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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (PC) by dkirschner (Jun 12th, 2025 at 16:51:43) |
Epic epic epic! I had zero expectations for this, having never heard of it until sometime after it came out and seeing that it got really good reviews. If you like Uncharted, you have to play Indiana Jones. Or if you like Indiana Jones movies. It's very authentic. It's by MachineGames, who has been doing the (mostly) excellent Wolfenstein games. They're sticking with the Nazi antagonist theme. This has Wolfenstein DNA, it feels like Uncharted and Tomb Raider, and it also feels like (unexpectedly) an immersive sim like Dishonored or Thief or something. It's REALLY good. I’m going to rattle off a handful of things I liked and then note a few rough patches.
(1) Story. Solid. I was invested. It’s a typical treasure hunt mystery “go to x places to get the x items” thing, but well done. The voice acting is top notch from all the leads, and even from side characters and random Nazis. The Harrison Ford likeness was cool to see. Characters were well written, good dialogue, good banter between Indy and Gina. An excellent bad guy, a Nazi archaeologist named Voss. He’s sufficiently patriotic and out of his mind for power, arrogant, cruel, and manipulative.
(2) Environments and level design. Outstanding. There aren’t a ton of areas that you’ll visit, but there is a lot of variety. Some areas are like semi-open world maps, while others are more linear. The semi-open world maps are full of places to explore, secrets to find. Discovery is organic. You’ll be infiltrating a Nazi camp and come across a “mystery” (the game’s category of puzzles, often finding and deciphering codes to open safes or locate a tomb or something). You might start the mystery by reading a note. Or, you might come across a piece of information from a note or an NPC or something that starts “fieldwork” (the game’s term for side quests). Fieldwork can be involved and is the side content that is most worth doing. There is usually a story component, often new characters, good puzzles, a great trippy sequence after Indy touches a poisonous frog, and so on. You can take or leave all the side stuff though. Some of it is well hidden, and I imagine it would take a good long while to find all the secrets in this game. Side content gives rewards you with money, adventure points (experience), and items. I purchased every skill I had access to by the end of the game, had a ton of points left, and had plenty of side content left to do. So, you won't be starving for experience. Also, the pacing is on point. There is a good mix of puzzles, exploration, combat, and cut scenes. You’re always moving forward toward some goal or another, even if it’s self-directed goals like “I’m going to clear out this Nazi camp” or “I’m going to stop at all these islands and see what’s on them.” The platforming is fun too, which usually goes along with the puzzling.
(3) Melee. Something that felt unique about this game is the melee focus. Indy famously punches Nazis, so that’s what he does in the game. There are melee weapons scattered all over the place, everyday items like pots and pans, guitars, pickaxes (lots of excavation equipment), clubs, hair brushes, brooms, etc. Near the end of the game I found a violin and bow and made sure to clobber enemies with them. You can block and throw a charged punch too, as well as parry and counter-attack. You can also employ your signature whip to disarm enemies. Especially as you go further in the game, enemies will have guns, which you are also welcome to pick up and use as clubs, or you can shoot them. Enemies tend to match your combat style though, so if you use your fists, they probably will too, or they’ll pick up a nearby weapon (and often will throw things at you). If you open fire though, if they have guns, they’ll shoot back. Plus, enemies from all over the place nearby will converge on your location. Shooting someone often meant death a minute later.
Some things that felt broken:
(1) Dogs. Patrol dogs are annoying. I couldn’t figure out how to stop them from attacking me. The game says that if you whip them, they flee, and that they’re also scared of gunshots. I would whip them and they would completely ignore it, latching onto my arm anyway. I would shoot them, and it seems that the game has a “no animal violence” thing because bullets simply don’t do anything to the dogs. The game also says that you can mash left and right click to get the dog off you, but it didn’t work. So, every time a dog saw me, there was nothing I could do but let it attack me! Then, once it attacked, a whip crack would keep it away.
