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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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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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Catherine (PS3) by dkirschner |
| Supposed to be interesting! ----------------- Cool game. Great story. Makes you think. Tackles important relationship issues. Puzzles got tedious. |
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most recent entry: Thursday 21 June, 2018
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I just checked, and I bought Catherine about 5 years ago. It's outlasted all the other PS3 games on my shelf, those that I bought, played, and sold since acquiring that console. As I'm in the midst of cleaning house, I realized if I would just play Catherine, I could sell my PS3 since I've played everything else I want to on it. Strange motivation to play a game, but it worked.
Catherine is a puzzle game published by Atlus, who I came to love in my PS2 days for publishing excellent RPGs like the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei series. The story here is excellent, the high point of the game. You play as Vincent, a directionless guy in his early 30s who's been dating Katherine for the past 5 years. Vincent suffers pressure from Katherine and her parents to get married and, you know, grow up. Upon reflection, this may have contributed to why the game sat on my shelf for years. I was living with a girlfriend who put this pressure on me, and I didn't want her to see me playing a game about it (especially when the character ends up cheating). Anyway, at the bar he and his friends frequent, he meets another young woman, Catherine, who is opposite Katherine in many ways. She's younger, hotter, loves sex, seemingly uninterested in a long-term relationship. Vincent starts cheating, and so begin his nightmares. There's more going on, but to keep it simple, Vincent increasingly struggles over what he's doing, and increasingly struggles to keep Katherine and Catherine from finding out about one another. The game explores these themes well (relationships, parenthood, responsibility, transitioning to adulthood), and larger themes that the two K/Catherines represent, order and disorder.
The game alternates between Vincent's time at the bar at night, where you hang out with your friends, get to know other patrons, and respond to texts from the K/Catherines, his nightmares where he climbs daunting puzzle towers, and his days, in which there's usually a story bit of him waking up and/or meeting someone for lunch. I wasn't terribly impressed with the puzzling, and that turned out to be a tedious hindrance to hear more story. These are spatial block puzzles. In each stage, you climb a tower of blocks, and you'll have to navigate and move various kinds of blocks to create stairs, to remove obstacles, and so on, in order to reach the top. The bottom of the level falls away periodically, so you have to keep moving, which puts temporal pressure on. The last stage of each area features a challenging boss. The bosses remind me of Bayonetta or Devil May Cry by character design. They're all creepy or disgusting, especially the fucking baby level.
Catherine is a DIFFICULT game. I played on "normal" (don't be fooled!) for the first three areas, and was pulling my hair out by the end of it. I couldn't wait to beat the third area's final boss so I could switch to easy difficulty. Easy is significantly simpler than normal, but still can turn challenging. Note that you can't change difficulties when you're in the nightmare, so you need to keep a save in the bar, as I learned the hard way (otherwise, I would have been on easy halfway through the third area). The game is generous with checkpoints during your tower climbs. I read that Catherine used to be even harder upon release, and that the devs patched it to make it easier because players were complaining. I'm glad they did!
There's more complexity than I've described to the story and the puzzles, but this is the gist. It's a cool game, and I'd recommend it for something different. Don't feel bad if you have to use a walkthrough for a couple puzzles. And if you really get into it and love the puzzling, there's days more worth of it in challenge modes and striving for perfect runs.
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