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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: Saturday 7 May, 2011
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Finished this just now. It's not the masterpiece I remember it being like 6 years ago, but it's still pretty fun. I remember it as more gritty, some of the best graphics I'd ever seen, and a more thick prison atmosphere. It's still gritty and got character, graphics of course look a bit dated now, but still nice.
The voice acting is awesome, what little of it there is. I'm glad Vin Diesel had a hand in making the game and starred in it. Unlike most action/stealth games, Riddick isn't scared of anything. All the guards, even the warden, everyone is terrified of him because he's a ruthless killer. When you start the game, this officer, Johns, has captured you (again?) and brought you to Butcher Bay to get a fat bounty from the warden there. The warden is on a power trip and has Butcher Bay on serious lockdown. He doesn't pay the bounty and instead mistreats Johns and tosses Riddick in a cell, from which he promptly escapes, starts a prison riot, and wreaks havok on the prison in an attempt to escape, which he finally does, with Johns. They have a cool relationship, one of those where the cop always catches the criminal, but they both revel in the chase and help each other at the end of the day.
The first chunk of the game is rather RPGish. Riddick has to escape general population, so he either wins some pit fights or gets caught with drugs, and has to run around doing favors for the inmates. That part was cool because you get to talk to the inmates and watch them interact. Some of them are crazy, some are mean, some are nervous, etc. etc. There's a decent amount of interesting extraneous dialogue to eavesdrop on. I stumbled on a repairman at one point improvising a song as he was working by himself. He was fixing an electrical panel. Something like "Oh yeah, gonna fix your panel baby. Mmmm, yeah, I'm fixin it good, gonna put it in place and fix your panel baby." Silly and random, and fun to stumble on. Unfortunately I had to break his neck for a key card.
The game relies on light and shadow. Riddick can see in the dark due to some ocular implants, so it's in his advantage to shoot out lights and be stealthy. Guards aren't so good in the dark. Their guns have flashlights though, and they'll sometimes wise up and use them. Usually the dark really does provide serious advantage, and I figured this out at some point, to stop trying to run & gun. I died a lot from doing that, but probably even more from trying to play the light & dark game. Why? Because the enemies like to cheat and see you in the pitch blackness. They like to suddenly open fire on you. They like, after you shoot a light or shoot one of them, to run right next to you and shine their light on you and alert all the other guards. And they like to shine their light from completely across the room, in your general direction, and then pump bullets into you from impossibly far away. And they run around like chickens with their heads cut off sometimes if they're alerted, which makes it really annoying to get rid of them. For the most part, this actually made the game fun and challenging because the guards and their cheating was so unpredictable, but after replaying some parts 20, 30 times it could get old.
Another highlight was getting to drive mechs. I like mechs. I like being overpowered and shooting missiles at guys with pistols. The final sequence in the game involves a mech, and is like a gauntlet. Very fun romp through the warden's offices for some payback.
I tried to get on the multiplayer to check it out, but as I figured, no one was playing. Oh right, there are extras, cigarette packets you can pick up. Each one is some fake brand of cigarettes with some punny health warning on it. I picked up maybe half, and they were a strange diversion that were fun to read, but really didn't fit in the game world. You can argue about cigarettes being contraband in prison, but random packs lying around in the caves, the mines, in the oddest places. How did they get there?! A couple: "MBryo - Don't smoke while getting pregnant." "Charlie's Chocolat Cigarettes - Emits toxic gas if heated." "Lung Busters - Tracheotomy tickles." Yeah, anti-smoking campaign?
Anyway, fun stuff. Played it because I found it and Dark Athena on Steam and never played Dark Athena. So refreshing myself on Butcher Bay and will get to Dark Athena soon!
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