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Horizon Zero Dawn (PS4) by jp (Oct 7th, 2025 at 18:35:32) |
After trekking across the entire map (that took a while) - which was fun in that I ran across a bunch of new creatures...I decided to give up. Not out of boredom or frustration, but mostly because I think I've seen most of what the game has to offer systemically, I'm not particularly engrossed in the story, AND I have a drawer full of other PS4 games I really want to get into... I feel like I played enough of this one (over 12 hours I think) that I gave it a fair shake and can say I played it well enough.
And yes, I was having fun - but I feel I have to find new fun elsewhere...the pile of shame has slowly continued growing...
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Psychonauts in The Rhombus of Ruin (PS4) by jp (Oct 7th, 2025 at 18:32:22) |
I finished this in one sitting! (literally, because I played it on PSVR while sitting down).
I enjoyed it. Didn't get nauseated (from the VR, not the game...) and also had some fun. I think it helped that I recently (last year?) played some Psychonauts - and that the platforming experience there was...pretty bad, so perhaps I wasn't expecting too much. But that seems unfair, and this game was clearly designed in a thoughtful way with regards to the common issues in VR. So, there's no locomotion - you jump from character to character by "possessing" them (I forget what it's called in the game), and the entire first area (you're on a plane with some of the characters from the first game) serves as a tutorial for the different interactions (read, powers) you'll have to use later on.
The plan you're on crashes - and everyone is scattered so you need to make your way around (outside of your own brain, because you're captured/tied to a chair) and rescue them, all the way until you get to the final baddy. As expected it's all puzzles, and there's humor (it wasn't terribly funny, but that's not a complaint), and a few clever uses of VR - for example there's a moment when you need to lean forward to peer into a periscope - and from there you can see another character you can possess (and thus continue making progress).
Most of the puzzles were pretty straightforward with two exceptions. One took me a while - you had to possess a flea and "get inside" (I don't recall how this worked - but I did it) inside the music box to fix it. The second I had to look up - this was partly a UI thing I didn't understand, because I knew what I had to do, just not exactly how to do it. It involved a cow. And a haystack. Used separately.
I think what I enjoyed the most - again, this is not a complaint, I thought it was really nice - was the intro. It's done in a James Bond intro style - with different creators names projected onto fish and stuff... the theme song is even done in that style - it's not the Bond theme but it evokes it.
Curiously the game ends - in the final credits - with a message stating that Psychonauts 2 was coming. Huh. No cliffhanger thankfully, which I appreciate. I also appreciated the game being short and not overstaying its welcome. I'm going to guess that some people complained about it being too short..but whatever. Short and good is better than longer and less good.
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Pinball Arcade (PS4) by jp (Oct 7th, 2025 at 13:44:59) |
I love pinball. I'm not a particularly good player, but I do enjoy playing on real (and virtual) tables. So, I really enjoyed browsing around in this collection - there's lots of old tables, weird tables that are hard to play on their real-world counterparts, and more.
Favorites? Ugh. It's so hard! Playing Black Hole was neat - though I think I had the chance to play it in Las Vegas? (or maybe that was another one).
I am surprised that this collection has games from four different companies - I have no idea if that's because of current-day rights consolidation or if whoever put this together was able to convince lots of people? I don't think it's that common to have a (legit) pinball collection with tables from Bally, Stern, Williams, and Gottlieb! (of the older companies, who's missing? I'm not sure)
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Creaks (PC) by jp (Oct 4th, 2025 at 18:49:17) |
I felt I was close enough to the end that I might as well see it through. I was also curious about the giant monster!
And so, 6 hours in, I can say I finished the game! (picked up all the trophies along the way as well - which wasn't too hard tbh, but still worth it - you have to pay a lot of attention so as not to miss some of the secret rooms, but since you can go back to any scene, it's not too punishing really. Also, the interactive paintings were a nice change of pace.
As for new things?
