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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,
you still consider yourself to be playing the game. If it's closed, you finished playing the game. (it doesn't matter
if you got bored, frustrated,etc.) You can also attach short comments to each of your games or even maintain a diary (with more detailed entries)
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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: Monday 14 January, 2008
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Gamelog Entry #1:
SUMMARY:
Rappelz is a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) that has three character races: Deva, Gaia, and Asura, within each of these races are three classes. For Deva there is the Holy Warrior, Cleric, and Breeder, for Gaia there is the Fighter, Kahuna, and Spell Singer, and for Asura there is the Strider, Dark Magician, and Sorcerer. Each class basically has a warrior, a mage, and a summoner; respectively for all races. Initially each race starts out with a basic character which you can later choose to become one of the classes for that race, meaning you don’t have to make a decision about your character until after you’ve played the game for a little while. About halfway through the game you can “job change†the aforementioned classes into their next evolution, so to speak, at which point you gain another skill set to go with the new sub-class. For the fighter and mage type there is a choice of two job changes to narrow the specialty of your character, while the summoner type only has one possibility.
GAMEPLAY:
As I said above initially everyone starts out on the Trainee Island with the basic characters for each race and has to run around doing several quests that teach you the rules, controls, and several nifty features of the game. As in any RPG you have to gain a certain amount of experience to level up, this is done by killing monster and doing quests for NPCs in the towns. (Note: Quests give a lot of experience, so it is definitely worth doing them). In Rappelz, along with experience, you get what are called Job Points these are used to get skills or to level up your Job Level. The job level, not the character level, is what dictates which skills are available for you to use. Hence, you don’t have to worry about messing up your character build by getting or upgrading a skill because you can just gain more job points by killing monster, in effect giving you unlimited job points.
One interesting feature of Rappelz is that your character has stamina. What this does is that, as long as you have some stamina, the amount of exp (experience) and jp (job points) doubles for each kill. On that note, the leveling in this game is really quick (at least for the first 25 levels or so); playing the game for an hour will likely get to level 10 at least.
There really isn’t much of a story for the game, I mean there is a quick background story to the three races are how they came to be, but there’s nothing to follow that and there is no final goal that you have to achieve. The game is definitely fun to play. The quick gaining of levels and abundance of quests makes it so that there is always something to do. The social interaction aspect really depends on the type of character you have. A mage character will need to be in a party to fight higher level monsters, whereas fighters are able to fight higher level monster on their own.
Gamelog Entry #2:
GAMEPLAY:
The style of gameplay doesn’t really change for higher level characters; you just get new skills and equipment. Though at the same time new areas of the game will become accessible to you, by this I mean that you will be able to go to new places on the map and fight higher level monster thereby exploring the world further. One of these places that you shouldn’t even attempt to go to without a strong party are the dungeons. These dungeons house monsters that much stronger than the ones you fight elsewhere in the game.
DESIGN:
I have mixed feeling about Rappelz. It’s a fun game to play, I certainly enjoy playing it but there are certain things that really bug me about it.
Let’s start of with the good elements. One element I really like is the amount of hot-keys that are available. Unlike most RPGs where you are limited to just the F1-F12 keys, Rappelz has F1-F12, Alt+F1-F12, Ctrl+F1-F12, and Shift+ F1-F12 be the hot-keys which really helps when you have a lot of skills, potions, and actions to map such that you don’t have to open your inventory in the middle of battle. On that note, items stack so the amount you can carry is only limited by how much weight you can carry, which is dependant on your items and your character’s strength. In Rappelz, the stats are automatically allocated each level with emphasis on certain stats depending on character class. A feature that I’ve already mentioned before is the stamina effect that doubles the exp and jp received. Also, there is are two items called Force or Soul Chips, which can be used on monsters to double the physical or magical, respectively, damage dealt to them for ten seconds; these items are quite abundant and pretty cheap to buy. I also like how each spell has its own cool-down time, so while one skill is cooling down you can use another one.
Now that I’ve covered good parts it’s time to talk about the bad parts. First and foremost, I really hate the fact that the developers are making this a game in which if you want to have better equipment and a more enjoyable playing experience you have to spend real money. There are some items that they sell in their online shop that simply don’t even have a minute chance of dropping in-game and if you want them you have to buy them; and these items aren’t cheap at all. This really ruins the long-term playing experience because even if you play for a long time you can’t get some of the best items in the game. Another thing that bugs me is that some monsters have a very low spawn rate, so sometimes finding the exact monster you need to complete a quest takes a really long time.
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