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Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (PS5) by dkirschner (Jan 17th, 2025 at 12:26:21) |
This is the nth Ratchet & Clank game and the third one I’ve played. I don’t really remember the other two, but they were like 10-15 years ago. I honestly don’t have a whole lot to say about it. It’s fun. It’s cartoony and arcadey. It’s pretty easy. It’s colorful and loud and has creative art. My favorite part is using all the different guns and trying to level them all up. There’s a mushroom bomb that spawns mushrooms that attack enemies, another bomb that spawns little robot dudes that attack enemies, a “topiary grenade” that spawns a sprinkler that turns enemies into shrubbery (funny), which freezes them in place and makes them vulnerable. There is a ricochet gun that you fire, then press R1 a bunch to bounce the bullet at the enemy. There’s a gun that freezes enemies in blocks of ice, which you can smash with your wrench. There are all the standard guns you expect (pistol, shotgun, rocket launcher, sniper, etc.). There is a gun that shoots dogs at your enemies. It's wild.
The coolest thing aside from the guns is the rifts. You find these purple crystals that will switch dimensions so that you can explore two versions of many areas. There are other rifts that you can use to traverse larger distances quickly, and others you can open to find secrets in hidden sections of the world. It’s neat to find areas within areas and to see the contrast between wherever you are and some ruined version of it. After not too long though I quit exploring these so that I could get on with the story. Whatever collectibles you find in the rifts (or anywhere else for that matter) aren’t that useful because, as I said, it’s an easy game. There are golden screws (no purpose as far as I can tell except to find them), armor pieces that do give stacking bonuses, spybots that are like encyclopedia entries for lore, and so on. The most useful thing you’ll find when poking around is definitely the crystals that let you upgrade weapons.
Those purple crystals and rifts are related to the story, which is good enough to drive the action along. The big bad guy is upset that his plans are always being ruined, so he travels to an alternate dimension where another version of him rules the galaxy (and then you follow him there and ruin both of their plans, of course). There are the Clank puzzles again, and they are neat, but simple, and reminded me of the game Humanity because he has to route clones of himself to an exit. There are also little action shooter areas for a new character (because Ratchet has an alternate dimension person too). So yeah, fun, but probably will not remember!
Oh yeah, the PS5 controller has a super cool feature (aside from tons of varied pulsing, vibrating, audio effects, etc.) where you can, depending on the context, pull a trigger halfway for an effect and pull it the whole way down for a different effect. For example, hold L2 to aim and hold R1 halfway to shoot a gun in its slow and accurate mode, or hold R2 all the way down to change to machine gun fire. Returnal was doing this too, but I haven’t played much of it. Ratchet & Clank used it all the time for a lot of guns. This controller is awesome!
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Monstrum (XBONE) by dkirschner (Jan 15th, 2025 at 14:06:52) |
Been playing this with Patrick, but we called it quits last night. I'd never heard of it when he pitched playing it. He likes to dig up old Xbox games. This one is from 2015 and is like a survival horror game. It's pretty basic and reminds me of several other games, but doesn't do any of its elements as good as they do.
The premise is that you're on a ship. Y'all have found something. Now the "something" y'all found (monsters, I guess) are killing everyone aboard. You need to escape. That is all. The story and setting reminded me of Still Wakes the Deep. There are three monsters, and you'll get one of them randomly each time you play. There seem to be a few randomized starting locations on the ship. So, you start, pick up a fuse and a flashlight (always in the first room), and head off wandering through the ship to find materials to get off board.
We found a life raft, a submarine, and a helicopter, but never got everything we needed to get any of them working. The monster always kills us before we get too far. All three monsters act the same, as far as we can tell. They regularly appear if you make noise (run, or a security camera spots you and sounds an alarm, slam doors). Usually you can hear them stomping around or breathing, but several times we turned a corner and there one was, quietly there to kill us.
The ship looks really dull, the environments are not interesting at all, I didn't find the gameplay to be much fun. The one thing that was fun was watching Patrick jump and scream when a monster would appear from nowhere and kill him. To Monstrum's credit, it produces some good jump scares and some tense moments before your inevitable death.
But these "hunter" monsters reminded me of the alien in Alien: Isolation. Not a fraction of the intelligence, so I never felt "stalked." I never felt that I could outwit the monsters. They are big dumb things that you avoid. And the "escape" goal reminded me of something like Friday the 13th, where you are trying to survive a rampaging Jason and find the keys and gasoline for a car so you can drive away. So, Monstrum is a hard pass, but it's got me wanting to revisit the games I've played that have some similar elements.
