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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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most recent entry: Friday 12 November, 2021
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Phenomenal experience. Beautiful/sad story, haunting setting, exploration-heavy, challenging combat, creative enemies, outstanding level design. The one gripe I imagine people having with this is its difficulty--a coupling of the Souls-like death system and the definitely-sometimes-annoying checkpoint system.
I'll start briefly with those gripes, and then gush about the rest of it. This is a 2d metroidvania that most reminds me of the Ori games (also phenomenal). But it certainly takes inspiration from Dark Souls. When you kill enemies, you get Geo (money). Geo is precious for the first half of the game because purchasing items from the world's vendors is key to survival and exploration. As you explore, you will find benches. These are "save points" of sorts. Sit at one and it records your progress, updates your map, and serves as a respawn point. When you die, a shadow of you spawns where you died and you respawn at the last bench you sat at, with 0 Geo and decreased health capacity. You are supposed to trek back to your shadow, kill it, and retrieve your Geo. Not always easy! Often, you will have died far, far, far away from the last bench and have to traverse 10 minutes of deadly enemies and environments to find your shadow (which is VERY handily marked on your map!). But if you die again before you kill your shadow, you respawn back at your bench and permanently lose your Geo. Brutal. This happened to me a few times. The risk to carrying around tons of Geo (without spending it regularly or depositing it in the bank) is huge, and when you die and go to find your shadow again, you need to be very, very careful.
Once you get farther in the game, the death/Geo loss risk decreases significantly. You'll eventually buy everything from all the vendors and Geo becomes a mere trophy. And as you unlock more and more areas, benches, stag stations (fast travel locations), and upgrades, all the backtracking becomes less tedious. And backtrack you will do, especially if you're seeking out all of Hallownest's secrets. But the character movement is tight, the environments are eerily beautiful, the enemies are fun, and so all the walking back and forth was rarely bad for me (except the one night I stayed up till 2am playing this and couldn't stop because I was stuck in an anxiety-inducing loop of dying, killing my shadow, trying to get out of the ridiculously dangerous area I had stumbled into called Deepnest, dying again, killing my shadow, etc. I was so tired, which just made me die more.). Otherwise, I enjoyed zooming around to revisit previously inaccessible secrets that I had marked on my map after obtaining movement upgrades. Plus, you will become more powerful and the enemies and environmental hazards will stop posing much threat.
I really liked how once difficult areas became a breeze to zip through later in the game. Deepnest, for example, so terrified me after that marathon session lasting till 2am that I avoided it for probably 10 hours of playtime and did everything else I could before revisiting it. When I did revisit it, I was pleased to find that the enemies that had once seemed impossible were now relatively easy (and could be farmed for Geo!).
The game takes place in a ruined city, Hallownest, that fell into misfortune some time ago. Explorers delve into it seeking knowledge, treasure, and adventure. As you explore, you'll meet other adventurers, characters who still live there, and corrupted denizens. The story is drip-fed to you through cryptic dialogue and environmental storytelling. Basically, some sort of infection consumed the city and the king tried to stop it by creating a vessel, which he locked away and sealed. But the vessel was tainted and the infection continued to wreak havoc on the city. So you, adventurer, learn about what you are doing as you go along (your character doesn't speak, so this is all through others speaking/thinking about you). You need to open the seal and destroy the vessel (though in the process...).
You'll explore a huge, huge map (huuuge, look up a picture) with different parts of the city that connect in various ways. There are the cliffs above the city, the royal quarters, the waterways, gardens, a beehive (did they produce honey?!), and more. Each section is aesthetically unique with different kinds of enemies. Sections are gated off in various ways and as you get new abilities, you can open the paths to them. Despite this, I imagine that no two players will take the exact same path through the game. Exploration was one of the best parts of Hollow Knight because you never knew when you would come upon a new area and you never knew what was there. When you enter a new area, you have no map of it until you locate the Cartographer. You'll hear him humming a tune and you'll see map fragments on the ground. Follow the sound and paper trail to find him and purchase the area map. Sometimes he's pretty close to where you enter the area and you can methodically map it out. I mean, you'll methodically map it out whether you actually have the map or not! In some areas, the Cartographer is not easy to find, which makes "find the Cartographer" like your first objective whenever you discover a new area. One area, Fog Canyon, I had completely memorized because it connected a couple other areas and I never found the Cartographer until just before I beat the game. I heard his humming and saw a paper scrap, but he was behind some impassable barrier (which I never found the way to open until looking it up after beating the game). I eventually found a different way to him, but yeah, you have to do the work to get the maps!
I said that you never know what is coming next. "Surprise" is another of my favorite things about Hollow Knight. And bosses! There are a lot of bosses. Some were pretty difficult, especially sort of in the mid-point of the game for me. Early on, bosses didn't give me much trouble, I think just because they were easy enough to read and I'm good at video games (/flex). Half-way through, though, I ran across several that gave me trouble, and a couple that I just ignored after repeated attempts (like the Grimm Troupe in the expansion pack and some of the "enhanced" versions of some regular bosses). I think these bosses were objectively more difficult and meant to be tackled later, plus I think I was slow to upgrade my weapon. Once I found the weaponsmith, I had materials to upgrade two or three times, and most of the rest of the game sailed by. I wound up beating later bosses by just equipping "weapon upgrade" type runes and spamming XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, only pausing when my health was low, and sometimes even killing the boss before I even had to heal. I wound up killing the last boss like this, while taking advantage of his choreographed "pauses" to heal. Spam XXXXXXXXX. Boss pauses to catch his breath. Heal. Spam XXXXXXX. Win. There are definitely some MUCH harder fights than the final one, including some nerve-wracking arena wave battles. I never did beat the final arena challenge.
SO. I hear there's a sequel to this on the way. Sign me up. I did not expect to like this so much. Metroidvanias are not my favorite genre, but I seem to get into some of them. I haven't yet identified what makes one "click" with me. I'm going back through old metroidvanias or metroidvania-adjacent 2d puzzle/platformers seeing which ones I liked a lot: the Ori games, the Guacamelee! games, Outland, Carrion, The Swapper (definitely more puzzle there). But then others have really not clicked (...Metroid Prime, most metroidvanias that mix roguelike elements like Dead Cells, although other roguelikes like Spelunky or FTL I have really enjoyed...). Truly, a mystery. I should reflect on this more. Until then, it's time to dust off Breath of the Wild, which I remember nothing about but am determined to complete over winter break!
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