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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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Gears Tactics (PC) by dkirschner |
| Crunchy Gears tactics game. Fun so far! ----------- Don't feel like committing to the end. Fun and intense combat, but the rest of the game doesn't do it justice. |
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most recent entry: Saturday 13 June, 2020
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I had never heard of Gears Tactics until I saw an ad for it on the Microsoft Game Pass storefront. Lo and behold, when it came out, it was included for free in Game Pass. Now, I'm wary of spinoffs, free games, and games I've never heard of that are all of a sudden available and appealing to me. But I do love tactics games, and the reviews for this were good-but-not-great (81% critic and 7.7 user scores on Metacritic, 76% "mostly positive" on Steam...and somehow a 4.8/5 on Xbox). I read a lot of reviews because the length appears to be 25 or so hours and I'm not keen on committing that amount of time to something that might be just okay. Plus, I have XCOM 2 and Shadow Tactics, two tactics games that I've actually been excited about for way longer.
Anyway, the perk of it being free is I can try it. If I'd paid for the game, I'd feel more compelled to finish, but to try for free? Eh, if it doesn't grab me I can put it down. I'm not sure how long I played, but I completed Act 1 (of 3), and I have a good impression of the game. The quick take is that it's XCOM-lite and a Gears game translated very well for tactics gameplay. I certainly had fun with it, but for everything cool about it, there are drawbacks that I know I'll not want to deal with for the remaining 2/3...and about 15-20 more hours...of the game.
Let's start with the cool stuff. If you've played a Gears of War game, you know it's already pretty tactical, as far as shooters go. I mean, it basically invented the modern third-person cover shooter. Just tilt the camera so you see the battlefield from above and, bam! Gears Tactics! Okay, it's more than that, but the franchise feels right at home in this genre. They kept standard enemy types and gun types and added classes. There are 5 classes that each have a couple specializations and quirks that make them feel unique. Some of the classes revolve around a gun type, such as the sniper (this one is obvious), the vanguard and support (which revolve around the lancer), and the heavy (which revolves around the mulcher [a chaingun]).
Each class has a big skill tree that branches off into four directions, allowing you to differentiate multiple characters with the same class. For example, the heavy can spend points around the Anchor skill, which is perfectly mapped from regular Gears games. In those games, you can't move and shoot a mulcher. Thus, in Gears Tactics, when the heavy takes a shot, he gains a stack of Anchor, which increases critical hit chance and damage. For every shot, he gains another stack, up to 3 or 5 depending on how many skill points you've invested. If you move, you lose your stacks. Maybe you're not interested in rooting your heavy to one spot and you'd rather spec your heavy so that shots do explosive damage in a radius. Maybe you want your support class character to specialize in healing individual units, or maybe in healing all units at once, or maybe in giving units other buffs. There are a good number of options here!
Enemies are similarly well translated from the regular games. Hammerburst drones like to take cover and use the Overwatch ability (all your characters can do this too, and it is quite useful), just like they tend to stay behind cover in the other games. Melee units will charge and try to get in range; genadiers become enraged and shoot harder and move farther; and so on. I suppose having played all the other Gears games (and two just recently) makes understanding Gears Tactics a little bit easier, but it's a pretty basic tactics game regardless, so far offering little challenge on normal difficulty. I also think playing two Gears games recently is making me care less about this one. I wonder if I'd be more into it under usual haven't-just-played-Gears-of-War circumstances.
Another way that the game adapts the regular franchise is through the focus on being aggressive. All your characters can perform executions on enemies if they are downed (dying), and some classes have abilities to charge and melee kill enemies. There are always perks for doing this, rooted in some character class's designs. When support class units kill an enemy, they heal all allies for a small amount. My vanguard is specced to gain 20% damage and 20% evasion for the rest of the round when he bayonet charges an enemy. My heavy has a perk where he gains 2 AP when another ally executes an enemy. Also, when you kill a downed enemy, every other ally gains 1 AP. So, the game really encourages up-close-and-personal combat through synergistic class skills. It's like the more you kill, especially with bayonets and chainsaws, the more actions you get. Very cool.
Despite the neat ideas Gears Tactics brings to the table for the tactics genre, the drawbacks are plenty as well. First, this story is so paper thin and uninteresting. The entire game is about you hunting some bad Locust guy named Ukkon. He's really bad, which you know by the fact that he's like an evil scientist, he kills COGS and laughs, he gets shot in the head and lives, he wears a cape and a crown, he uses an Immortan Joe style facemask to breathe sometimes. I mean, he's bad okay? So bad. Nearly every story mission so far has been "search for survivors/more COGs!" or "go to where Ukkon might be."
The story missions' narratives are bad enough, but the side missions are even more pointless. There are four types, which you will repeat over and over again. Or so I've read in reviews. But I've done two types and I already don't want to do any more side missions. The real problem? Side missions are mandatory! You have to complete x number of side missions every so often to progress the main story. They are pure filler to make the game longer. Gears Tactics has really annoying ads touting the fact that there are no microtransactions (what, is this a mobile game??) and asking you to rate it, but it is silent on the sin of padding a game with filler required side missions.
Couple this with the fact that your Gears level up so unbelievably slowly and you will be drowning in repetition. My main characters, the ones I've used every map, are level 4. My other COGs are level 2 or 3. I am looking right now at a video of the Act 2 boss (another 1/3 through the game) and they are playing with main characters level 4-5 and other COGs level 3-4. I've read that this is just how it is! People are finishing the game at level 7. Ugh. You only get skill points when you level up; otherwise, all you get are like weapon modifications and some armor, which generally do pretty boring things like just increase damage or evasion.
Speaking of the inventory system, it needs some streamlining. During missions, you can retrieve "cases" scattered around the map for parts, and you'll get some other parts as rewards. To equip something, you have to click through a bunch of menus for each soldier. Say I got a new helmet. I click a soldier, click the helmet slot, and see what they have equipped and the list of what else I have. If that soldier already has a good helmet, I have to click the roster, click the next soldier, click the helmet icon, and then see the list. I should be able to see what helmets all soldiers have on at the same time! Or, I should be able to see all of one character's equipment on the same screen! This clicking down into separate menus for each equipment type for each character is madness.
One of the best things about XCOM is that each of your soldiers matters to you (especially if you name them after your friends). When they die, it sucks. You're sad and have a hole in your team. Gears Tactics' extra COGs are totally dispensable. They can die permanently, but it doesn't matter at all. You have a constant stream of new recruits that, unbelievably, will often be of a higher level than the units you've groomed in battle. Well, time to bench reliable Todd who's been with me for this whole act and recruit Amanda because she's a level higher. Bye Todd. Gears Tactics also has no meta strategy layer. There's no base-building, no flying around the world, no nothing except leveling and equipping your Gears from mission to mission. It makes the game feel shallow (perhaps shallower than it actually is).
So, way more than I intended to write for this. Not a bad game at all! The battles hold my interest for sure. They are well done and exciting, and the one boss fight I had at the end of Act 1 was great. But almost everything else is barely propping it up. I'll wait for another tactics game that I was looking forward to!
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