Blogging the experience of gameplayhttp://www.gamelog.cl/index.phphttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8029After a bunch of good/easy runs I got into a streak of bad runs...all the cats dying and that sort of thing. Which makes me wonder if this wasn't designed - as in, I got an easy run in the beginning before the (invisible) training wheels came off? The longer I played though, the more grating the crass humor became. To a point that I'm happier just playing something else now, which is a bit of a shame because there's interesting stuff here and I was enjoying discovering new combos and interactions and such. But, it also feels like the game is a bit grindy in ways I'm not too excited for...I need to "dump" a lot of cats to get more upgrades so, is it really worth it? It doesn't seem like it, so I'm putting this back on the metaphorical shelf...jpTue, 03 Nov 2026 17:19:24 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8029&iddiary=13572http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8033Finished this last night and it was... well, less interesting than I had hoped? The interesting parts of the story sort of got lost along the way, and the interesting things about this cyberpunk universe (one on which psychic abilities and gene-manipulation such that people can acquire certain animal traits exist!) were also downplayed to focus on a story that's loosely about memories/reality and...sort of a ghost(?) (as in Ghost in the Shell, not as in scary ghost stories). Also, the "puzzly" moments - picking which pictures from your inventory to drag into slots on a fuzzy picture that needs solving were...mostly nonsensical to me - as in, I never felt really confident as to why I had to pick certain things and not others. The logic behind the correct solutions was unclear at best...which was annoying. I even looked up a video playthrough for one part - and the person who did the video ran into the same problem with the puzzle I was stymied by. And they did what I did - scoured the other places for something they may have missed before going back and trying combinations until one worked. At least I did confirm that the order of selection did not matter. A relief that made the trial and error a lot easier to manage. Thankfully.jpTue, 03 Nov 2026 17:16:11 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8033&iddiary=13571http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8035I'm really digging this so far. It's a lot more involved than I imagined, but also seems a little bit familiar...from playing the mobile f2p game of all things. I'm only a few missions in, just getting started, but I've been having fun exploring and learning about all the things the game has. Which is a lot! Crafting and cooking and inventory and stuff management. And lots of different weapon types, I've only tried two...but it's also been weird... 1. I started out with a full plate armor set equipped - I think this might have been a promo of some sort? But, it's super good - like, way above level...so I don' really take damage when fighting monsters so I feel like I'm cheesing it. But, this wasn't my choice - I just started like that. 2. From reading reviews over the years and stuff others had said, I sort of had the idea that the spaces in this game were huge, and it took time to track down and hunt a monster...and that it was all really involved.. but so far I feel like the spaces are really small. And tight. I've fought the "big" monsters 3 times - and they're not that big nor that remote...which feels strange. Perhaps I'm just getting the easy-peasy low level "big" monsters that sort of slum it in the starter areas? It's happened to me twice that I'm "tracking" a monster and then it's just there...wandering around and I tart to attack it. It's neat how their animations when they're wounded, and then try to run away...felt bad too.They make different noises (more "I'm dying and in pain" than "amgry roar be scared".jpFri, 30 Oct 2026 13:18:58 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8035&iddiary=13570http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8033It feels weird to say that I almost bailed on a visual novel because I couldn't solve a puzzle. But it's true! I don't actually know what happened, but this was a scene where you have to place items from your inventory...and I had three items, did it, got it wrong, tried all the combinations and it still didn't work. Then I spent 20 minutes scouring the environments in case I had missed something, did not find anything new and was about to go "ugh, I'm done". Went back, tried again, and now it worked. What? I think I might have misunderstood how the interface worked or was supposed to work? Maybe I did it differently the 2nd time? I don't know. We'll see what happens the next time I get to a "puzzle" (I mean, they're not really puzzles, but hey...) So far I'm intrigued, but I've only played what I assume is the prologue - so, we'll see how much longer I can maintain interest. The problem I sometimes have with games like this where you have to do lots of reading is that, if I'm playing at night in bed, I'll just get sleepy five minutes in. So, it's really hard to make progress.jpFri, 30 Oct 2026 13:11:04 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8033&iddiary=13569http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8027Made it to level 9, did a few more quests and...yeah, I think I'm tired now. Strangely, it feels like there isn't much/enough story for me to continue to want to play, and I got a bit tired of always being under-health? Well, that got a bit better because I "discovered" (figured out) the cooking part of the game - I was finally able to put all these animal/critter parts and learned that lots of the stuff you cook then gets rid of the rads (all the food items I had healed, but also added rads - and I didn't have a way to mitigate that, so it seemed like a negative downward spiral). The no-rads healing food was really a game changer in that way, so that was a big improvement. Oh, every now and then there's a weird storm - and it was a super cool experience - it sounds and looks incredible and I was genuinely worried...rads going up, lightning noises and stuff. Great ambience! Maybe I should have gotten to the city I was supposed to visit for the story...but Ilooked at the shelf of over games to play and though..meh.jpMon, 26 Oct 2026 15:08:51 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8027&iddiary=13568http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8034This