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Mar 29th, 2022 at 19:03:43 - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (WiiU) |
According to GameLog, I started this in November 2020. That puts me just a little past time to make an entry...I haven't been playing that whole time, but I am in the middle of a burst of Zelda energy now. I have no idea how long I've been playing, but I have cleansed three of the Divine Beasts and am approaching the fourth one. After that, I don't know what happens. Can I go to Hyrule Castle, defeat Ganon, and end the game?
Why have I been playing this so long, anyway? Well, I've gone through hot and cold periods with it. It is a game that requires patience, and I'm not always a patient player, given that I often have no or little time to play and given that I always have so many games backlogged. When I'm not feeling patient, the game can frustrate me. But when I'm in a good frame of mine for it, playing BoTW is extremely relaxing, and I'll get lost in it. This tension itself between wanting to blow through a game and wanting to be patient and explore all it has to offer can be frustrating, too. The reason I'm feeling the tension so strongly with BoTW is because it is a phenomenal game, but also a phenomenally long, detailed game! I want to see everything but I also just want to get it done and move on!
BoTW has a huge map. Hyrule is teeming with secrets, characters, dungeons, monsters, items, and activities. You can spend time searching for and clearing the shrines, which are thoughtful puzzles or combat challenges. I've recently been hunting these down, especially the secret ones, which you find by solving riddles and following clues. Some puzzle shrines are head-scratchers, while others are elementary. This morning, I found a puzzle shrine that took me about 30 seconds to complete. I've never been in and out of one so quickly. Alternatively, the other day I found a combat shrine that took me at least half an hour to finally kill the tough Guardian inside. Your reward for completing shrines is an orb. Collect enough and you can make an offering of them to get extra health and stamina.
You could also spend time seeking Koroks, cute leafy creatures hiding around the world. If you notice something amiss--a stone circle with one stone out of place; an odd assortment of flowers in the wild; a pattern with one part slightly off--then figure out a way to "solve" whatever it is. I have found maybe 12 Koroks, but recently read that there are NINE HUNDRED of them. Finding them allows you to unlock inventory slots, which is useful because since your weapons, bows, and shields break with use, you always want a lot of backups, and different types of weapons are handy to have in stock for different situations.
You could spend your time learning cooking recipes, training your horse, completing side quests from NPCs, exploring nooks and crannies of the map, following up on rumors, finding and killing unique monsters, searching for the settings of Link's photo album, trying to glide as far as you can, buy a house, etc., etc., etc. My next step is to cleanse the final Divine Beast. Then, I would like to take my time and explore more of Hyrule (two entire regions are still undiscovered), try to solve some of the hidden shrines, complete some challenging side quests, and really enjoy more of this open world. I'll come back later and write about cooking and climbing (you can climb literally anywhere and it is awesome) and combat and whatever else is on my mind then!
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Mar 29th, 2022 at 18:23:50 - 7 Billion Humans (PC) |
It appears that the devs behind World of Goo and Little Inferno puzzle games have moved toward programming puzzles! This was a surprise for my non-programmer self. I've tried plenty of games that benefit from programming knowledge (e.g., the Zachtronics catalog) and typically enjoy them until they get beyond me. 7 Billion Humans was no different. You are presented with puzzles and commands in a programming language. In each puzzle, you have to make workers perform mundane office tasks (arranging data in specific order, shredding documents, etc.). Well, sort of mundane. You see, the world is controlled by robot overlords and they are training humans (you) to become self-sufficient and manage themselves to solve problems. The mundane tasks you program workers to complete are actually having big impact: solving climate change, growing enough food for everyone on the planet, providing free public transit, and so on. The game has the critical humor I expected, at least.
