Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8027Made it to level 9, did a few more quests and...yeah, I think I'm tired now. Strangely, it feels like there isn't much/enough story for me to continue to want to play, and I got a bit tired of always being under-health? Well, that got a bit better because I "discovered" (figured out) the cooking part of the game - I was finally able to put all these animal/critter parts and learned that lots of the stuff you cook then gets rid of the rads (all the food items I had healed, but also added rads - and I didn't have a way to mitigate that, so it seemed like a negative downward spiral). The no-rads healing food was really a game changer in that way, so that was a big improvement. Oh, every now and then there's a weird storm - and it was a super cool experience - it sounds and looks incredible and I was genuinely worried...rads going up, lightning noises and stuff. Great ambience! Maybe I should have gotten to the city I was supposed to visit for the story...but Ilooked at the shelf of over games to play and though..meh.Mon, 26 Oct 2026 15:08:51 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8027&iddiary=13568https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8034This is probably the lamest log I'll write for a game - but I just wanted to document my experience, even when it did not involve playing the game. I out the disc in, it starts reading and then shows the name of the game in Japanese/Chinese. Huh, that's weird. It happens around the same time I see a little popup notification that an update has been downloaded. Weird, whatever, it should be fine. I load the game, watch the intro - looks fun. And then I get a UI alert. It's in Japanese/Chinese... weird. I get past that...and get to the game's main menu. Everything is in English. Oh, nice! But I go into the config menu...and oops, it's all in Japanese/Chinese again...and I try toggling things to see if I can switch language to English. No luck. I go online, "why did my game switch to another language". Everyone says to set the console region language to what I want, and that the game should change. It's already in English. No luck. I try a bunch of things...still no luck. I look at the game case. Maybe this was a European version of the game and the language got borked somehow. Nope. ESRB rating, so it's US. I pop the disc, to try a re-install and stuff. The disc is all in English..but it does say "MADE IN JAPAN FOR HOME USE ONLY". I wonder if the disc is Japanese? (in a US case, weird). It also has a code.. PLAS 05251. Online sleuthing reveals it's a Chinese disc. Whut? Sigh. I guess someone duped Gamestop and now...me.Mon, 26 Oct 2026 15:01:25 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8034&iddiary=13567https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8026I'm putting this back no the shelf now - mostly because I started to get a little tired of it. As I think about it, it's abit of a tricky design space and I can see how the design team was trying to keep things fresh and mix things up. They've added a little mechanic where you can tap on some objects that get highlighted to see what's inside. THere's also a "follow the musical pattern" in which you click on things on the map in the right order...following a musical script. It's all "ok" - not particularly compelling, but I've started to get tired because the also isn't much I find interesting in the story. Each mission feels like "oh, here's a thing that happened, let's fix it" but the characters and the world aren't that compelling, and while there are neat things in the images - they're not really woven into the storytelling. So, I don't feel like I'm learning cool things about this weird/interesting world from the missions themselves - at most I pick things up from the artwork. It's a weird "miss" - because the artwork is super fun and neat to explore, there's cool details and characters - but it falls flat after that. Also, playing on the Switch is more annoying than it should - I feel the controls are really imprecise - I need to move the cursor to a specific location and I overshoot/undershoot tweak and adjust and it's just...annoying.Thu, 22 Oct 2026 08:43:00 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8026&iddiary=13566https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8027Ugh. I'm not sure I want to continue playing. We'll see. I've hit level 7 and I would say that the experience so far is really mixed. The game seems to want to encourage scavenging all the things. But, you hit a weight limit super fast - and it becomes really annoying to manage that, especially since you can't fast travel when you're encumbered. So, why bother? I've also picked up all kinds of things that...I can't do anything with? Tings have "value" but I've yet to run into a store or any place where I can sell. So far everything has involved killing all the raiders/enemies - and the towns I've been setting up/helping out (two so far) don't have shops. Though I think I can build one if I get the materials? (something to try out the next time I play). I also nearly worked myself into an unrecoverable position - I left a car manufacturing plant (running away from enemies) only to load immediately into 4 enemies right there. I don't know how I was able to survive them - a lot of luck I think, and more than a few tries. But it was really bad. I might have quit there if a few more tries hadn't