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Get Even (XBONE) by Sup3rCondor (Apr 19th, 2021 at 19:36:11) |
At first I really enjoyed this game. There was a lot of mystery and I had no idea what was going on. At first I thought it was a stealth fps, but I quickly realized that its more of a psychological thriller.
The gunplay is pretty simple. Its not the best, but it is very passable. What really makes this game unique is the phone that the player is equipped with. It does all kinds of things that all help the player solve different puzzles and uncover clues.
For some reason the game was made in Unreal 3. For this reason the graphics all feel outdated. They feel like they should be in an Xbox 360 game. The game does benefit from the stronger hardware and holds its framerate high.
The ending was kind of garbage. The developers really wanted the game to feel like the choices in the game matter, but with the way I played the game ended in a lame way. It's clear I am meant to keep playing the game to uncover stuff, but I don't really want to. The story feels like it has ended.
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Before I Forget (PC) by dkirschner (Apr 17th, 2021 at 18:37:40) |
This was a free Twitch game a couple weeks ago and I grabbed it because it sounded different. I'm always looking for games about death and loss. This one is about dementia. It's really short and simple, but so sad.
You play as a woman, and things start out straightforward enough. Walk around your house, click on objects, find Dylan. Eventually you (the player) realize that you (the character) have memory troubles. You're not going to find Dylan (and I guessed the "twist" immediately). Gameplay wise, it's a walking simulator with some emotive flashbacks. I think the best scenes are at the end (the frantic one and the calm final one).
In trying to interpret this, you (the player) are of course learning about the characters for the first time. It's all new. But in the context of dementia, you (the character) are also learning about the characters. At one point, she doesn't think that a magazine with her on it actually has her on it. She doesn't know who is calling her. She is unaware of her condition. Hours pass while she looks out the window, sits at a chess board, or thinks about putting the kettle on for tea. At the end of the game, all the notes and things you've uncovered are blank again, suggesting that she has forgotten again.
She exhibits the fear and paranoia and frustration that characterizes a lot of dementia patients. And the joy of realizing over and over the good things that have happened (her and her husband's successful careers) and the grief of realizing over and over the bad things that have happened. I wonder if dementia is sadder when is happens to people with successful careers and big families. Like, there's an idea that those people had more to lose. I think that's how we frame success though. Would this story have felt different if the main character was an office worker rather than a notable cosmologist? If her husband was a bartender rather than a famous pianist? Subjectively, the illness is just as devastating, and at some point, they won't know what they've lost.
This makes me think about my family members who have had dementia, and makes me think about my parents and about me in the future. My step-grandfather has severe dementia and is only being kept alive by a team of medical professionals and a girlfriend who loves him very much. He has no quality of life, doesn't know who any one is, sits in a chair with his eyes closed all day. He used to be like the woman in this story, getting up and doing things throughout the day, but then later on getting worse (including leaving his house and locking himself out, wandering outside with his guns, smashing his house windows with a baseball bat, threatening people who came over, eventually forgetting everyone around him).
This makes me remember that I should write a will and all that and specify that if I can't remember shit and get angry and paranoid and make others' lives hell and have no quality of life, to do all that is possible to kill me.
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Cultist Simulator (PC) by dkirschner (Apr 17th, 2021 at 17:34:14) |
This is a weird one! I was intrigued by the theme of building a cult and the way you do it through a sort of card game. You will have no clue what you are doing until you try and fail a few times. Then, I suppose like cult knowledge, it becomes clearer with study.
You start off with a menial job (in subsequent playthroughs you can choose a couple other, better jobs). You have to go to work to earn money because time passes in real time (there is a handy pause button), and I suppose you have rent and need to eat. Soon, you can perform more regular actions, such as studying, dreaming, and exploring the city. You also get other stats to manage: health, reason, and passion.
You can boost stats by studying them to get more cards, which allow you to use the stat to perform more actions or to make actions stronger. For instance, using your passion for work will let you paint. If you only have one passion, your paintings will suck and you won't earn anything, but if you have four, you can turn profit and use money for other things, such as exploring the city to buy books from the bookstore or to pay entry into a secret club or to hire a goon (who could become a follower or, better yet, a sacrifice).
Basically this is a game of managing expanding resources and countdown timers, as it takes time to study or do anything else. Eventually, you will learn more about the occult, including getting all sorts of recipes for rites, magic items, incantations, and etc., etc. I never really got past acquiring a bunch of things (I actually exhausted the library and studied every book, haha), improving my arcane knowledge, and getting stuck in a loop of going to work. I had maxed out all my stats, didn't have anything useful to dream about, and just...didn't know what else to do that wasn't going to take forever.
