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Sep 7th, 2024 at 10:10:47 - Else Heart.Break() (PC) |
I picked this up because some PC Gamer staffer from way back when I subscribed to that magazine used to write glowingly about it all the time. Supposedly, it's this deep hacking type game where you end up being able to manipulate all these systems in really creative ways in a city. Sounds cool, finally bought it!
Utterly failed to grab me. Clunky and obtuse. You can rotate the camera, and it has a short zoom, but you cannot pan the camera, which for an isometric perspective game is bizarre. It automatically pans when you get near-ish the edge of the screen, then jerkily snaps in place. There are no tutorials. The map of the city and navigation are awful. The map has no details. Parts of the city, which do have names, are not labeled on the map. I played for nearly an hour and half the time couldn't figure out where I was. There is no "you are here" marker.
Movement is painfully slow. Everything feels stiff. You can double-click to run, but after you run for about 50 feet, it says "too tired to run." Maybe I should drink something? Pick up a water to drink. Nope. Maybe eat? Pick up some food to eat. Nope. I probably need to sleep because I've seen beds. Continue wandering around until my character literally passes out in a road (there is no "tired" meter or anything, so how in the world was I supposed to know this?). He ran for another 10 feet upon waking, then "too tired to run." Sigh.
There are objects to pick up: radios, water, beer, food...I stuffed about 3 radios, 10 bottles of water, a dozen beers, and other miscellanea into my backpack. When it got full, I drank the two dozen beers. My character swayed a bit when standing still, but otherwise gave no indication of intoxication. This game is supposed to be all cool hacker stuff, but the systems I've interacted with so far make no sense. Food, water, and beer don't do what they seem like they should. There is obviously some sort of sleep/rest mechanic, but there isn't info about it. Movement and navigation suck. Dialogue is dull. I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing and am not interested in exploring further. Bummer!
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Aug 9th, 2024 at 15:18:34 - ULTRAKILL (PC) |
Retiring this. Another surprise freebie from my wishlist on Amazon Luna, and the third game I've played on that cloud gaming platform. This was more stable than Devil May Cry 5, no crashes at all. Though I didn't play for too, too long. ULTRAKILL is really freaking hard. It's a boomer shooter with new Doom vibes because, as with new Doom, you regain health by getting close to an enemy and getting their blood on you (aka attacking them at point blank). So you have to be aggressive.
I made it to what, I learned, is considered the boss that forces you to get good at the game, V2. It's challenging up to that point, but you learn each enemy and you can methodically get through the levels. V2...killed me like 100 times. I got him pretty close to death two or three times, but man, he was frustrating! He's hard to hit, super fast, flies and slides around like crazy. He's actually an upgraded version of your character (so I imagine how annoying I am to the enemies!). I was trying to blame this on Amazon Luna, but honestly it's my fault. I couldn't learn him well enough. I mean, I learned his attacks, and I kind of figured out how he choreographs them. But then once you do that, you need to be able to dodge the attacks that need to be dodged, parry the attacks that need to be parried (the shotgun blasts), and do all that while constantly zipping around yourself and shooting at him. It's so fast, and I am having the horrifying thought, "Am I too old for this?!", like are my reflexes just not what they used to be?! Oh no...
The guns are fun and the movement is tight. Each gun (that I got) has two special attacks. For example, the pistol has a charge attack and a neat one where you toss a coin in the air, then shoot the coin, which ricochets with a 100% chance to hit an enemy. The shotgun has a grenade launcher and a charged shot that you have to be careful with lest you blow yourself up. The machine gun can deploy mines and has some sort of exploding scattershot. The whole thing is wrapped up in that low-fi boomer shooter aesthetic where it looks like Quake. The music was great, lots of pounding industrial/metal music, with other moments of classical and whatnot.
I would have liked to play more of this, see what other guns, enemies, and bosses there are, but V2 is kicking my butt, and there wasn't all that much compelling me forward anyway, despite it being a tight game and obviously at the top of the boomer shooter genre.
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Aug 9th, 2024 at 15:03:10 - Cocoon (PC) |
Oooh, I forgot to write an entry for this one. This was a really cool adventure puzzle game, sort of like a Limbo or Inside (because apparently same lead designer). It gets better as it goes on, as it becomes more complex. I didn't know what exactly I was doing for most of the time (like, the story is...??...until you start to make some educated guesses about why you are doing what you're doing later).
