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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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Heavy Rain (PS3) by dkirschner |
| Interesting premise, love the cinematic aspect, controls are interesting, story branches into confusing territory. |
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most recent entry: Friday 23 May, 2014
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Heavy Rain reminds me a lot of Indigo Prophecy, which makes sense as it’s another Quantic Dream game. But that’s both good and bad because like Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain was damn cool for at least ½ the game before spinning out of control into some nonsense by the time it ends. At least Heavy Rain didn’t delve into the supernatural, so the nonsense of Heavy Rain is only due to the branching storyline and the super lame twist about who the killer is. Writing this will be difficult because I want to explain why I think what I do about the killer, but I don’t want to provide spoilers…so I’ll just be vague and/or quiet.
So the controls are mostly great. I loved the interactive movie-ness that they created. You must move the right stick in certain directions and patterns, and press and tap buttons in sequences or like QTEs or context commands in order to interact with objects. So like a half-arc turns water faucets and characters will splash their faces or wash their hands, pushing up will pick things up, tapping triangle when prompted may make a character force open a door and so on and so forth. It sounds boring to talk about, but in the game it works really well and is very engaging. The movements are often quite naturalistic. I liked both the mundane aspects of the game, like exploring rooms, and the action sequences. The controls and the actions that you perform, between the mundane things and the more action packed things reminded me of a hilarious mix between LA Noire and Octodad (sometimes characters were almost that difficult to control. I don’t know why you just can’t move with the left stick like every other game).
You can also hold L2 to get options to hear characters’ thoughts. This was had the weird outcome of causing all the characters to seem scattered and confused. As you push all the buttons to hear their thoughts in a situation, for example, as you’re wandering around your apartment, you may hear like, “I am thirsty. I should get something to drink,†“I have to pee. I should go to the bathroom,†“My wife will be home soon. I should get some work done,†“Oh no, I was supposed to wash the dishes,†“I wonder if my son is having fun at his birthday party,†etc. All these random thoughts always make characters sound scatter-brained or schizophrenic or something, like they’ve always got a million conflicting things going on in their heads. I didn’t like it. It’s worse in the tense scenarios because, for example, you’re running from the cops and the character will think, “Gotta keep running,†and “I should just turn myself in,†and “It sure is raining hard outside,†and “I’m so tired from running!†and “I wonder if Madison got away,†and “Shaun! Where is Shaun!†Like 10 different random often contradicting things always going through their minds!
So the big part of the game of course is the narrative. Overall, very cool. I liked the murder mystery, the 4 playable main characters, their particular jobs and types of interactions and interwoven storylines. Despite all I didn’t like about the game and the story, I have to say that it was really neat. One thing I disliked about the story was all the Saw-like nonsense going on, like the killer laying sadistic traps. How the killer got SD cards through an electrical grid or scattered glass in air ducts for you to have to crawl through, or how the GPS knew Ethan was driving on the wrong side of the road, or how the killer recorded the voice in the GPS in the car that had been in the garage 2 years ago…and a bunch of other weird omnipresent and omniscient killer stuff. Oh and other Saw things like you have to cut off your finger, inject yourself with poison…Right.
I guess one thing that is sad about Ethan’s plight is that after going through each trial, the SD card is usually somewhere he could have found it without going through the trial. Like after he shoots the drug dealer (or whatever happens if you don’t shoot him), the SD card is in the gun. After he drives down the wrong side of the road, the SD card is in the glove compartment accessible with a key in the GPS. After he chops his finger off, turns out the SD card was under a loose floorboard. If he were calm enough to take apart his environment, he’d probably find some of the SD cards without shooting a man or chopping his finger. I felt bad for him.
After completing the game (and my girlfriend was watching me play most of the time and was really interested in the outcome), we went online and looked up all the various endings and things that could happen to different characters. I was surprised at how many endings there were, and I was also surprised that there was only one real killer. Since I really thought it was someone else, I was sure there would be an ending where that someone else was the killer, but in fact, there is only one, although that someone else can be jailed for it. I was also surprised to learn that, for example, hiding in the refrigerator in the burning apartment building was a legitimate way to survive the explosion and escape the building. I hid in the fridge as a joke.
Anyway, interesting stuff, worth a look.
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