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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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2285 registered gamers and 3255 games. 7787 GameLogs with 13264 journal entries. 5110 games are currently being played.
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Gradius (NES) by Galactiger |
| This game is full of gritty action set in a hostile alien world. It's a pretty good SHMUP, but you should probably avoid it if you dislike humiliation. |
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most recent entry: Wednesday 23 January, 2008
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Gamelog #2 Session #2 for CMPS 20
Start Time: 5:00 pm
End Time: 6:00 pm
Assignment due 1/25/08
Note: Whoops, this got posted to the front page. LOL, how embarrassing! Anyway, there ought to be a way to get this format template for 20/80K posted somewhere. It would be convenient.
GAMEPLAY
Gradius started out as sort of fun to play and turned into a chore. I couldn't get past the first level; a spewing volcano of sorts got in the way. The game doesn't have a tutorial, which makes you feel silly if you can't figure out the complicated weapons system when there's really only two buttons (it's the NES version). Out of boredom with the game, I tried to see how long I would last simply holding down the "shoot" button. Surprisingly, it was comparable to how long I lasted when I was actively trying to play well. This was immensely discouraging.
Some of the more difficult aspects of the game which were difficult to the point of destroying the fun of the game were evading enemies and figuring out how to use the power-ups effectively. Evading enemies of normal size was okay, but trying to evade multiple "baseballs of doom" was really difficult. The boss volcano that spewed brown "baseballs of doom" looked really unpleasant and was really difficult, if not impossible, to get by. The power-ups were often more of a hindrance than a boost. One of the power-ups also shoots bad guys, but effectively makes you a bigger target, making it more difficult to pass levels where you have to squeeze into certain areas. Not only that, it absorbs most of the accumulated bonuses, making it difficult to get something else that will help you.
One very sad thing about Gradius is that you are thrown into a situation, without any reason to care about the outcome. Usually, compelling story and characters would do this for a game. The development that would go into story and characters could be pretty minimal, such as a scant few lines of text that names a few character names. No such thing is in Gradius, which means that after I quickly tired of the gameplay itself, there were no characters or story to keep me coming back.
Looking through other reviews of the game, the major thing going for this SHMUP is that it's a classic. That good point can only persuade someone to try a game, not to stick with it. Many other reviews had similarly negative tone; my bad experience is not unique.
I don't recommend this game to anyone but someone who 1) is a hardcore SHMUP-player, and 2) has access to the manual and/or walkthrough. Although the game has a two-player option at the beginning, I didn't have the opportunity to try it. Besides, I'm not sure I would subject any of my friends to Gradius.
DESIGN
Gradius creates conflict, but mostly not the kind you want or expect. The challenges are mostly how to not get bored, frustrated, or angry playing this game. The game didn't bother to keep things interesting. With no story, few characters, poor gameplay, and huge difficulty, Gradius doesn't keep me interested in the least. This game could be hugely improved with tutorials and narrative, which it lacks completely.
The steep learning curve and complicated power-up system make this a bad game. Gradius has a following, but it's not part of the typically mainstream audience and market, and the learning curve and complications are likely why. I enjoyed this game for the first ten minutes, but every 10-minute interval after that, I had learned nothing and basically repeated the same game experience, which was pretty awful.
Despite all its faults, Gradius makes pretty good use of space within the gameworld. The whole screen is filled with baddies and the environment for much of the time. The sky is filled with stars rather than being a plain, empty black. Good use of space might be a good feature in a game. However, the good use of space in this game serves only to make the game more difficult than it originally was, which hurts the design of the game.
The tone of the music and the tone of the gameworld conflict hugely in my opinion. The tone of the music sounds like you're exploring and making revelations. The tone of the gameworld makes it seems as though you have a clear mission to destroy bad guys. However, the tone of the music and gameworld both conflict with what's really going on. For example, death in-game resulted in a jubilant ditty being played. The tone is therefore mixed and confused, which is pretty disappointing.
I would change a lot of things about this game. If something is not obvious, I would have a tutorial so it's not necessary to keep a manual. Paper manuals are frequently lost, even for games which require some explanation. It's not that the controls of Gradius themselves are complicated; it's just complicated and confusing when there's no explanation given. Knowing this information changes gameplay from an experiment into an experience, I think. The one thing this very frustrating experience has taught me about games I will make are: have explanations handy in-game. Not only does it simplify things and ease the learning curve, it can make or break a game.
That's it for this entry. Keep gaming!
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