worked out... Also, so far at least, there's surprisingly little in the way of story/narrative. I'm surprised because it's a Bethesda game - so I was expecting a lot more. I'm ignoring the wonky glitches and weird graphical things because that would be a bit unfair at this point (old game and all that, and I don't think it downloaded an update because I think the game's content servers are offline by now?) Anyways, we'll see how much further I go... Oh! The other thing that's really annoying is how hard/rare it is to find the item that decontaminates you such that you can heal back up. Every rad lowers your max health, but getting rid of rad has been SUPER hard/rare. Most of my time I'm running around with 1/2 health just because of the rad capping it.Sat, 17 Oct 2026 17:37:02 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8027&iddiary=13563https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8030I played this enough to complete a full run with the starter character (this unlocked new characters - but I haven't gone back to play since). And WOW, the final boss fight was super stressful and cool. I'm feeling kind of lucky that I beat it on my first try actually. First try at the boss, not first run. I might have been 3 or four runs before I got that far... ..it's an interesting game! There's a new element in the "safe areas" where you also have a (separate) deck of cards that lets you do things in the safe areas - find new cards, upgrade stuff, and that sort of thing. When you get new cards they can either be for the combat part of the game or for the safe zones, and there's some neat interactions there. Interestingly, when you rest at a safe zone it can have negative consequences - but you only want to do it to draw a new hand of safe zone cards. I'm not sure I entirely understood how everything here worked - lots of card play reduces the "danger rating", but I don't know if it matters at all other than resting there. As in, does leaving a safe zone with a high danger rating mean harder combat later? A less safe state for the next safe zone? All of this I couldn't figure out from what I've played so far. There was some stuff I thought was a bit unfair - there are some things in the safe zone that you can play a card to unlock, but some require multiple cards - and more than once I left a safe zone without having unlocked the thing. It felt like I had wasted those cards on a thing I didn't know I couldn't unlock - and as far as I could tell, the progress towards unlocking is reset when you leave. Visually, the game is so cool - it's like a slicker version of Inscryption.Sat, 17 Oct 2026 17:02:29 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8030&iddiary=13562https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8029I've been enjoying this a lot more than I expected. It's crass and adolescent in ways I no longer find funny or even charming or endearing - but the game's design is really interesting to me. So, I've just been ignoring the representational aspects to focus on gameplay. So, it's a turn-based tactical rogue-like game. You have a squad of max 4 cats and must fight enemies while staying healthy and alive during a "run" - basically a series of fights with some treasure and shopping and "narrative" encounters. So far I've been unlocking new locations that let you go "deeper" (it also branches) and I'm curious how "deep" (i.e. long) each run can get. It's getting longer such that I cannot play a run over lunch break any more - having to save, stop, and resume the next day. But...here's some fun/clever game design: 1. The cats are random in their stats and so on - BUT the game layers "classes" on top of that, that really help you shape what your team can do. The classes are basically "tags" (like dog tabs, but for cats) than mod the cat - give them random within-class abilities, and off you go. I was worried that the game would be too random, but here you can adapt the roles to the cats you have and try to have a well-balanced team for the runs. I've unlocked two new classes so far (it's vanilla fantasy in this sense: fighter, mage, archer,etc.): the cleric and the thief. I'd be surprised if there aren't a ton more. We'll see. 2. Once you finish a run. That's it for those cats. You've levelled them up and so on, but they can never venture out again. Sure, you can have them stick around for breeding (I can't tell if levelled up cats with good stats because they've levelled up have kittens with higher stats)...but that's it. So, you can't stick to a team - it really forces you to experiment with new cats (with different skills, etc. - while still giving you some control, see above). 3. There's durability on all the gear you find. Again, you can use stuff a few times before it breaks/runs out - but mostly you'll be using new things and such. Again, encourages experimentation. I don't think I've seen a duplicate item yet? Things I'm not so sure about... 