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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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GameLog hopes to be a site where gamers such as yourself keep track of the games that
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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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most recent entry: Friday 25 February, 2011
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Okok. I decided to fire up Call of Pripyat, which is the sequel (2nd expansion, after the prequel) to Shadow of Chernobyl, since only hours ago I was so let down by what was shaping up to be pretty awesome.
Call of Pripyat suuuuuucks. Minus 1 million points. Let me rattle off some of my experiences in the 2 hours I played.
Intro: Nice intro that gives a summary of Chernobyl and the events of the first game. Intro is plagued by the narrator saying one thing and the subtitles saying a different thing. Also, the narrator and the subtitle disagree on dates, as the narrator said, on different slides, June 11th, 2009, 2011, and 2012, where the subtitles said, respectively, June 10th, 2008, 2010, and 2011. Not a good sign at the beginning of a game. Oh right, and the story summary? In the first game, I'm from the beginning supposed to find and kill a man named Strelok. That's who I saw get rained on by gold coins and then a deadly pile of debris at the end. Apparently that was...me. Yeah, I know. I don't follow either. Anyway, this one clearly states who I am, and that would be someone sent on a mission to find 5 downed helicopters.
I started outside an old barge, which stalkers here inside the zone use as bases. I picked up some quests. I went after the first quest, which was to go with a group and clear out some mercenaries from another barge. I went. We cleared. I failed the mission before it was over. How? I dunno. No one important was dead or anything. It said I canceled the mission. I didn't. I reloaded. It did the same thing. Okay.
Right after that, the game's graphics engine crashed. The game had been stuttering, especially while running through the outdoor environment. I restarted the game and turned all the graphics down from ultra to high, even though I know this computer runs everything on ultra. It still stuttered. Annoying. I turned some stuff down to medium. It still stuttered.
A couple quests later. I followed another NPC to search this warehouse for bloodsuckers because some of the stalkers think the bloodsuckers got some of their men, but this one guy doesn't think so. He knows there's something else going on. We kill a bloodsucker and go downstairs. I see another one standing still just looking at us. He doesn't activate until I shoot him. We kill him. My NPC companion opens an elevator shaft and tells me to follow him down. He jumps on top of the elevator. I jump down on top of the elevator. And die. From a 5-foot jump that my NPC friend just made. At least it didn't kill me into the next level like Shadow of Chernobyl was doing. I didn't write about that I don't think, but if I died near a zone change, it would prompt me (when dead) "Would you like to move to the next zone?" If I click yes, I die and fall into the geometry behind the level and just fly through space. Quite strange, it was.
I discovered I can't loot animals and normal mutants like the last game. No biggie. There are some new and improved things. Well, new at least. Instead of artifacts just lying around to be picked up, I've got this scanner that I have to have out to find them, and then they're in the ground so then I've got to search the ground for them. The scanner beeped once, but it was for a quest item, a piece of rope, that certainly wasn't an artifact. All equipment now has durability, and it apparently affects everything instead of just armor, including sell prices. You can repair and upgrade at certain NPCs now though, which is neat, instead of just finding random upgraded weapons. There are now helmets to equip. I found many more guns and ammo than in the previous game, and I could be wrong, but the weights of things seem to have been decreased, because I had like 4 guns and a ton of ammo at one point and was still sprinting.
The map was much improved over last time. No longer would it jump to seemingly random locations when opened, and it properly tracked objectives. However, the stash icons still suck! I got a quest with a reward to go get a stash. I went to get the stash, followed the map marker. There was no stash. Awesome.
My first impression of the environment that was so damn incredible in Shadow of Chernobyl is that it's just lame here. There's less going on. I didn't see any bandit/stalker shootouts going on. I did find a couple packs of wild mutant animals, but I just ran by them instead of wasting ammo and time since they can't be looted anymore anyway. I found enemy PDAs, but now they are lootable, although I don't know what to do with them. They don't locate stashes like they did in the first game. I didn't see a single random anomaly or radiation spot. They were more scattered in SoC, but in this game they have only so far been clustered around predictable locations (cough cough) like main quest objectives. Going to do a main quest? Cool. Be ready for a bajillion anomalies and high radiation. But you know what I did? Just sprint in, inspect the choppers, sprint out. Anomalies and radiation don't matter. Run in, click F, run out.
This game *appears* to be very short. I found three choppers (went through the story in one of three regions). Looking at this walkthrough, the entry point to the second region is quest 13/24. Did I really do 1/3 - 1/2 of this game in under 2 hours? I died a lot too, and did some side quests. I bet if you go straight though this is like a 5 hour game, tops. At least the optional side missions are more interesting than in SoC. Several of them involved pairing up with some NPCs and going on little missions together. I also enjoyed the insta-travel options that these missions come with, as well as the NPC who will insta-travel with you from region to region for 1000...monies. And although the quests don't tell you all the time, apparently they can have secret time limits, like secret 5-minute time limits where you fail them before you leave the place you got it from. Awesome. That happened once.
Here was an annoying thing. Remember the last game where some of the translations or just English language usage was funny? Like when the NPCs talked about their 'homies.' In this game, everyone calls me 'bro.' "Hey bro." It's really stupid. I hate people calling me bro in real life. I don't want to be called bro by a bunch of Russian NPCs. Constantly. It's like their default greeting, voiced over and everything. If they called me like...Broshelovski, I might be okay with that. But at least I haven't had to read their emails with emoticons yet like in the first game! It was really funny, but obviously ridiculous, to read these emails between the evil geneticist scientists. Slightly exaggerated, but approximate example: "Krishnov! The evil scientist team today has perfected the radiation-o-tron :)) can't wait to see you at our next meeting. i heard boss Dragnivich got a bad haircut :-0" Totally believable.
Another stupid thing: In SoC, enemies could shoot through grates and fences, while I couldn't. I hate when games do that. This one continues the tradition, as well as somehow allowing enemy fire through walls and pillars to hit me. Further, when I load a game, it's like the enemy positions reset or randomize or something. They did this in SoC too. One time I loaded a save game and it loaded with two enemies literally right next to me. They blew my head off about 20 times before I was finally able to get away from them without dying. The same crap was happening in this game. I would load a save from the middle of a firefight, and voila, enemies magically have me in their sights, are right in front of me, have moved from upstairs to downstairs, etc. Totally unfair.
And sadly, I cannot take this game anymore. I'd been contemplating to keep playing or quit, and I finally quit when I got to a research facility that's the exact same model building -- exact same -- as in the previous game. And all the NPCs look the same. The trader scientist looks like the twin of the barkeep. And then, the final straw, as I was leaving the research center, I heard mutant dogs barking, so I know they're running around viciously outside. Door opens. All the friendly mercenaries are just sitting and standing around a camp fire paying no attention to the 5 dogs running around, and the dogs promptly come attack me, and the mercenaries don't seem to know they exist. Stupid as hell.
It's too bad Call of Pripyat has so many things wrong that I don't want to play it. It's also too bad Shadow of Chernobyl got so damn good after the beginning and a little warm-up period, and then inexplicably botched the end, because there is serious potential for this series to be awesome. It certainly had its moments in SoC, but there are no such moments so far in CoP, and I won't find out if there are because I've got other stuff to play to waste more time on this.
I hesitantly recommend SoC if the good parts sound good, but do not touch Call of Pripyat. I heard the first expansion, the prequel, Clear Skies, is no good at all too.
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