 |
|
Griftlands (PC) by dkirschner (Apr 29th, 2025 at 15:53:58) |
This is a roguelite deckbuilder that’s neat in that you have two different decks and there is some interesting worldbuilding, with probably like 100 characters you can meet. It’s also narrative heavy. You play runs with one of three characters, each of whom has their own story. Unfortunately though, it never really clicked with me; I was always sort of bored. I played two runs with the first character, Sal, dying near the end of my first attempt. On my second attempt, I noticed “story difficulty,” set it to that, and steamrolled the second run. I left it on story difficulty and steamrolled the game with the second character, Rook, too. When I started the third character, I was sort of dreading learning his mechanics, the tedium of leveling up another set of cards (you can level up each card once by using it a specific number of times), the endless filler-feeling dialogue, and the tons and tons of negotiations and battles I would have to wade through to get to the end of another story that I didn’t care about. So, I played part of the first day for him to get a sense of the character and any new mechanics, then called it quits.
Here's how the two types of decks/combat work. The first is “battle” and needs no explanation. This is normal deckbuilder stuff. Do lots of damage and kill stuff. Some mechanics include “prepare” (a card is “prepared” when it is in the leftmost spot in your hand and can activate special abilities), “gamble” (one character has a coin that he flips, and some of his cards do different things depending on heads or tails), “burn” (deals damage over time), and so on. Each character has a few unique mechanics.
When you battle enemies, you can spare them or kill them. If you spare them, they might hate you (all the various characters you encounter can either hate, dislike, like, or love you). If you kill them, their friends might hate you. If you kill them in an isolated place, well, you got away with murder. It can be tempting to kill enemies because they drop items, and sometimes quite good ones, or maybe because they were real jerks and deserved it. But, when someone hates you, you get a debuff (e.g., status cards cost one extra action), which does go away if you kill that person later. When someone loves you, you get a buff (e.g., gain 4 defense and 2 power at the beginning of every battle). It’s obviously good to have a lot of people love you and few people hate you. I definitely had some hate debuffs that were pretty annoying to deal with.
The second thing you can do is “negotiation,” and this one is different. It’s the same basic idea as battle, except think of it as the passive option. This second deck is full of cards that are meant to manipulate, persuade, and intimidate others. In a negotiation, you have “arguments.” Characters all have a “core argument.” Then, they can make other arguments that do various things. All arguments have “resolve” (HP). When an argument’s resolve reaches 0, it is defeated. No big deal for a regular argument; these come and go during a negotiation. If your core argument loses its resolve, then you lose the negotiation.
So, there are generally two ways out of a situation: battle or negotiate. Sometimes, negotiations make subsequent battles easier. As you think about building your decks, remember that if you lose a negotiation, you might still be able to battle, but if you lose a battle, you can’t then negotiate…because you’re dead. That means that, for me at least, negotiation was far more useful, and I chose that option far more. On the other hand, there are more mandatory battles than mandatory negotiations, and bosses are typically trying to kill you, not argue with you. So, you can’t rely on only one deck; you must figure out how to balance them.
There are some other things to consider, such as the battle and negotiation grafts (like skills or perks you acquire each run), and then the various roguelite meta upgrades. You can unlock permanent upgrades for each character, perks that can be used on any character, as well as new cards that will appear in your runs.
In the end, it feels strange to say, but I wish I had just stopped after the first run. I feel like I wasted my time with this one hoping that it would click. There are certainly things I enjoyed (like the negotiations and trying to get a ton of characters to love me), but like I said earlier, I just found Griftlands tedious and boring.
read all entries for this GameLog 
- add a comment 
|
|
Gris (PS5) by jp (Apr 20th, 2025 at 20:25:52) |
I distinctly remember Gris getting a "meh" review score in Edge magazine. So, I was expecting to be underwhelmed gameplay-wise though wowed visually.
And yes, I was wowed visually (and aurally too - playing the PS5 version that makes use of the speaker controller in a cool way)...and the gameplay was sort of meh - but, it got better and better the longer I played!
