Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7701This game is supposed to be a deck-building tactical game and it sort of isn't, but very lightly is - at least in my experience so far. So, like CD2: Trap Master this game REALLY wears it's Slay the Spire inspirations on its sleeve. Again, there's a path you that branches and you need to pick which nodes to visit - and there's fights, boss fights, resting spots, stores, artifact/rewards, and shops. Oh, there's also "story encounters" where you make a choice that often results in a benefit and a drawback. VERY Slay the Spire - though I noticed the way the events are distributed is different and that it's much more important to plan your way through it since the paths intersect a lot less and you can, for example in my last run, set yourself up with 4 rest/upgrade a card spots in a row! In addition to a deck of cards you have the character you chose and two "minions" (they're all monsters) that exist on a 2D grid that's quite typical of tactical games. The enemies will spawn, you have energy to cast your cards - generally you cast your cards, unpause and wait for the timer to pause the game when it hits the threshold (7 seconds) for your hand to flush, a new hand is drawn, and you get more mana to cast spells. What isn't really tactical about it is that all the fighting on the tactical grid (which includes everyone having abilities they cast once their mana is full) happens automatically. You can't (afaik) give orders to anyone. At best, if you have the right spells, you can move creatures around (your own or enemy), but they then move back to whatever it is they want to do (e.g. attack the nearest enemy). One of my runs used a character that had access to "trap" cards which are pretty neat since you lay them on the grid and then have to trigger them (with a different card) and ALL the trap laid will trigger. Some do damage, others heal your allies, and so on. So, the game isn't tactical at all in the turn-by-turn combat and movement decision-making sense. Yes, you choose whom to roll into a fight with, which spells to cast on whom, and when to cast things. But, since you don't directly control your combat units it all feels pretty indirect. Where the game goes pretty wild (and above/beyond what Slay the Spire does) is that once you've cleared a run - you gain access to making your own hero - choose skills/talents from a list AND choose which spells will be available (again from a list, which only has the ones you've unlocked). So, in this sense the game has a lot, lot more options/replayability and that sort of thing. But, I'm not sure it's that much more interesting? Oh, there is a meta-progression. When I beat my first run a giant death/reaper creature appeared and said "ok, now you can start to make progress towards winning - you have to collect wings". And I've collected a few since, you get them from killing the stage end bosses (which is nice in that you don't have to get all the way to the end). I need to get 7 - so I wonder if I'll just have to play over and over until I randomly get the right bosses or will the game feed me different ones until I get them all? I've also unlocked a new (third) character...but I kind of don't want to use it because I want to get all the wings with the character I've made some progress with. I've played about 4 hours and I've really enjoyed the "decay" and "trap" mechanics... we'll see how it goes!Sun, 07 Apr 2024 13:32:36 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7701&iddiary=13210https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7636Argh. The longer you go without playing, the worse this game's experience becomes. This is almost entirely due to me forgetting both how to play, but also all the localized information and knowledge you pick up - like who is where, when, and so on. I love the idea of a "clockwork" game where you deftly navigate your way through things that happen and certain times and places - there's a sense of beauty and elegance to the choreography you develop and create (sort of like when you watch those time loop movies and see a character weave through people and places because they know what's going to happen when and they've just learned it). BUT, that beauty also creates an entry barrier - at least a psychological one for me, because the game's on-ramp is past and now you're in the thick of it. But you've forgotten everything...Thu, 04 Apr 2024 11:14:36 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7636&iddiary=13209https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7690So I took a break - and then came back to the game and had forgotten how to play. It took a bit to remember (I purposefully avoided looking stuff up because I wanted to see how easy it was for me to remember). So, some of the fights with V took longer than they should have - because I had forgotten that V has to "finish off" the enemies...lol. While I often focus (for my own personal interests) on game play and game design aspects of a game - I realized as I was playing this game that..wow, the visual design of the large enemies really is phenomenal. They're both beautiful, awesome, creepy, gross, and disgusting. It's quite the accomplishment and I really appreciated it. And, this is in the context of me playing a game that is ~7 years old and running on last gen hardware. Perhaps I haven't played enough PS5 games yet so I'm still too impressionable? Have things moved that far in terms of photorealism? I have decided to move on even though I realize, from the back of the box, that I'll miss out on the 3rd playable character. It's no fault or problem with DMC5...it's just that I've got too many games to play and I think I've understood enough about this game to move on to another.Thu, 04 Apr 2024 11:09:05 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7690&iddiary=13208https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7697This is a 2-in-1 game collection of match 3 games that, as far as I've played each, are exactly the same in terms of gameplay even though the story and art is completely different. The one notable thing about these is that it's a match-3 game that supports three different types of matching which you can switch between whenever you want. It's interesting because it means it's a lot harder to get stuck, and that you have to think in a few more ways in order to identify matches and such. The three ways to match are: 1. Typical swap two tiles to make a match 2. Connect three tiles orthogonally to make a match 3. Tap on group of tiles that are orthogonally adjacent to each other to make a match. There's overlap between the three modes, of course, and in the 