Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1269https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7918This one is reminiscent of Post Void, but with a subversive '90s anime aesthetic rather than a psychedelic horror one. You are an angry man (a "strong silent type") with a mullet who contracts with a company through an app to kill robots and rescue an influencer. The big boss robot makes you climb a building to get to her for the final showdown. On the way, you go through 70 or 80 stories of the building, in sets of 10. After every 10 floors, you fight a boss, or hit a story sequence, and get a checkpoint. If you die before doing that, you go back to the beginning of that set of 10 floors and lose any upgrades you acquired (except the ones that persist across runs). I spent quite a while on floors 60-69, but didn't have to redo any of the others more than two or three times. I'm not sure why 60-69 was so much harder! It is the only boss I died on, and there was a part of the level layout I kept getting (floors are randomized or procedurally generated or something) that stumped me for a while. There was a laser grid with an enemy that kills you if you touch it. To pass the laser grid, you have to jump through it, but that makes it easy to land on the enemy and die. I eventually figured out how to jump through that grid configuration, then quickly back up and kick the enemy. Or, if you have enough time left, you can run through the lasers. After every floor, you get a choice between three or four upgrades--new/upgraded weapons, speed bonuses, critical hit bonuses, invincibility to hazards, etc. Those upgrades stay with you for the duration of the 10-floor set, then they reset for the next 10 floors, with the exception of your weapon, which you get to keep, even if it's upgraded. The only weapon I upgraded to level 3 was the pistol, so I beat the game with the pistol! And if you die, all your upgrades go away and you reset that 10-floor set. So, you get like 9 upgrades before you get to each boss, and the upgrades are pretty important both to get through the floors before the boss and to fight the boss itself. Upgrades are also important because you only have 10 seconds to live, and you need to extend that as much as possible. You carry a phone that constantly counts down in the app. Kill an enemy, get time back. Kill enemies in creative ways (kick them into lava or lasers, launch them off a ledge, etc.), kill enemies quickly back-to-back, and get more time back. Get hit though and lose time. The game emphasizes that it's not about speed, but flow. In that, it's Hotline Miami-ish, where you are quickly reacting to where enemies are and what type they are so you can dispose of them efficiently without getting hit much. There are enough enemies that you don't need to fly as fast as you can, but I generally did. You have guns and you have a boot, so you alternate between blasting enemies and kicking them into things. It's fast-paced and fun. The story is fun too, like a silly dystopian sci-fi anime thing that has a lot to say about consumerism and how people are like robots. It's a short game, with an endless mode and more difficulty settings for replayability. Not essential to play, but worth a couple hours for some high-energy FPS action and creative style!Wed, 25 Jun 2025 14:10:58 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7918&iddiary=13414https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7916One and done! I don't think I ever played a Crash Bandicoot game on PlayStation and I don't think I ever need to play another one. It feels like an old-school platformer and is surprisingly retro. You run, jump, and spin your way through various levels. Your goal is to destroy all the crates, get all the fruits, find all the hidden gems, and, in time trial mode, do it quickly. That's it, straightforward. There are "masks" you pick up that give Crash some special powers, such as reversing gravity or slowing time. These change up the platforming. In the last set of levels, where there is a serious difficulty spike, you do these sequences where there are multiple masks. So for example, you pick up the super spin mask, jump, super spin, jump, remove the mask, land on the TNT (because if you super spin on the TNT it blows up immediately), jump, pick up the reverse gravity mask in midair, reverse gravity, float up to the time stop mask, stop time, crawl through the dynamite, jump, pick up the reverse gravity mask, reverse gravity, float up, pick up the phase mask, phase out and go past a laser, phase in and land on a platform, phase out and go past a laser (this is all while falling, by the way), land successfully on the final platform and end the level. Levels are littered with all manner of death traps, from enemies, to exploding boxes, to bandicoot-eating plants, and the platforming is not easy! Part of the difficulty is due to all the things going on on screen, and that's great. It reminded me of something like Super Meat Boy (one of my hard platformers to compare) where you need to learn some muscle memory to get through harder sections. Like, you'll be running and die because a box of dynamite is around the corner, so you die, restart from checkpoint, and remember not to hug the corner. And do that a lot, because in later levels, you will die a lot. I don't have too much else to say, really. There's a story but it's silly. There's fan service with recurring characters from previous games, even some you get to play as, which also changes up the platforming a bit. There is a lot of replayability as you can strive to find all the boxes and gems every level, do all the bonus levels, collect skins, and so on. I had a pretty good time playing, but will probably never play another one. There are better platformers that don't channel the gnarly 1990s so hard.Tue, 24 Jun 2025 10:15:10 