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Before Your Eyes (PC) by dkirschner (Apr 14th, 2024 at 13:51:13) |
I've been looking forward to playing this, especially after playing One Hand Clapping, which had a singing mechanic. That game activates your mic and you use your voice, raising and lowering pitch, to interact with the game. Before Your Eyes was similar in that the game activates your webcam and uses your eye blinks as input. Before Your Eyes works WAY better than One Hand Clapping, and it's the better game all around. I figure that detecting blinks (yes/no) is easier than detecting notes along the range of human vocal pitch, so kudos to One Hand Clapping for trying.
Blinking in Before Your Eyes doesn't do anything unless you do it over a prompt (mouse over the prompt, then blink to interact) or unless you do it when the metronome icon is visible, which progresses the story to the next scene. The rules are simple, and it became a game in and of itself for me to blink strategically. I imagined that at the end of A Clockwork Orange, Alex's eyes are forced open so that he could successfully complete this game. At times, I felt like holding my eyes open with my fingers. This is because your eyes will get tired/dry/itchy while playing and you will screw up and blink when you don't mean to, skipping dialogue or ending a scene early. That's frustrating enough. Make sure you do the blink calibration, but I think that no matter how well you do it, it will still occasionally register some non-blinks as blinks. This really didn't happen much for me; through calibration, I think I turned the sensitivity way down, and I wonder what effect wearing glasses had. But like I said, it works surprisingly well.
So, the game itself is narrative-heavy. It's an obvious play on the idea that a life can pass in the "blink of an eye." You're picked up by a ferryman of souls who asks you to tell the story of your life. Back in time you go to remember it: your childhood, your parents, your career, etc., blinking your way through each scene. I won't spoil the story, but there is a twist that I absolutely did not see coming (though I should have paid more attention to the mysterious dark scenes) that changes the narrative and the tone of the game. This is one you can spend time reflecting on.
Aesthetically, it's got a simple visual presentation, sort of painterly, with some really nice piano music. The voice acting is good, with the exception of the girl-next-door (who sounds the same at 10 as she does at 40). For some reason, they also used the same voice actor for your dad and her dad, which made the one scene with her dad calling her very confusing ("Why is my dad at her house?!"). But I liked the dad and mom's performances. I was wondering through the whole game if your character was mute and/or on the spectrum because he doesn't talk--only through a typewriter later in the game--and otherwise expresses himself through his prodigious musical and artistic talents. But I think he's just a silent main character, not actually mute.
Anyway, the game won a BAFTA for a reason. It didn't blow my mind, but it's a neat experience that's worth having. It's short too, doesn't waste your time. I'm considering incorporating it into a class.
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Stray (PC) by dkirschner (Apr 13th, 2024 at 12:00:39) |
Patrick and I have been playing this together this semester, and finished it a couple weeks ago. We were talking after beating it about despite how simple and straightforward of a game this is, it manages to be something new. Playing as a cat (and being able to do cat things like curl up and sleep, scratch things, knock objects off tables, etc., so cuuuute) was novel, and the setting and story were interesting. But really, playing as a cat. I smiled a whole lot throughout the game. The lil companion robot was cute too.
On the other hand, I was often tired and bored while playing, and literally fell asleep during several sessions. Patrick would be making dinner or something in the kitchen, and I'd snap awake, cat walking into a wall, and I'd pretend I had not fallen asleep, and that I was just watching the cat walk into the wall and thinking. Like how my dad always used to claim he was "resting his eyes" when he'd fall asleep on the couch.
I would not call the game exciting. It was a lot of wandering around the city and talking to robot NPCs, fetching things for them. The city is a really good-looking dystopia, and the robots are quirky, but I wish they had more dialogue. You don't get a sense that many of them have personalities besides whatever one-note thing they do. I mean, the lack of dialogue makes sense, and it's not really "dialogue" since the cat can't talk. The fact that you are a cat adds a whole layer of silly to the game. Like, why has this lil robot befriended a cat? Why are all these robots putting all their faith in a cat to save them? Cats don't understand what we're saying to them, and cats do whatever they want! Playing as a cat in a game where you're doing fetch quests (fetching is dog stuff!) and doing things to help people is very un-cat-like.
But, you know what? The ability to play as a cat and do cat things trumps how little sense it makes, and I would play as a cat in this dystopia again. Idea for next time: more cats. And what do you think? Were there cats at the end?! Optimistically, I think so.