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Inscryption (PS5) by dkirschner (Jan 15th, 2025 at 13:47:48) |
Finished this on Saturday. I really liked most aspects of the game, but the story lost me by the end. I was reading online to gain a clearer understanding of the details surrounding the woman at the end, and saw all kinds of stuff about the CIA and nuclear weapons that I had no clue about. Apparently there was an ARG where devoted gaming sleuths were decoding hidden clues, editing game files, and so on to gain more information about Inscryption (the disk in the game). There is a surface-level story within Inscryption, and I followed that, and then there is the second layer with Luke and what he's up to outside of Inscryption, which I pretty much followed, and then there is the third layer which involves all the clues. I saw some of the clues while playing, and clocked them as potentially important, but in no universe would I have known what to do with them. There are crossovers between Inscryption and Pony Island and all sorts of stuff.
This is all novel dressing around a good card game. It's simple, not necessarily in terms of mechanics, but in terms of scope. The board, for example, is either 2x4 or 2x5 depending on where you are in the game. So you are only dealing with up to 5 cards on your side of the board at any given time. On the opponents' side, you can see cards that are going to come into play on their next turn, so not only is it like 2x5, but you can see a third row of cards that are coming. Your main deck is only 20 cards, and you'll have multiple copies of most cards. You also have a secondary deck full of identical 0-cost cards that you can either toss on the board to take a hit and die or sacrifice to play more powerful cards. You can only draw one card (total, not from each deck!) each round, so your hand is also usually tiny. Opponents seem to have even more limited decks (and ran out of cards earlier in the game). Number values are also small. I think the most damage any card ever did at once was like 7 (except cards with the Bifurcated Strike or Trifurcated Strike abilities, which do their damage multiple times). Each match ends when either player tips a scale that has 10 points. It starts in the middle (at 0), and you need to tip it to 5, while your opponent is trying to tip it to -5. This means that if it's in the middle and you deal 7 damage, you win and then some. The scale can swing wildly as new cards attack; it keeps you on your toes to have such a narrow window in which to win. You could have the scale at 3, but made a poor play, and the enemy hits you for 8 (which tips the scale to -5) and you lose. Matches can end really quickly.
A large part of the game is countering the cards that your observe your opponent about to play. "A good defense is the best offense" applies here. You will have many defensive type cards with 0 or low attack, but that may serve other purposes if they have certain abilities or synergies. In the last act of the game (it's split into 3 acts), you actually get to buff your basic defense cards and they become extremely valuable. They're not only defense cards; they're also sacrifices. Most cards cost some resource to play, and often the resource is "blood," which you get by sacrificing one of your own cards. So, you might play a 0 attack 2 hp card, let it take a hit (and prevent you from taking a direct attack), then sacrifice it to play a stronger card that costs 2 blood. There is a 7/7 card that costs 4 blood. Given that there are often 4 spaces on your row on the board, that means that you must sacrifice everything on the board (usually it's one blood per card) and go all in to play the 7/7. But since you attack immediately and you can see what cards are coming from the opponent, then you can always get 7 damage in if you directly attack the opponent with that card. There are a wide variety of abilities and resources that allow for different strategies and play styles. Some other of my favorite abilities were snipe (lets you target any card on the board instead of attacking the space in front of the card like normal), poison (kills any card it touches, pairs great with a 1-damage snipe, which just insta-kills anything), and sentry (which attacks any card that enters the space in front of it, and since many cards only have 1 or 2 hp, this will insta-kill or kill on the next turn a whole lot of cards). Since Inscryption is a roguelike card builder, and you build your deck as you go, you don't always know which cards are going to become your superstars or what strategies you will be able to employ. As you proceed (in act 1 through a sort of dungeon mastered roguelike scenario, in act 2 through an SNES-era JRPG style world, and in act 3 through a maze), you will get the chance to do all sorts of random-ish things to your cards: add stats, add abilities, sacrifice cards, merge cards, etc., etc.
I think that it was this sense of "I have no clue what my deck is going to look like" that may have been my favorite thing about the game. It was constantly surprising me with new mechanics, new resources, a new style, a new weird story beat, new cards, new ways to enhance my cards, new puzzles, and on and on. And the whole thing is tinged with a mysterious, borderline horror game, tone. Like, it is extremely compelling, and in a way that is unusual for a roguelike. Most roguelikes, for me, are "just one more run" kinds of games. Inscryption isn't typical in this sense, as it's only in the first act where you are doing standard "runs." Incidentally, I died the most in the first act and tried it a few times before beating it (and upon each death, you get some stronger cards and may be able to solve some additional puzzles or get additional items to help you out). But Inscryption kept me going because I never knew how things would shake out. The cards also have a lot of personality (not least because a few of them talk to you).