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7916&iddiary=13413https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7906Retiring this one (and Sekiro). I was really into Nine Sols for a while, but, like Sekiro, it's like beating my head against a wall, agonizing for hours to make inches of progress. Nine Sols is a Sekiro-like metroidvania, Sekiro-like because it features incredibly difficult parry-based combat. I am learning that this may not be my cup of tea. It's too bad because I enjoyed the metroidvania aspects and think this is a much better game than the last metroidvania I played, Ender Lilies (which I thought was solid). Nine Sols is more like Hollow Knight, but with that Sekiro influence. The story immediately hooked me. It feels like slow-burn sci-fi. Your character gets pushed off a cliff, wakes up when a village boy finds him, and lives for a time in this village. The village does periodic ritual sacrifices, but when the boy who finds your character is ready to be sacrificed, your character pulls a plot twist and, short version, the village is not what you think it is. Off you go on a quest to defeat the "nine sols" and...do whatever it is that does. I killed two of them and I feel like I was close to finding one or two more. The two sols I killed were HARD, but such good, unique fights. In the second one, you fight this cat-harpy (all the sols are cats) and her two enslaved humans. One human is quick and the other is slow, but both are strong, and you fight them at the same time. When you empty one of their HP bars, the sol descends to heal them, at which point you can attack her. But while you're taking advantage of your window to attack her, the other human is still coming at you. Rinse and repeat this until she is dead. The strategy lies in how you choose to deactivate the humans. Do you focus on taking out the big one or the small one? Which one is less dangerous when you are attacking the sol? Or, do you try to deactivate them both at the same time, thus giving you free time to attack the sol? Or, what I finally got good at was staggering them, so I'd try to take down both their HP, then deactivate one, attack the sol, then when she was done healing it, immediately deactivate the other so she came right back. When I finally killed her, I thought the fight would go into a second phase because that's what happened with the first boss, I spent a long time killing it, but when I thought it was over, it just went into phase 2! I loved the hard-as-nails boss fights, but the regular enemies were brutal as well! I died countless times to archers, dogs, swordsmen, spearmen, little guys, big guys, everything. Nine Sols does the Dark Souls / Hollow Knight thing where when you die, you drop your money, or if an enemy kills you, then they have your money. Then you have to make your way back there WITHOUT DYING to retrieve it. But the enemies are so vicious, and the platforming is challenging too, that it's quite the feat to make the (sometimes long) trek back to your corpse. So, you lose your hard-earned cash all the time. And you need that to purchase upgrades. And if you are avoiding enemies too much, then you're not getting experience points, so no skills improve either. I wanted to learn enemy attack patterns so that I could effectively parry and kill them, but it was such a slow death-filled process for every enemy type (of which there are many), including the various elites you encounter. Nine Sols does have some cool innovations. For one, you have a "talisman" that lets you do this attack where you sprint past an enemy, attach a bomb, and detonate it. This converts all internal damage to permanent damage. What is internal damage, you say? Well, that's like temporary damage. Your character takes internal damage when you parry but miss the perfect timing, which is nice. Internal damage refills over time. So, you can miss a perfect parry, take internal damage, and recover it. Of course, if you take too much internal damage, you'll still die, and if you get hit while you have internal damage, then it converts to permanent damage. Enemies do the same thing, so using your talisman when they have internal damage can really deplete their HP. Another thing I liked was this butterfly drone thing you have. If you press LT, you take control of the drone and can fly it around. This is really useful for scouting ahead so you can see what enemies there are, what platforming obstacles there are, etc. The drone can also fly into special spaces and hack electronics to open doors and whatnot. On the one hand, stopping to use a drone to scout ahead of you all the time slows the pace down a lot, but on the other hand, caution is really important. In the end, I don't have the time or patience to dedicate to mastering Nine Sols (or Sekiro), as much as I like it. Therefore, it is retired (as is Sekiro)! Although I did read that if you change the difficulty to story mode, you can manually adjust damage dealt and received (to the tune of +/- %1,000!), so maybe one day I'll god mode my way through just to see more of the game. Tue, 24 Jun 2025 06:53:53 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7906&iddiary=13412https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7912I've got several of these to update, burning through Game Pass games before the end of the month as I am. I enjoyed South of Midnight, especially for the creative writing, the neat animation, and the stellar music. The combat, while fine, gets repetitive, and the game starts to drag toward the end because of this and the way that most of the 13 or 14 chapters unfold in the same formulaic way. What's cool about the writing? The game takes place in the Deep South (something like New Orleans or Mississippi or the bayou). It features Southern folklore. The main character is Black and the game deals with slavery and racial trauma. It also deals with child abuse, social work, interracial relationships, grief and loss, and more. As someone