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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!
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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.
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Sonic Rush (DS) by jp (Apr 6th, 2025 at 13:34:08) |
I started playing this from the saved game - with new(?) character Blaze on "area 2" (I don't remember the exact name). And, I just could not beat the level - it was set in the casino world, and everything was moving super fast and on "automatic" - so, you just press move and the character zips along, bounces, etc.
It's actually quite boring! Because you just do this, at some point you hit an enemy (very few enemies in the game!), lose your rings, and then carry on. But, I'd lose because I'd fall into a bottomless pit, lose three lives and then out.
I'd say it wasn't so much frustrating as it was a disappointment. Yes, the point of Sonic is that it's "fast" - that's it's thing. But I find that there's little interaction to the game for most of the levels - you just "go along with the direction". It's neat when sometimes you get bounced around automatically, but for the most part I like to control the character.
So, I deleted the save file and started a new one, this time with Sonic in the equivalent of green hill zone. This level has two areas and then a boss. So, it's like 3 levels make up a level.
And, the experience was pretty similar - run on automatic for a while, lose rings suddenly or die, repeat with a bit more caution...etc. I did make it all the way to the boss fight - which I almost beat one too many times, and I just realized - ok, this is dumb - at least the boss fights have more gameplay ( you dodge, make an attack when the weak spot is open, etc.) - but it's still a pretty boring/uninteresting platforming experience.
So, off to the shelf it goes!
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Secret Files: Tunguska (DS) by jp (Apr 4th, 2025 at 19:16:25) |
I think there's a weird moment in time when everyone thought that point-and-click style adventure games were dead, but they were not. And, I think this game is an example of a game that was under the radar of "mainstream" games press at the time? Or at least under the radar of the average consumer of videogames...
This particular game is also a strange little time capsule - it's a port of what I think was a PC game...also at a time when people where porting all kinds of things to the DS. And, it works! Well, from a UI perspective at least. And it works pretty well. At least compared to another adventure game I played recently on the DS whose name I'm blanking on as I write this. I bounced on that one because it had some character/3D interactions that were awkward and unintuitive. Here, they were much smarter about it (I'm assuming they made UI "concessions" because it's on the DS). So, while you have a 3D character that navigates a static space - you don't actually have to move the character around directly in order to interact with objects/places in each scene. Press one button and all the interactive spots highlight, and you can just tap on them directly. I LOVE this solution - especially because I was never a fun of the "hunt for the pixel" approach that many games had (on PC) - and I'm super glad it didn't come across into this DS version (for all I know, the "here's all the highlights" was also possible on PC).
But, the UI triumph aside, I still kind of bounced off this. I got stuck on a puzzle (how typical!) - and what I had to do was leave a location to visit another location and then continued...this seemed really "unfair" to me - as in, unintuitive - mostly because I had assumed I could not leave the locatio in the first place. It wasn't entirely unintuitive - but it was the sort of puzzle where I was sure I should be able to (in this case) get the key out of the aquarium - but it turns out that no, I had to leave the place, do some other stuff, and then come back. At this point I was well into the tried-and-true "try all the things with all the things", except that I did not know I could leave the location I was at. Sigh.
So, from glancing at my list of DS games I still need to play...well, I wasn't THAT interested in the story so far and the puzzles didn't feel particularly interesting either..so, it was an easy game to put on the shelf.
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Shogun Showdown (PC) by dkirschner (Apr 4th, 2025 at 18:33:00) |
Clever little tactics roguelite. It reminds me of Into the Breach and other tactics games where you are given clear information about what enemies will do each turn. It's also reminiscent of Into the Breach because of the small play space. Basically, the game takes place on a 2d plane that is divided into like 8 or 9 spaces. Any given character occupies 1 space and can move left or right. You build a "deck" of "tiles" that include attacks and other special abilities, many of which involve movement (e.g., a forward dash that moves to the nearest frontal enemy and deals 1 damage). Your goal is to build up your tiles and progress stage by stage until you kill the Shogun.
During each run, you can purchase and upgrade tiles, mostly increasing their damage or decreasing their cooldowns, purchase passive abilities, use items, and other standard roguelite stuff--make yourself stronger by strategically handling whatever random things you get.
Most every action you do takes a turn, and all characters take turns at the same time. So, you move right (1 turn) and all the enemies do a thing (one might move left toward you, one might queue up an attack). Then you queue up an attack, and those two enemies might queue up an attack and attack, respectively. Actually, it also reminds me of Crypt of the Necrodancer, which works like this, where all characters act simultaneously. In that game, when you move, everything else moves. Shogun Showdown is like that. When you do something, the enemies do something.
