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Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments (PS4) by jp (Apr 21st, 2024 at 00:26:13) |
This game is way more interesting than I initially gave it credit for (and I might even play all the cases, I'm that curious!)
There's a bunch of cases, you're Sherlock and you gather clues, investigate locations, use your special "eyesight", interrogate suspects, and more. So far, this is what you'd expect.
Some clues become more important and they show up in your "brain" where you can pair it up with another clue (if it's the correct one) to deduce something. Once you have enough of those, you can reach a conclusion. ALSO, once you've reached a conclusion you can decide how to act on it (usually it's either call the cops or call Mycroft - i think...).
What's really wild is that in the brain-connecting clues interface, you can reach lots of different conclusions! (I think it's 4 per case, at least it has been that so far and I've completed two cases). OH! And, as far as I can tell, the you can get it wrong! And, you just move on...the game calls some of them moral choices - which I'm confused by. But the idea that you could arrive at an incorrect conclusion and the game just moves on to the next case is pretty wild. So far, I've gotten both right (because there's abutton you can press that even warns you - like "spoiler alert" and it shows my result in green - which I assume is that I got it right).
Anyways, that's super cool!
Oh, and the game haslots of little mini-games that you play once, and they're part of the story (e.g. taking sherlock's pulse, or arm-wrestling with a sailor)..
The 2nd case is pretty neat - it takes place in the UK, there's a missing train...and there are rich Chilean (and Mexican) businessmen involved! Whoah.
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Fights in Tight Spaces (PC) by jp (Apr 21st, 2024 at 00:19:38) |
This one's a bit weird and I'll confess I didn't play it that much (just played one mission - which is like 1/5 of a full run?). It looks like it wants to be SuperHot, but it isn't - that's ok. But, it has a "play the movie" of what you just did in a level that you would think would play fast and smooth and super action-y. But now, it's slow and it even pauses between card plays...so it looks rather boring, which is a real shame.
As for the game, there's interesting stuff going on, but I haven't fully understood everything:
a. There's a typical energy system for casting, but a secondary system (combo) that lets you play some cards with a combo cost. If you move in your turn you lose combo so it's sometimes tricky to get everything to pull off.
b. While playing I was disappointed (because it seemed unfair) that there are objectives (bonus ones) in each level - and I wasn't getting any because I didn't know what they were! Apparently they're actually shown on screen, but in a place I did not see or notice.
c. The game seemed a bit slow - I was just moving and getting out of the way as I waited to draw into a good hand of cards. This cuts the momentum for sure and also made it hard/impossible to accidentally hit the secret (not really secret) objectives. So, I'm curious to go back and try again with awareness of the objectives. They should help a lot - in that I'm more likely to try to "solve the puzzle" of each turn and hopefully get the bonus objectives.
d. It's strange that you have to pay to heal, but I thought it was neat that you can upgrade several cards (if you have the money) and that some cards are cheap to upgrade - there's different pricing for them!
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Hadean Tactics (PC) by jp (Apr 21st, 2024 at 00:11:34) |
Ok, I've now cleared the game (not unlocked everything, of course) and it really is quite fun and interesting. The 3rd character (which I was waiting on to try out because I wanted to clear the game with the 2nd one) is pretty neat as well though as I write this all I can really remember is that it has an orb mechanic similar to one of the characters in Slay the Spire.
The harder ending is basically another 3 levels, but they get shorter! The last one, if I remember correctly, is just the boss. I don't remember what deck I was running, but it was pretty good - in the sense that I had picked up some good combos..traps and all.
I'm going to stop playing, for now, mostly because the list of games too look at keeps on growing - one a week - because of the design seminar I'm teaching.
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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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2157 registered gamers and 3105 games. 7607 GameLogs with 13096 journal entries. 5074 games are currently being played.
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Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction (360) by dkirschner |
| Good so far. Didn't like the cover system at first, now think it's better. ------- Fun game, short, simple. Very cool environmental objective displays. |
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most recent entry: Sunday 11 November, 2012
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Last one for this batch. I haven't played a Splinter Cell game in some time, but Sam Fisher is different than he used to be. He's faster, more Ezio with the ability to climb around on pipes and window ledges, assassinating people from various positions. He also feels a bit supernatural because of this new "marking" mechanic. So in this game, after you kill an opponent in melee, you can mark up to 4 enemies (depending on your gun). Then you push Y and Sam pops out and headshots all of them. It's really cool to do, and you use it very strategically, say, when you come upon a tough-looking room with 4 or 5 enemies. Well, find the one who is a bit isolated from the rest and melee kill him. Then mark the others, and bam, cleared room. But it feels a little impossible. Yeah, Sam is a badass agent, but really? He can pull off 4 headshots on elite super soldiers in a split second without being even shot at? Skepticism aside, the rest of it is more realistic.