who teaches social work students, it was really cool to have the main character's mother be a social worker, and to have all these themes be important parts of the story! The game is divided into chapters, and each chapter or two covers a particular story of some tragedy or trauma happening and the victim turning into a monster. The main plot is that Hazel's (main character) house with her mother in it gets swept away in hurricane waters and she goes to find and save her. On the way, she meets a big catfish (the narrator) and various other characters, some related to her family and others related to the traumas she heals. And that's basically how the chapters play out. Hazel enters a new area and finds out there's a sad story there that explains whatever monster is around. Then she has to find the three or four memories that tell the story of the trauma, fighting in arena battles to get each one. Then, she has to go to the monster and cleanse it. Then, there is a platforming chase sequence. Repeat. All combat takes place in arenas. You walk into an area, it becomes gated off, enemies spawn, and you kill them. There are several different enemy types that behave quite differently, and a bunch of them will spawn together (especially later on). So, you'll have like two aggressive melee enemies, one "healer" that protects an enemy, one that stands back and fires homing missiles, and another giant one that spreads rot on the ground. And they're all flitting around the arena attacking you. It can feel a bit chaotic, but you have some neat tools to handle them. You have a push and a pull, a stun that makes enemies take extra damage, a strong area attack, and you can send your little doll companion to mind control one. You can also like purge an enemy after you kill it, which deals some AoE damage and slightly heals you. It all feels good and can be challenging, but like I said, there is just too much of it. The combat starts to feel like padding. Another thing that got old by the end was searching for skill points to upgrade attacks. These are collectibles hidden all over the place that require you to search in every nook and cranny if you want them. You don't have to find them all, but I think the upgrades helped me in combat. They are often obtained by the lightest of platforming and puzzle solving, "going the wrong way" on purpose. These give you either 5, 10, or 20 skill points. Upgrades require around 100 points on average to unlock, so you have to find a lot of these pickups to get rewarded. I didn't mind this too much because the environments are pretty and the movement and platforming feel good. So, I did enjoy the combat and exploration for a while, but searching high and low for skill points became tedious. One thing that consistently made me want to keep going despite knowing that I was going to keep having to fight and do an end-of-chapter chase sequence was the music. As you get closer to the monster in each chapter, there is like a special song that starts playing. So, when you're searching for Two-Toed Tom, a giant alligator (yes, he is a victim!), a song starts playing about Two-Toed Tom, ramping up in intensity through a boss battle, almost seeming to narrate what you're doing. I LOVED the music because it was related to the story and what was going on in the game. I'm glad I played South of Midnight. I'd recommend if you want something narratively unique. Tue, 24 Jun 2025 06:15:43 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7912&iddiary=13411https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7897Finished this up with Patrick last night. It's a simple, relaxing one that boils down to being a collect-a-thon. You play as a girl and her brother (one at a time, in third-person) in a world hit by some kind of ecological catastrophe. The old world (our society) was ruined a long time ago, flooded, and a subsequent society built atop our ruins was also ruined by your standard bad black and red "mass" of vines and stuff creeping over everything. The girl has some sort of connection to the mass (it is actually called the mass) and can heal it, turning the black vines a vibrant green. There is a pretty visual effect where flowers bloom wherever she walks (it's a pretty game in general!). She can cleanse large areas of the mass by finding seeds and placing them into pods. That's how the game is chunked into areas. It takes place in this one section of the world, you have a home base in the middle of the map, and there are 10 seeds you have to find to cleanse 10 areas. Since this is a water world, you drive a motorboat around, using your spyglass to locate the seeds, each of which is at the end of some light puzzle platforming on its own building/island in the water. It's handy when you're looking for the seeds because, as your base is in the middle of the map, each seed is pretty evenly spaced around it in a circle. The puzzle platforming is simple. You navigate to a dock, get out, and...push forward on the left stick. There is no other button except pressing "A" to use switches and pick up things. The character automatically jumps and climbs as you move her. I said "puzzle platforming," but really, both of these things are really light. You don't have to think much to solve the puzzles or platform. That's why I said the game is relaxing (easy, pretty, no enemies, etc.). As you explore the ocean and the buildings/islands, you can find a couple hundred collectibles, from little pictogram diaries to boat parts to cosmetic items to relics you dredge up from the ocean, etc. It would be easy to get sucked in to ticking all the boxes to find all the things on the map. It was funny playing with Patrick because he is more likely to do that than I am, and he kept wanting to go back and find diary entries and stuff that we missed that he could see on the map. So when he was playing, he'd take time to look for items. When I played, I just went straight