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Return of the Obra Dinn (PC) by jp (Oct 27th, 2024 at 17:55:32) |
So far, which is only 30 mins or so into the game, this is not what I was expecting! It's more "interactive" than I thought - with the 3D frozen-in-time scenes a particularly surprising stand out for me so far.
I'm currently on the 2nd "scene" (chapter?) and I'm not sure I understand how the pocketwatch is meant to work - sometimes within a scene it'll be vibrating - and then I'll press X on some other part and it'll flash and then you'll see a trail of "smoke" - and I'm kind of confused as to what it's all supposed to mean. I think for now I'll just continue to play along until I get horribly stuck? I'm just worried that it's a key mechanic of sorts that has some meaning that helps fill out the blanks in the case.
I liked the "fill in the blanks" in Curse of the Golden Idol - and this is similar (though earlier!) - but harder in a way? I just need to identify who died, how, and by whom. The names seems to be the hardest thing so far. We'll see how it goes.
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Tunic (PS5) by jp (Oct 21st, 2024 at 00:22:20) |
This one's been a real joy so far. I've been trying to be very disciplined about not going out for help, guides, advice or anything. If anything I've been too disciplined because, when we talked about it in class, I learned that I should have been paying a lot more attention to the pages from the manual I've been finding. There was some important stuff there (like how to upgrade your health, etc.) that I did not know and it's made the game a lot harder as a result. Oops.
So far I've really enjoyed how organic the discovery process has been and how it's not incredibly overwhelming - I've been able to loosely keep track of the things I've discovered and the things I have to return to. We'll see what happens when I play again, because I've had to take a break to get into another game...for class as well. So, what little muscle memory and skills I've developed, and what I know about the map and so on...it might be forgotten.
I've also found some weird unexplained stuff:
a. A room which was "south" of an area inside a building/cave. The room has a circle of pedestals (sort of where you'd place a bust), all empty and all had the option to interact with, but nothing happened. What is this place and will I have to return? No idea.
b. I've found three "shops" (I might have missed some). It's unclear to me if they're all the same shop in the sense of what's sold - I hope so, since it seems a bit annoying to have to visit them all just to see what they're selling. I hope the wares are the same.
c. I figured out the greyscale-dimension teleporting, and I teleported off a pad the took me to a small square room with no apparent exits. The teleported square was green instead of yellow like the rest. I wasn't able to do anything, I just teleported back. But, I wonder what that place was!
d. There are some hooks in areas that seem like I should be able to interact with. I'm guessing I still need to pick up an upgrade/ability/item to use them?
So, I'm looking forward to playing more, but I'm worried the game will get too hard for me (combat and bosses). We'll see. It got a lot easier when I did the upgrades...
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Cocoon (PC) by jp (Oct 21st, 2024 at 00:14:28) |
I was half expecting not to like it just to be a sort of contrarian. But no, I was wrong and I have enjoyed my time with this game. I think a big part of it is that it seems to move along at a nice pace. I get a bit tired of those puzzle games that have 100 levels and you just start cranking and grinding away and it sort of loses the joy and appeal. Cocoon is different. It's still a puzzle game, and the puzzles are integrated into the games environments and I have no idea what's going on in this weirdly organic yet technological environment. It's all very alien, but in a good curious way rather than a scary creepy one. The world reminded me very much of the animated show Scavengers Reign. There's no voice or things to read, it's all very silent-protagonist. But, the protagonist is sort of like a bug-person so who knows what that should be like.
Great experience so far, and remarkably simple. I'm impressed by how easy it has been to learn to play the game, and there's only the arrows to move around and the space bar to interact. That's it. And it just seems very intuitive, which is rare and unusual for a puzzle game. Of course things get more complicated as I've picked up new orbs - each with their own rules/special-ness and I'm half expecting everything to get combined and then my brain will melt. But so far, so good.
There's also action-based bosses! These I'm less appreciative of, though they do bookend moments of progress and although they haven't been easy, I have been able to get past them even if it's taken a handful of attempts. The last one had me "shooting" myself around into a giant creature that's stomping around an arena. At this point I've got 4 orbs (red, green, purple, and white) and we'll see what happens. Are there more? The menu shows I've made good progress so we'll see.
