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Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS) by jp (Mar 21st, 2026 at 18:27:14) |
I don't know why I had this one sitting on my shelf for so long...but, I guess it was a good a time as any to try it out.
So here you're actually a vampire - but no powers (yet?), other than that it's a regular 2D Castlevania with items, and equipment, also levelling up, and backtracking and so on. I only recently unlocked the double jump, which helps - but overall I'm not super enthused by the game. I feel like the character takes too long to change direction, and that I get hit a lot in ways I felt weren't easy/possible to avoid. I don't mean when it's a boss and you're just learning what it's attacks are.
According to the savefile I'm over 20% though, and I'm pretty tired of it already. I'm maybe 5 hours in or so? It's hard to tell because when you die...well, all that time prior doesn't count.
The powers are pretty strange - so, sometimes, when you kill an enemy you get like a "spirit orb" or something that you can then equip as a power. They're all different - I like the ones that summon a monster-pal the best, but overall the system seems under-utilized? Maybe I just haven't been lucky enough to get any of the really cool monsters?
Touch screen interaction seems minimal - occasionally you'll run into a sealed room that shows a design and sometimes, after beating the boss that's usually behind that room, you have to trace the design yourself.
I did think it was funny that two NPCs set up "shop" in one of the early areas - so you can teleport back to their location (from special teleport rooms) to basically buy supplies and things. I should stock up on lots of health potions, but I'm probably not going to continue to play the game, so not seeing much point. I think I got the gist of it.
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Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS5) by dkirschner (Mar 9th, 2026 at 09:45:05) |
Yeah, this was incredible, as expected. The story, the character development, the historical setting, all incredible. My brother and another friend (especially the friend) were highly invested in me playing the game, so I was keeping them updated while playing. Another friend was supposed to be playing it at the same time as me, but I paused a couple months ago and he defected to Mass Effect for a break and never returned. I need to be like, "Dude, I beat it. Hurry up so we can talk about it!"
There are so many memorable missions, from the night out with Lenny (the game explores race and racism during this time and place, which was neat) to going to get the kid from the Italian guy to an epic train robbery to the final showdown, and even to the side missions, like collecting debts for Strauss (which seems so mundane), but realizing the damage that Strauss's money lending causes to individuals and families and then eventually kicking him out of camp. The characters are all flawed, and the main character arc of Arthur about made me cry throughout the last chapter (though I had a MAJOR plot point spoiled for me by a John Green book!). Truly, it is a story about redemption, with some characters growing and others succumbing to their flaws. Very human, very emotional.
Two main activities in the game are riding your horse and shooting people. Riding your horse could have gotten boring fast, but you have good control over movement and how fast you go, and have to manage horse stamina. You also encounter things along the road, from Strangers (capital "S") to meet (aka side characters with their own story arcs), to strangers (small "s") whom I usually ignored (aka random events to random NPCs like passing someone calling for help because he's getting chased by bandits, passing a person begging for money, passing a hunter stuck in a bear trap [I felt bad that I never helped the hunter]), to ambushes, etc.
There is a handy auto-ride system, where you can set a cinematic camera to take over as you go from one place to another. Arthur will actually ride the horse the whole way, but you can put the controller down and watch the beautiful landscape and bathe in the ambient music. You can also fast-travel using wagons or trains between towns, but I hardly ever did that.
Shooting people is pretty basic. You have a weapon wheel and an inventory wheel, and during combat you basically duck behind cover (R1), pop out and target someone (L2), which uses handy aim assist, flick the left control stick up to the target's head (because aim assist always centers on their chest), and pull the trigger (R2) for a headshot. Duck again, line up your next headshot, kill. Move forward to the next cover. Repeat until mission cleared. This did get repetitive by the end. I hardly ever used "dead eye," a slow time ability that allows you to shoot multiple enemies at once, and I hardly ever used items, including healing items, because you just don't need them. Weapons are just regular pistols and rifles and knives, whatever they had in the late 1800s. Combat was spiced up by the various contexts in which you fight (e.g., raiding a mansion, robbing a train, shooting on horseback, etc.), and it was engaging, but like I said, it did get repetitive.