for the seeds. So yeah, chill game to play together. Positive experience. Nothing to write home about though. Wed, 18 Jun 2025 07:14:41 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7897&iddiary=13408https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7913This was ahead of its time. I've been trying to play it for years on PC, but it's always been unplayable on my computers, with stuttering, low FPS, and bursts of neon color with the infamous lighting bug (green, magenta, and yellow mostly) that blot out everything on the screen. I remember initially thinking that the colors were an art choice, which would gel with the whole sci-fi time travel story, before realizing that, no, these are bad colors! Anyway, I'd never gotten past Act 1 before, but this week I was able to play the whole thing. And FINALLY! Despite being 9 years old, parts of it still feel fresher than things coming out today. The story presentation is the highlight. The game tells you something like, "Quantum Break is a seamless experience across the game and TV show." I used to think that there was a whole TV show related to the game, like the game was a spin-off or something. But that's not how it works. After each of the game's acts, you can watch a 20-25-minute live action "TV episode." These were cool! They add depth to the story, filling in information about other characters and what's going on behind the scenes of the game at Monarch (the game's evil corporation). I can't count the times where I was playing/watching, and saw something that connected to the game/show. It could be insight into a character's motivations or what they were doing, explaining how this or that event actually happened, or even a one-off comment that referenced some small detail. This sort of attention to detail is most impressive. I won't spoil the story, but in Act 5, you have all sorts of "ooooh shit!" moments as you remember what happened in Act 1 (and...see them happening again). Why haven't more games experimented with this blend of gameplay and live action? I'm not thinking of something like Immortality or Her Story that focus on interactive video, but more of a hybrid. The story itself is mind-bending and engaging. My quibbles here were with some of the characters and relationships that felt implausible (never mind the implausibility of time travel). They were all really well acted with several Hollywood actors I recognized. But, our main character, Jack, seems to be like a loser-ish "Joe Everyman" (with a criminal record) who ends up being able to operate a time machine. It's alluded to that he had weapons training in Thailand or something, but...why? He comes into the picture because his best friend runs Monarch, the big evil corporation. And his brother was an eccentric physicist who created time travel. His brother only cares about two things: time travel and Jack. Why he cares so much about Jack, I have no idea. And why the best friend who owns like the world's most important multinational corporation cares so much about getting in touch with Jack (the only person he can trust?) in Thailand, flying him all the way to the US, I also do not know. And again, Jack and his best friend (who is a businessman, not a physicist) are somehow able to operate time machines. There is also a love (?) story between Jack and another woman that is paper thin. Other aspects of the plot don't make sense either. Monarch is described as having "hundreds" of employees. My School of Liberal Arts has hundreds of employees. Multinational corporations have thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands. The physicist brother built a time machine and did all this work starting with a prestigious grant that was for...$150,000. I have a subaward right now for that amount. It pays for summer salary, data collection expenses, and conference travel for three faculty. This physicist has 50 computers, tons of other scientific equipment, several buildings, and a freaking TIME MACHINE. It was mentioned that he sold his parents' house for more money, but that would be like (20 years ago) maybe another couple hundred thousand dollars. This guy needed a grant for $150 million dollars, not $150,000. The third-person shooter gameplay is what does feel 9 years old. You can equip a pistol, a machine gun, and a shotgun. You have various time manipulation powers, which boil down to sprint, sprint version two (sprint for longer...), shield, explosion, and one that I never quite figured out, which places a "time bubble" on an enemy, which you shoot bullets into, and then the bullets do extra damage when the time bubble bursts. Enemies are mostly straightforward. Later on, there are some "heavies" who are really armored and take more bullets. Then there are some guys with chronon harnesses, which let them "sprint" like you, and some others with fields that negate your abilities if you get too close. For those guys, who also pack a lot of heat, you have to get behind them to destroy theirs suits' power. Some snipers later on. And one boss fight at the end. That's it. Not a lot of strategy required. Levels are linear with a decent amount of collectibles, mostly of the "reading emails" variety and the "find skill points" variety. With the skill points, you slightly upgrade abilities; these were not necessary. I enjoyed the extra story details though; the emails and memos made some of the characters (especially those at Monarch) deeper and went into more detail about Monarch's plans. This stuff was also explored more in the TV episodes, and I like how it all reinforced one another. In combat situations, you dispatch a wave or two of enemies and move on. There are always exploding barrels. And since this was 2016, it's a bit of a cover shooter, but without a dedicated "cover" button. Jack squats down when you move behind things. It worked pretty well. The thing that doesn't work as well is movement through the environments. I