Not counting the "hub" area, the game has four zones/levels that each introduce a mechanic, as well as some in-world things to interact with. And so, the game really goes from less to more as later levels incorporate more in-world mechanics as well as require use of the character mechanics you unlock. It also all makes sense with the game's theme and story and balblabla (ludonarrative harmony is what my students brought up).
That being said, it's a pretty relaxing and flowing kind of game - nods to Journey in there as well - and there isn't really a fail state, though you can get stuck on puzzles and some dexterity-timing dependent puzzles. There's some swimming bits that are just glorious - as you dash from "water bubble" to "water bubble" (blocks of water in the air) - and I loved swimming up waterfalls.
What impressed me the most though were two things:
1. I kept on trying to "go the wrong way" and most of the time, it was the right way.
2. The onboarding and tutorials are really, really well done. You notice a thing, or do a thing, and then that's the thing you have to do later to solve puzzles and so on. It feels very natural and very normal.
So, I'm actually excited to try Neva now...
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
Lost in Blue 2 (DS) by jp (Apr 18th, 2025 at 18:46:41) |
Perhaps the strangest thing for me about this game is that it's a bona fide survival game on the DS. In my mind, the genre is more recent than 2006! I'm thinking of all the indie survival games (craft stuff, gather food, don't die of hunger or thirst) and then ones on Steam..and here's this game - a sequel no less - and it's straight up THAT. Survival. And there's two characters to boot - and you can die (I did, pretty soon it turns out).
I guess I was surprised by how quickly I did die - and, from a novice perspective, it felt sudden and a bit unfair. As in, CLEARLY there was nothing I could have done differently to survive. I spent too much time exploring was probably the main problem, and I left the boy behind in a cave we found, and I'm not sure that's what you're supposed to do? You have to keep both of them feed, hydrated and energized, and I felt like I had my hands full with just the one character.
I think my biggest mistake was probably not getting the spear for fishing made sooner? But then, I'm not even sure how you're supposed to use it - and all the other food I kept scavenging wasn't really doing much. Like, you'd eat it and not see a huge effect. I'm guessing there's something I'm not understanding and it makes me wonder if a full reset makes the most sense? (instead of loading into a saved game that's already doomed/too heavily stacked against success).
Perhaps the strangest thing (for me) about the game is that there's a super simple mini-game for cooking! You collect stuff to cook and also stuff to use as spices and then need to sort of trial and error recipes - though I could set the boy (the character I was not controlling directly) to cook and he'd come up with his own stuff... it's weird.
And it's a sequel? I guess I should look up if this is a port to DS from someplace else? It would make more sense in a way - the game is also low-poly 3D as you wander around the environment. Still...I might just put it on the shelf.
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
Phantom Abyss (PC) by jp (Apr 6th, 2025 at 19:14:27) |
I'd heard of the game's hook (or gimmick if you will) as, everyday it's a different 1st person platforming game/run, and if you die - that's it. Play a different run later.
I'm guessing stuff changed along the way, though the concept is still here - it's a reasonably challenging rogue-like 1st person platforming game. I've had fun, you have a whip to help you climb and each level has different modifiers (the whip has an ability) and you can pick up boons in your run (if you have enough coins to afford them) and hopefully make it to the end. BUT, you see a bunch of ghosts for everyone else who played this level - if someone died, you can collect their spirit or something for a small heal! During each run you collect keys you can use to buy permanent upgrades, and so you go up the progression ladder of many roguelites...
Someone described this as first person temple run, which is close enough? I mean, the levels themselves are a lot more interesting than the "mere" reaction times that temple run goes for, here you can side-step/etc. stuff - and there are different paths, and in all you can be a bit creative for how you approach stuff...I've had fun so far - unlocked all the green levels and I've started on the blue ones!
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
Cuphead (Switch) by jp (Apr 6th, 2025 at 13:37:03) |
I only get to play this when my son comes around - and we play together and I realized, yeah - I need to either start practicing seriously or just give up. And, I enjoy playing it co-op, so there's not much sense in practicing, so I decided to give up.
We did make it to the 2nd island(?), and played some of the levels there - but I was clearly starting to see a steeper path to success. As in, it too us (mostly my fault) more and more tries to make less progress. He's already played it, beat it too? So, not much point for him really.