There is a new cover system in Conviction. I admit to disliking it initially, but it grew on me. You hold LT to take cover. Then if you look at some other color, a contextual icon will appear showing that you can move there. So push A and Sam scurries to the next cover. It's cool, but far too constraining. For one, you can only move to the edge of cover. You can't automatically run to the center of a barrier, for example. Two, you can't move to cover unless the game says you can move to that cover. The cover must be very near. So I can't move to cover that is like 10 feet away or more. I have to get up and run there. I'm not sure why the range is so small. Third, a lot of the stuff you can take cover behind, you can't move to with the autocover button. I'm not sure why only certain cover objects were included. Fourth, if you just want to move around a corner, you can't really do it. You need to 'move to next cover' around the corner, which means looking from the right angle at the right spot at the wall 1 foot away and pushing A. So, this new cover system, it's cool when it's available. Otherwise, it's rather useless, and it would be easier just to have a more conventional cover system that incorporated the player choosing what counts as cover. Sam does crouch all the time, so he moves low. This is a plus at least.
The enemies are not particularly difficult, and they don't get much more difficult from beginning to end. Actually there are only a few different types. The game is really really short, so there's not much room for additional enemies. Basically the only thing I had to think about was 'helmet or not?' If no helmet, pistol headshot. If helmet, machine gun headshot. They'll try to flank a bit and throw the odd grenade. It's weird that they don't have more tools available to them. Meanwhile, I have sticky bombs, which you can use to scout an area with a camera, or to make noise to attract enemies, or to explode like a bomb. For my part, the noisemaker function never worked. No one was ever attracted to it and I don't know why. I also had remote mines, EMP grenades, frags, smoke and flashbang.
Sam gets his famous goggles, though improved to see through walls and detect enemies and interactable objects. These also felt a bit overpowered and superhuman to wear. Oh, hey, I can see through walls now. And I was warned, "the elite enemies will have these goggles too." Unfortunately for them, I am smarter than they are, and so even though they can see me, I kill them first. You can also mark enemies through walls with the goggles on, which made it pretty simple to keep track of where they were at all times. This worked like how I recall Far Cry working to tag enemies through binoculars. There were usually several ways around a level to take out or avoid enemies. This was fun and worked to the game's advantage for staying interesting. Often I'd die doing something one way a few times, then go try a different method to see what happened.
There is another cool thing Conviction introduced called 'last known position.' When enemies spot you, this silhouette of Sam remains in that position, your last known position in fact. You can move away and enemies will converge on where they last saw you. This allows you to flank them, slip past them, and just mess with them in general. For example, get spotted, drop a remote mine, run away and watch them gather there, detonate remote mine. One thing I spent a long time doing on an early level was hanging outside some windows, getting spotted, then sneaking up and pulling an enemy out the window, climbing somewhere else, getting spotted, pulling another enemy out the window, etc. Great fun.
Story is good, a bit less confusing than these conspiratorial Tom Clancy stories tend to be, which I appreciated. It's all about Sam's daughter and some lies and deception within Third Echelon. The game's presentation has some especially noteworthy innovations. Your objectives are shown in the environment. How to explain? Say you have to get to the White House. When the level begins, the words "Get to the White House" will be displayed on the side of a building or something. Then say you make it to the White House. You go inside, and directly ahead on the wall you see, "Rescue the Vice President." Then perhaps a little audio scene plays through your headset explaining about the VP and the situation within the White House. Bits of video, maybe what is happening to the VP or whatever, will flicker on the wall in front of you. Objectives can be on the sides of cars, anywhere. In fact you can push Select to display your current objective, and it just like plasters it onto whatever surface you're looking at. It's really neat. This isn't a HUD gimmick. It's more like an artistic touch on what's normally presented via menus. I would love to see this idea carried out in other games.
That's about it. Died a lot, yet not particularly difficult. Many deaths just due to me screwing around. However, any actual hard part was doable usually by going into a corner and shooting whoever ran around it. Felt kind of cheap, but hey. The only part I legitimately had trouble with was the end after I find the Vice President in the White House. A bunch of enemies burst through a couple sets of doors and it's just overwhelming. I tried hiding in a corner (too many enemies, got frag grenaded and flanked), tried tossing all manner of grenades (still too many enemies and they enter in waves), tried opening fire with giant machine gun (too many enemies come too fast, flanked), and finally with some luck I got them by a combination of remote mines, mad machine gun spraying, and trying to suppress one entrance.
In the end, solid enough game, not my favorite of all the Splinter Cells, also recently enjoyed the Rainbow Six: Vegas games more. Very, very short. And I didn't find anyone on Xbox Live, so I dunno how many people are playing.
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