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Hadean Tactics (PC) by jp (Apr 7th, 2024 at 13:32:36) |
This 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!
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Deathloop (PS4) by jp (Apr 4th, 2024 at 11:14:36) |
Argh. 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...
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Devil May Cry 5 (PS4) by jp (Apr 4th, 2024 at 11:09:05) |
So 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.
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Far Cry 3 (360) by dkirschner |
| Lots of fun so far, reminds me a lot of Assassin's Creed now. Lots of hunting, skinning, killing pirates. --------------------- Excellent game, great story, main characters, fun gameplay overall. Side quests mostly alright at best (but fun supply drops). |
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most recent entry: Sunday 17 March, 2013
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Finished the main story of Far Cry 3 yesterday. It was a trip (ha, get it?) I'll not spoil much since this came out relatively recently and many people haven't played it yet. Thoroughly enjoyable game. Excellent story, a bit weird/funny/over the top at times, but still really good. I never made it far into Far Cry 2 so I can't say how similar it might be, but for my comparative purposes imagine some assemblage of Just Cause 2 and Assassin's Creed (esp. Brotherhood). Besides the story, you go around liberating the island by securing enemy strongholds and disabling communications towers. You can also do Wanted Dead quests, Path of the Hunter quests, Supply Drop quests, and various other non-quest but just-if-you're-interested activities for no relative reward. There are also additional quests, which the game calls 'story quests' or something, but which are just quests where you have to go do some usually trivial task for some personality void NPC. Anyway, all this extra stuff is totally optional and I quit doing it once I began feeling like I wasn't getting anywhere in the game and these extra quests started feeling repetitive.
These extra quests can get very dull, especially the 'story quest' quests. The mundane NPCs are really lifeless. They stand there, utter the same couple things aloud, repeat the same few conversations, and crucuially don't respond to you in the least. I was disappointed with this. Supposedly I'm their savior and they don't interact with me at all. Also, the game uses like 5 skins for NPCs. There were towns full of twins, triplets, sextuplets, octuplets...
The world itself didn't feel too alive in large part because of this. Pirates, for their part, were either guarding their posts or driving maniacally down the road (for no purpose I ever saw), gleefully stopping to hunt you if they saw you. The animals on the island felt more real than the mundane people, and many of my favorite parts of the game involved hunting or just watching animals. You need to hunt animals because they're how you craft ammo pouches, rucksacks, syringe packs, etc. You either stumble upon them haphazardly in the wild or hunt them by looking for their icon on the map, which is their general zone of habitation, and go looking. You kill them and skin them, in gross detail, while your character expresses accurate sentiments like "Eeew," "Ugh, gross" and "Fuuuck." Many times I'd be walking somewhere and hear a predator roar, and I'd start looking around trying to find it, only to see some deer or something dart past me with a leopard in hot pursuit. The predator kill the prey. The prey run from the predators. It's very cool. One time I was hunting deer by a riverside and I killed a deer, which fell into the water. I ran up to the water's edge and BAM! A giant crocodile attacked me from the water. I jumped out of my seat...then killed and skinned it. That was awesome and made nature feel so vibrant, and after that was really when I began paying attention to the predators around me because it dawned on me that I wasn't the only hunter on the island. Anyway, most of the hunting I did just to make everything I could, and I did it relatively early in the game, after only a few main story missions, just to craft everything I could. But after that, there was no point in hunting and I didn't do it the entire rest of the game, except for the odd Path of the Hunter quest, which asked you to kill a special animal with a specific weapon. These were sometimes challenging (especially using the recurve bow) and usually granted materials to make the final [crafting item] in a set, like the wallet that holds the most money or whatever, but ultimately hunting and crafting were over with too quickly. After that, I ignored all animals unless I could use them to kill enemies.
I wish some of the other activity types rewarded you instead of just gave you a high score, like the racing. I would have liked to race, if there were some reward to gain. But there wasn't, and there were rewards for tons of other things, so why bother? One activity was called Trials of the Rakyat, and was the part of the game where they forced multiplayer into your experience. Walking around the island sometimes, I'd see a bright red rock with something like [XxPWNYOUxX], who held the high score for that particular Trial. Nothing like that to break the fantasy. I played a couple to see what they were, and you just try and kill as many enemies as possible with the weapons provided. Fun, but just leaderboard type stuff. And I guess everyone can see your dumb Xbox Live name plastered over rocks in their game.