Anyway, I've talked to a few people about this since playing, and piqued the interest of someone who really likes Slay the Spire and Balatro. I wish the story was easier to make sense of, though I appreciate the effort that went into the complicated presentation and am glad this exists for people who like to dig into clues like that and discover something. It was a really intriguing experience to play this one, definitely will remember it!
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Bloons TD 6 (PC) by dkirschner (Jan 10th, 2025 at 11:08:48) |
Retiring this one. It's a cartoony tower defense game about monkeys and balloons. I gather that it's been around a long time, it's heavily monetized like a mobile game, and so there is tons of content. I played a handful of rounds, tried many of the different settings and challenges and whatnot. I'm not sure what I thought it would be like...less of a mobile game, I suppose. There are dozens and dozens of monkeys, heroes, upgrades, abilities, balloons, etc., etc. It's overwhelming, grindy, and not my cup of tea for tower defense.
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Cult of the Lamb (PS5) by dkirschner (Jan 5th, 2025 at 09:13:12) |
Cult of the Lamb makes being a demonic cult leader adorable. The game is a hybrid of a farming village sim and a roguelike (very much in the style of The Binding of Isaac, with Slay the Spire style paths to choose in dungeons [aka “crusades”]), and it works really well. Basically, upgrades from running your cult provide you with stronger weapons and better resources in crusades, and completing crusades provides you with resources for improving your cult. There are four crusade areas, each of which must be completed four times to get to the boss at the end. Defeat those bosses, and you will fight the game’s main boss. And your cult has a predefined area in which to expand and exist. Indoctrinate followers, keep them faithful, fed, and healthy. The combat in the crusades is fun, but nothing you haven’t seen before. There are a handful of weapon types, some weapon attributes (lifesteal, crit chance, etc.), you get a heavy attack, a magic curse attack (depending on what items you find), and like a special single-use relic. And you can find tarot cards, which give you buffs during your run. A handful of times, I got some “broke the game” style builds, such as a vampiric axe and huge boosts to attack speed and movement speed. Later on, you add the blunderbuss to your arsenal, which is basically an insta-win if you get one (bonus if it has useful stats). Crusades are not necessarily easy though; enemies tend to be fast and there’s a lot going on in the small play areas, especially when rocks and other junk gets in your way (step one of a busy screen is smash all the stuff that obscures your vision or impedes movement!). Boss battles are intense; one time I beat a boss with half a heart left. I didn’t get touched for the last half of the battle, and my knuckles were white from gripping the controller and focusing so hard. Other times, I unloaded on bosses and killed them in 30 seconds without taking damage.
The cult management part is the novel piece for me though. I don’t play sims much, don’t really enjoy them, but this is pretty light. Through spending “devotion” and a couple other currencies, you unlock buildings and rituals. You’ll need beds for everyone to sleep (or else they’ll be too tired to work and pray), an outhouse (so you don’t have to run around cleaning up poop), space for crops to grow food (lest your followers starve), buildings to help harvest wood and stone, a pillory, a morgue for the corpses that will pile up (followers die of disease and old age), and on and on and on. Why a pillory? Well, sometimes a follower will dissent and begin speaking ill of you; they’ll lose the faith and infect others with their lies. You can “re-educate” dissenters once per in-game day, which decreases their dissent level. But eventually, they’ll leave your cult, perhaps stealing some gold or persuading another follower to come with them. I figured out that if you jail them, they can’t preach heresy to others, re-education works better, and eventually they won’t be dissenters anymore and you can let them back out.
You’ll manage hunger, sleep, health, dissent, faith, and maybe one or two other things from time to time. Faith is a really important one. Your followers’ faith levels will decrease over time. You have to preach sermons and perform rituals to keep the flock in check. You can preach one sermon per day and perform rituals on cooldowns. Rituals might involve sacrificing followers, dancing around a bonfire late into the night, mass brainwashing, throwing a feast, and so on. Some rituals you have to choose among when you declare a “doctrine.” So for example, regarding the feast, you could have chose to learn the feasting ritual, which restores faith and hunger, or the fasting ritual, after which followers will not need to eat for three days. If you learn one, you cannot learn the other, and there are like 30 such doctrinal choices to make, which generally differentiate you being a “nice” cult leader or a “mean” cult leader.
It's fun to try and keep all these levels in balance. Time continues when you’re on a crusade, so you also have to consider faith, hunger, and cleanliness while you are crusading. You will sometimes want to leave early to deal with a problem. There are also other areas of the overworld map with other characters and activities, such as a place to go fishing (for a quest, and to dredge up fish to feed followers), a place to play a dice game (for coin), and some others. These are cute little diversions to indulge in, often if you’re waiting for daytime to deliver one more sermon to get your followers’ faith up before embarking on another crusade.
