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Nov 18th, 2024 at 16:22:28 - Genesis Noir (PC) |
Artsy point-and-click about love and the end of the universe. The visuals are mesmerizing, lots of black and white (film noir style) with yellows for accent, flashing lights, changing perspectives, just wildly creative. The sound design is great too, lots of jazz music that often coincides with visuals bouncing around.
The story isn't easy to follow. It's a metaphor about the main character's relationship with a jazz singer told as the creation, evolution, and destruction of the universe. I didn't care much about what was going on, but was just basking in the audiovisual treat.
Gameplay is simple. Like I said, it's a point-and-click adventure at its core, but hyper stylized. So you aren't just walking around pointing and clicking. It feels like a series of scenes with toyboxes because it's not always obvious what you need to interact with or how to do it. It was reminding me of GNOG, where you just play with a level, click around and see what things do. I read that a lot of people found the gameplay frustrating, but I never did. Again, for me, this boiled down to "oooh aaah." I couldn't have cared less about how easy the puzzles were or how obtuse some of the interactions were or how deep the metaphor was going. It's a beautiful game and not one I'm likely to forget any time soon! I saw that there is another one coming out (sequel?). If it's the same kind of thing, I will definitely buy.
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Nov 15th, 2024 at 19:16:32 - Killer Frequency (PC) |
Cool concept, stays pretty engaging throughout. The first-person perspective might suggest more action than there is. It's totally a narrative game. Not a "walking simulator" per se, although it's true that you cannot run. Most of the game is actually you standing in place.
You play as a radio host in the late 1980s who gets a job in some small town. On this fateful night, there is a serial killer afoot, with the story rooted in the town's history. After an incident with the police, 911 calls are routed to the radio station. You and your producer take calls and, from behind the DJ booth, hopefully save some lives. Callers will ring up saying they're being stalked by the serial killer and you have to walk them through staying alive. One guy is being hunted in a corn maze; another in an office building; another needs to leave her house and go down the street; and so on. You often need to explore the radio station to find things to help you handle the calls, like a map of the corn maze to help that caller get to the exit. Your producer doles out keys to locked doors as you explore more of the station. Other callers will ring to talk or play pranks or whatever. The writing is strong and there are some really funny parts, like any interaction with the pizza owner. It's got a great 1980s slasher film campy vibe to it.
It's less scary than I thought it would be, though there are some tense moments. Eventually, though, you'll realize that it doesn't matter if callers die. The story keeps going, and I'm not sure if there are multiple endings. It seems like there's just one. And since it is campy, sometimes it is kind of funny if someone dies. This game may not be the best at promoting ethical reflection, though there was one poignant caller who talked about beating addiction and gaining a new outlook on life, which was very touching. Eventually, you will get into the basement of the radio station, which was a little creepy. It felt like it went on a little long because you're not really doing a whole lot. The radio station is really small, you'll collect the few extra records and tapes scattered about, you'll play the same records 3 times each, you'll toss dozens of paper balls into a wastebasket basketball goal while you're listening to people talk. If the writing and voice acting wasn't on point, this would have been a swing and a miss, but luckily it was a fun several hours!
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Nov 12th, 2024 at 21:38:31 - Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved (PC) |
Cannot believe I beat this. What a fun twin-stick bullet hell game. I set out initially just to beat Adventure mode. At some point, I dabbled in the other modes, one of which added more enemy types and game types and the other of which stripped the game to its core--no special weapons. It was so fun, and there were so many variations on the core gameplay, that I ended up beating every single level in the game. But I tell you what, although there were definitely some challenging levels, the last boss fight--Topaz--was a massive difficulty spike. Topaz is the last boss in both Adventure mode and Hardcore mode, and both of those levels have been all I had remaining for weeks. I played some other games in the meantime, and periodically tried to beat Topaz, but never could. Tonight, sitting up in my friend's spare bedroom, I got frustrated and looked online to see if other people were having just as much trouble as I was. I was not alone! Dozens and dozens of forums complaining about this boss. And lots of encouraging posts. I decided I'd give it one more shot. And I beat it. That was probably 30 or 40 tries in total. Then I thought, "What the hell, let's give Hardcore Topaz another go." And I beat that too on the first try tonight. So, after 30 or 40 losses, I beat both Topazes back to back. The Steam achievement for Topaz on Adventure mode is 6.2%, so I'm feeling pretty smug at the moment.
