential. The game’s description oversells the impact of turning points. If you use the “wrong” word, you get a “the end” shortly thereafter. The game’s description says that using different words DRASTICALLY CHANGES EVERYTHING THAT FOLLOWS and that you’ll jump back and forth between ENTIRELY DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF THE STORY! Not really. At a “the end” screen, you go back to the turning point (through a menu) and choose a different word. You’ll either get another ending in a second, or it’ll be the “correct” word that continues the story. There are some actual branches, but interestingly, the game still proceeds linearly. For example, you have to go down branch A to get to branch B to get back to branch A. In other words, there is only one way through the story. Oddly, there are some words that are never used. You can’t just choose any word in your stock during turning points; only specific ones are available, which narrows the potential of this mechanic further.
This mechanic reminded me a bit of Great God Grove, which is another “word game”, wherein you use phrases spoken by NPCs to solve dialogue puzzles. Instead of using whole phrases or sentences, here you just occasionally are prompted to use a word to complete a storybook narration, which determines what a character does and therefore what happens. Great God Grove also felt limiting. I suppose that is because language is near limitless, and that makes for tough narrative design.
Despite its simplicity, I thoroughly enjoyed playing through the mystery of Beacon Pines. I wonder if they’ll make a sequel. I’d be interested to see what Luka and his friends get up to next!
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Crime O'Clock (NSW) by jp (Oct 8th, 2026 at 09:44:19) |
First, what a banger of a name for a game. Ha!
I picked this up from the box art. It looked like this was "MicroMacro: Crime City" in videogame form. A good thing in my mind. What made MicroMacro cool/fun is that it's a giant "where's wally" with an extra twist - you have to find things but then also "trace" them over time. So, a character might be dead in part of the "map", but you can look around to and see the character still alive walking to the place where they're dead, and so on. So, you trace time through space.. it's hard to describe.
This game - at least from what I've played so far does exactly the same thing with two differences. First, the map (illustration) changes - so, there are different maps for different snapshots in time (some things change others stay the same from what I can tell). Second, there are occasional mini-interactive activities you have to do (not quite enough depth to call them minigames) - these represent "computer analysis" moments - like tracing a cell phone being used to towers, or identi-kit-style assembling the portrait of a perp. They take place in a sort of "computer network" visualization that's all black background which is in direct contrast to the main map that's on white.
The art style is all black line drawing comic-style characters (like MicroMacro, but different enough) on a white background with color used very sparingly for UI-stuff.. I think it looks great.
The maps (only played on one, the tutorial and the first case) are fun to look at with lots of little easter egg style details.
I think I'm going to enjoy this!
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2323 registered gamers and 3388 games. 7927 GameLogs with 13441 journal entries. 5109 games are currently being played.
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Mega Man 9 (Wii) by mfthomps |
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most recent entry: Tuesday 20 October, 2009
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GAMEPLAY
Thanks goodness for checkpoints. After another 90 minutes, I discovered that as long as you do so before losing all of your lives, you can reach checkpoints. Though not very obvious as say in a game like Donkey Kong Country, where there's a nice little barrel for you to break. But, assuming this applies to all levels, about halfway through the level and right before the boss, there is an invisible checkpoint, so that if you die, which in my case happened often, you will start off from your checkpoint as long as you don't get a "game over."
To ease the tension, my roommate and I decided to switch off during the level. If one of us died, the other picked up the controller to continue, giving each of us a nice, if brief break from the tension. It's easy to get nervous playing this game particularly when you only have one life... and honestly the thought of having to start a level over is enough to make you sweat when you've finally gotten to the boss. After finally reaching galaxy man, I died... (and he only had 2 units of health left!). The hard part about this boss, which according to many should be the easiest in the game, is that it is incredibly difficult to avoid attacks. In fact, I feel like that's exactly what it is that makes this game so challenging. You can only jump so high and move so fast, and when facing Galaxy Man, that range just isn't enough. This also has to do with the design of the game, and the fact that every time you take a hit, your Mega Man is pushed a short distance backwards as a result of the impact, which temporarily keeps you from jumping, running, and shooting, but we'll get to more of this element in the design portion.
Galaxy Man's power is able to suck Mega Man in a small hole (which I should mention is instant death)... and unless you are able to time your movements right and get just far enough away from him so that you have room to turn and get in a few shots. Even though this is easy to figure out, the problem is trying to avoid running in to him after you successfully shoot him, as he runs into rather quickly and you are unable to jump over him. Usually games like this one rely heavily on patterns and while it's easy to get a grasp on his general movements, it doesn't really matter when you're unable to avoid it. Somehow my roommate made it by getting in just enough hits before dying, and yes, BEAT Galaxy Man! So now Mega Man has the ability to shoot holes that suck enemies in, which is likely to be pretty helpful in other levels.
Again, it's hard to give a lot of detail on gameplay when I've only managed to get past one level (with the help of a friend!). But hopefully in another 90 minutes we'll be closer to getting through another level... or maybe halfway through?
DESIGN
So what makes this different from other platformers? From other Well, like other platformers, jumping, of course, is a prominent factor, but NOT the core game mechanic, as in games like Super Mario Brothers. Instead like most Mega Man games, shooting with your M. Buster, and eventually other things (depending on what suit you gain from which boss) is the main mode of attack and the key to progressing through the game. The other thing that makes this game interesting and a bit more difficult to figure out, is that the player is actually able to control the order of levels. In other words, there is no set first, second, third level. A menu pops up with Mega Man in the center, surrounded by 8 bosses, and it's up to the player to decide which one to tackle first. Seems unimportant, but depending on what level your attempting, sometimes having another suit (from a boss you've defeated) can open up a whole new way to approach the level. For instance, in levels where enemies follow you (in gradually increasing numbers), Galaxy Man's black hole is rather handy. But, there is a catch. Because you only have a limited supply, it is important to keep in mind that once you run out, in can be hard to get more ammo because it is truly random what happens after you defeat an enemy: sometimes a small amount of health or ammo, sometimes a much larger amount, sometimes a life, but often nothing at all (particularly when you're in desperate need of it).
The other challenging element of this game is the fact that your are temporarily stunned every time you are hit (as well as pushed backwards)... often resulting in either falling off the level (or in a pit of spikes), or into another enemy. Yes it's frustrating. Although I often laugh about it, I'd be lying if I said I never felt a little impatient and annoyed. But, as I said before, the desire to overcome these challenges overtakes those feelings.
There are few cut scenes so far but nothing two intrusive or long. Depending on whether or not you love a good embedded narrative, you may or may not be happy about this. Although I do love narrative (I am an English major!), if you just simply want to move on to the next challenge, it is very easy to fast forward the text.
Most side scrolling platformers don't have emergent narrative or interactive elements. There's no multiplayer, although I think you can compare scores with other players as well as receive awards, trophies (milestone markers, basically) for achieving a certain feat in the game (there is a time trial mode I can't even begin to think about trying!). This game really doesn't need it though, and as far as sidescrolling platformers go, strategy is particularly central to this game. What order you play the levels, what suits you use, when you use them-- these choices are up to you, the player. As far as interactivity goes, that's pretty complex and interactive for a 2D sidescroller/platformer. This game doesn't need flashy graphics, in fact, anything more complex would take away from the fact that it isn't necessary for a game like this one. Enjoy it. Be frustrated. Be excited by challenge. And be in awe of the people who designed this game... because with simple graphics, patterns, and choices, they were able to make one of the most challenging classic type games ever.
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