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Portal Stories: Mel (PC) by dkirschner (Apr 26th, 2024 at 17:11:51) |
I had some Portal 2 mod sitting in my Steam library and then saw some other one released recently that was highly, highly reviewed. I thought, "I wonder what are some other fully self-contained Portal story mods with great reviews," and Portal Stories: Mel jumped out. Downloaded it, played it. It's ridiculously impressive, basically a full prequel to Portal 2. But man, is it challenging! I made it most of the way through without using a walkthrough, but eventually caved in and then relied on it to solve four or five levels. Initially, I had luck putting the game down and coming back to it later, seeing the puzzles fresh, but after a while that quit working.
It's hard in part because it begins where the difficulty in Portal 2 ended. It's a full game, but not in terms of introducing mechanics. That is to say, it doesn't introduce mechanics. It assumes you know everything and are a portal genius. That's fine as a mod. So its puzzles are difficult, and they are really clever. You have to learn new tricks, not used in previous Portal games, that it doesn't teach you. You just have to figure out, for example, that "destroying a cube" is occasionally what you need to do to solve a puzzle. It never would have crossed my mind that I would need to purposefully destroy a cube for any reason, but it pulls that trick a few times. Other times, you need to move a cube from afar using an excursion funnel. In the second level I caved in for the walkthrough, you combine these tricks, using an excursion funnel to destroy a cube, so that you can get a new cube in a different spot.
In the third level I used a walkthrough for, there is actually a decoy button and panel that you don’t need at all. I spent a lot of time messing with that button and panel! That level honestly felt mean! There is also some guesswork involved in some levels in shooting a portal where you can’t see, which was also kind of a mean trick. One trick (that I figured out, go me!) that I saw a lot of people stuck on involved sliding a cube down a slope to break the paths of a series of lasers, which opened up a series of red laser grids so that you could get to the next area. That one took a while because, annoyingly, you have to slide the cube down the slope and get it to land in a portal. You have to open the other portal after you pass the red laser grids and get the cube. But getting the cube to slide into a good spot to be able to pick it up was a pain. All these super hard levels made me feel brilliant when I solved them (typical Portal!), and like an idiot when I saw the solution online ("Ah, of course!" Or actually in this game's case sometimes, "What the hell?!?").
The story and production values are great. You play as another test subject, there is another maintenance core, and there is another AI trying to kill you. It's a direct prequel to Portal 2, which you learn after the credits. Very cool. If you're a Portal fan, it's worth playing, but just know that it'll really test you!
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Wandersong (PC) by dkirschner (Apr 26th, 2024 at 16:46:54) |
This was a freebie from somewhere or another, and it is totally worth playing. I picked it up because it looked like it had an interesting "singing" mechanic. You use the right stick to navigate an action wheel, where each of eight directions is represented by a color and produces a note. Your character is a bard, so you're basically singing with the right stick. It's pretty simple, but it is implemented in a variety of ways throughout the game. For example, you don't select dialogue options like in most games. You use the right stick to choose the option on the action wheel and the bard "sings" the dialogue option, one click on the wheel per syllable. So, "I'm a singing bard" would be like right, right, left, up, down-right. For dialogue, it doesn't matter which notes you sing, just sing the syllables. Other times, you'll have to match colors like in a typical rhythm game, or during some very cool boss fights sing notes according to colors of projectiles and environmental cues. Like I said, it's not terribly difficult, but it is such a different take on how a character interacts with the game world, and it's done in such a playful way, that it's consistently fun. I smiled through most of the game.
The entire game has a playful tone, not just the singing mechanic. The story itself plays with the typical RPG hero narrative. You aren't a hero; you're an overly positive little bard who thinks he can sing a song to save the world. There is a hero with a giant sword who calls lightning from the sky, and constantly foils your adventure, saving the world in the traditional way by killing all the bosses, but she's a jerk. The game is all about "believing in yourself" and "friendship" and "being positive" and etc. In most RPGs, you learn special moves, gain equipment to better kill enemies, get money (the bard never has any money), and so on. What does the bard find hidden throughout his adventures? A man in a mask who teaches him dances. Very silly dances. What purpose do the dances serve? None whatsoever, except to entertain you. You can dance-walk (instead of regular walk) at any time, and it is pretty funny.
The writing is also consistently funny, and there are many characters to meet. The game is broken up into seven acts, some of which are more interesting than others. They generally have a "talk to all the people" phase, then a "complete the area (side)quests" phase, then a "puzzle platform" phase, then an encounter of some sort with a fairy or a boss or the hero or someone. Admittedly, there is a lot of dialogue, and yes, I read all of it because it's good. But the characters are talkative. And admittedly the quests are not always that exciting. And admittedly the puzzle platforming leaves something to be desired in terms of how well the bard controls and in terms of length (they almost always feel too long). But damn if the whole package isn't a 9 out of 10!
