 |
|
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: Friday 7 January, 2011
|
I played this about two weeks ago and never made an entry, but have been thinking about the game, mostly because I keep getting these creeping feelings daydreaming about the shootings. I imagine games, movies, books, etc. about a specific event in time and place elicit all kinds of different responses depending on the biography of the person interacting with it. When Columbine happened, I was in high school. I remember watching news footage the day of. I remember the school intruder drills we started having. Code for a shooter in the building was that the principal would come on the intercom and tell the teachers "Teachers, please bring your red folders to the office." There were other codes for like green and yellow, but I remember those drills. It's one thing to have a practiced drill for natural disasters, but quite another feeling knowing you're preparing for the event of a rampaging person. Anyway, simply being a high school student at that time made Columbine a salient event for me. Then also being a high school student who wore baggy clothes and long hair, looked different than most kids, listened to some of the music the shooters did, all made me somewhat empathize with them. I mean, I always thought they were crazy, but I always hated how the news portrayed the kids as such products of their media consumption. I could go on and on, but this all set the tone of the game for me.
I downloaded this after having read a whole lot of entries here and having read about it various other places online. It's pretty much what I expected gameplay-wise and story-wise, but what hit me like a freight train was after you plant the bombs in the cafeteria and go wait on the hill for them to go off. The bombs don't detonate, so the two boys go into the school armed. When I entered the school and saw the students and staff walking the halls, I had this moment. Nothing in the game was happening except NPCs moving and me standing in the hallway. The only way to advance is to open fire. I thought, woah, I am supposed to kill these people. If I want to play the game, I have to kill a bunch of kids and teachers. And I thought that I didn't want to kill them, and I wonder how someone could reach that point where they walk into a school and say, yes, I want to kill all these people, and I have the means, and I'm going to do it. I mean, imagine it. There's no way I could ever think that.
So the game does a good job of showing hypothetically and from stories and journals and things snippets of the boys' everyday lives, their hanging out, their jobs, their planning, their hatred, their hobbies. This is what I felt the game did best. It brings the boys down to earth. But it can only go so far before delving into pure speculation of the insides of their heads, where it doesn't go, which is good. News media never bothered to go as far as this game did in presenting the boys. It stops at, oh, they listen to Marilyn Manson and play Doom. This is violent media. This is anti-religious media. This is evil media that corrupts our youth and causes them to shoot up their school. Simply not true. There's a really good interview he gave with Bill O'Reilly on him and his music and his outlook on his influence on people. Snoop Dogg also has a good one in that series too. The music in the game was fantastic, the 8-bit Nirvana and such. The conversation between the boys I felt was really well done. I don't know what was from journals and what was made up, but I feel like it's a hell of a lot more representative of them than any news outlet would try to be. And this goes a lot farther than just Columbine of course. The same ideas this game presents, its argument for re-evaluating claims of media influence and such, are applicable to anything else that gets blamed on media, other shootings and violent acts, teen pregnancy, drug use, ADD, all the more believable and the more bizarre correlates.
Say you blame Marilyn Manson and Nirvana and Rammstein and whatever for this violence. Really, most people aren't aware that there are a million worse things out there that anyone can easily get their hands on. I listened to some of that in high school, Korn and Limp Bizkit and Marilyn Manson and whatnot, and thought that that music was the most badass heavy stuff available. Later I discovered all kinds of metal and hardcore music, and now I listen to a lot of black metal, a lot of which is satanic and certainly anti-religious, and other death metal or grindcore which is over-the-top violent and disgusting. That stuff doesn't get on the radio and so people aren't aware of it! While the news is busy talking about how bad Nine Inch Nails were (I remember this segment) saying "I want to fuck you like an animal," Cannibal Corpse was and is talking about necrophilia and other seriously messed up stuff. Which is worse? Is either one even bad? Is it okay to sing about this stuff? Does it corrupt youth? What does that even mean? This is one thing I think about whenever I hear someone railing on Marilyn Manson or whoever on the radio, and I think about how ignorant that person probably is of the vastness of media.
I'm glad this game was made. I don't find it insensitive. I find it a useful entrant into the conversation of media effects and violence in particular, angry youth, religion, gun control, all kinds of stuff that people should be thinking about. Think about how this game could be an argument for gun control laws. Those two boys have all the power because they have weapons. This is reflected in the battles that are so easy. You just blast your way up and down the halls. The jocks don't have a chance, the teachers don't have a chance, and the religious kids just pray. You can read about how the boys acquired all their weapons, and if you should think that's problematic. No one should be able to acquire and stockpile weapons like that. What need? Manson has a part in some interview, I can't remember which one, where someone asks him what he would have said to the Columbine shooters. He says something like "I wouldn't have said anything. I would have listened to them because that seems like the problem. No one listened to them."
Super Columbine Massacre is not a great game, but I find it important nonetheless. I quit playing after I got to the hell level because it actually got hard. The end.
[read this GameLog]
|
|
|