So the story, right, very interesting. You (rich white boy) and your friends get captured by pirates on this island. After an excellent opening scene, you escape and start on a journey to find and rescue your other friends. On the way, you meet a few important locals who help you out, one of whom gives you a tattoo, or "tatau," as the game insists, which has some mystical qualities and grows as you acquire skills and become a Rakyat warrior and champion of the Rakyat people. There are several levels to the story, and as I keep saying, it is quite good. You figure out later, once the game starts throwing Alice in Wonderland quotes at you, that your character has gone far down the rabbit hole, and doesn't want to come out. Your character goes through a transformation on the island, saying some pretty hilarious and typical rich white boy stuff about finding his purpose in life (which is, he now knows, to be on this island with the Rakyat, though I have no idea what he thinks he will do on the island once his friends leave and he kills all the pirates). For whatever reason, whether it's mystical and out of his power or because he wants to, I'm not entirely sure, he becomes somewhat power hungry and vengeful. This does make some sense since the pirates killed some of his friends and ruined his vacation, but the sense that it DOES make is made NONsensical by his clingy girlfriend who insists he is changing and keeps asking things like "What have you become?" and calls him on his cell phone in the middle of a mission to check in on him. SHE makes his transformation weirder by adding a relationship dynamic to it that, to me, was either overdramatic or unnecessary. Or both. Either way, I didn't like his girlfriend at all because I empathized with him. I wonder if people did like his girlfriend. I wonder if girls liked his girlfriend and empathized with her more while boys empathized with Jason. So yeah, the whole self-discovery/transformation thing was...interesting.
Add to that the hallucinogenic staple of the story. The island is filled with drugs, and you take them a handful of times, often in relation to the Rakyat and becoming a warrior. ALL of these trippy scenes were amazing. I loved them. To me, they clouded what was really happening between him and the Rakyat leader, I forget her name. I think she may have been using him (especially based on the ending I got where she goes all Species on him), but I can't be sure. I think the drugs muddled his mind and caused him to make, or led him to, poor decisions, and to think of himself as invulnerable, or more of a hero than he was (and he was a hero). So maybe because of the Rakyat leader and the hallucinations, and the tribal tale he was told, he became a bit self-aggrandized. I do need to watch the other ending on YouTube, that reminds me...
The main characters in the game are excellent, and I will remember them for a long time. The hippie doctor Earnhardt, the hilarious German/American spy, Vaas, oh man will I never forget Vaas, the Australian slaver...And the ending missions, wow, so wonderfully tense. You'll realized as you play the game that many characters die. The death near the end is one of the best deaths I've ever experienced in a game. I mean, not best as in I wanted it to happen, but unexpected, well-executed, fitting, etc. And speaking of deaths, I really like how Jason (your character) should have died about 5 times but didn't. I can imagine how pissed off Vaas was every time he thought he killed Jason but Jason came back. There were many, many, many authentic "holy shit!" moments. The action sequences also were excellent, from escaping burning buildings to getting free from being bound underwater.
One final thing is that since the game takes place somewhere in the South Pacific near me in Singapore, there are several references to Singapore, and I noticed some Malay (again like Just Cause 2, which was full of it). For some reason though most of the NPCs sound Hispanic or Australian. I think they're supposed to be like Maori, but it only sort of worked on that front. Anyway, according to a character in the game, in Singapore it's illegal to buy or chew gum. False! For the record, anyone who tells you that is misinformed. You can bring gum for personal use, just not large amounts. You can chew it. No one cares if you chew gum. You can also buy it here at pharmacies. Just go to a pharmacy and say you want gum. Easy. I wish people would quit perpetuating Singapore as a place with such backward rules. There are some to be sure, as there are everywhere, but the whole "gum is illegal!" thing is plain wrong. This same NPC also calls Singaporeans "ricepickers." There's no rice picked here. I didn't particularly like that character because he was the ultra-American patriot, but definitely was irritated by the Singaporean stuff.
So anyway, awesome game. Great fun. I'm going to hang on to it and probably go clear the rest of the outposts and disable communication arrays and whatnot before giving it back to J. Oh and also, multiplayer was fun. I did some team deathmatch.
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