Another thing that got repetitive, and that I quit doing after too long, was looting corpses and searching places for loot. Each "search" animation is way too long, and like I said, you don't end up needing health items, or any other items. You can always pick up new guns from the ground and ammo is plentiful. You can also buy guns and ammo too if you want. There is a "camp upgrade" element to the game in the earlier chapters, and I collected money and items to sell until I had upgraded everything, but that was a small portion of the game. Once I'd upgraded everything, first of all, the camp moves and you don't even have access to all the upgraded stuff for a chunk of the game (I don't think), and second of all, you don't need all the stuff anyway. So once camp was upgraded (by like chapter 2? of 6 + epilogues!), I basically had no use for money for the rest of the game. Sure, you can buy outfits and new guns and whatever, but none of that is necessary.
This made me feel like I went pretty straight through the main game, plus most of the Stranger missions, but didn't touch much else. I didn't mess with mini games, I didn't spend time in towns going to the theaters and whatever, I didn't mess with cosmetic things like giving myself haircuts or trying on outfits, I didn't do optional legendary hunts (those wild animals will kill you so fast!) or search for special gear or do the treasure maps, etc. That all sounds nice if you want to spend more time in the game and do everything that the Wild West has to offer, but I didn't. The main story was fantastic, so that was my focus, and I've played so many open world games and MMOs that I felt no need to hunt extra legendary creatures or collect special item sets.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was an epic tale. I can see why my brother and my friend were so excited for me to play it. Now I will be the one harassing other people: "Did you play RDR 2 yet?! Let me know when you start it! Keep me updated!" Next up from Rockstar later this year: GTA 6!
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My Hero: Doctor (DS) by jp (Mar 6th, 2026 at 18:01:32) |
From the back of the box this game looks like a "western realistic" Trauma Team game - use the touchscreen to do medical stuff like bandage a patient's arm or give them an injection. And it is...sort of? Weirdly every single "case" (mission) I played began with (and sometimes also ended with) a driving section - an ambulance of course. Here you have to dodge other vehicles and obstacles to avoid damage as you travel to a location where something happened or back to the hospital. Roads are full of other vehicles that have no qualms with suddenly changing lanes in front of you and such. You can collect "energy" (not what it's called in the game, but I don't remember the name in the game), and when you have enough you can turn on the siren - and this causes other vehicles to get out of the way (sometimes not fast enough). It's kind of a bizarre gameplay addition - and it doesn't help that the controls are kind of wonky and, from my experience, it really out stayed it's welcome even as the background locations you're driving through change.
I even unlocked a better ambulance (better driving stats)...and there's more to (eventually) choose from. I mean, the game's basic structure is pretty standard, there's cut-scenes with stories (everything so far seems to involve college kids of some sort). It makes me really wonder who the intended audience/age group for this game was. The name of the game would imply children (it's aspirational!) but the story seemed a bit more "grown up" - i.e. adolescent, but the gameplay was also quite simple..skewing younger again in my mind.
The more games of this kind I play (not top-tier first-party DS games), the more I wonder about the conditions in which they were made. Was this a game that was knocked out by a small studio in 6 months?
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Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom (PS4) by jp (Mar 2nd, 2026 at 19:08:07) |
Decided to quit suddenly because I realized I was just starting to grind for achievements and not actually having fun or enjoying the game. Which, in the grand scheme of things sounds like a bad thing other than I think that I quit in time BEFORE I got super tired and bored. So, leaving on a (little past) the high of the fun experience.
I was grinding the Dream Doors - and apparently there's a nice monster at the end that can be a real challenge - but, I didn't have a sense of WHY I'd want to do that. Here I mean motivation within the game's story. I was hoping for a nice story payoff if anything? It seems like there isn't, it's just a grind for resources and stuff and so...time to bail!
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Vampire Survivors (PC) by dkirschner (Mar 2nd, 2026 at 15:38:02) |
I first played this a few years ago on Game Pass and loved it. I rebought it on Steam because there was so much extra content. (I have since learned to avoid long games, roguelikes, and stuff with tons of replayability on subscription services; buy those instead!). Last summer, I replayed the game and started to dig into the DLC. There is practically an infinite amount of stuff to do in Vampire Survivors. I still feel this after sinking another 30 hours into it. The achievements and unlocks are extremely compelling and I could chase them all day. But it has finally started to feel repetitive. Longer 30-minute runs that result in like one unlock or just some progress through a map feel more and more like a time sink, especially as I have other games to get to, including newer games in this genre.