But the gist of it is that you're this bug guy and you solve puzzles in the world by using these orbs/spheres/moons that you pick up and carry around. The gimmick is that you can go inside of each sphere, and inside of each sphere is another world, with its own puzzles. When you get a second colored sphere, you'll realize that you can take it inside of the first one. Like, whenever you enter or exit a sphere, you take what you are holding, which could be a sphere, or later, a sphere within a sphere within a sphere. It gets pretty mind-bending later on, as you are figuring out how to get spheres inside spheres to solve this or that puzzle.
There are also some boss fights, which were fun. The whole aesthetic of the game is mysterious and otherworldly. All the other creatures, the environments, the music, it's very like bio-mechanical sci-fi type stuff. I thought I would like this, and sure enough, it landed. Really creative, super well designed, never played anything quite like it. Highly recommend.
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Aug 2nd, 2024 at 13:18:29 - Freud's Bones (PC) |
I bought this for the interesting premise. You get inside Freud’s head and help him dig into his crisis, as well as help him conduct psychotherapy on his patients. It's a point-and-click with a lot of reading and listening to Freud unraveling. Most of the game takes place in his office, where you can click on things (ooh, aah!), solve the same frustrating Egyptian hieroglyphics puzzle over and over (ooh, aah!), treat patients, and watch Freud spiral. As such, the game is quite small and quickly becomes repetitive. The puzzle, for example, is an artifact that Freud acquired during his travels. It spins like a slot machine, and you have to use a legend to decipher the hieroglyphics that appear on its face. Easy enough, but they are out of order, and to put them in order, you just have to guess at what the hell it wants you to do. The words will form a sentence, but sometimes it's a question, sometimes the independent clause is first, sometimes it's second, sometimes it's just worded in a strange way. You have no way of knowing any of this, so you will assemble the four images in all possible configurations until you happen to get the correct order. Super annoying. So far, the resulting sentences have just been Freud posing existential questions to himself.
I thought the most interesting part would be conducting psychoanalysis. Well, when this game says that's what you're going to do, by god, that's what you're going to do! You get some excerpts/summaries of Freud's writing, an encyclopedia of psychoanalysis terminology, a breakdown of mental diseases, types of patients, dream symbolism, and so on. As your patients lay on the couch, you are sort of cross-referencing what they are saying with all this information to get to the root of their problem and diagnose them. This is interesting for sure, but I think the problem is, well, most psychologists don't do this anymore. This isn't what clinical mental health counseling or social work is. So, trying to play this, I could not help but constantly be like, "No, don't ask that!" or "He should do this..." or "But that's not what the patient said..." This is a case where my prior knowledge and experience probably got in the way of "becoming" Freud.
He's a hard person to become as it is, considering the smoking, cocaine addiction, obsession with sex, and so on. In addition to treating patients and posing existential questions to yourself, you also need to manage Freud's finances. To do this, you go out to fancy places and schmooze rich people, trying to get patrons to fund your research because your books are selling poorly and the newspapers are calling you a fraud. In all the game's social interactions, you have to choose dialogue options that will appeal to the other person, or get them to do what you want. For potential patrons, this might mean sucking up to them, appealing to their desires. For patients, this might mean taking an approach that aligns with their sickness (e.g., don't be direct if they are suffering from anxiety because it will make it worse). Characters make facial expressions and you can see patients' hearts beat, so you can read them.
The game also visualizes the id, superego, and ego as layers in the head. As you're appealing to characters, or digging around during treatment trying to find causes of their problems, you identify topics and "move them" from the id to the level of conscious awareness. Pretty neat. Anyway, at this point I might have written as long as I played, and I don't feel like finishing. The cases "solve" themselves as you scrutinize case files for a magnifying glass icon to click on important words, and I've gotten bored of listening to Freud. The marketing material for this game heralds the "visionary game designer" who made it and goes on about how this is the pinnacle of Italian game design. I should have been wary of that. It's a neat idea for sure, and obviously a lot of knowledge and passion is on display here, but it is not a good time in practice.
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