I beat the Shogun for the first time this evening, which was maybe my fifth run or so. I had what felt like extremely overpowered weapons, a sword that I'd leveled up to deal 5 damage with only a 2-turn cooldown. I also had a bow-and-arrow with 4 damage and a 3-turn cooldown. The kicker though was a curse that doubled the next damage on an enemy. So, I'd just queue the curse, the sword, and the arrow. That took literally half the Shogun's health bar. Did it again, dead and into phase 2. No problem. Did it two more times. Dead. Easy. When you beat the Shogun, you unlock "day 2", which is the next difficulty level. You can also unlock additional characters with different skills, and you can keep unlocking new tiles and stuff. I consider it beat after taking out the Shogun once. It's a fun game, really tight, and makes you think ahead. It doesn't do much that you haven't seen before though.
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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.
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2285 registered gamers and 3255 games. 7787 GameLogs with 13264 journal entries. 5110 games are currently being played.
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most recent entry: Sunday 9 February, 2014
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Summary:
two teams of 1 or 2 players fight for control of the board and objectives (similar to Risk) using card and dice based combat. A “computer controlled” 3rd party, Booker and Elizabeth, move around the board, interacting with players. The game is over when players have achieved enough victory points by capturing territory or completing objectives or the city is destroyed by Booker and Elizabeth.
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Play Session 1:
This will focus on basic game mechanics and my initial impressions of them. I will make plenty of comparisons to Risk since this game is in the same vein.
This is a very complicated game and took us a while to set up. There are a huge amount of pieces and lots of rules. It definitely requires a “trial play through”, which is what this session is.
Players start their turn by buying units and structures. Compared to Risk though, there are much fewer territories and units so each is more important. Personally, I like this as it makes the game more compact and hectic and each decision carries more weight. Structures allow for combat bonuses and are a good way of defending against attacks if your troops are elsewhere or you are attacked by both opposing players.
After buying comes unit movement and this has a unique twist. A unit can move normally, a short distance from one location to the next or they can use the skylines to travel anywhere they want on the map in one turn. However, to balance out the power this gives, all units riding the skylines have a chance to die, with the chance increasing the farther they go. This is a cool tie in to the game but the chance to die is so great that it’s almost never worth it unless absolutely necessary. This is one of the few parts of the game I would change. High risk, high reward is one thing but this is betting everything you have and hoping to roll snake eyes 5 times in a row. It’s just not practical.
Finally comes combat. Rather than just rolling dice like in Risk, players play cards from their hand to add to the roll. This is a decision I very much like since it forces players to strategize rather than just hope for a lucky event. This is a good time to talk about the upgrade system. Players are given lots of chances to upgrade their combat cards (of which there are 6 different types), each in 4 different ways up to 2 levels. As someone who loves getting meaningful upgrades, this is a great way to keep players interested and helps to support myriad different play styles. Each card also has an unlockable special ability, some of which are the same to both teams and some of which are unique to a faction. These are a very fun way of mixing up combat and an addition I’m a big fan of.
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Play Session 2:
This will focus on some more advanced topics as well as issues we ran into our second time around as more “advanced players”
At the start of each game, each player randomly selects a team leader. These leaders each have a different power which gives a bonus in a certain way (extra troop movement, extra money, cheaper structures). Though some are definitely better than others, all are useful and none are game breaking. It is important to play to your leader’s strengths though and to account for your enemies’.
At the start of each round, an event card is played and players play cards from their hands to either pass or fail the event. These are the same cards which are later used in combat, forcing players to choose between an important affect (extra money for a team, extra damage for a turn, Booker will attack someone specific) and attempting to win a fight later on. Additionally, a world card is also played which gives teams a chance to vie for victory points. These give the game a high level of replayability.
One of the problems with the game though is that it is very complicated. That in of itself isn’t the issue though; it’s that the rules will inevitably have gaps that will be confusing. In our case, we could not decide what “occupation of a territory” meant. Can you use a structure or do you need a unit there? This is a simple example but it was only our group’s second game and we had already come across this. Groups that play this game are going to need to be able to establish a good set of house rules to account for this.
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Final Impressions:
As someone who’s started getting into “serious” board games like this, I really like this game and would put it among my favorites. It’s deep, balanced, well put together, has high replayability and is generally well thought out. It does have its issues, but its nothing that puts a serious dampener on game play.
Playing Bioshock: Infinite the video game will probably make you enjoy this game a little more, as you recognize places and people from the game, but you certainly don’t need to have played it to enjoy this game. Half my group hadn’t and they had a blast. If you are looking for a large, fun game and aren’t afraid to spend a few bucks, this is a great choice.
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