3rd one matches don't happen automatically when new tiles drop to fill in the space of tiles that were removed due to a match. So, there's an interesting effect that happens when you've made a match in the 3rd mode and then switch to the 1st mode! You can get a lot of tiles to auto-match and disappear if you've left the board with lots of groups of 3-in-a-row. Other than this little wrinkle, which was interesting to be fair, there wasn't much else to note in either game. There's trophies and interstitial puzzles to play between every 10 or so match-3 levels, but it's pretty light on everything.Sun, 24 Mar 2024 13:19:19 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7697&iddiary=13205https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7668Made it all the way to the final boss fight - against Bowser, obviously? - but I've struggled enough with it that I decided to call it a day. It's a multi-stage battle that, as far as I can tell, requires you to use your rage ability. That's ok, except that it's hard for me to recharge it during the battle so it's a bit more frustrating than simply having to learn attack patterns and dodge attacks. Now that I think about it, I might be "underpowered" for the end? There's lots of things I could have purchased but have not and I don't really feel like returning to old levels to "farm" them, so I feel it's better to simply move on. And this is a strange thing to say about a Nintendo game! (that it's grindy...)Sun, 24 Mar 2024 13:12:25 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7668&iddiary=13204https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7690I started to play this fully expecting to not really like it, not get too far, but at least have some sense of how the game works. So far it's full of surprises (for me at least). I'm probably playing on the equivalent of "easy" (I think the mode was explained as "recommended for newcomers to the DMC series", which is exactly me), so the game has not been that challenging for me. Rather, it's been enjoyable as I'm trying to learn to execute some of the combo abilities I've unlocked. I guess that's surprise number one. My second surprise is how many cut-scenes the game has and how often I've noticed I'm smiling at something genuinely funny that happened. I was expecting annoying man-bro teenage snark. And, there's a little bit of that - but it's not that bad. It's sort of on the right side of snark/funny. I guess that's too surprises. Lots of cut scenes and the humor. Third surprise is that, and I've only played 5 missions, there are (at least?) two playable characters! I've started with Nero and now I'm playing with "V". And V plays VERY differently from Nero. He doesn't really attack, he has these demons you control that are sort of like your attacks. He's weak...there's other energy bars you need to pay attention to. Obviously he's got his own set of upgrades and stuff. So. Lots of fun! I might even (try) to finish this one! The try is because who knows what'll happen with the difficulty level.Sat, 16 Mar 2024 19:57:52 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7690&iddiary=13201https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7689I picked this up a while ago because I was curious about the game. I recall it getting "ok" reviews, but that it got a lot of media attention. What I don't remember right now is if the media attention was from the crowdfunding campaign (this would have been in the early days of videogame crowdfunding) or after that (e.g. failed to deliver? needed more money? crowdfunding drama?)... or something else entirely. I remember there being drama and attention... Maybe the episodic thing they wanted to do was also super fresh at the time and that was driving the games media cycle? So, here I am, maybe 10 years later? More? Playing the game on a PS4...I think the crowdfunding was all about touch interfaces and the (at the time new?) ipad? So. What is the game? Well, it's episodic. I finished episode 5. It's a stealth game. It's set in some sort of dystopian fascist 1984-style future, and it has an interesting split-attention thing going on. You control both a character who must move around in a 3rd person 3d space to escape (walking around, hiding in lockers, avoiding guards, finding items, that sort of thing) while at the same time you control a "hacker" (I have no idea who) who can hack items and hop around from camera-to-camera. So, you often have to scout ahead (by hopping to other cameras - you only see things through the PoV of a camera - mostly), see what's up, unlock things, hack things, etc. and the hop back to a camera that gives you a view of the character such that you can see what you're doing when you're controlling her. It works! And, I appreciated that there weren't a lot of high-stakes time-based challenges because the camera hopping (which changes your perspective) can really slow things down and it was easy for me to get caught on corners and that sort of thing. It wasn't too hard, and I enjoyed the first episode - lots of cut-scenes though...and...lots of humor? This was unexpected... - So, all of the guards carry around a passport you can scan to see who they are. And they all appear with realistic-looking pictures and sort of normal names. But, I was a bit confused that they also had flags from countries all over the place. It all clicked when I scanned a guard whose picture was not a photo but a cartoon character. Specifically Tycho or Gabe from PennyArcade! I then realized - OH! The photos are all of Kickstarter funders! (which was also indicated on the passport, I just hadn't noticed!). The guards are all essentially criminals with mental and behavioral problems...and it's cool that, even as late as the PS4 version, the creators are holding up to what I imagine was promised during the Kickstarter campaign. Still, it was a weird 4th wall breaking thing for me... - Which was perhaps augmented because... When you pick a guards pocket you get a game disk! (3.5 inch disc) Each disc is of a different indie game - which was cool - and there's commentary on the game and everything. This made no sense to me at all either...Though it was cool, I thought. And perhaps a sign of what the indie community was then (when things were really taking off!). Later on I discovered why there were all these disks - you get help from a turncoat guard who is into retro games and whose collection was raided by his fellow bullying guards (thus, the discs everywhere). It was a reasonable explanation - but it came too late and also in a context such that I felt it was lucky I even found it... So, overall - will I continue playing? I had some fun with the game, but