1. There's base building, but it seems REALLY slow and grindy. Mostly it involves donating cats to NPS, but the 2nd round of donations all need at least 10 cats...which seems like a lot to me. 2. You also have to provide for "happiness" in your base - happier cats breed more often, unhappy ones get into fights - and they can (and do) kill each other! (winner gets a buff - but if it's a veteran, the buff doesn't matter? or maybe it does for breeding)Sat, 17 Oct 2026 16:52:57 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8029&iddiary=13561https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8027For some daft reason I was sure I had played this - a bit - way back when I was at DePaul on an Xbox 360. I remember starting inside a vault, designing my character, leaving the vault, and then wandering around in the wasteland for a bit. I was also confused by the VATS system, which I thought was cool - but I had trouble with the UI/understanding the controls. And then, I didn't play again... ...and now I realize, having played the beginning of THIS game, that I was confusing it with Fallout 3! Wow. I've never played Fallout 4 prior to a few days ago..which seems kind of wild to me. I've been having fun so far, and I'm learning how to work the UI - I have to stop myself with the VATS since I often, by mistake, switch between enemies instead of between locations on an enemy. But, think I'm starting to get the handle of it. It's a neat system and I just learned (realized) that you can lock in several shots in a row, which is nice. I did struggle with the "base building" because it took me a while to realize that when building stuff at the workbench you have to WALK AROUND to place the things - I was just frustrated that I had all the items, but the "x" (to buy/place) was disabled. I hope to play more over the coming days...having sort-of-recently seen the show, I feel like I'm ready to dive into Fallout more than I have in the past.Tue, 13 Oct 2026 10:30:59 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8027&iddiary=13559https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8026First, what a banger of a name for a game. Ha! I picked this up from the box art. It looked like this was "MicroMacro: Crime City" in videogame form. A good thing in my mind. What made MicroMacro cool/fun is that it's a giant "where's wally" with an extra twist - you have to find things but then also "trace" them over time. So, a character might be dead in part of the "map", but you can look around to and see the character still alive walking to the place where they're dead, and so on. So, you trace time through space.. it's hard to describe. This game - at least from what I've played so far does exactly the same thing with two differences. First, the map (illustration) changes - so, there are different maps for different snapshots in time (some things change others stay the same from what I can tell). Second, there are occasional mini-interactive activities you have to do (not quite enough depth to call them minigames) - these represent "computer analysis" moments - like tracing a cell phone being used to towers, or identi-kit-style assembling the portrait of a perp. They take place in a sort of "computer network" visualization that's all black background which is in direct contrast to the main map that's on white. The art style is all black line drawing comic-style characters (like MicroMacro, but different enough) on a white background with color used very sparingly for UI-stuff.. I think it looks great. The maps (only played on one, the tutorial and the first case) are fun to look at with lots of little easter egg style details. I think I'm going to enjoy this!Thu, 08 Oct 2026 09:44:19 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8026&iddiary=13556https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8024I knew this game hadn't reviewed well when I bought it, but it was cheap and I was curious. I think it's worse than what I expected. I may be a bit unfair hear, but I reacted really negatively to the game's onboarding experience - or what I would call a lack of onboarding. The game starts with a cut-scene showing your character (a young girl) playing with her brother. The game's hide and seek and you hide in a hallway cupboard, are quickly found and then...you're in control. Your brother is close by, his back turned and he's "counting" (like you do when playing hide and seek). Ok! I must run around and find a new place to hide. This makes sense with the game's title. There aren't many places to go, I run up the stairs, enter a room and somehow manage to make my way onto a shelf that's nailed to the wall a good height above the floor. This seems like a good place to "hide" - it's also, the only place I think other than just waiting in a corner? There's a bunch of looked doors but I can only peer through keyholes and none of the doors seem to open. I only "learn" this from poking into the game settings to see what the controls are. Ok. This is fine - I just need to wait for my brother to stop counting and start searching and we'll see what happens. Nothing happens. Oh. Am I supposed to hide in a special pre-determined hiding location? I jump off the shelf and start wandering around - maybe I missed something. I learn I can crouch - but there's a space that's too low for me to crouch under. I peer through the key holes of all the doors to see if I'm missed something. Nothing. I go back into the settings to remind myself of the "use button" (R1?). I go back to a door leading out of the room at the top of the stairs...and nothing. But then, it works and the door opens. Oh, I guess that door does open. I never go back to check the others because a cut-scene cues in and it's the girl just standing behind the door as her brother runs and in immediately finds her. The camera then pans to a clock on a dresser and control is now back in my hands. I realize a dresser drawer opens, I can