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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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Gravity Rush 2 (PS4) by dkirschner |
| Something different! Neat movement, lovely art style. ------- Quite the ride with a bonkers story, some frustrating episodes, but overall worth it. |
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most recent entry: Thursday 23 May, 2024
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This was a neat one, and recommended with caveats. I'd never heard of Gravity Rush before looking through the PS4 catalog for anything it looked like I missed before I "finish" the console. The gimmick of Gravity Rush is that your character controls gravity. She doesn't "fly" by propelling herself forward; rather, she orients herself in whichever direction and "falls" that way. Traversing the environments, especially the spans between islands, was consistently thrilling. In tighter spaces though, and when aiming for precision as during combat when you need to hit a specific core on a monster that's moving around, movement and the camera can be extremely frustrating. The episode where Kat (the main character) and Raven have to go inside the ship monster and destroy the gravity engine, sliding through tight corridors and breaking barriers, was especially bad on this point.
The other caveat is similarly something that I liked at times, too: the story. I was hooked on it for the first half. It was coherent, following the main character, Kat, and the somewhat mundane everyday challenges of the Banga fleet, a group of people living on a flying settlement. I really enjoyed this part of the game because there is great character development, not just for Kat, but for a host of notable story characters, as well as minor characters. I got to know them a bit, understood their relationships, their history, and so on. This is done largely through side quests, which are varied, interesting, and usually teach you something about this or that character that adds depth. I completed about half the side quests before deciding to focus on the main story and finish up. After like 20 or 25 side quests, although they remained creative, I was losing interest in the larger story, and there were so many side characters in Jirga Para Lhao (the second main area of the game, a bit city that the Banga fleet docks at) that I stopped caring all that much. I also thought at first that you would get worthwhile rewards from side quests (gems to level up abilities, talismans to equip that make abilities stronger), but I don’t think I ever got gems. You occasionally get a special talisman. Usually, though, it’s a costume or a decoration for Kat’s room, neither of which I care about. It also turns out that talismans are unnecessary. I hardly paid attention to them the entire game.
I also hit on some frustrating side quests, like the one where you have to pretend to be Hekseville’s (the third main area of the game, a city that Kat gets to from warping through a gravity rift) hero, Kali Angel, and go around getting people to notice you, then once a bunch notice you, eat ice cream to drum up excitement about an ice cream shop. But they can’t notice you too much! Otherwise, they’ll realize that you’re not really Kali Angel and you fail the mission. Amusing, yes, but frustrating in practice. Some of the side quests took me half an hour or more. Another maddening one was the one where I had to find a dog’s frisbee, slowly being led around by the dog until we finally found it in the possession of a spoiled little girl, whom you can only convince to give you the frisbee by teaching her how to play fetch with the dog. Thereupon you play a little “fetch” minigame, attempting to toss the frisbee to predetermined locations from where you are standing. The frisbee, not obeying any known laws of physics, flips and spins and spirals and often lands outside the target zone. I tossed that frisbee like 50 times to build up the dog’s “joy” meter because when you miss the target, the joy meter decreases. I hated that side quest so much. Anyway, there were enough frustrating ones, and my own joy level was decreasing, that I finally stopped doing them.
Back to the story…the Banga fleet arrives at a Jirga Para Lhao to stock up, where Kat and the fleet become involved in business and political intrigue. I liked all this stuff! But then, about halfway through, the game takes a turn. A giant evil city appears and after you kill the city, you get sucked into a gravity rift and appear in the city from the first game, Hekseville, where there are a lot of characters Kat knows but I don’t (and here is really where the side quests quit being interesting because I haven’t been with these characters for half the game and the story is going off the rails). The game just starts throwing crazy story beats at you. Did you know that the nice mayor whom everyone loves is also a mad scientist?! He’s going to freeze time to save his daughter!! And the city’s guardian, Kali Angel, is also his daughter and she’s also the sister of Cecie, who has been around since Banga fleet, but Cecie is also a gravity shifter really named Durga Angel, and then the entire city of Jirga Para Lhao comes through the gravity rift to help save Hekseville, and then you have to travel up a pillar because some old god appeared and said so, and when you get there, there is an ancient city and apparently you are the queen (???) of this ancient city (and honestly the part where you are the queen again was really cool; there are high points even when the story goes off the rails), but you were deposed 100 years ago and an insane child now rules the city, and the insane child releases an electricity monster (???) and you fight it and save the world the end. It was a lot of “this person is actually THIS person!!” and “this character is secretly doing THIS bad thing!! Bet you didn’t see that coming!!” type stuff.
One thing that was consistent though is how upbeat the game is. Kat is a downright positive and fun character. That upbeat and fun tone is conveyed throughout most every aspect of the game, which kept my joy meter high save for a few frustrating parts. The game looks and sounds great. The animations in particular make it look like Studio Ghibli, and there’s great detail in the world. Kat can get emotes, and early on I was using them on people to see if they did anything. Turns out that the emotes often get reactions from NPCs. I “scared” a juggler and he dropped his pins. I waved at people and they waved back. I sang and they clapped. The coolest one was when I scared someone carrying a box of goods down some stairs. He dropped the box, and about 10 tomatoes rolled out of it and went tumbling down the stairs. Detail!
So yeah, neat game for sure. I don’t think I’d sink the time into another Gravity Rush game, but I’m glad I played this one.
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