take this for granted that modern games usually let you hop over things that are at shin-height. Not so in Quantum Break. If you see a ramp, you can't jump onto the side of the ramp. You have to go to the beginning of the ramp, get on, and walk. You can't jump over any boxes or objects in the environment. The only exceptions are those platforming segments where you're meant to jump on something, and those are usually marked with yellow. This made for a lot of me jumping, Jack grunting and just sort of colliding with the shin-high object, and me rolling me eyes and walking around it. Another thing that I take for granted these days are excellent checkpoints. Often in action games nowadays, when you die, you restart at the beginning of that battle or right before the obstacle that killed you. Sometimes you go back to a clearly marked save or checkpoint. Quantum Break sets up checkpoints in strange places. For example, in the last battle, you cross a large room and run up a ramp to talk to someone, then the boss comes out, talks at you, and the battle starts. When you die, it doesn't just restart the encounter. It puts you back at a door, and you have to run across the room and up the ramp to the NPC, talk to him, the boss comes out and talks at you (which you can skip), and then the battle starts. Why not just immediately restart the battle?! That kind of thing happened a lot, where instead of just restarting a battle or a platforming sequence, it would take you to like 30 seconds or a minute before that and you have to re-do some boring part like...running across a room or going through a gate or whatever. I'm really glad that I finally got to play this in its entirety! Actually, I thought I wasn't going to make it because the lighting bug was there. It first happened toward the end of Act 2, but I was able to play through it, then it happened in a good chunk of Act 4, and again I managed to squint my way through that too. It's like playing with a mod that makes the game harder! "Color burst" where you can't see well. Can you still kill all the enemies in the room with "color burst" activated?! Then it came on really bad in Act 5 during a tough battle and I had to restart the game a couple times because I couldn't see, but luckily that was it. So yeah, I feel like I played something out of time because so much of the game was so impressive and unique. I didn't even mention the time-stopped environments, which were so, so cool to play through. I can't believe that a game pulled this off nearly 10 years ago. It feels like something that would be incredible even today, and playing Quantum Break, I felt that sense of incredulity at the way that time fractured in the environment. Definitely recommend, but with the caveat that it took me like 5 years to finally be able to play it on PC, so I have no idea how that goes for other people or other systems. Tue, 17 Jun 2025 06:25:05 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7913&iddiary=13407https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7905I never really got into this, despite getting most of the way through the campaign (about 4 out of 5 chapters). There is a lot more to manage than in the first game. In Frostpunk 2, you no longer have just one city around a generator, but also outposts to run and a big map to explore. There are more resources to manage. There are more systems to manage. There are multiple factions to manage. It's hard to keep track of everything! Despite the bigger scope, it's a really similar game. Build your city, keep the people warm, calm, and free of disease and squalor. The temperature goes up and down and you must adapt accordingly, reallocating heat to different districts such that citizens can continue working (ideally uninjured) and not get sick or die of cold. If the cold sets in, things break down fast. Threatening again are the "whiteouts," huge blizzards that last for weeks. You must prepare for them ahead of time, stockpiling food, coal and oil, materials, goods, and so on. There was a major whiteout in chapter 2 or 3 that I had prepared well for in terms of stockpiling, but I hadn't accounted for how unhappy all the factions would get because of the cold. All four factions hated me, my trust went to 0, and they were going to vote to depose me (which is a game over). I couldn't believe it and the only thing I can figure I could have done differently is overheat the generator. But I didn't do that because I was scared it would malfunction. Or perhaps you are supposed to come out of the whiteout hated by everyone and have to rebuild their trust. I funded factions' projects, reallocated heat to their homes, let them pass whatever laws they wanted, and promised them power, and just in the nick of time before the vote, I gained the amount of trust I needed. I rebuilt all that trust, continued exploring and expanding into chapter 4, where a new outpost required for progression became unmanageable due to mistakes I made. With this particular outpost, you can choose to settle it or salvage cores (valuable and rare resources) to power the generator of your main city to the max level. I chose to salvage, but there are toxic fumes in the outpost. These get worse as you break the ice and extract resources, and I just kept losing so many people from disease. I replenished them over and over, but couldn't keep track of that and funneling other resources to the outpost at the same time, as well as managing my main city and first outpost. The outpost's generator kept losing power, one faction was really pissed off and kept destroying housing districts, which meant my people kept becoming homeless and freezing to death. I finally researched and built a watchtower for security, but then the faction attacked my industrial zone that was automating extraction (so fewer workers died from toxic fumes). Through all this, the generator kept powering down, I think because I didn't