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Paradise Killer (PC) by dkirschner (Oct 16th, 2024 at 16:51:22) |
This was a huge surprise, and yet another gem in that narrative Humble Bundle from a couple months ago. I actually got this game once before and gave it away because I was on the fence about whether I thought I'd like it. But I got it again and figured I'd give it a shot. Good decision!
Paradise Killer is extremely creative. It's like a detective game / visual novel. I don't play either genre, so this was all pretty new to me. You play as Lady Love Dies, an "investigation freak" who gets called back from exile to solve a murder. There's a whole fiction here. Lady Love Dies is part of "The Syndicate," which is a group of...I don't even know what they are...special people, I guess...who live on an island. Every so often, they destroy the island and create a new one. They usually destroy the island, it seems, because demons invade it. That's more or less the case this time, too, except that on the night that they were supposed to move to the new island, the entire Council (the Syndicate leadership) was murdered. That's the one you're called back to solve.
There are 10 or so other (alive) Syndicate members. You run around the island, exploring it, finding clues and collectibles, learning about the history of all this, and meeting the other Syndicate members. You're collecting evidence, trying to make sense of the murder. Who did it, why, and how? Once you've collected enough evidence, you have a trial. Actually, you can have the trial immediately if you want to, just wildly accusing people. But, I was a good investigator. I think I explored most everything and discovered most all the evidence, and waited to call a trial until I had a good picture of what happened.
And there is a lot to explore. The island has like 10 areas, and there is hidden stuff everywhere. I thought the game was going to be more like a visual novel, and although I knew there was some exploration moving through a 3D world, I didn't know that that would be most of the game. I got completely engrossed in scouring the island for clues and collectibles. You will find a ton of stuff, and you will keep on discovering new areas and secrets if you're looking hard enough, all the way up until the end. I used the word "engrossed" earlier, but "exhilarated" also is appropriate. Like, it was really exciting to find hidden objects, secrets, to get more evidence against a character, to realize I learned something that could break an alibi, and so on.
I 100% want a sequel to this on the next island, and actually, I have some things I want to look up about this one, like what happens if you execute everyone and there is no one left to move to the next island? If you execute Lydia, can anyone be transported there? If you execute the Architect, then who builds the next island? Each character has a role, so what happens if those roles are empty? All the Syndicate members are suspicious for various reasons, and I gather in this game that there is no "right" answer. Like, it doesn't tell you if your accusations are correct; you just piece your evidence together as best you can, and if the Judge finds it reasonable, then the people you accused are sentenced and either executed or exiled. So, I guess that different players can have different outcomes of the trials.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Oct 16th, 2024 at 16:52:38.
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En Garde! (PC) by dkirschner (Oct 15th, 2024 at 17:11:30) |
This is a silly, short adventure game (~4 hours) featuring fencing, and the combat is really quite good. It's predicated not only on fencing moves (dodge, parry, riposte), but on using the environment to gain advantage over enemies. For example, you can kick things at enemies (boxes, crates, vases, etc.), which will momentarily surprise most enemy types. Surprised enemies are opened up to being kicked themselves, and you can kick them off ledges, into traps, and so on. You can pick up objects (buckets, turkeys, lanterns, etc.) and throw them at enemies too, distracting them or, if you're close with a bucket or turkey, putting them on the enemies' heads. It's amusing seeing an enemy running around with a turkey on his head.
You can also interact with the environment, such as by throwing a lantern at a cannon, which will cause it to fire, or by cutting a rope holding up a chandelier, which will cause it to fall. You can jump on tables, swing on poles, and generally run circles around your opponents, throwing and kicking things at them. Doing such acrobatics also surprises them, opening them up to kicks and attacks, or just distracting them so that you can focus on other enemies, because they will swarm you.
There are a variety of enemy types that, especially when there are a lot of enemies together, can be pretty challenging. They basically escalate in the complexity of their patterned moves. If their swords highlight red, it's an unblockable attack that you must dodge. If their swords highlight blue, you need to parry. Different enemies have different combinations of these two moves, and they come at you fast, so you have to react quickly to their series of attacks. As you dodge and parry the more advanced duelists, you wear down their guard bar. Once that's depleted, you do damage to their health. If you get hit, their guard bar replenishes. So, you need to string together perfect moves to defeat enemies. Combat happens in arenas, often with waves; it's intense and fun!