(2) Dropping items. You can drop items by pressing “Q” and you will drop whatever you’re holding if you press “tab” to open your bag or “2” to take out your camera or lighter. This was very annoying early on, though less so as you learn the rules by which Indy drops things. It was also less annoying as I realized that it was just being realistic. Indy has two hands. He can’t use a camera and steer a boat at the same time, can’t climb a ladder and hold a gun, can’t bandage himself and hold a map, etc. BUT, what didn’t get any less annoying is that way too often the dropped item will “disappear.” You can’t see it on the ground. Sometimes this was because you’d drop it and it would “bounce” away. Other times, it just resets to its original location. And one time, I couldn’t complete a mystery puzzle because I dropped an item in a pit, but I couldn’t get it back out of the pit because Indy can’t hold his whip with both hands and carry an item at the same time. Actually, thinking back to this now, I probably could have thrown the item up and out of the pit. At that time, I didn’t know I could throw things. This is because…
(3) Not much explanation for UI. The game tells you surprisingly little in terms of how to play and what things mean. This was neat for “figuring it out,” but, like I said, I didn’t know how to throw items until later in the game! And I had to look up what the various bars meant (hint: the white bars are health, the blue ones you get by eating food are “bonus” health, and when you eat fruit, you get extra yellow bars which is like reserve stamina). There is an in-game manual that doesn’t have this stuff in it. It’s weird. The game also doesn’t explain how to go back to previous areas of the game until AFTER you do it. And there’s a scary “you will lose unsaved progress” when you click to go back to a previous area, so I didn’t do it at first, and eventually looked it up.
I would play a sequel in an instant. Hopefully MachineGames is making another! Or they could make another Wolfenstein game. At this point, I'll play whatever they make, especially if it's about killing Nazis, which they seem to be the best at making games about.
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Lunar Genesis (DS) by jp (Jun 10th, 2025 at 12:24:35) |
Ok, so I finished the first mission - that then opened the game to other deliveries! The ones that opened up later were much more of the fetch quest variety - take 2 feathers to Jim in town X and not "move the story forward" kind of missions. So, I happened to be able to easily do one (because I already had the materials)...and then, well, I've decided to put the game back on the shelf.
It's just really slow! And the combat is not interesting at all and also really slow. You can't select whom to attack, and at best you may want to cast a healing spell now and then. But, even with my caster at level 10 I can only cast a few spells (and maybe the bigger ones twice) so...there's not much do engage with here. Sure, the game might open up more later in that sense (more party members?) but I'm almost three hours in and it was really feeling like a drag.
I did find (by accident) some "secrets" while in the dungeon (where I had to fight some sasquatch who had stolen the original/first package I had to deliver). In their dungeon rooms there were tombs - and you could slide back some of the tombstones. In one of them I found a "bone sword" - which I thought was a weapon, but no. It's an item to sell (or perhaps use as part of a delivery quest?).
The game's entire set of items and their role/function is really unusual - items weren't in the "categories" I thought they'd be, so I'd end up looking through all of them to swap for a better weapon and that sort of thing.
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Lunar Genesis (DS) by jp (Jun 8th, 2025 at 13:25:20) |
This looked to be a "generic" (as in, typical) JRPG game - wander around a map, fight monsters in a turn-based system, meet characters, learn about the story, etc.
But, it's surprisingly obtuse..in ways I was not expecting...
1. There's the usual "make sure you talk to the correct person in the village" in order to unlock the next step in the story. (I wasted a lot of time doing what I thought I was supposed to - wandering the thieves forest, when I had to talk to a townperson who "unlocked" a rockfall to another area entirely...
2. There's two modes for combat - in one you get experience (and level up), in the other you get loot (no experience). It took me a while to understand what was going on - and a quick peek at the manual as well - you basically toggle between "virtue " and not - in the former you get experience, in the latter you just get items. I think it's an interesting idea - in theory - you decide whether you want to level up or accrue loot to sell to get better gear. I've mostly been going with the levelling up, but to be fair it's not clear to me if there's an optimal to pursue here (I'm also over-levelled because of the time I spent wandering in the forest).
3. The UI shows a list of boxes and I noticed they sometimes had red check marks - I thought it was connected to combat in virtue mode. Separately I found some blue chests I could not open, and wasn't sure if there was a glitch or what. Thanks to some internet sleuthing, it turns out you have to kill all the monsters in an area (each then adding a red check), on doing that you get a blue effect on the characters that then lets you open the blue chests. I might have figured that out eventually - the red check marks being the clue here. But, there's more...
4. You can dash - but I've only just realized that it costs hit points! I noticed after dashing around that eventually the characters just wouldn't dash anymore. I was confused...and then I was also weirded out by times I healed and then healed again (with effect) without there being combat. So I noticed that dashing cost health! I'm not sure how the cost is calculated - is it linear (to time spent dashing?) or not? The risk/reward consideration here is that walking is slow and the game gets a bit boring (again, I've spent too much time wandering in the woods, so perhaps it's my own fault?), so dashing is REALLY tempting...