That was my fourth playthrough and I decided to quit because I get the gist of it. Also, I was out of health. Sometimes you will get sick, which will require health to stave off. I suppose this is like a win timer because I never figured out how to get health back. If you don't stop an illness, it turns into decrepitude, which persists the rest of the game. I had like 5 decrepitude (I must have been really sickly!). Anyway, assuming I didn't die from wasting away, I guess I would have slowly gotten the various pieces of recipes for learning about and enacting cultist things, grown the membership of my cult, moved into a headquarters (I had an empty one but couldn't figure out how to move in), hired a goon to sacrifice in the end, and raised the dead or whatever you do in the end to win. Oh, I did win a "minor victory" one time by becoming chief of police or something. I have no idea. But I sat here for three hours today clicking on things and feel like nothing happened.
My girlfriend has been listening to a podcast about Heaven's Gate and telling me about it. So, with that plus Cult Simulator, I feel like we're ready to start our own.
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Alpha Protocol (360) by Sup3rCondor (Apr 17th, 2021 at 13:39:21) |
I played this for about 20 minutes. The frame rate is abysmal! I swear it was running at a solid 10-15 fps for most of that time I was playing. Its bad. Its too bad because the game seems fun and like it has some good ideas! Unfortunately its pretty much unplayable with the framerate like it is. Maybe I'll play if for PC one day, but I will not be playing it on the Xbox 360 again. I would keep playing if I didn't have so many other, better games to play at the moments.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Apr 17th, 2021 at 13:40:16.
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Outriders (XBX X/S) by Sup3rCondor (Apr 17th, 2021 at 13:34:38) |
I finished the game!
The gameplay stayed strong pretty much all throughout the game. This game was advertised as a co-op game, but I played the whole thing solo. I never really felt like I needed more people to play with. The game works great as a single player game. As I previously mentioned, the gameplay is fast and exciting.
The game suffers from the same thing that Revenge of the Sith does. The overall story and world are fascinating and interesting. However, the moment to moment scenes and dialogue is not good, and even really bad sometimes. There were plenty of head scratching moments when characters would say one liners that didn't fit the situation at all. Given that Bulletstorm and Gears of War Judgment had very passable dialogue, this is disappointing. It doesn't drag the game too far down though.
Finally I want to express my gratitude for gamepass that allowed me to play this game in day one with my subscription. It really is the best deal in gaming, and its only getting better. Anyone who games on Xbox or PC should be subscribed.
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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,
you still consider yourself to be playing the game. If it's closed, you finished playing the game. (it doesn't matter
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)
for that game. Call it a weblog of game playing activity if you will.
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2072 registered gamers and 2679 games. 7131 GameLogs with 12645 journal entries. 5027 games are currently being played.
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Team Fortress 2 (PC) by ESchmitt89 |
| Very fun, lives up to the original |
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most recent entry: Wednesday 5 March, 2008
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GAMEPLAY:
In my second game session I decided to focus more on the different playable classes in TF2. The nine different classes are broken into three different categories that include offense, defense, and support. The offense classes include the fast but weak Scout, the good all-around Soldier, and the high damage dealer the Pyro. Defense includes the Demoman, Heavy, and Engineer. Finally, the support classes include the Medic, the Sniper, and the Spy.
Each class is very unique in many aspects such as health, damage, and abilities. For instance, the Heavy class has the most health, making it the best class to be healed by a medic. This is why players often see a heavy being fallowed around by a medic healing them. Each class plays very different from the next, which keeps the game play very interesting and fresh. It is also a nice feature that players can change their class whenever they feel, so it doesn’t feel like you get stuck with something you don’t like playing.
The medic class is arguably the most important class in the game, which is funny because I find it the most boring to play. Injured players can call for a “MEDIC!!!” in hopes that someone playing a medic is close enough (and nice enough) to come heal them. Most FPS’s out today do not have a healing class, which is one reason why TF2 is so much fun to play.
The Engineer class is another very unique class for a FPS. Engineers are very weak when it comes to weapon based combat, but they can build very powerful machines to help out themselves and their team. They can build teleporters, health vendors, and stationary turrets to help out their team. On top of being able to build cool gadgets, engineers can upgrade these gadgets through multiple ranks. This means that the longer an engineer can stay alive, the more powerful they become.
DESIGN:
Having played the original Team Fortress years ago, the first thing I noticed when I started playing TF2 was how drastically different it is from its predecessor. Team Fortress was a mod on the original Half-Life engine, and was a very different game than TF2. One of the first things I noticed upon playing TF2 was that there were no alien weapons, alien maps, or any aliens at all! In fact, TF2 decided to completely overhaul the TF series while leaving the core game play almost untouched.
The game play consists of squad based first person shooter mayhem, 9 distinct classes, and lots of action. Just like the original, the games consist of very large team battles with lots of carnage. Unlike the original, TF2 decided to go with a new look. The new graphics are very stylized and have a cel-shaded look. Players in the game look like exaggerated caricatures with very large arms and hands, and very small legs and feet. This new look works well with the unrealistic style of the game and makes the game stand out from other on the market.
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