use it to jump up..and somehow pick up a dunce cap of sorts (paper cone with flag on top) and a pillow? I can't seem to use them for anything..so uh, I jump back down and open the door to leave the room and... ..it opens into a different space. Now we're in "imaginary land" - a large space with household furniture that's too large and warped and so on. This reminds me of some of the Psychonauts levels - sort of wonky geometry that looks different. Still fine, it's like the kids are imagining they're someplace they're not but there's still references to real-world things - and they're large because you're a small kid. It's ok. I'm still holding the pillow (or the dunce cap?) and...dont' know what to do. So, I start wandering...there's a large bird creature...I see a stake under the water but can't pick it up. Oh. Then, suddenly my brother appears (in a sort of tiger costume)...and it's game over, go back to the start - I mean, a reset and I'm at the part where I entered this fantasy land space. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. Hide again? Find the pre-designated hiding spot, find "the spot" which triggers the cut-scene? Leave the area? I start exploring and see a large lounge chair at the top of a rock mountain. Ok, lets go there. I make my way up (not easy, jumping is weak, you slide off things, etc.)...get to the chair - but it's more like a couch. There's a ovaloid rock...I pick it up. There's also a sort of plush animal. Pick that up also. Nothing happens. Uh. Maybe I'm supposed to go somewhere else? There are things that seem high up and out of reach... I end up throwing the rock and the plushie - sort of by mistake (R2)... I wander/fall down...get caught by my brother. Still no idea what to do. Time to consult a guide. Oh, it turns out you're supposed to find these plushies and put them in a basket. What? How was I supposed to figure that out? No idea. I do some wandering and find a door that serves as a ramp to the top of a large basket - which is where you're supposed to drop the plushies. There's a cardboard sign with...16 of them? Lots of them. I found one, but now have no idea where it is. I decide to restart, maybe there was a bug and a tutorial was supposed to fire but didn't? No, it's the same. Fine. I go back to the top of the rock mountain, get the plushie and drop it in the basket. There's a ding noise...and that's it. I have no idea how many are left. As far as I could tell the sign stayed the same, no checks or crossed-out plushies. I find another plushie inside a large, very large, bucket I was able to fall into after jumping higher thanks to a geyser. Nice. Oh, there's no way to get out of the bucket. I hit the menu and there's a "I'm stuck" option - this triggers a cutscene of a bird that swings down and takes you back to the start. Oh. Seems like a solution to a problem than shouldn't exist. I get it if you squirrelled your way behind some strange geometry and don't want to lose the game state. It's almost elegant in that context. Here it just feels lazy - put a required item inside an inescapable object to force you to use the bird. Ok, maybe that was on purposes (so you learn the bird thing. But, I had to poke around in the menus - instead of it triggering a tutorial text - "Hey, you're stuck inside the bucket, if that ever happens do this..". I gave up in frustration soon after that. I was able to pick up the raw steak at one point...but the general physics and navigation felt so poor that adding the pressure of your brother coming at you to reset your place in the level felt at odds with the experience. This wasn't hide and seek now, it was a scavenger hunt...and not a particularly interesting one at that either.Sun, 27 Sep 2026 16:53:00 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8024&iddiary=13555https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7996The night before last I played some more and beat the gauntlet! I felt very chuffed about that...kept on going, got to another boss (Parn!) beat that, and immediately after was ANOTHER boss...I lost really quickly and got really mad. In my mind it was boss gauntlet + Parn + final boss...with no saves in between and the thought of doing it all over was too much. So, I put the game down pretty confident that I'd just have to watch the ending on Youtube or something. Last night I picked it up for a "last attempt" of sorts - before that though I scoured the map and found a few secret areas I had missed! And one area that was now accessible I had forgotten about. Good thing I did, I got a new weapon (the Chakram?) with great range, for a little less damage, but just the sort of thing I'd need for the final boss fight. I then stocked up on potions, swapped my spell to one I thought might work better, and went back in. And success! (I think I had to try twice) And in the end, was it all a dream. Sure. With some more to it...but still. The epilogue was nice, though it was weird to going back to level 1 with none of the additional movement unlocked - not that there was any challenge. It feels strange to beat a game like this. I usually bail a lot earlier due to my lack of interest in practicing enough to improve enough so I can clear certain challenges. This game hit the sweet spot for me - it wasn't trivial, and I felt like I improved and learned the game's systems over time.Tue, 22 Sep 2026 07:38:16 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7996&iddiary=13554