Cult of the Lamb does flirt with being repetitive, especially the crusades. The areas are gatekept by requiring you to have a certain number of followers. Having to clear each crusade area at least four times is a little annoying, but usually by the time you’re tired of crusading, you’re back doing cult management, and by the time you’re growing bored of doing cult management, you’re on another crusade. It’s a nice back and forth. I do gather that, by this point in the game’s life, the developers have released various updates, which have made the game more complex, such as adding “sin” as a resource, which I didn’t really bother with.
Overall, this was a fun, cute, chill, novel experience of a genre hybrid that I hadn’t played before.
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Falcon 4.0: Allied Force (PC) by 1661 |
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most recent entry: Thursday 6 March, 2008
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Gameplay 2:
There is, in fact, no way to do justice to the complexity of Falcon in something as short as this gamelog. My previous depiction in the last gameplay section only scratches a small part of the surface of the types of operations going on in the dynamic campaign. I didn't take into account, for example, the fact that the game engine also has A.I. for each of the ground units that move around in the theater or that even while I am not flying, the game will continue to carry out the war while missions are flown by the A.I. But I digress. There are just too many things to talk about regarding the complexity of the game and the flight controls. Sometimes it is easier to just sit back and watch the computer fight the war with little or no human player involvement. I found myself doing that quite often.
While not flying, the player can also watch all of what is going on throughout the battlefield from an overhead map of the entire theater. The player is also afforded a certain degree of control over the battlefield as the player can create new missions and assign any available aircraft from any squadron to fly them, much in the same way that the game engine normally does automatically. If the player so chose, he could turn off the automatic generation of missions and create them all himself as he sees fit to winning the campaign. Due to the complex synthesis of the entire campaign situation that is required to generate the hundreds of missions actually needed to run a successful campaign, such micromanagement is not advisable. A more effective technique of exercising control over the war is to simply assign priority levels to the different types of targets (aircraft, armor, bridges, radars, etc) and regions of the map.
All the while, there are all sorts of statistical information available to the player. Details about every single flight package can be viewed and changed. All friendly and visible enemy air units, ground units, and structures can be seen on the map represented by icons and their positions will be updated as time progresses. Supply levels, relative power graphs, and radio live radio chatter can all be accessed and heard from the campaign planning mode. If so desired, a player could leave the game running for 2 weeks straight and two weeks worth of campaign operations would be carried out autonomously, with the player receiving news updates as if from the position of a war planner. All of these elements make Falcon much more than a flight simulator, but a tactical war simulator.
Design:
Falcon 4.0: AF is actually a re-release of the 1998 game Falcon 4.0. Many of the elements in the game have changed little from the original release, and most of what has changed between the 1998 and 2005 releases relate to stability. The new content in the game was developed mostly by members of the community who added modifications to the game and were subsequently hired by the company to update it. With all of that in mind, the original release of Falcon 4.0 was truly ahead of its time. Even the parts of the game that received only minor upgrades still show remarkable design quality, namely the terrain mapping. The terrain used real satellite images of Korea to cover the landscape in the game. By today's standards, the images used aren't particularly high resolution and are probably the graphical weak point of the game today. But the sheer expanse of the gameworld and the amount of terrain covered are design elements that cannot be ignored.
The gameworld in the Korean theater is modeled to be the actual size of the Korean peninsula, using nautical mile measurements to calculate distance. If it would take 30 minutes to fly at cruise speed in an F-16 from Seoul to Pyongyang, it would take 30 minutes in the game and the corresponding distance would be traversed in the game's nautical mile measurement. Luckily, the player needn't sit through 30 minutes of flight to a destination, which can sometimes be boring especially if the flight is an uneventful air patrol over friendly territory. Instead, the player has the option of speeding up time to 64x the current rate.
Another significant design element is the way in which the game world is presented. Once the player enters the cockpit, there are no loading screens and the player can fly from one end of korea to the next. There are tons of air traffic, ground traffic, and landmarks to be seen. and all of the terrain and objects in the game world will be rendered as they are come across. This gives the sense of the game taking place in a massive, continuous game world the size of an actual country.
There are also changes in the weather patterns which will affect where and when there will be clouds or haze and what altitude and thickness it will appear. This design element not only adds a layer of difficulty to flying safely, but also creates breathtaking visuals. Despite all of the praise I gave to gameplay, sometimes I found it satisfying to fly just to see the landscape from 70,000 feet in the sky and to simply admire the well rendered 3D plane models, jet streams, and aerobatic maneuvers. There is no doubt that the design of the game world and the game objects themselves greatly add to the quality of this title.
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