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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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Extreme Road Trip 2 (iPd) by fanwar3 |
| I played this new game on the app store today and it was called Extreme Road Trip 2. It is the second iteration of the original Extreme Road Trip. It is a side-scrolling and an endless runner game. Moreover, I found this game addicting once I started playing it. In other words, I cannot put my iPhone down while I play this game. To be honest, this game often looks very elementary for those who have not played it before. On the contrary, once you play it, you will discover that this game consists of complex game play that will need all your wits to survive.
With the gas pedal stuck, you have one option of jumping, rolling, and doing stunts to continue rolling on in the game. As you travel farther distances, your level bar increases, making you get to another level. When you get to another level, you get to break those two crates, which hold a limited amount of power-ups. Once you lose these power ups, you have to spend 100-400 coins to use one of these power-ups. When you start the game, what you have to know is that you are running on a limited supply of gas and from the beginning, the aim of the game is to make it to the furthest distance possible on your limited supply of gas. But you can get more gas by picking up the red gas barrels along the way. Stunts are not quite complicated to perform but are hard to novice players. Well, stunts help to save on your limited gas supply. How? This is because when you perform stunts, you are given the turbo boosts for extreme road trip and as a result, you will not use your gas supply for sometimes. The stunts that can be performed in the game are long jumps, hangs, flips, and so on. According to Game Center Acheivements, I have done handfree landing, double flip, triple flip, quadruple flip, quintuple flip, infinite loop(I did six flips in a jump to get this), and I once did 12 stunts in a jump. This game is fast-paced, so if you do a stunt that lands your car upside down, your car explodes and the game is over. You have to be able to land as perfectly as you can to progress through the game. Even if your car is a little titled off the wheels perpendicular to where you are trying to land, the game will end. Sometimes, you will hit mines and that is a good thing. It is a good thing because you will have the oppourtunity to perform as many stunts and complicated as you can make it. If you hit one of the balloons in the sky, you get more coins. The coins will allow you to buy cars and use power-ups each time you play the game. There is pretty good inventory in the game. As for the missions, many of them are straightforward, and some of them are tricky to accomplish. The pretty tricky missions ask you to do a perfect slam landing, slam while upside down, and other tricky stunts that I can’t really do. Starightforward missions will ask me to crash at 300-400m, do 10 flips in a jump, do a perfect landing, and the like. As for the music, it is reminiscent of most 8-bit games. The music is so addicting too.
As for balance, the game seems okay except for some things. Sometimes, I can land upside down for some time and not die. After I hit a mine, the car jumps at high altitudes and my car will sometimes spin out of control to the point I can’t make it land perfectly as quickly as possible. I run out of gas quickly so, there needs to be gas barrels in the air or something like that since most of the time, I am in the air. There should be a way to sell cars in the game in order to get more coins, since the car I got was not as fast as I thought it would be. There are too many hills and cliffs and they are disadvantages because when my car is traveling fast in the air, it is hard to predict where the car will land and if I land a car a certain way on a certain hill or cliff, I can die. Otherwise, this was one of the games I found interesting.
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most recent entry: Saturday 3 November, 2012
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I played this new game on the app store today and it was called Extreme Road Trip 2. It is the second iteration of the original Extreme Road Trip. It is a side-scrolling and an endless runner game. Moreover, I found this game addicting once I started playing it. In other words, I cannot put my iPhone down while I play this game. To be honest, this game often looks very elementary for those who have not played it before. On the contrary, once you play it, you will discover that this game consists of complex game play that will need all your wits to survive.
With the gas pedal stuck, you have one option of jumping, rolling, and doing stunts to continue rolling on in the game. As you travel farther distances, your level bar increases, making you get to another level. When you get to another level, you get to break those two crates, which hold a limited amount of power-ups. Once you lose these power ups, you have to spend 100-400 coins to use one of these power-ups. When you start the game, what you have to know is that you are running on a limited supply of gas and from the beginning, the aim of the game is to make it to the furthest distance possible on your limited supply of gas. But you can get more gas by picking up the red gas barrels along the way. Stunts are not quite complicated to perform but are hard to novice players. Well, stunts help to save on your limited gas supply. How? This is because when you perform stunts, you are given the turbo boosts for extreme road trip and as a result, you will not use your gas supply for sometimes. The stunts that can be performed in the game are long jumps, hangs, flips, and so on. According to Game Center Acheivements, I have done handfree landing, double flip, triple flip, quadruple flip, quintuple flip, infinite loop(I did six flips in a jump to get this), and I once did 12 stunts in a jump. This game is fast-paced, so if you do a stunt that lands your car upside down, your car explodes and the game is over. You have to be able to land as perfectly as you can to progress through the game. Even if your car is a little titled off the wheels perpendicular to where you are trying to land, the game will end. Sometimes, you will hit mines and that is a good thing. It is a good thing because you will have the oppourtunity to perform as many stunts and complicated as you can make it. If you hit one of the balloons in the sky, you get more coins. The coins will allow you to buy cars and use power-ups each time you play the game. There is pretty good inventory in the game. As for the missions, many of them are straightforward, and some of them are tricky to accomplish. The pretty tricky missions ask you to do a perfect slam landing, slam while upside down, and other tricky stunts that I can’t really do. Starightforward missions will ask me to crash at 300-400m, do 10 flips in a jump, do a perfect landing, and the like. As for the music, it is reminiscent of most 8-bit games. The music is so addicting too.
As for balance, the game seems okay except for some things. Sometimes, I can land upside down for some time and not die. After I hit a mine, the car jumps at high altitudes and my car will sometimes spin out of control to the point I can’t make it land perfectly as quickly as possible. I run out of gas quickly so, there needs to be gas barrels in the air or something like that since most of the time, I am in the air. There should be a way to sell cars in the game in order to get more coins, since the car I got was not as fast as I thought it would be. There are too many hills and cliffs and they are disadvantages because when my car is traveling fast in the air, it is hard to predict where the car will land and if I land a car a certain way on a certain hill or cliff, I can die. Otherwise, this was one of the games I found interesting.
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