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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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Dredge (PS4) by dkirschner |
| Eldritch seafaring horror. Reminds me of Sunless Sea. -------- Simple, engrossing gameplay loop. Love the mystery and vibe. |
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most recent entry: Monday 24 June, 2024
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Dredge immediately reminded me of Sunless Sea, but it's simpler and friendlier. You are a fisherman who finds himself in a Lovecraftian sea, taking up the job of an angler at a local village. Not all is what it seems: at night, the fog rolls in an strange, terrifying creatures roam the water. Soon, an enigmatic figure calling himself The Collector sets you on your main quest, to find five sunken artifacts. There are, conveniently, five island areas on the map, so off you go from one to the other, fishing, upgrading your boat, and finding sunken things.
What I liked the most about Dredge was how it sucked me in to its simple gameplay loop. You go out, fish, return to town, sell fish. Use money to upgrade your ship, go out farther, fish, return to town, sell fish. Repeat. To fish successfully, you need specific rods for specific types of biomes (shallow, volcanic, abyssal, etc.), and faster engines to go farther. So, you can't explore unless you upgrade things. There are also messages in bottles, which you need to find to understand the story, special mutated fish (worth more money!), ship parts, treasure, and other things to find. You've always got a couple things you're looking for, always discovering new fish (I discovered about 50% of the total number, so there is WAY more out there!), or dredging up something useful.
There is also the underlying dread that keeps you moving. You generally only want to be out during the day; at night, things get dangerous. The dread made me cautious, but caution worked, in that I may not have experienced some of the more unnerving things in the game. That is, apparently if you don't sleep at night, you'll start seeing things and more weird phenomena will happen. But I almost always slept, and definitely never went two nights with no sleep, no nothing got too nightmarish. I wonder how nightmarish it gets?
The game itself is easy, with just the right amount of aforementioned dread, which helped lull me into its gameplay loop. You'll run into some rocks, see and hear other ghostly ships at night, and at the last island be harassed by swarming fish, but you probably won't die. I died one time from taking too much hull damage, and it just reloaded my last autosave from a couple minutes earlier.
The story is compelling and, along with the constant upgrading, kept me interested in moving forward from quest to quest, island to island. Each island has one main character on it, whose issue you have to resolve, whether it's finding their dead crewmates or reconciling a conflict between two brothers, before you can get to the main quest's artifact. I actually explored every single island on the map, sailed around looking for new characters, docks, shipwrecks, and other points of interest. There are some secrets scattered around, some shrines wherein you must place specific types of fish (I solved one and got an awesome crab trap), and some mysterious black rocks that never did anything for me and I have no idea what they were for.
Finally, I would also add that this is (weirdly?) an inventory management game. Since you're out fishing and collecting things, you will run out of storage space. All the objects are like Tetris pieces: you can rotate them and pack your hull just so. This was more satisfying than I thought, as in a typical game where I have to manage inventory space--say an open-world RPG--, I get frustrated. Making the inventory basically like a Tetris mini-game was a good call! It also helps that you're never far from somewhere to sell things. Your trips out to sea are always quick, so if you fill up, no problem. There's no penalty for going back and unloading, and it just takes a minute (plus, you'll get to sleep, and I was usually able to time my trips during the day).
Definitely enjoyed this one! There is plenty more to do if you want to collect all the fish, fully upgrade your ship, complete all the side quests. It's engrossing and tells a good story.
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