not enough to be compelled into the later episodes. I took a quick peek and it seems the ratings/scores went down starting with episode 3, so I felt I played enough to get a good feeling of the game (I thought the black hacker market where you could sell intel/dirt you found along the way in exchange for new abilities was pretty cool), without needing to spend more time on it.Sat, 16 Mar 2024 09:54:40 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7689&iddiary=13200https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7685This was great fun to play couch co-op. I've been at it in fists and starts since sometime in November? (or maybe it was December). Basically, whenever "the kids" were all around - we'd play a bit of this. In the end it was just two of us who finished it. What I found interesting is how little the "modern" additions (more moves and combos, an upgrade progression system for each character, collectibles and challenges for each level) to the brawler style seemed to matter. At least to us. Sure, it was nice to level up and get stronger - but it wasn't something we were chasing, it just happened as we played. I never paid too much attention to the combos - and I'm guessing if we were playing on the harder difficulty levels this might have been different...we just sort of played through on basic, definitely lost lives, but were still able to pull through. The collectibles were fun, and we did go back an replay a few levels to pick them up. But, they didn't seem to add too much to our experience of the game... What DID feel good - and I recognized as being a "modern" addition - where all the fun animations and little tidbits in levels. Quite a few were gags and such - and it made the experience such that I enjoyed paying attention to what was going on in the different scenes and such. So, instead of the game having three times as many enemies/enemy types - it just added new/bespoke to the level animations (e.g. regular enemy comes out of a store eating an ice cream) that were fun to watch. It made the game feel like it had more depth. This isn't a knock on the older/original games at all, it's just an "art budget" sort of thing. What do you do when you want to do something that really closely resembles an old game (in style and gameplay) but can do it with current tech? Go for the subtle improvements - like better animations (more frames? more resolution, but still pixel-based looking).Thu, 07 Mar 2024 12:57:13 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7685&iddiary=13193https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7679Ok...it's time to move on! I did at least win a battle on one of the higher difficulties and...maybe I won't quite uninstall it just yet. I was just getting started on the meta-progression as well, and there are lots of new cards to unlock (in the meta-progression). So...we'll see. It was a game changer for me to realize that you could move your traps around - this is a huge help for certain bosses as well as the 3rd boss levels where the layout often changes. I've also gotten better at the game in the sense that I'm really stingy now in terms of picking up new cards. There are lots of cool 4 mana cards, but in practice you rarely get to play them. If you're lucky you can add some inscriptions to them to make them cheaper - but you can't really count on that for several 4-cost cards. So, I now pick up one, two at the most...and try to make the most from there.Tue, 05 Mar 2024 13:04:06 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7679&iddiary=13192https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7677This game has such a sense of humor - it's subtle - and generally involves characters saying dumb stuff or being put in dumb situations. There's a side quest where you get bumped into by some ruffians who try to shake you down, you then beat them up (assuming you choose not to pay). I've run into them twice already! It's these random side story quests I've enjoyed the most. One involved a buxom woman who comes on to you a lot, only for you to get drugged and robbed in a bar! Well, I later ran across the bar, beat up the bartender and...sort of finished the quest. Not sort of, it counted as finishing it! (with trophy award and all). There's been a few of those quests where you do something, and then, later on you get the narrative resolution. It's an interesting structure that seems fresh - rather than having the quest always "active" here it just resolves later as a result of your wandering around. That being said I did learn what the "!" on the map meant (generally it's for quest stuff that's active). The game's been a neat introduction to the franchise for me, and at 12 hours in, I don't think I'll be continuing to play mostly because I've got a drawer full of other PS4 games I need to get to (I've stopped buying PS4 games for a while - so it's all backlog now, and it's very very slowly getting smaller) I also learned where to make use of all these locker keys I'd been finding - and opened a bunch of lockers (it's kind of strange to think that ALL of keys to the lockers have been lost by their owners) for prizes and treats. Perhaps the strangest thing about this entire game is that the protagonist - Kazuma Kiryu - for all his anger and violence, basically spends most of his time fighting random people that attack him while trying to do nice things for others! I've been trying to find a replacement for the RC racer guy who can't get married because he's failed the full-time RC racer commentator interview and really needs full time job but can't quit before there's a replacement. I spent some time helping a woman sell matchboxes (with matches) because she wanted to get a gift for her paramour, but she's really poor (and perhaps a bit lazy) and her parents make the matches out of their apartment... Also the poor old man who's shivering and just needs a cloak (got him that, he gave me a pair of glasses, that then helped someone else, and so on). He's a friendly neighborhood spider-man without any superpowers except for mean fists and kicks. As for how the story will play out? Well, one of the women I was looking for (who presumably stole the yakuza's nest egg of a billion yen) turned up dead. Drowned. Cement to weigh down the body and all. Pretty dark and tragic, especially as I'm trying to protect her daughter who has some sort of pendant that everyone seems to want. There's too many characters and ties (families) for me to keep it all straight, but it's the daily running around that's had me most engaged with the game to be honest.Mon, 04 Mar 2024 12:21:29 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7677&iddiary=13191