It's definitely a little rough around the edges, which only added to its charm for me. The bard sometimes glitched into the terrain, so I'd have to exit and re-enter a screen. The pirate ship occasionally just refused to move in one act. Also, for some reason, when the camera was zoomed out, the dialogue could become unreadable. I assumed this had to do with the fact that the game ran in a low resolution on a TV, but it was the same on my laptop. I've watched videos where it looks fine for other people. I mean, it was like 1% of scenes that were unreadable. Most were fine, and at worst, some scenes were like looking at one of those "did u kno u can raed tihs senentce bceause the frist and lsat ltetrs are the smae??" things, which was...honestly kind of fun, like word puzzles. Obviously not ideal, but it didn't detract from how much I liked the game.
So, a big hit for me that I never would have heard of had it not been offered for free. Definitely recommend for those who like RPGs and quirky indie games.
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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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Global MU Online Season 6 (PC) by jat247 |
| The game used to be great when it first came out. Now I wouldn't recommend that anyone play it due to poor game play and security issues. |
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most recent entry: Wednesday 27 April, 2011
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Global MU Season 6 – Thursday, April 21st
Global MU Season 6 is an MMORPG published by Webzen on Octobers 6th, 2003.
= Game Play / Mechanics =
You can choose one of three realms to play on; Valhalla, Helheim, or Midgard. Once you have chosen the realm you wish to play on you have several servers to choose from. If you’re a paying player you can access several “gold” servers which give increased item drop and experience rates. Then you have several servers that are Non-PvP and several servers that are PvP. When first starting the game you have the choice of choosing between three different characters; a fairy elf (archer/arbalest), dark wizard, and dark knight. The fairy elf starts out in a map called Noria. If you choose a dark wizard or dark knight you will start out in the Lorencia map. Each character has hit points (HP), mana points (MP), an AG points for high level skills/spells, and SD points which is a pvp shield that takes 90% of all pvp damage (once all SD points are gone, HP goes from taking 10% of the damage to 100% of the pvp damage).These three characters have 4 stats, Strength, Agility, Stamina, and Energy. Each level up (until you complete a quest at level 220) gives these three characters 5 stat points to spend. Each of the three characters has different ways you can build them based on what stats you choose to focus on raising when leveling. There are three types of builds for the fairy elf. One is an agility elf (AE), the second is an energy elf (EE), and the third is a hybrid between the two. An AE focuses primarily on Agility and Strength allowing her to deal high amounts of physical damage and later learn the powerful skill Ice Arrow which deals a significantly large amount of damage and freezes the opponent in place for a few seconds. An EE primarily focuses on Energy, which allows her to learn and use powerful defense and offense buffs as well utilize a healing spell to replenish HP. A hybrid elf is a mixture between an EE and an AE, specializing in neither of the elves main abilities. There are two main types of dark wizards. One of them focuses mainly on Energy to allow for high damage output and much large amount of MP. The other focuses on Strength and a ton of Agility in order to wear stronger armors and increase the effectiveness of a wizard spell called Soul Barrier that scales off of Agility. Soul Barrier reduces all damage by a % based on a wizards Agility. A wizard with high Agility is also very swift to cast their spells and be able to teleport around extremely quickly to avoid being hit by other players. Agility also increases a wizard’s chances of hitting monsters and especially other players. The best dark wizards find a good balance between the Energy they add and the amount of Agility and Strength they choose to have. The third starting class, the dark knight, is the tank of MU. There are four main types of dark knights players make. One focuses a ton of strength to deal high damage. Another focuses Agility to increase their defense and speed, making them extremely hard to hit and extremely hard to deal any significant amount of damage to. Another, rarer choice, chooses to focus on Stamina which gives a player additional HP. This rare type is almost obsolete now since the SD bar was implemented. In the past this type was mainly used in synergy with a full set of armor with a special option of damage reflection on each piece. So anyone hitting them basically ended up killing themselves before they ever managed to lower the dark knights health enough to kill them. The last type focuses on Energy, due to a skill they learn later called Fortitude, which depending on how much Energy the player has increases the max amount of HP of the player and all their partied allies; which greatly increases survivability. Once any of these starting three characters reach level 150, they have the option of doing a quest to upgrade their class and gain a reward of 20 stat points. A fairy elf will change in appearance and be renamed a Muse Elf. A Dark wizard will change in appearance and be renamed a Soul Master. A dark knight will change in appearance and be renamed a Blade Knight. After any of these three characters reach level 220 they are allowed another special quest which allows them to unlock a special skill/spell of their class and gain 6 stat points per level from then on. Additionally when a character reaches level 220, they are allowed to create a new character with the class name Magic Gladiator, which is a hybrid between a dark wizard and a dark knight. They gain additional stat points per level, can wear lower armor sets belonging to both the dark wizard and dark knight, can acquire both of the classes lower level skills based on their stat points and which ones the player raises, and later get their own specific class armor. They also have all stat and level requisites on items lowered, so they can use gear earlier than the first three classes. When a character reaches level 250 another character class is unlocked and a Dark Lord can be created which receives even more stat points per level than a magic gladiator. However, a Dark Lord has five stats instead of four. He has the additional stat of Command, since he is a character that has command of a couple pets. The higher the Dark Lords Command stat, the stronger his pets become. The Dark Lord can use lower level dark knight armors and weapons, and later gets his own class specific gear. There is also a Summoner class that was introduced, that was not supposed to have a level pre-requisite in order to be able to play, but this is apparently false as I cannot create one. Webzen’s documentation is so poor it doesn’t state what the requirements are now in order to create a Summoner, so there is not much more that I can say about them other than they were meant to be a hybrid between an elf and a dark wizard.
