 |
|
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!
read all entries for this GameLog 
- add a comment 
|
|
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.
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
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!
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
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.
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
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.
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
|
|
|
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)
for that game. Call it a weblog of game playing activity if you will.
[latest site fixes and updates]
[read more]
|
view feed xml
|
 |
|
2285 registered gamers and 3255 games. 7787 GameLogs with 13264 journal entries. 5110 games are currently being played.
More stats
|
 |
|
most recent entry: Wednesday 25 December, 2024
|
I should have been writing entries for this as I was playing (same with Death Stranding, coming soon…) so that I could chronicle great moments. But man, I got sucked into this hard, and the great moments are uncountable. I don’t know how many times—dozens, at least—I thought, “Wow.” The writing is the best in any videogame ever. My total time was well over the “completionist” time on howlongtobeat.com because I read everything I could. Approach it like a novel; part absurdist, part political philosophy, part murder mystery. There is nothing like Disco Elysium. Here are some things that set this apart from a typical isometric RPG / point-and-click (the two genres this borrows from the heaviest):
1. You play as a loser, not a hero. And not just any loser, but an alcoholic cop who also loves to do speed (although you can swear off drinking and drugs; in my playthrough I was mostly clean). This is not an RPG where you can "be anyone." You can choose the "flavor" of alcoholic loser cop, but you're still an alcoholic loser cop.
2. The writing is smart. Like academic smart. Like if I didn’t have a PhD in Sociology I would have understood far less. If you like social and political theory, you may be the target audience here. And a variety of political theories are present, their virtues and flaws explored. None are upheld as “the answer” to organize society, yet special critique is reserved for people and systems that exploit the marginalized.
3. There is no combat, except for theory combat and some dialogue-based combat toward the end.
4. There is equipment, but it’s just clothes to make you look cool and/or absurd, and they affect stats.
5. All stats affect various checks and dialogue options.
6. Your stats are characters. Okay, this is a seriously unique feature. Your Empathy, your Logic, your Endurance, your Hand-eye Coordination…they all talk to you. They give you advice (sometimes bad advice), narrate situations, provide background information, crack jokes. You would think that high stats are all good, but this isn’t the case. Yes, you’ll pass checks, but any personality trait in an extreme has drawbacks. For example, Encyclopedia is great for providing you with background information, which you can use to your advantage, but at high levels, it provides a constant barrage of useless trivia (even claiming to know things that it doesn’t!). Or, Drama is great for putting on convincing performances, telling if people are lying, and so on, but at high levels, it becomes manipulative and mean.
7. You can talk with objects.
8. The game “remembers” dozens of choices you make and tweaks dialogue accordingly. I was constantly surprised, like “it remembered I said that?!” The ending calls back to many decisions that you made, tasks you completed, and so on. It was a bizarrely sweet, touching ending.
9. You can internalize thoughts such that you have an “inexplicable feminist agenda”, understand “race theory,” become an “art cop” (a cop who is also an art critic), or fervently believe you are the one who will usher in global communism. There are like 50 thoughts. Usually, you suffer some penalty while having the thought (for a few in-game hours), and then you get whatever pros and cons for internalizing it (and you don’t know what these pros and cons are ahead of time, so it’s a gamble as to what the thought does). To unlearn a thought costs a skill point, so I basically never unlearned anything once I learned it. I actually disliked this aspect of the game, that I couldn’t experiment with thoughts because of limited thought slots and limited skill points (that I preferred to put into stats). I also disliked that if you remove a thought, it’s gone forever; you can’t have it again. When clicking around one time early in the game, I accidentally unlearned “inexplicable feminist agenda,” which I was so curious about, and didn’t realize it until a couple hours of playtime later, so I couldn’t go back and keep it.
Characters and worldbuilding are top tier. Many characters are extremely memorable, such as Cuno, a speed-addled tween who talks in the third person and poses so hard to be badass to some girl peering over a fence behind him; a “high net worth individual” who is so rich that light literally bends around him; and a group of electronic music fans who want to create a meth lab and a dance club in an old church (in which also currently reside a “crab man” who is a religious zealot who lives in the rafters and a computer programmer who DMs the world’s largest RPG and who is trying to find some rip in the fabric of the universe or something). Oh, and of course, Kim, your trusty sidekick, a cop who is better than you in every way. Regarding worldbuilding, the game takes place in one downtrodden part of a city, which serves as the lens through which you learn about the past like 50 years of world events—a communist revolution; the spread of a religion; a suzerainty; etc. It’s dense in the best way.
Quests (or tasks) are creative and, like the characters, extremely memorable. The main quest in the game is to solve a murder, but that was often the least interesting part. Instead, things like helping those EDM fans make their dance music more “hardcore,” hunting for cryptids, exploring a haunted commercial building behind a book store, trying to collect everything you need to sing karaoke at the hotel, and arguing with the hotel staff about karaoke and rent and whether he’s a bartender or not and constantly listing off new things you find that are wrong with the hotel, are all highlights. I think that by the end of the game, I did pretty much everything possible.
[read this GameLog]
|
|
|