The DLCs (so many!!) have been interesting in that they alter the base game in interesting ways. The maps have rooms, islands, and more geographical features; they are not just massive plains with the occasional obstacle. Contra has a different kind of boss fight. They have new characters, weapons, evolutions, and secrets. The Ode to Castlevania DLC is massive, about the same size as the entire base game! It also has unique boss fights, and an even bigger map to explore, including different spawn points so you don't start over every time. I mean, really, I could just keep playing this forever...but I can't keep playing this forever! I must delete it. Maybe one day there will be another DLC that really piques my interest and the game will rise like a vampire from the coffin of my Steam library! I did see that they are releasing a first-person card battler roguelike, so I am sure I will get sucked into that too!
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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)
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2321 registered gamers and 3350 games. 7886 GameLogs with 13376 journal entries. 5125 games are currently being played.
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Bioshock Infinite: The Siege of Columbia (Other) by TheAngelOfChaos |
| Overall, this a very fun game that has high replayability. It rewards skill but has a element of chance that forces players to adapt. |
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most recent entry: Sunday 9 February, 2014
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Summary:
two teams of 1 or 2 players fight for control of the board and objectives (similar to Risk) using card and dice based combat. A “computer controlled” 3rd party, Booker and Elizabeth, move around the board, interacting with players. The game is over when players have achieved enough victory points by capturing territory or completing objectives or the city is destroyed by Booker and Elizabeth.
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Play Session 1:
This will focus on basic game mechanics and my initial impressions of them. I will make plenty of comparisons to Risk since this game is in the same vein.
This is a very complicated game and took us a while to set up. There are a huge amount of pieces and lots of rules. It definitely requires a “trial play through”, which is what this session is.
Players start their turn by buying units and structures. Compared to Risk though, there are much fewer territories and units so each is more important. Personally, I like this as it makes the game more compact and hectic and each decision carries more weight. Structures allow for combat bonuses and are a good way of defending against attacks if your troops are elsewhere or you are attacked by both opposing players.
After buying comes unit movement and this has a unique twist. A unit can move normally, a short distance from one location to the next or they can use the skylines to travel anywhere they want on the map in one turn. However, to balance out the power this gives, all units riding the skylines have a chance to die, with the chance increasing the farther they go. This is a cool tie in to the game but the chance to die is so great that it’s almost never worth it unless absolutely necessary. This is one of the few parts of the game I would change. High risk, high reward is one thing but this is betting everything you have and hoping to roll snake eyes 5 times in a row. It’s just not practical.
Finally comes combat. Rather than just rolling dice like in Risk, players play cards from their hand to add to the roll. This is a decision I very much like since it forces players to strategize rather than just hope for a lucky event. This is a good time to talk about the upgrade system. Players are given lots of chances to upgrade their combat cards (of which there are 6 different types), each in 4 different ways up to 2 levels. As someone who loves getting meaningful upgrades, this is a great way to keep players interested and helps to support myriad different play styles. Each card also has an unlockable special ability, some of which are the same to both teams and some of which are unique to a faction. These are a very fun way of mixing up combat and an addition I’m a big fan of.
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Play Session 2:
This will focus on some more advanced topics as well as issues we ran into our second time around as more “advanced players”
At the start of each game, each player randomly selects a team leader. These leaders each have a different power which gives a bonus in a certain way (extra troop movement, extra money, cheaper structures). Though some are definitely better than others, all are useful and none are game breaking. It is important to play to your leader’s strengths though and to account for your enemies’.
At the start of each round, an event card is played and players play cards from their hands to either pass or fail the event. These are the same cards which are later used in combat, forcing players to choose between an important affect (extra money for a team, extra damage for a turn, Booker will attack someone specific) and attempting to win a fight later on. Additionally, a world card is also played which gives teams a chance to vie for victory points. These give the game a high level of replayability.
One of the problems with the game though is that it is very complicated. That in of itself isn’t the issue though; it’s that the rules will inevitably have gaps that will be confusing. In our case, we could not decide what “occupation of a territory” meant. Can you use a structure or do you need a unit there? This is a simple example but it was only our group’s second game and we had already come across this. Groups that play this game are going to need to be able to establish a good set of house rules to account for this.
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Final Impressions:
As someone who’s started getting into “serious” board games like this, I really like this game and would put it among my favorites. It’s deep, balanced, well put together, has high replayability and is generally well thought out. It does have its issues, but its nothing that puts a serious dampener on game play.
Playing Bioshock: Infinite the video game will probably make you enjoy this game a little more, as you recognize places and people from the game, but you certainly don’t need to have played it to enjoy this game. Half my group hadn’t and they had a blast. If you are looking for a large, fun game and aren’t afraid to spend a few bucks, this is a great choice.
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