have energy extraction set up there and I wasn't funneling efficiently from my main base. Looking back on it, I probably should have built housing in the hills above the toxic fumes so at least my workers wouldn't die at home. My favorite thing was trying to play all the factions. There's a system again where you pass laws, and each faction can gain and lose representatives in a chamber. They each have different ideologies too, and you might align with one over the other. But of course, doing something aligning with one or two factions might piss off another one, so you're always balancing. The game is transparent about how many votes laws need to pass, and if you need more votes, you can make promises to factions that were hesitant. This serves the dual purpose of getting your law passed and making a hesitant faction happy by fulfilling your promise. Anyway, managing all these different things was very stressful and felt like pushing a boulder up a hill. I appreciate the complexity of Frostpunk 2, and I still love the environment, story, and tough choices. But like the first game, it's not enough to make me love playing it. I saw, oddly enough, that these developers have another game that just came out on Game Pass, The Alters, which looks unique. I might give that a look in the next few weeks.Sat, 14 Jun 2025 13:35:10 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7905&iddiary=13405https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7910Epic epic epic! I had zero expectations for this, having never heard of it until sometime after it came out and seeing that it got really good reviews. If you like Uncharted, you have to play Indiana Jones. Or if you like Indiana Jones movies. It's very authentic. It's by MachineGames, who has been doing the (mostly) excellent Wolfenstein games. They're sticking with the Nazi antagonist theme. This has Wolfenstein DNA, it feels like Uncharted and Tomb Raider, and it also feels like (unexpectedly) an immersive sim like Dishonored or Thief or something. It's REALLY good. I’m going to rattle off a handful of things I liked and then note a few rough patches. (1) Story. Solid. I was invested. It’s a typical treasure hunt mystery “go to x places to get the x items” thing, but well done. The voice acting is top notch from all the leads, and even from side characters and random Nazis. The Harrison Ford likeness was cool to see. Characters were well written, good dialogue, good banter between Indy and Gina. An excellent bad guy, a Nazi archaeologist named Voss. He’s sufficiently patriotic and out of his mind for power, arrogant, cruel, and manipulative. (2) Environments and level design. Outstanding. There aren’t a ton of areas that you’ll visit, but there is a lot of variety. Some areas are like semi-open world maps, while others are more linear. The semi-open world maps are full of places to explore, secrets to find. Discovery is organic. You’ll be infiltrating a Nazi camp and come across a “mystery” (the game’s category of puzzles, often finding and deciphering codes to open safes or locate a tomb or something). You might start the mystery by reading a note. Or, you might come across a piece of information from a note or an NPC or something that starts “fieldwork” (the game’s term for side quests). Fieldwork can be involved and is the side content that is most worth doing. There is usually a story component, often new characters, good puzzles, a great trippy sequence after Indy touches a poisonous frog, and so on. You can take or leave all the side stuff though. Some of it is well hidden, and I imagine it would take a good long while to find all the secrets in this game. Side content gives rewards you with money, adventure points (experience), and items. I purchased every skill I had access to by the end of the game, had a ton of points left, and had plenty of side content left to do. So, you won't be starving for experience. Also, the pacing is on point. There is a good mix of puzzles, exploration, combat, and cut scenes. You’re always moving forward toward some goal or another, even if it’s self-directed goals like “I’m going to clear out this Nazi camp” or “I’m going to stop at all these islands and see what’s on them.” The platforming is fun too, which usually goes along with the puzzling. (3) Melee. Something that felt unique about this game is the melee focus. Indy famously punches Nazis, so that’s what he does in the game. There are melee weapons scattered all over the place, everyday items like pots and pans, guitars, pickaxes (lots of excavation equipment), clubs, hair brushes, brooms, etc. Near the end of the game I found a violin and bow and made sure to clobber enemies with them. You can block and throw a charged punch too, as well as parry and counter-attack. You can also employ your signature whip to disarm enemies. Especially as you go further in the game, enemies will have guns, which you are also welcome to pick up and use as clubs, or you can shoot them. Enemies tend to match your combat style though, so if you use your fists, they probably will too, or they’ll pick up a nearby weapon (and often will throw things at you). If you open fire though, if they have guns, they’ll shoot back. Plus, enemies from all over the place nearby will converge on your location. Shooting someone often meant death a minute later. Some things that felt broken: (1) Dogs. Patrol dogs are annoying. I couldn’t figure out how to stop them from attacking me. The game says that if you whip them, they flee, and that they’re also scared of gunshots. I would whip them and they would completely ignore it, latching onto my arm anyway. I would shoot them, and it seems that the game has a “no animal violence” thing because bullets simply don’t do anything to the dogs. The game also says that you can mash left and right click to get the dog off you, but it didn’t work. So, every time a dog saw me, there was nothing I could do but