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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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Control (PC) by dkirschner |
| Super stylish. Neat story. Alan Wake vibes. -------- Fantastic. Gameplay is fun and varied throughout. |
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most recent entry: Thursday 27 May, 2021
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This is a real gem. Having just played Prey (another sci-fi/supernatural action game with psychic powers), I had hoped Control wouldn't feel too similar. Well, Control blows Prey out of the water. Playing them back-to-back, Prey was unnecessary! I won't go on about how practically every aspect of Control is better (sorry Prey), but will detail things I particularly enjoyed.
First off, the story is bananas, in a good way. There is a federal agency called the Bureau of Control. Their job is to investigate paranatural activities (not ghosts or spirits, but like weird occurrences with everyday objects like your toaster randomly turning on or your TV set sucking you in). Then, they take the object (called an Object of Power, or an Altered Item) back to the Bureau and study it. These things are all linked and it gets complicated about alternate dimensions and entities and whatnot, but it's so cool.
You play as Jesse Faden, the new Director of the Bureau, as she tries to find answers to where her brother went, to an entity in her head, and to her own past. Along the way, you explore the Bureau, which has been overrun by the Hiss, some sort of hostile alternate dimension thing that produces some cool enemies. Many are just Hiss varieties of armed Bureau personnel, but then there are various flying enemies, one that blinks in and out of visibility, a scary floating orb that heals others.
The best enemies are the bosses, most of which are optional. In fact, I only completed a few of the optional ones. Most are really hard! And when you die in Control, you lose 10% of your...I forget the word...basically your main "leveling up" resource. So throwing yourself at a boss just screws you over. Best to wait until you are more powerful or until you've just purchased some upgrades and don't have much resources left to lose. Anyway, I beat the game before I came back to them. A lot of the enemies you fight are "altered items," which are everyday objects that have powers, that can alter reality, do things to people. One fight was against an anchor. There are four platforms in a square, and the anchor is this massive ball of energy with a core in the middle. It rotates, turning from platform to platform, and at each stop along its rotation, it belches a bunch of clocks (it's part of the story of the item--all items have backstories about how they came to the Bureau's attention). Before it belches, it exposes its core and you can use telekinesis--one of your abilities--to launch a clock at it. It won't belch and will instead spin to the next platform. I don't know what happens if you get hit with the clocks. My guess is you pretty much die. Anyway, that sounds too easy, right? Yeah, it is. So after you hit the core a couple times, it starts spawning enemies, the flying bomb guys that drift toward you and explode, as well as regular soldier dudes on other platforms who fire at you. This makes it a lot trickier because all of a sudden you are avoiding/killing bomb guys, sniping solders (or you could levitate over and dispose of them more closely), and watching for the anchor's rotation, which speeds up as the fight progresses. Even though I didn't beat many of these, I did see a lot (tried and got scared of losing resources and said I'd come back later!). They are really creative and some are really hard!
So I mentioned the combat. Combat is fun, varied, never got old. In fact, I didn't even unlock all the main abilities. You have a gun that takes different forms. These are standard shooter fare (pistol, shotgun, minigun, rocket launcher, sniper rifle) that you can usefully upgrade. You switch between two forms at any time (and can change to others from the menu at any time). You also have access to some cool, powerful psychic abilities. You can pick up and launch objects (a go-to attack, very useful for destroying armor and interrupting enemies), you can levitate, you can ground slam from levitating, you can mind control enemies (very useful, especially because when you take control of them, they go to full health), aaaand...oh, and I think the one I missed, which is a shield. With like 4 psychic abilities and two guns (plus many swappable mods), and a variety of enemy types, you always have a lot of combinations to play with and fit any situation. Once you do unlock the levitation ability, the levels become noticeably more vertical (or sometimes they always were and you just never noticed because you couldn't float!), which provides even more tactical opportunities.
I know I said I wouldn't compare to Prey anymore, but I have to just this once! In Prey, Talos 1 felt nice and lived in, in part because of all the audiologs, notes, and emails. But as neat as some of that stuff is, do you know how many games I can count where you listen to audiologs and read emails to learn more about the world? Like, hundreds. I remember it was novel when Doom 3 did it in like 2004. "I'm sure we can be more creative!" said Control. Yes, there are tons of documents laying around that you can pick up and read. They generally interesting and often relate to things you see in the world. For example, one of my favorite parts of the game was going to the Containment sector where the Bureau keeps all the altered items. Throughout the game, I had been picking up reports and reading about all these altered items (a refrigerator that kills everyone if no one is looking, a rubber duck that follows people, an oscillating fan that sucks oxygen from rooms and suffocates people, etc.). In the Containment sector, there they all were, each in their own room! The refrigerator was the most surprising because there was a Bureau agent sitting in there freaking out because he'd been staring at it for like 24 hours. Someone forgot to relieve him of his shift when the Hiss infiltrated the building, haha.
In addition to all the optional reading, there are radio broadcasts of a Twilight Zone sort of show, internal videos produced by the head researcher (humorously low budget), a kids' puppet show series for children growing up in the Bureau (terrifying), and more. It's not just that there was more media to examine, but it was all so interesting and tied together with all the stories of the altered items, with stories of what happened to specific people in the Bureau, with stories of specific AWEs (altered world events).
Anyway, I'm about out of steam with writing. The last thing--Control ties in with Alan Wake. I did not know that. I went back and read some about that game since it's been a while since I played it. Very, very cool. Control gets an A+ from me. Definitely recommended.
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