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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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Tales of Vesperia (360) by dkirschner |
| Great feel for this JRPG. Oozing with charm, fun action battle system, neat item synthesis and skill systems. ----------- No, no, no. Charm oozes away and game is left dry. Story sucks. Upgrading weapons was the best part. Not a terrible game, I'm just way over this series. |
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most recent entry: Saturday 2 November, 2013
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Finished Tales the same day as FFXIII. I am SO over JRPGs for a while!
I'd say the game began around an 85% for me and ended on a 70%. It outstayed its welcome by 15 or so hours as well. I think I'm just tired of the Tales series, perhaps have grown out of it. I haven't played one in a long time, since Tales of Symphonia on Gamecube.
Tales of Vesperia is all about friendship and being stronger together and learning to put others' needs first...blech. It started out all funny and charming, especially compared to FFXIII's complete lack of charm (save Sazh), but a handful of the characters ended up being really annoying. I liked Yuri, the main. He had a cool attitude and was voice acted very well. Estelle and Judith were also pretty good. Repede, the pipe-smoking dog, was the best of course. As usual, the children characters just got under my skin. Karol is like 10 years old and is a monster hunter. How original, a monster hunter. Then he becomes a guild leader of the guild that Yuri forms with him. Why would you form a guild with an annoying 10-year-old kid? I dunno. Unfortunately the guild becomes the centerpiece for the whole 'let's stick together' theme and it was just so cheesy that I didn't really want to play anymore after that. Rita is the other character I disliked. She's also a kid, a "genius mage" and a researcher. Yeah, a 12-year-old expert scientist. She goes on and on about science and research. As a Ph.D. student, I cannot stand science and research being talked about in uninformed ways. In Rita's world of science, she just "discovers" things left and right. She uses the scientific method...literally, she said at some point "hypothesis, method, collect data, observe...that's the secret to winning!" or something equally idiotic. She's always figuring things out, but contrary to her scientific method, she always discovers things abstractly instead of empirically and then assumes they will work. I know it's fiction, but damn the game's representation of research irked me to death! There were more annoying non-main characters too...ah, JRPGs...
Here's a quick breakdown of the story. There are things called 'blastia' that power various systems in cities and whatnot...regulate water supply, form barriers to keep monsters out, etc. Blastia is going missing/being destroyed, so monsters are invading everywhere. "Monsters." They're never any specific enemy, just "monsters." Anyway, you go off trying to find what's happening to the blastia and after a while the story goes deeper and deeper and gets super convoluted. There are ancient beings called Entelexia and there's some bad thing called Adephagos that I thought was one enemy but turns out at the end it was plural the whole time (??) and seriously I had no frackin idea what was going on for the last 10 hours of the game and I really didn't care either. The story was really really weak.
Combat remains fun, yet repetitive. Tales is known for its active combat system where you run one character around the field mashing buttons and scoring combos. Combat system is deep but became B B B B B B X B B B B B B X... repeat ad infinitum. Every fight can be won like that, especially once you set particular skills and tweak your party and the AI behavior. There are tons of types of combo attacks and special moves and tons of weapons that you learn skills from by wearing them and getting "LP" points. Enemy types are recycled like crazy. I just watched the trailer for Tales of Xillia, the new Tales game, and they have the SAME enemy types on the trailers in that game. Come on guys, new enemies...
There's tons of extra content and a new game + mode if you're into that. Fans will probably love it, but I think it's my last Tales game. I was so bored and did not care at all for the last couple play sessions. This is one I wish I hadn't bothered to play. Very mediocre experience for me. Scratched Tales of Xillia off my 'to buy' list.
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