let it attack me! Then, once it attacked, a whip crack would keep it away. (2) Dropping items. You can drop items by pressing “Q” and you will drop whatever you’re holding if you press “tab” to open your bag or “2” to take out your camera or lighter. This was very annoying early on, though less so as you learn the rules by which Indy drops things. It was also less annoying as I realized that it was just being realistic. Indy has two hands. He can’t use a camera and steer a boat at the same time, can’t climb a ladder and hold a gun, can’t bandage himself and hold a map, etc. BUT, what didn’t get any less annoying is that way too often the dropped item will “disappear.” You can’t see it on the ground. Sometimes this was because you’d drop it and it would “bounce” away. Other times, it just resets to its original location. And one time, I couldn’t complete a mystery puzzle because I dropped an item in a pit, but I couldn’t get it back out of the pit because Indy can’t hold his whip with both hands and carry an item at the same time. Actually, thinking back to this now, I probably could have thrown the item up and out of the pit. At that time, I didn’t know I could throw things. This is because… (3) Not much explanation for UI. The game tells you surprisingly little in terms of how to play and what things mean. This was neat for “figuring it out,” but, like I said, I didn’t know how to throw items until later in the game! And I had to look up what the various bars meant (hint: the white bars are health, the blue ones you get by eating food are “bonus” health, and when you eat fruit, you get extra yellow bars which is like reserve stamina). There is an in-game manual that doesn’t have this stuff in it. It’s weird. The game also doesn’t explain how to go back to previous areas of the game until AFTER you do it. And there’s a scary “you will lose unsaved progress” when you click to go back to a previous area, so I didn’t do it at first, and eventually looked it up. I would play a sequel in an instant. Hopefully MachineGames is making another! Or they could make another Wolfenstein game. At this point, I'll play whatever they make, especially if it's about killing Nazis, which they seem to be the best at making games about. Thu, 12 Jun 2025 16:51:43 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7910&iddiary=13401https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7904Doom: The Dark Ages was a good time, but the franchise is starting to take itself too seriously. I remember enjoying the stories of Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal, but this one was an eye-roller. Of course, it's just an excuse to kill demons, which is fine, but I don't need the excuse. It provides the Slayer motivation too, but again, I don't need him to have a reason for what he's doing. I didn't care about any of the characters--not the king, not his daughter, not the various named lieutenants and soldiers whose names I never learned. The main bad guy was very evil and bad, as befitting a prince of Hell, but I don't know what his motivation was besides...power? Kill Sentinels? Why? The fat guy, Kreed Makyr, I liked better. He reminded me of Baron Harkonnen in Dune. So, story, overly serious and who cares. The running and gunning is as satisfying as ever. Whereas the previous two Doom games focused on the risk/reward of proximity, The Dark Ages edges away from melee. Although there are melee weapons, the star here is your new shield. You can use it to close in quickly and bash enemies, but I far more often used its thrown buzzsaw function, which stuns enemies and allows for various effects. For example, you can upgrade the regular machine gun to ricochet when shooting an enemy affected by the buzzsaw shield. Throw the shield, fire the machine gun, watch the bullets tear through nearby enemies. Very satisfying. The roster of guns is great and, as with Doom Eternal, most have their place for rock-paper-scissoring enemies in certain situations. The plasma rifle explodes enemies with plasma shields. The shotgun and the ball-hurling gun do more damage to armor, which you can then break by throwing your shield. The machine gun that does spread damage is great for clearing out hordes of fodder demons. The one that I used the least was the sniper rifle, which wasn't really a sniper rifle. You can't zoom and it more "lobs" the bullet (arcs and falls short) than shoots it straight. So, you can't actually snipe, which is fair enough; it just made the gun pretty pointless for me. All guns can be upgraded a few times, and I ended up playing almost exclusively with the alternate plasma rifle, which supercharges, doing tons of damage to an enemy and arcing electricity to nearby enemies, which then explode when you shoot them. In terms of the combat encounters, this was an evolution of Doom Eternal, which was nice. I liked the somewhat open maps where you'd stumble upon groups of enemies, rather than walk into a room, have the walls come up, and do one arena battle after another. Although walls would come up, creating arenas, they were usually much bigger, more varied, and felt more organic. By the end, you were dealing with numerous tough enemies at once, sprinting around, targeting armor, parrying, cycling your weapons, etc. And I have to mention parrying, another new combat focus. This was in Doom Eternal a little bit, but parrying is now a big part of combat. Enemies sometimes have a green animation with their attacks, or will shoot a green projectile at you. These can be parried. Parrying has various effects, such as stunning nearby enemies, spawning an auto-turret, and shooting out a fan of homing knives. You have to learn to telegraph enemy moves and parry in the midst of all the chaos on the screen. It was FAR more forgiving than something like Sekiro. I'm also currently playing Nine Sols, which has Sekiro-like parrying. Hopefully these games help me with Sekiro! There