Puzzles begin easily enough. You might be asked to make workers to pick up a datacube in front of them and then drop it in their original location. That would require commands: step (forward) --> pick up (datacube) --> step (backward) --> drop. These get increasingly complex, of course, and I gave up about halfway through, on level 31 or something, when I had to make workers pick up documents from a printer and arrange the documents in a checkerboard pattern, while not falling through several holes in the floor. This used various commands, including takeFrom (printer) to get the document, "if" commands with directions to guide their walking so they don't fall into holes, the "nearest" command to make sure they are going to the printer to get documents and not picking them up off the ground, "memory" commands so they remember where the nearest printer is, and so on. I couldn't figure it out and looked on YouTube. Once I saw how unlikely it was that I would have figured out that solution, I looked at some of the next solutions too. All brutally difficult for me! I realized that this was my wall and bowed out. Later levels have you writing memory (instead of just remembering something that already exists), performing arithmetic on datacube values, and actually programming communication between workers to synchronize their actions.
So, I'm glad I stopped, but glad I tried it out. Many of the puzzles I did solve made me feel very clever indeed.
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Mar 18th, 2022 at 08:08:49 - Ape Out (PC) |
I thought this would be more like Hotline Miami. It's far simpler though, but with a really snazzy presentation. I loved the jazz music and the crashes synchronizing with your punches. It really got my blood pumping.
You play as an ape. And you have to escape. How do you escape? Run to the right or left (depending on the level) and punch everyone in your way, hurling them backward and sometimes into other humans, who all explode in splatters of red and body parts. You can also grab enemies and use them as shields, which makes you move really slowly, but who wants to do that?! Run and punch, baby!
You are in a research facility or ship or war zone for...reasons? In the end, you break out a bunch of other animals, and then in a bonus level rescue a baby ape. The bad guys are clearly in the midst of a war. Maybe they're conducting research on animals? Maybe they're trapping them and selling them to raise funds?
Either way, bad guys come in a few varieties as the game progresses. You start with regular pistol-wielding bad guys, and then you'll encounter ones with shotguns, sniper rifles, flamethrowers, and explosives. It introduces these one at a time in the multiple short levels. I believe there are about 32 levels in total, and the game took me an hour and 20 minutes to do everything. You also get tossed some light environmental challenges, such as bombs dropping from the sky and fences blocking paths later on.
The best thing about Ape Out is the crashing drums. It's got a great frenetic jazz soundtrack, and every time you punch an enemy, a drum or cymbal crashes. It's very comic book-y ("Pow!" Bam!" "Crash!"). Highly recommend for some wild action and unique, artistic presentation.
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Mar 4th, 2022 at 08:06:36 - SteamWorld Dig 2 (PC) |
This was a random freebie from Amazon Twitch Prime that didn't look interesting to me, but had great reviews. I did not expect to enjoy this so much and now I am curious about the rest of the SteamWorld IP. Another game, a card-based RPG, is on Amazon Twitch Prime right now. It's also well reviewed (but not a ton of reviews), and I had grabbed an earlier game for the same reasons, which is like a side-scrolling strategy game.
SteamWorld Dig 2 has a simple, engaging gameplay loop. You dig, down, down, down underground, exploring the depths and collecting gems. Once you fill your backpack with gems, return to town and sell them. Use the cash to upgrade your tools so that you can dig down, down, down...
This carried on for about 10 hours of gameplay, which was perfect. The digging is punctuated by fighting enemies, finding secrets, and exploring caves, which are separate puzzle areas that often feature a specific skill, enemy, or mechanic. Caves can be devious, such as some of the mine cart puzzles. Exploring is rewarding. In caves and in pursuing secrets, you will find cogs that you use to upgrade tools, as well as hidden relics, for which an NPC gives you blueprints to further unlock upgrades. For much of the game, I progressed slowly and methodically, but by the end, I was jetpacking around, hurling bombs left and right, smashing enemies into one another, and collecting and selling mountains of gems.
The visuals are charming and detailed, the characters are quirky, and the story is light-hearted and fun. There's not much to the story, and the way main quests function reminds me a lot of Breath of the Wild, which I am currently playing. You get the massive objectives, and most of the game happens on the way to those objectives. So yeah, this was a surprise and I am excited that I happen to own two more games from different genres in this world!
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