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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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Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3) by dkirschner |
| Pretty cool, like the story and narration. Guns aren't very creative and shooting is generally fast and accurate. -------- Good game. Nice difficulty. Plot holes. |
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most recent entry: Tuesday 25 February, 2014
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Got my PS3 back from the shop. I can't say it was free anymore since I had to drop some cash for a new disc drive. Now I can say I got it highly discounted, still a satisfied customer. So back on the wagon of playing all the PS3 exclusives and PS3 games that were region locked for my Xbox. Resistance was a flagship title for the console's launch in 2006. It's crazy to think I'm playing "new" games from 8 years ago. That last console generation sure did last a while. It was a pretty good shooter, nowhere near in league with Gears of War though, as far as flagship FPS titles went. The main difference is that Resistance isn't a cover shooter. It's more Call of Duty-esque.
I liked that the story was told as an account, and also that it wasn't an American-centric game. Granted, the Americans were the saviors sort of, but it mostly had to do with England. Just a nice change. This woman, head of a military caravan that encountered trouble, is the story's narrator. The caravan was taking an alien creature to drop it off to the Americans, who were supposed to use it to help with a last ditch effort in saving England and repelling this invading alien force, called the Chimera. Caravan got ambushed, and basically you go secure the caravan, traverse the Chimeran tunnel network, and eventually blow their invasion to hell. The story was cool because it told all these little stories about moments of heroism that you, American solder I-already-forgot-his-name, participated in that allowed for eventual victory. There wasn't much emphasis on character building, just telling this overarching story of the Chimeran invasion and England's fight to drive them back out. It's pretty obvious that this is set up to have more stories in sequels, of which there are plenty. At some point I'm sure I'll find out more about my character (he gets infected but has titular "resistance" to the alien virus that turns everyone else into aliens), and I'll probably have to drive the Chimera out of the rest of Europe, perhaps fight off an invasion of America. Yay.
So, first thing I noticed about the game is that it's hard. I died in the tutorial like 10 times and almost turned the difficulty down to easy. I'm glad I didn't though because it leveled off for the most part. The reason the tutorial was hard was because the main character hadn't been infected yet, and so his life didn't regenerate at all. You get damaged, you stay damaged. Your health is in 4 25% bars. Once you get infected, you can regenerate the bar that's part empty, filling that quarter. So like if your health is at 70%, it will regenerate up to 75%. If it's at 76% it will regenerate up to 100%, if it's at 5% it will regenerate up to 25%...It is a serious tactic to try not to get damaged below 75%, 50% or 25% so that you can regenerate more health. There are health packs scattered around. Other parts are really frikin hard too, like the first time you have to fight one of those big spider aliens that shoots explosive egg things at you (which is after a giant firefight and having to take down two stalkers!) and the part where you have to fight like 10 of those slender man things. Holy crap, I did those parts like 20 times. There's also an auto-checkpoint system, and I frequently had to re-do sections. Say within one checkpoint, there are 4 battle parts. Made it through 1, through 2, through 3, died on 4. Got to restart from the checkpoint at part 1. Although it was frustrating sometimes, as challenges tend to be, I enjoyed the difficulty. It forced me to learn which guns were good against which enemies, to be cautious, to handle multiple enemies of different types simultaneously, and so on. Definitely not an easy game, but quite rewarding to beat the hard parts.
Alien enemies weren't anything special until later on when more interesting types emerge like the stalkers and the aforementioned egg-shooter spiders. But most of the time you'll just be fighting hybrids, your basic grunt with machine guns, or some slightly different version of them. The challenge becomes conserving life and staying alive and using guns smartly. Guns also were pretty dull until later on, and even then, not too exiting. Basic machine guns, shotguns, sniper rifle..those are what you have through half the game. You regularly find a new one at predetermined spots. Oh, and ammo is strewn around EVERYWHERE, and often specific ammo in a spot will alert you to what gun you should probably think about using for whatever is coming up. Later, you get some kind of explosive globule-throwing gun that was handy against big hard enemies and some sort of ricocheting machine gun. The most interesting gun was probably this energy rifle which could shoot through objects. For each object it passes through, it becomes stronger. One type of enemy has this gun too, and seeing them was usually a red flag to run away, then come back and be really careful. When you run away, they still shoot at you, and you see this energy forming on walls and things, then "pew!" as it continues to the next surface, stays there a moment, then "pew!" through it to the next surface. Scary.
One cool thing about the weapons is they all had alt fire modes. That object penetrating gun had one where you create a shield that nothing can pass through (except object penetrating ammo), so that was great for when lots of enemies rushed at you down a hallway. Put up the barrier and blast them. The human machine gun has a grenade launcher. The alien machine gun has a homing beacon you can tag an enemy with and your shots will fly around obstacles to hit it. The sniper rifle can slow down time for easy headshots (super handy in the last levels). There were 3 types of grenades, your basic, these that shoot a bunch of spikes everywhere, and some others that incinerate an area. The latter kind was especially dangerous for me even. Toss it and run or get burned up too! Oh, and the Chimera would place these mine traps around sometimes, which were pretty cool. If you get near, one of those spiky grenades would pop up, or a laser robot, or this energy expulsion thing, and you have to shoot them or hide or get hit or, with the energy expulsion ones, either jump or duck to avoid the energy, depending on what height the thing rises to. Pretty neat.
Yeah, that's about it. Interesting premise, fun gameplay, nothing too amazing. Hopefully 2 and or 3 will take it to the next level and expand more on the plot.
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