The fencing and acrobatic antics align with the narrative and tone of the game. You play as a heroic rapscallion who is against the "Count-Duke" and his evil scheme to milk the population and enrich himself. The plot and characters are usually over-the-top. There are plenty of funny one-liners. It's all very silly, endearing, and colorful. And I say all this with the feeling, in the end, that it was missing things. It moves at a fast pace and feels like it could have been fleshed out more, perhaps even taken a bit more seriously, and been a more engrossing action game. What's here is solid, but it feels like more of a foundation for something else than anything I'd encourage others to go out and play, although it was totally fun.
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FAR: Changing Tides (PS4) by dkirschner |
| Like Lone Sails but on/under water. --------- Not as good! Neat ending though. |
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most recent entry: Tuesday 2 July, 2024
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Sequel to FAR: Lone Sails, which I played last week. Although it’s expanded, I didn’t like it as much. Lone Sails has you piloting a contraption across the land, while Changing Tides has you on (and under) sea. The ship is bigger and has a couple extra mechanics, like raising and adjusting the sail to catch the wind and going into “turbo” mode, which is useful a few times for breaking through barriers or getting unstuck. The useful “vacuum” attachment is missing, replaced with a winch, which will descend and attach to cannisters full of items if you are above them, but otherwise you have to manually swim down and pick up each item and bring it back to the ship. It got really annoying. Why not have an undersea vacuum and keep this quality of life element?
The longer run time of Changing Tides is due, I think, primarily to: having to swim and retrieve each item (bad), longer and more complicated puzzles (good), and longer time cruising in between places of interest (neutral). The environments are still pretty, and you still get this sense of being isolated, but Changing Tides has more emphasis on exploration since you can dive underwater. There’s an “ancient civilization” down there, but I don’t know anything about it save it is technologically advanced. The exploration was mainly frustrating, and that is due to the thing that caused me the biggest headache: the controls.
Lone Sails’ controls were pretty good. With its physics, items would roll around as the contraption ambled over land, so items could get in your way. But running and jumping with the main character was pretty tight. This was important because of the small confines of the vehicle; precise movement was necessary. In Changing Tides, however, they made the character floaty and everything else more stable. If I had a quarter for how many times I: went up ladders without intending to; missed my jump; jumped past what I was aiming for; damaged my ship because I couldn’t get to the sail or engine or whatever in time; etc…I admit to shouting at the TV a couple times because I couldn’t get the character to catch a ladder because the movement was so floaty. It became really frustrating as the boat and exporable spaces got bigger. I have no idea why they didn’t calibrate the character’s movement just like in Lone Sails.
Finally, there were several times I got stuck on the environment or that it glitched out. One time was especially bad. I was diving down trying to find a way underneath an obstacle. Down, down, and the sea turned slowly from blue to black. I pressed onward, assuming I would die, but no! A little light appeared, and I thought, “Cool! You’re supposed to dive far down, then use the character’s flashlight to guide you!” So I swam around in the dark for 10 minutes trying to get the light to go to the right place. Finally, the screen flickered and I was next to another obstacle on the right. I thought I had come up or something, so I tried to go back down, but couldn’t. I tried to go left and up, and the screen flickered and turned black again. Repeat for a while as I tried to figure out what was going on, before realizing that I wasn’t supposed to have been able to go into the darkness in the first place, and that I was wandering around outside of bounds. All of a sudden, the screen flickered again, and I was stuck on the bottom of my vehicle. I had to reload the game to get unstuck. It took me a while to figure out what to do there, and turns out, you have to dive with the vehicle. When you do that, the underwater area looks different than when you dive without the vehicle, which was really, really stupid. There was no path when I dove alone, so why would I think to descend in the vehicle? And all of a sudden in the vehicle, there is a path forward? Come on.
A nod to the ending of the game though, despite the rough journey. It ties into the first one and I guessed it about ¾ of the way through. I want to like these games more than I do, but after the less polished second one, I wouldn’t play a third. I might recommend Lone Sails just for a taste of what’s neat about the series, but wouldn’t recommend this one.
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