Well, there were three new enemy types! A female version of spiky-head (I don't remember what I called in my last post) - this enemy does the opposite of you: if you go left, she goes right, and vice versa (I know they're male/female because there's a puzzle in which you're able to bring to of them together and they embrace and it's romantic with hearts and all). Then there's the goat - that runs away from you to another patch of grass and can also, sometimes, jump up to higher/lower platforms, and the "elephant trunk". The goat turns into a chair you can stand on and the elephant trunk turns into a pipe from which water flows. The trunk comes up to "sniff you out" which is how you get it to change position before turning on a light. The last two aren't used in that many puzzles (good thing, I was starting to get a bit antsy tbh), and the game's ending was interesting..
a. You get a final light crystal that's used to take care of the giant boss 0- this area is deep underground - and you see a flower-headed creature! It's just there, chillin', which was intriguing, but nothing else happens...sort of teasing a future game?
b. There's a lot of cut-scenes at the end, which was a bit tiresome - but the fun part is you basically (by following one of the bird creatures) ride a elevators/platforms all the way back to the top where you started. This is all following routes you can sometimes see on the way down, and it was neat to move past all these puzzles you solved! I enjoyed the trip back only for that!
c. There's really no more puzzles - so, no final "boss puzzle" Which would have been a bad idea? it would have to be real-time? I don't know, I'm glad there wasn't another puzzle to work on...
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Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure (PC) by jp (Oct 4th, 2025 at 17:47:12) |
When I picked games for my critical game design seminar this semester I really wanted to avoid a "typical" sokoban game and this one seemed to have enough of a twist that it wasn't really a block-pushing puzzle game, but rather something different. And it is!
I've played 4 1/2 hours and I think I must be 1/3 of the way through? Or maybe a bit less..I'm not entirely sure since there's lots of optional stuff that you don't quite realize is optional, or that you skip over without realizing. At least that's what I learned during discussion... In that sense it's less puzzle game and more "adventurey" (true to the title). On the other hand, I'm not sure I see any significant features or aspects to call it a "role-"something game. Sure, there's a character (fixed/pre-determined), and you adventure around, but there's no inventory, no progression, no agency in the conversations. There is a lot of reading (from the conversations) and there's some nice humor un there...but not really any role-playing...
The gameplay's a bit hard to describe, easier to see and show than to tell, but it's a game where you never move the character, rather the character is nailed to the floor and you slide the floor around - in horizontal or vertical rows/columns. You slide the entire row/column - and they wrap around the edges of the rooms, which are all basically rectangles in different dimensions. The trick is that there's a bunch of rules and interactions that make this harder to accomplish. For example there are objects that block movement (it's like they're floating above the floor so don't slide with it), but you can slide items (sword!) into them to destroy them, and stuff like that. Rather than pick the next puzzle you basically have to navigate the world, opening up new locations, and so on.
I'm not sure if I'll go back to it, but it's definitely an interesting thinkygame that's sokoban-adjacent. Good stuff.
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GameLog hopes to be a site where gamers such as yourself keep track of the games that
they are currently playing. A GameLog is basically a record of a game you started playing. If it's open,
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if you got bored, frustrated,etc.) You can also attach short comments to each of your games or even maintain a diary (with more detailed entries)
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2303 registered gamers and 3305 games. 7839 GameLogs with 13322 journal entries. 5114 games are currently being played.
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Halo 3 (360) by Drifty86 |
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most recent entry: Monday 24 August, 2009
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Halo 3 was much different than the previous Halo 1 and Halo 2 games with regard to graphics, animations, GUI, key commands. At first, the use of normal and specular maps was well implemented (unlike Halo 2). The story line remains constant but is not really a big part of the joy in playing the campaign. The multi-player aspect of the game is not available to me yet.
For me, what pulled me into the game was two things, a sense of progression in skill and the ability to almost completely take on the role of the hero. This is a total detachment from reality.
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