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
|
|
|
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)
for that game. Call it a weblog of game playing activity if you will.
[latest site fixes and updates]
[read more]
|
view feed xml
|
 |
|
2287 registered gamers and 3259 games. 7790 GameLogs with 13267 journal entries. 5110 games are currently being played.
More stats
|
 |
|
most recent entry: Monday 19 October, 2009
|
Entry 1:
SUMMARY
Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts is at its heart a physics based puzzle game. The other major elements consist of platforming and exploration. Through the course of the game the player collects various parts that can be used to build vehicles that allow them to complete the physics based puzzles, explore the worlds, and collect puzzle pieces. Banjo Kazooie is a humorous and "playful" game that creates an exceptional environment for players to experiment and explore.
GAMEPLAY
In the beginning of the game you are introduced back into the original world of Banjo Kazooie, from the first Nintendo 64 game, as well as their original nemesis. The game initially appears similar to the original but is quickly interrupted by a new character who throws everyone into a completely new world. Next, you are put through a few tutorial on how to move objects around in the world, how to construct simple vehicles, and how to collect puzzle pieces.
Once you are finally set free, you get to venture into the first world. When you enter a world you get to choose a vehicle that you want to use. At this point in the game, all you have is your little trolley that you constructed in the tutorial. Learning to control this trolley take some time; the physics in Banjo Kazooie's world is not quite what it is in the real world.
Throughout the world you meet various characters of which all seem to be some sort of animal. Each of these characters has some dialogue which is usually humorous or full of puns, making the interactions between Banjo, Kazooie, and other character quite enjoyable. Each world has its own little story revolving around these characters, though it is not really involved. The main story has something to be desired as well, but this is more than made up for in gameplay. The missions alone seem to add a great variety to the game in terms of the things you get to do while playing.
Entry 2:
GAMEPLAY
There hasn't been much change in game play since the last play period; however, I have gotten more into figuring out how to construct better vehicles. Building your own vehicles is quite fun and satisfying; especially when you are able to use them to efficiently complete a puzzle. At this point in the game, all I have at my disposal are "car" and structural parts. But even with these few pieces you can still create a variety of vehicles.
I have found that some things do tend to hold true when it comes to the in game physics. Building a vehicle low to the ground and somewhat wide seems to make it easy to control; however this does make it heavier reducing the speed. So as you can see there are a fair number of factors that need to be taken into account when designing your next great vehicle. I used to love playing with Legos (and probably still would), so this part of the game is extremely fun for me. You get to build a vehicle and then drive it around and use it to complete tasks.
Much of my second play through was spent experimenting with different vehicle designs to see what worked best. One of the challenging things about this was that for some of the missions, the car needed to be able to push objects effectively. Designing a well balanced car proved to be quite difficult.
DESIGN
Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts is hub based and can be broken up into two sections: the hub, and the various worlds attached to it. Initially you only have access to a single world. From this world you gain enough puzzle pieces in order to unlock the next world. This seems to be the overarching process throughout the game. Through the first two play throughs I was only able to reach the second world, which happens to actually only be a variation on the first. However this allowed me to become familiar with the level's layout, which seems like a good design decision. I was in no way bored with the levels.
There are many facets to the game that will keep a player interested. The most interesting are the dialogue, the creativity of the levels, and the creation of vehicles. The dialogue is funny and witty, which makes it quite entertaining. Though at first daunting; once you get the hang of it, designing vehicles, becomes a very fun and experimental process. Other than being limited to the number of pieces you can use in a vehicle, there is no other limit to what you can try. As you attempt to complete challenges, you often have to go back and revise your design so that it will be better equipped to complete the task at hand.
Banjo Kazooie has elements of both a game of progression and emergence. There are levels with challenges, and completing these challenges allows you to unlock even more. However, the way in which you solve these challenges is up to you. There are of course some physical guidelines that must be followed (you can't win using a wedge car on a pushing challenge), but other than that, it is up to you to create the solution. The story itself sets up some conflict and a reason to go through each level and its contained challenges, but what really drove me to play the game was to see what parts I would get next, and what the next greatest vehicle i could build was.
[read this GameLog]
|
|
|
