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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,
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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: Tuesday 29 March, 2011
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Zelda II: The Adventure of Link – Saturday, Mar. 26th (both games)
Zelda II is the sequel to the successful The Legend of Zelda title. Both games are for the Nintendo Entertainment System. This game is similar in play to the side scrolling Castlevania games from the same era.
Genre:
Zelda II is an action game at heart, a role playing game in its execution, and a platformer in practice. The action element stems from the player’s limited inventory. The primary weapon that the player uses is the sword (which looks like and is used like a dagger for whatever reason). The player must be quick at the controls to hit his/her enemy in the weak spots while dodging incoming blows. However, the player has three primary stats that can be leveled which give it an RPG element: health (effectively defense), magic (reduces cost of using spells), and attack. In addition, there are stats which can be modified: defense can be modified with spells that the player may find, and max health and max magic points can be increased by collecting items. Most spells modify the character, such as the Jump spell (which increases the height of Link’s jump). Some spells, however, modify nearby enemies, such as the one that kills all enemies on the screen. Experience points are gained by killing enemies and by collecting EXP bags, and the points can be spent on a stat or saved for a different stat. In the end, though, this game is a platformer. This game is side scrolling like the original Mario and Castlevania games, and because of this, the player must often jump across ravines or traps and must dodge enemies.
Initializing play:
When the player first loads the game, he/she can name his/her game/character and begin the game. The game can be saved via a combination of buttons that will stop the game or by dying and running out of lives which also causes the save screen to come up. A player can resume his/her game on the load screen by selecting it. Unfortunately, he/she will start out at the very beginning of the game with the only differences being that his/her stats will be updated to whatever they were when the player saved, and his/her items/spells will remain as well. However, any experience points used to level up stats disappear, which can be very annoying, so it is best for the player to spend his/her experience points when he/she is about to lose the last life.
The hero/the plot:
The story is not very fleshed out. Supposedly, Link is the same hero from the first Zelda game. In the first game, Link was a traditional hero in that there was really no reason for him to have gone on his journey to save Zelda save that he is just a nice guy and could. His motives in the second game are rather unclear. Zelda has been put into an eternal slumber by Ganon’s followers who remained after his death. They are trying to resurrect Ganon – by using Link’s blood. This introduces a second motive for Link; if he sits around and does nothing, then Ganon’s followers will eventually kill him and succeed.
The world:
The game is spatially segmented with an over world. In this top-down view, Link journeys across the world looking for towns and dungeons, neither of which are necessarily easily discovered. Enemies appear after a certain time period and roam around the screen. If Link comes into contact with an enemy, he enters into an area with the traditional side view. This area is small, but it is filled with whatever types of enemies are native to that location. Once Link makes it to the end of the area (the boundary) on either the left of right side, he returns to the over world.
The over world divides the world up in two major ways. First, it spatially separates towns, dungeons, and caves (and often caves are two-way and divide the over world). Second, various obstacles, such as water or large rocks, separate one part of the map with another, requiring Link to obtain a specific item to continue. This divides the game into some linear pieces, requiring some levels to be beaten before others. Otherwise, any level can be beaten in any order.
Towns in this game have residents, many of which who will talk with you and tell you next to useless information. In addition, some of the younger women will let Link inside of their homes to heal him, and the older women will do the same but restore his magic (and who knows how this is accomplished). Also, a select few inhabitants have items to give, spells to teach, or sword techniques to teach Link so that he can become more powerful/continue on his journey.
Caves generally separate areas of the over world, but they may also contain items (some optional). Heart containers increase max health. Bottles increase max magic. And finally, little trophies shaped like Link increase the player’s number of lives by one. Caves generally contain enemies, and most of them are pitch black unless the player has obtained the candle.
There are many dungeons in this game. All of the dungeon bosses of the first six dungeons (also called palaces) must be defeated to unlock the entry to the final palace. Dungeons are mazes full of enemies and are progressively harder (by type/frequency of enemies and by complexity of maze).
Game play:
In my first session, I played through the first level and part of the second level. My strategy was to primarily level up my attack. Each level up in attack halves the number of hits that it takes for an enemy to fall, and I knew that I would not need as much health if I could kill the enemies quickly. I learned anew that the little blue blobs that are able to lunge at your character are extremely annoying, even if they are easily dispatched. This is due to the mechanics of controlling the game. It is very difficult to jab their small hitbox, especially given the speed at which they jump at you. I remember them being easier, probably due to the ability that the player gets further into the game which allows him/her to jump and stab downwards exactly as Link does for his in the air downward smash in the Super Smash Brothers series.
I have never done well at killing iron knuckles in this game, and this was especially true during this play through given that I am really rusty on the controls. The action element of this game really comes into play fighting these things. I know that there is an easy way to kill them (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9yhg7_zelda-ii-how-to-kill-a-iron-knuckle_videogames), but timing my jumps and strikes is difficult. The alternative though is to watch whether or not it will strike at your head or your gut and to try to block it and attack in the narrow timeframe between attacks, which I certainly cannot do.
My second session was nothing short of a disaster. I finished up level two easily enough, but level three was just too difficult. First of all, there was an abundance of enemies with high health that could jump and throw stuff at you. Second of all, there was an abundance of high health iron knuckles which I have yet to be able to kill easily.
The primary reason for failing at this dungeon, however, was the introduction of the blue iron knuckle. This thing can throw his knives at you at a very fast pace. I just cannot control my character well enough yet to kill these things effectively. What was worse though was that the first blue iron knuckle was placed immediately following a dark red one (similar to the regular iron knuckle, but with more health). Once I did finally manage my way through these enemies, the boss was none other than a supercharged blue iron knuckle. Its first phase is on horseback where it tries to gore you with a lance. Once I made it past this form, I found that it turned into a regular blue iron knuckle which then killed me. Out of frustration, I ended my gaming session.
Overall:
Overall, this game is enjoyable, albeit incredibly frustrating and difficult. I played this game years ago and never could beat the final level because I would lose most of my lives travelling from the beginning (since this is the location on the map it puts you when you load a save) to that level. If the developers had just added a few more spells or reduced the number of enemies, the game would be more enjoyable. As it is, you should not play this game unless you want a real challenge and have the time to overcome the timing issues for executing moves properly. Also, you need some time to level your character’s stats up. Good luck staying alive long enough later in the game to get the number of points necessary to level your stats.
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