5. The first time I went through the woods and got to the town at the other side I was almost out of HP, not MP left and could not find how/where to heal! Yeah, there's a statue in town you activate and it heals you - this might be a "Lunar series" staple that people would/should recognize if familiar with the series? (I was not) and I swear the first time I tried it didn't work - but that might have been a collision thing? So I wasted time wandering around the village trying to find "the inn" to rest or whatever.
Overall, I'm not sure I'll keep playing - but I do want to finish the first mission (the game has framed itself as a "package delivery game" - but the first delivery has gone astray and it's taking a lot longer from what I thought it would... We'll see....
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Chou Gekijouban Keroro Gunsou: Gekishin Dragon Warriors de Arimasu! (DS) by jp (Jun 7th, 2025 at 21:25:45) |
Hell of a long name for a game!
According to Gameeye "Keroro Gunso the Super Movie: Gekishin Dragon Warriors de Arimasu!' is a game based on the 4th Keroro Gunso anime movie of the same title. That would explain the pretty cool anime intro movie that played... I wonder if there's a way to watch the movie now?
I only picked up this game because it was cheap and it looked like I could play it despite having zero Japanese language skills. And, I could play it! And the gameplay-related text instructions I was able to figure out. Mostly. I think.
I'd seen the character before - sort of a cute anime frog with a yellow hat/helmet and I recall the name being "Kero Kero Kero" but a few minutes on wikipedia has set me straight that the character is called "Keroro" so perhaps my understanding was from some other things? The show sounds like fun and I'm surprised it's never made it's way to the US. At least I think it hasn't? It seems like a funny action adventure kind of show...
The game itself is a simple 2D platforming game with special abilities - that let you navigate the levels. There are several (6?) different characters - with levels being dedicated to each and they each have a different "attack" ability which you can also power up. It was fun, pretty polished, and with all kinds of things going on I have no idea what they were about. You collect gems and I think you unlock stuff? I was playing off the saved games on the cart which (all three!) had completed the game...and I was too lazy to see how to clear at least one so I could start fresh. But, no matter - I had fun anyways! (just went back to the first levels and did those from scratch).
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Pokémon Ranger (DS) by jp (Jun 7th, 2025 at 20:26:26) |
Got to a point where I decided to bail. This was partly because I got frustrated - I was in a Pokemon Ranger temple or something where you have to do some tests..for one I had to defeat a Pokemon and losing meant going back to the beginning of the trial which meant I had to do a bunch of fights along the way...and I just decided it wasn't worth it (after trying three times). So, I bailed.
The game is more interesting than it probably gets credit and I was surprised about some of the mechanics and how you have to figure them out with IMO very little info from the game (no clues, etc.). For example, it took me a while to realize that how quickly you draw the loop does matter because different Pokemon react differently to it! For some, going slow and wide was the trick, for others, the opposite! For the encounter at which point I decided to bail, "Chapter IX - Three Relics and...?" I wasn't able to figure out the right technique - or pull it off at least...and since I'm on a plan to REALLY work on the DS backlog... and I was having an "ok" time, I decided to move on.
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2292 registered gamers and 3277 games. 7810 GameLogs with 13282 journal entries. 5116 games are currently being played.
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Wii Sports (Wii) by mel1117 |
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most recent entry: Thursday 21 February, 2008
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2ND GAMEPLAY: As it turns out, my hypothesis was correct. For my second round of gameplay, I tried Wii bowling. I must say in my opinion, Wii bowling is WAY easier and more fun than Wii baseball. Once again, you act as if the controller is the bowling ball, and in order to roll the ball at the right speed without bouncing it on the lane, you have to release the controller at exactly the right time. I was doing really well with this, and I was definitely not as frustrated with the bowling as I was with the baseball.
However, I'm not going to lie...at first, I kept bouncing the bowling ball on the lane because I was not releasing it at the right time. This was definitely frustrating for me at first, but after a few turns I definitely got the hang of it. As I took more turns, I was hitting more pins. I definitely got used to the buttons on the controller and I knew the right time to release.
DESIGN: The design of Wii Sports is extremely realistic, as well as the sounds. I really felt as if I was literally inside a bowling alley, due to the detailed sounds and graphics. There were no levels or anything, but the graphics were still detailed enough so that the player could become completely engaged in what is going on in the game. Also, because it emulated actual sports games, the player is able to easily relate to it.
I really like how the Wii controller and graphics were put together. Like I said before, it's really nice how the player can become so interacted with it that the game experience is way better than just sitting down with a plain old controller. I can definitely see how and why the Wii became so popular. It can only get even more popular from here.
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