There is no real storyline for Mu Online. You fight big bad monsters everywhere, and level up as much as you can and pray good equipment drops or that you get drops you can combine to create good items or upgrade your existing items. The max level in Mu is level 400. After that you can pay to have your level 400 characters (you pay individually for each one) “reset” back to level 1, but they keep all their existing stat points. To put it bluntly, I played Mu for about 4 years (when the community was actually fun, and PvP was amazing) very consistently, even leaving my computer on overnight with a bot program to help me level, and I never reached level 400. This game is insanely difficult, and promotes the “rich get richer, and the poor get poorer” theme and that only paying customers or hackers prosper (although the hackers prosper much more than even the paying customers). There are game mechanics set up for equipment so that you can raise the level of an item up to 15 from 0. The first six levels require a jewel of Bless which has a 100% success rate. From level 6 to 9 it requires a jewel of Soul, which unless the item has the attribute of luck only has a 50% success rate. (Don’t let the advertised success rates fool you though. You’re much more likely to fail than succeed regardless of whatever the success rate is.) To raise an item to 10 or higher the Chaos Machine must be used. To put it simply, I’ve used the Chaos Machine to create other cheaper items and had put in enough combinational items that the success rate was 99%, and I still failed three times. The Chaos Machine is evil; its name is an epic understatement. The higher you try to raise the level of an item in it, the lower the success rate gets. If an item fails in the Chaos Machine, it is permanently destroyed and disappears. The incentive for raising items to such high levels though is that the equipment’s stats go up significantly more, and if you wear a full set of the same armor type of the same level (say +10) then your defense is increased by 5% of your total current defense. At +11 it’s a 10% bonus increase, and so on and so on. You can raise the item level of wings (able to be worn at level 180 depending on the wings. There are 1st stage, 2nd stage, and now 3rd stage wings), helmet, chest piece, pants, boots, gloves, and weapons and shields. There are four types of gear drops as well. There is regular equipment. There is excellent equipment that has a green name and is shiny with higher stats than regular equipment. There is ancient equipment with even higher stats than excellent equipment and if the whole ancient set is obtained and worn the player obtains other unique bonuses. Lastly there is the level 380 equipment for all classes. Also, while you cannot raise the level of these items, a player can wear a pet, two rings and one pendant. Since there is no storyline in Mu, the real main objective is to become as strong as you can and be in the guild that controls the “Castle”. This is a unique map in which special monsters spawn and drop unique and rare items. Only the guild that owns and successfully defends the Castle from other guilds during even times is allowed access to this map and its huge benefits. Additionally there is a tax in all NPC stores on all items and that tax (in zen) goes to the Guild Master of the guild that holds the Castle. Other than that, the only other goal is to get the best gear to look awesome and be able to kill anyone and everyone that you want to when you want to. A first kill of another player changes your name orange. A second kill changes your name dark orange. Three kills or more changes your name blood red, and eventually changes the shading of your character darker and darker. If you kill a player with a red name several times within a certain time limit your name terms blue and you get the temporary status of Hero. There are penalties to killing other players. When your name is changed because you’ve killed a player, you’re more likely to drop items you’re wearing or holding when you die (certain items, or items of a high enough +level cannot be dropped). You also lose more experience and zen (the in game currency) if you die from a monster. Also if you kill a player none of the NPCs will sell you anything. For each player killed, you must wait about 3 hours in game (if you’re logged out it doesn’t count) for that kill to be cleansed from your record. Additionally, after killing 2 or more people you are not allowed to use your warp command and warp to other maps (costs a certain amount of zen, and requires a certain level depending on the map). So the downside for killing people was that the killer had to walk everywhere which takes forever depending on where you want to go, and takes even longer when other people see you and know they can kill you for free and send you all the way back to the nearest town when you die. However, this warp penalty is broken. While when pushing the M key all the warp options are locked, you can type the command manually into chat “/warp |
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