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Gris (PS5) by jp (Apr 20th, 2025 at 20:25:52) |
I distinctly remember Gris getting a "meh" review score in Edge magazine. So, I was expecting to be underwhelmed gameplay-wise though wowed visually.
And yes, I was wowed visually (and aurally too - playing the PS5 version that makes use of the speaker controller in a cool way)...and the gameplay was sort of meh - but, it got better and better the longer I played!
Not counting the "hub" area, the game has four zones/levels that each introduce a mechanic, as well as some in-world things to interact with. And so, the game really goes from less to more as later levels incorporate more in-world mechanics as well as require use of the character mechanics you unlock. It also all makes sense with the game's theme and story and balblabla (ludonarrative harmony is what my students brought up).
That being said, it's a pretty relaxing and flowing kind of game - nods to Journey in there as well - and there isn't really a fail state, though you can get stuck on puzzles and some dexterity-timing dependent puzzles. There's some swimming bits that are just glorious - as you dash from "water bubble" to "water bubble" (blocks of water in the air) - and I loved swimming up waterfalls.
What impressed me the most though were two things:
1. I kept on trying to "go the wrong way" and most of the time, it was the right way.
2. The onboarding and tutorials are really, really well done. You notice a thing, or do a thing, and then that's the thing you have to do later to solve puzzles and so on. It feels very natural and very normal.
So, I'm actually excited to try Neva now...
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Lost in Blue 2 (DS) by jp (Apr 18th, 2025 at 18:46:41) |
Perhaps the strangest thing for me about this game is that it's a bona fide survival game on the DS. In my mind, the genre is more recent than 2006! I'm thinking of all the indie survival games (craft stuff, gather food, don't die of hunger or thirst) and then ones on Steam..and here's this game - a sequel no less - and it's straight up THAT. Survival. And there's two characters to boot - and you can die (I did, pretty soon it turns out).
I guess I was surprised by how quickly I did die - and, from a novice perspective, it felt sudden and a bit unfair. As in, CLEARLY there was nothing I could have done differently to survive. I spent too much time exploring was probably the main problem, and I left the boy behind in a cave we found, and I'm not sure that's what you're supposed to do? You have to keep both of them feed, hydrated and energized, and I felt like I had my hands full with just the one character.
I think my biggest mistake was probably not getting the spear for fishing made sooner? But then, I'm not even sure how you're supposed to use it - and all the other food I kept scavenging wasn't really doing much. Like, you'd eat it and not see a huge effect. I'm guessing there's something I'm not understanding and it makes me wonder if a full reset makes the most sense? (instead of loading into a saved game that's already doomed/too heavily stacked against success).
Perhaps the strangest thing (for me) about the game is that there's a super simple mini-game for cooking! You collect stuff to cook and also stuff to use as spices and then need to sort of trial and error recipes - though I could set the boy (the character I was not controlling directly) to cook and he'd come up with his own stuff... it's weird.
And it's a sequel? I guess I should look up if this is a port to DS from someplace else? It would make more sense in a way - the game is also low-poly 3D as you wander around the environment. Still...I might just put it on the shelf.
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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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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.
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2287 registered gamers and 3258 games. 7789 GameLogs with 13266 journal entries. 5110 games are currently being played.
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Guild Wars: Factions (PC) by Awesome Juice |
| An excellent MMO, especially because one's effectiveness is dependent on your skill build and how well you use it, rather than how long you've played the level grind. Also, there's no monthly fee. The Factions expansion adds a new continent, new guild and pvp options, two new classes, etc, etc. |
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most recent entry: Tuesday 16 January, 2007
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I played for about an hour and twenty minutes today between 3:40 and 5 pm. I again played as my assassin character, this time attempting to complete the story missions for the Factions expansion.
I started out at Raisu Palace, the second to last campaign mission. There weren't very many players around so I went over to the Kurzick area of the world map to investigate what I would have to do to get some of the Kurzick elite armor, which is the best looking assassin armor, in my opinion. Before the armorer would even talk to me I needed more Kurzick faction points, so I went and fought on the Kurzick side of Fort Aspenwood using the same build and technique as before.
I found that defending felt a lot easier than attacking. Two of my teammates quit out, leaving us undermanned, but I never once felt seriously pressed to defend the inside of the fort, although the Luxons did get inside for a few minutes once or twice. The enemy team probably had a few unfamiliar players or they were just uncoordinated, or perhaps even more of their members left the game than on my team. Either way, it wasn't a particularly challenging or exciting battle, but winning it allowed me to go back and have the option of buying the armor I was looking for.
However, I soon discovered that the armor I had thought cost only 1500 gold per piece was in fact the 15000 per piece version. So, in order to get the armor I wanted I'd need to fight my way down to a new area in search of a different armorer and then spend 70,000 plus materials on armor. Feeling disappointed but mainly just because I hadn't paid enough attention to the GuildWiki article, I went back to look again for a party to beat the final missions with.
This time I was lucky and ran into a few people that I had done a mission with about a week ago and I quickly joined their party which fortunately filled up with an acceptable variety of classes fairly quickly. The Raisu palace mission felt somewhat repetitive but it was at least satisfying to move through groups of at a rapid pace as we raced against the clock to save the emperor from being killed. We came close to failure only once when we decided to run through an area full of traps and beat a single boss at the end rather than engage in a long battle on those traps. After a few more groups of enemies that fell under the weight of a small army of necromancer minions aided by my poison and other degeneration skills, we had reached the end of the mission. To no-one's surprise, Master Togo, an NPC playing the role of distant headmaster to the characters starting in the Factions realm, is taken by the nemesis, Shiro Tagachi, and killed in order to complete a spell returning himself to the mortal world.
My party quickly jumped into the next mission in which our only task was to charge and kill Shiro Tagachi. On our first attempt, it seemed as though everything was going well until suddenly Shiro snuck some ability through and managed to take out most of the party in a matter of seconds. It was confusing to me, but we retried the mission a moment later and everyone must have been focused on executing their skills more effectively because Shiro was finished in under 3 minutes. After beating him, the party partook of an award given by a group of NPCs in the final area, I used a ranger skill to tame a phoenix as a pet, and I ran through a long series of stilted dialogues between the NPCs who played some role in the game.
Since Guild Wars doesn't try very hard to immerse players in the story and I was being waited on to go to dinner, I didn't pay much attention to any of this dialogue and simply ran past it all towards the exit in hope of something being more interesting, but there wasn't, so I left for dinner.
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