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Sep 28th, 2017 at 00:19:43 - The Last Guardian (PS4) |
What a frustrating game. As good as it is, and as much as I look forward to doing it. There is no end to the frustration that the controls of this game give me. They are simply far to unresponsive for the game to give you full control over how to solve the puzzles.
For example, in this session I fell into a water filled cave and needed Trico's help to get back out. There was a crate I could push into the water, so I did, and climbed on top of it, Nothing happened. So after a few tries I got frustrated and had to look it up. Thank goodness for the internet. I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't have it and tries to complete this game. The issue is that you need to have it next to a specific pillar. However, even when I did, the game didn't respond as I would have hoped, and in the end I had to sit on top of the crate and call Trico again and again until he finally dropped his tail.
It's actually kind of a shame that the game isn't a bit more responsive, because it does a really good job of making you build a relationship between the boy and Trico. The puzzles are interesting when they work, and fun to solve. But when the controls don't respond they are frustrating and cumbersome.
The main focus of the game in terms of theme, or story. (Since I must address this for this class.) Is this relationship between the boy and Trico. This relationship is extremely effective. With more and more exciting moments pumping up their bond and the stakes. The many leap of faith moments that you experience in the game are extremely cool. At least these first few times. I can see how they could get quite old honestly.
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Sep 27th, 2017 at 02:56:45 - The Last Guardian (PS4) |
So far I've actually found myself getting sucked into The last Guardian. The game has a very interesting environment, and on top of that it always feels like I'm exploring some new forgotten cavern wherever I go, even though I'm just following the narrative of the game. This could make the game feel rather stale, but in the case of this game I actually found every new environment to be refreshing and puzzling. The game itself feels a lot like a puzzle platformer, which is about what I know about the previous works of this team. Ico, and Shadow of the Colossus namely.
There is plenty about this game that I think works really well, fromt he interesting environments, to the unique design of the player character.
If there were any problems that I had to say harm the game out for so far, it's that the controls are actually pretty annoying for me. There are a lot of occasions so far where the player character, the boy, has jumped off of Trico's back and into a pit. Which brings me to another small problem that I have with the game. I don't understand the game over screen. When I saw it for the first time, I mistook it as a loading screen, and only figured when my random button presses were affecting the screen that I needed to smash everything on the controller to respawn. I think that this is not only a strange choice for a death screen, it's pretty bad honestly.
And as of yet I haven't really thougth a lot about the ethics of the game. Since for all of it so far all that I have done is wander around with my giant cat-dog with wings. If I were to try and think of just one thing that stood out to me. It's that the game has a message laying under it so far, that seems to imply that the player character is accepting quite a lot of responsibility.
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Sep 1st, 2017 at 17:31:57 - Prison Architect (PC) |
So this is actually a repost of my third entry since my previous one was lost to the ether.
I've grown to enjoy Prison Tycoon a bit more since I unlocked free play mode, but there are a few things in the game that I really think could have made it more compelling if perhaps they were tweaked just a little bit. As well as some mechanics that I find really confusing to work with.
I will start with the latter. It has taken me quite a bit of time to figure out why my workmen build walls the way that they do. After considerable time playing around with the quick build options I've found that for me the quickest way to build a cell block is to place a foundation of carefully considered dimensions. This is made easier with the planning tool. Which is a wonderful feature I wish a similar game, Rimworld, would outright steal. Leave a little space for the hallway, and then place one cell. Then use the clone tool to copy paste that cell outline up and down the row. Repeat until the cell block is done. This is actually the kind of thing I enjoy in tycoon games. Careful planning, and decision making. It is hampered however by the bizarre choices that the workmen AI use. Sometimes I'll find that they've torn down a wall that I didn't want removed and I won't know why. So far, I'm still getting surprised by brick walls vanishing. Sometimes only to be rebuilt.
The other problem that I have with the game is I think it is far too easy for me to make money with a prison. And there's no real motivation that I feel makes me want to have the most profitable facility. The grant system is an interesting way to encourage this. However, with my prison already running profitably, I didn't feel the need to take on some of the more unscrupulous ones.
I've never been the type to feel like a moral decision that is too easy to make is a compelling one in a game. So when I'm making plenty of money and have a well funded education program in my prison, what reason could I have for making my prison less hospitable? But I think if the game was rebalanced so that education was more expensive, or so it was harder to turn a profit. The decision between offering awful meals and dog patrols would be a lot more tempting.
But still though, I am compelled with Prison Tycoon to find out what that's like. So I think that the designer was onto something.
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Aug 31st, 2017 at 05:16:59 - Prison Architect (PC) |
On my second session of Prison Architect I found that in sandbox mode the player faces some difficulties and they aren't necessarily ethics quandries. I've had a lot of frustration with figuring out how to place cells optimally. You typically have to draw out the foundations before you section them into cells. The issue is it is rather hard to say how big you want it to be if you want say, 15 cells. I think more or less I've got the pattern now. But sometimes I seem to get one side of the cell block wrong, and the other just fine.
I think this game could have a bit more intrigue to it too if the game had more interesting quests. Perhaps given by specific characters in the game. In Tropico, a game I see this one having more and more similarities with. You have faction quests in both Tropico, and Abroad in foreign powers. As such, you have a wealth of quest-givers. I don't think Prison Architect has anything like this. And it could make for really interesting gameplay if you could take quests from prison gangs. Or from politicians. Maybe even unscrupulous scientists!
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GingerbreadFetus has been with GameLog for 7 years, 0 months, and 10 days |
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