are also three different modes of combat. Mostly, you are the Slayer, on the ground, running and gunning. Sometimes, you pilot this giant mech to fight enemy titans. Other times, you fly a dragon and engage in some air combat. These segments were epic for sure, and they broke up the gameplay, but I much preferred the regular on-the-ground combat. It's so crunchy. Everything has weight to it, sounds great, looks awesome. Finally, there are secrets galore, so you can spend your time exporing the maps, poking around to find all the gold, upgrade materials, collectibles, and so on. I did not focus on this, and probably averaged like 60-70% completion on the maps. You use your shield a lot for platforming around, throwing it at switches and whatnot. I probably would have explored more, but, you know, Game Pass only lasts for a month and I've got a lot to get through! First Game Pass game of June, down. Definitely recommend Doom: The Dark Ages if you want a fast and frantic FPS.Sat, 07 Jun 2025 08:33:17 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7904&iddiary=13396https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7898This is a solid metroidvania, hits high marks in all aspects. It's not Hollow Knight and it's not Ori, but it's up there. It’s set in a dark medieval fantasy type world, has a beautiful soundtrack and great artwork. The story is presented in that cryptic souls-like fashion and told primarily through notes in the environment, usually written by characters that you defeat or White Priestesses. It tells of the Blight, a never-ending rain that falls, infecting people and driving them mad. Combat and movement are both tight and responsive. There are like 25 weapons. I think that the most unique design piece is that your weapons are not weapons at all, but are the spirits of (mini)bosses that you defeat. Your character is a frail priestess and the spirits fight at her command. You can equip six of them at once (in two sets of three), so you always have a variety of attacks to deploy. Some are “main” attacks and others are “subskills.” The difference, usually, is that main skills can be used an unlimited number of times, while subskills have a specific number of uses before they run out. When you stop at a respite (save point), you refill your skill uses and health potions. Some main skills do have limited uses though, and near the end of the game, I realized that you can equip multiple main skills in each set. I had assumed that you could have one main skill and two subskills per set of three. This seemed so obvious to me that I didn’t even try to equip multiple main skills and only did so by accident! I wonder if my play style would have changed had I discovered that earlier. Anyway, some skills are melee, some are ranged, some excel at hitting airborne enemies, there is a strong poison cloud that deals damage over time, a movement skill, a stun skill, fast weak attacks, slow strong attacks, skills that can charge attack, and so on. Since you can equip six, you’ll have something for every occasion, and can really tailor them for boss fights. One neat thing is that you can use multiple skills at the same time. Since “you” are not attacking, your spirits can do so simultaneously. All skills can be leveled up using a specific type of experience, basic stuff. The level design is pretty good, but the rooms do get kind of same-y and boring after a while. This sucks because you will backtrack a lot. The map doesn't help with this, since it doesn't give you much information. For example, the rooms are all represented with variously sized squares or rectangles and no other defining features. The only icons on the map are respites (save points), white lines connecting rooms you have been to, and red dots for entrances/exits that you haven't been through yet. Rooms will also turn orange if you have collected all the items inside, which was handy. But there are no icons indicating other objects, obstacles, or enemies. Metroidvanias often mark bosses on the map, mark obstacles with some icon indicating what it is or what tool you might need to bypass it, and so on. Given the amount of backtracking to explore new areas after getting new traversal abilities, it became frustrating that the map didn’t tell me which obstacles were where. This meant that I had to try and remember what obstacle was blocking the constant number of 10-20 unexplored entrances, making my way back through sometimes maze-like rooms to check each obstacle to see if I could bypass it now. So, the map was a bit disappointing, but I guess props for giving me a feeling of achievement and discovery by making me work for exploration. Miniboss battles were easy, basically just buffed versions of regular enemies. I recall dying a few times on the first ones, but I think I one-shot like 15 of them. Boss battles were excellent and provided more of a challenge. Most bosses have three phases that predictably change at 66% and 33% HP. Most took less than a few tries, but I remember three that took a while, including the last boss, which I looked up how to beat because I just wanted to finish the game. I learned that a lot of weapon and relic combinations are (over)powerful. I had been dying for a good hour on the final boss, but after I looked it up and tried a suggested build, I killed it in two tries (and had full health, no health potions used!). There is a sequel out. It has overwhelmingly positive ratings on Steam but it looks really, really similar to Ender Lilies. It would be another solid metroidvania to play, but if it's just more of the same (though by all accounts polished in every way), then I'm not particularly interested, at least no time soon. I do have Nine Sols to play on Game Pass (soon?), so maybe I’ll get a pretty direct comparison to another recent highly rated metroidvania. Wed, 28 May 2025 07:51:46 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7898&iddiary=13395