Topaz has six or seven phases, and they're all pretty easy once you memorize the patterns, except the last one or two. So, I was getting right near the end of the fight like every single time. At the end, he starts spinning around and moving toward you. The level is bordered by red walls (you touch, you die), and Topaz itself has red walls circling it. Enemies spawn along the wall, usually blue diamonds (which move toward you at a moderate speed) and a couple colors of purple (which slowly move or stay pretty still). At one point, these yellow balls start spawning randomly on one side of the level, then another side, then another side, and they fly quickly across the level. It's super annoying because they can spawn right on top of you if you're near an edge and will kill you before you have a chance to move. So, don't be near the edge in that part, avoid the yellow balls, and move the boss quickly into the next phase. At the end, the boss gets larger and its red walls take up like 1/4 of the screen, plus enemies are spawning along the edges of the screen, so you really don't have many places to move. I regularly died here if the yellow balls didn't get me because I'd get trapped. I think the trick is to stay calm (obviously) and focus more on staying alive than attacking the boss. You'll have plenty of time to attack Topaz in between waves of enemies. But if you're dead, you can't attack, so stay alive! I used the "fire" weapon, which amplifies your frontal attack, and the turret special, but I actually didn't set off the turret or my bombs, beating the Adventure Topaz with no special weapons (which deserves another, even rarer, achievement, right?!). Now that I think about that, I'm definitely feeling smug.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Nov 12th, 2024 at 21:49:03.
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Nov 12th, 2024 at 18:18:10 - Card Shark (PC) |
This gives me vibes of Pentiment in style. The art is beautiful, very painterly, and if you watch the backgrounds, they kind of move or “dance” with shimmering particles, especially indoors. It’s set in 18th century France and you find yourself caught up in national political intrigue. The story is intriguing, the writing is sharp and witty, the concept is creative.
Card Shark is a game about cheating at cards. You play as a mute man, and you are taken under the wing of an infamous ex-noble/socialite turned conman. He teaches you card tricks as you travel around the country swindling rich people out of their money. Your targets are often chosen not just for their wealth, but because they have information, and your handler (and, it turns out, his handlers) is trying to unravel a mystery that will have huge implications for the country’s political class.
The card tricks start off easy. For example, you pour wine for an opponent, steal a glance at his cards, and signal with your hand which suit he has the most of. Or, you shuffle the cards, but palm an ace to deal to your handler. There are 28 tricks, or combinations of tricks, and the complexity escalates like crazy by the end. Here is the "tutorial" text when you are taught the next-to-final trick for the final card game. You'll do this long part after you interpret a code to give two specific types of cards to your ally. You’ll palm one card to deal to your ally and then sweep cards in a specific order according to the code to get the second card. Then, you get the following tutorial explanation, with visuals:
“First off, I need you to shuffle once whilst injogging the top card at the same time. Subtlety is key here so make sure you do this in one fluid motion. Nice job. We’ve already set aside two cards for me, your target, so now it’s time to sort out the other players. Go ahead and drop two cards per additional player. Now each player has two cards prepared for them. To secure the selection, outjog the next card. Outjogging is just like injogging, but the card pokes out away from you instead of in and towards you. Here, see, the outjogged card and injogged card are on either side of your stack. Your thumb can easily create a gap beneath the injogged card when you’re squaring the deck. And you’ll naturally grab everything up to the outjogged card, too. This creates a break below it. You can use these gaps to restore the stack on the next pass through the deck. Good. You know how this part goes. Shuffle down and injog in one motion. Now drop a pair of cards for each player besides myself. Now for that outjog we talked about to sandwich the stack. Good. The prepared cards will be easy to find thanks to those markers on either side. Go ahead and shuffle down the rest of the deck like the honest man you are. Then square as I showed you. With the deck squared, you need to drop all the cards up to the first gap. That way you can get back to dealing with the stack you’re preparing. Now my two cards are at the bottom of the stack. But they need to be distributed amongst the opponents’ cards. To distribute the planned cards in the stack, you’ll need to drop one individual card for everyone other than your target. The next card should be for me…But the ones you prepared are on either side of the next break. Drop everything up to the break. That should be my card with a card for each opponent above it. Great. Now there are two cards prepared for each of my opponents. But there’s only one for me, currently. Drop that next card to make sure both cards I requested end up in the same hand. Now you just need to offset the stack so that the requested cards are dealt to me. Simply drop as many cards as there are opponents seated before me in the deal. Look at that! Both cards are on track to end up in my hand. But in your celebrations don’t forget to secure your stack by injogging the next card. With the stack secured, all that’s left is to drop the rest of the pack and cut the deck at the marker. Let’s see what happens when you deal out the cards. Good job. The two low red cards are dealt to me. You’ll finish by reversing the opponents’ cut."
You will have to do this by yourself under the pressure of increasingly suspicious opponents, with money (and your life) on the line. Each instruction and term in the description above is a specific motion. The small parts form the whole trick. Also, in real time, players are not necessarily sitting in the order that they are in the tutorial, or there may be a different number of players, and the cards you need to hold may be high or low cards, which changes the number and order of the drops and all that. AND, in the very last card game, you not only have to give two cards to one player, but you also have to give two different cards to TWO different players, and you have to figure that part out on your own. It’s so complicated! So complicated, in fact, that I threw my hands up at the end and watched a YouTube video of the last card game. No shame! A read part of an AMA with the devs, and apparently this game turned a lot of people on to magic tricks. Tracks. Totally unique game, worth checking out.
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