is probably the lamest log I'll write for a game - but I just wanted to document my experience, even when it did not involve playing the game. I out the disc in, it starts reading and then shows the name of the game in Japanese/Chinese. Huh, that's weird. It happens around the same time I see a little popup notification that an update has been downloaded. Weird, whatever, it should be fine. I load the game, watch the intro - looks fun. And then I get a UI alert. It's in Japanese/Chinese... weird. I get past that...and get to the game's main menu. Everything is in English. Oh, nice! But I go into the config menu...and oops, it's all in Japanese/Chinese again...and I try toggling things to see if I can switch language to English. No luck. I go online, "why did my game switch to another language". Everyone says to set the console region language to what I want, and that the game should change. It's already in English. No luck. I try a bunch of things...still no luck. I look at the game case. Maybe this was a European version of the game and the language got borked somehow. Nope. ESRB rating, so it's US. I pop the disc, to try a re-install and stuff. The disc is all in English..but it does say "MADE IN JAPAN FOR HOME USE ONLY". I wonder if the disc is Japanese? (in a US case, weird). It also has a code.. PLAS 05251. Online sleuthing reveals it's a Chinese disc. Whut? Sigh. I guess someone duped Gamestop and now...me.jpMon, 26 Oct 2026 15:01:25 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8034&iddiary=13567http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8026I'm putting this back no the shelf now - mostly because I started to get a little tired of it. As I think about it, it's abit of a tricky design space and I can see how the design team was trying to keep things fresh and mix things up. They've added a little mechanic where you can tap on some objects that get highlighted to see what's inside. THere's also a "follow the musical pattern" in which you click on things on the map in the right order...following a musical script. It's all "ok" - not particularly compelling, but I've started to get tired because the also isn't much I find interesting in the story. Each mission feels like "oh, here's a thing that happened, let's fix it" but the characters and the world aren't that compelling, and while there are neat things in the images - they're not really woven into the storytelling. So, I don't feel like I'm learning cool things about this weird/interesting world from the missions themselves - at most I pick things up from the artwork. It's a weird "miss" - because the artwork is super fun and neat to explore, there's cool details and characters - but it falls flat after that. Also, playing on the Switch is more annoying than it should - I feel the controls are really imprecise - I need to move the cursor to a specific location and I overshoot/undershoot tweak and adjust and it's just...annoying.jpThu, 22 Oct 2026 08:43:00 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8026&iddiary=13566http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8031Retiring this one too. It's a twin-stick shooter / bullet hell type of thing mixed with modern Doom. Slick, for sure, but I didn't know it would be so arcade-y. There's not much story to speak of, and it's basically a test of mastering the controls to beat, with additional motivation provided by leaderboards. It is fun, intense, for sure, but as with Civ 6 and Noita (although Kill Knight isn't long per se), I don't have the patience right now to commit to it. I might be at a point where I'm exhausted by more open-ended or twitch-based games. I could feel it with Drop Duchy (roguelite fatigue?), which I saw through to the end, but perhaps I should find something more story-heavy with a clearly defined ending for next. Anyway, like I said, Kill Knight is slick. The controls gel really well. You use RT to shoot pistols, circle to melee attack, and LT to shoot like a shotgun spread. All the attacks synergize in different ways. You have to use melee to get shotgun ammo, for example, which incentivizes running up and slicing enemies. Each attack generates some kind of resource that you need for other attacks (or health, very important!), so you have to vary attacks. It really does feel like a twin stick shooter / bullet hell version of the newer Doom games. I think that's about it...dkirschnerSun, 18 Oct 2026 15:28:37 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8031&iddiary=13565http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8028My first thought was "this is like Spelunky." And of course it is because it's another roguelike where you go down, down, down into the depths, and the only way you get better is to die a hundred times, learn what killed you and why, and just skill up. Also learning the wand system, which is one of the two things that make this stand apart. The other is the pixelated destructible environments. There are huuuuuundreds of enemies, spells, and perks. I saw like 5% of stuff and made it to the third "biome" a few times. In my longer runs, I had cool wands and spells, like spells that made my projectiles home or explode or that covered a wide range. The way it works is that each wand you find has stats (which seem to just randomly vary), including some number of spell slots. You can find/purchase spells, and you can move them around between wands. This means you can load up your favorite wand with a variety of useful/synergistic spells that'll help you kill enemies, move around, and explore the biomes. Perks are also helpful, like ones that make you immune to certain elements or that give you a little ghost companion to augment your damage output. The destructible environments are cool. Each pixel is categorized as a type of material (e.g., wood, water, coal, gunpowder...), and they have various interactions. Wood burns, for example, so if you shoot a lantern and it falls on wood, it'll light up and maybe collapse. If you're on fire, go find water to put yourself out. I don't know what "blood" does, but I saw that it ticks up to 100% as you stand in it. Acid poisons you. Occasionally stuff blew up and I wasn't sure why. I'm sure there are a lot more interactions. It reminded me of Divinity: Original Sin 2's elemental combat system. Anyway, so what this looks like while playing is that you're zooming around (you have a jetpack and can float a bit; this replaces a typical game's jump), firing spells and getting fired at by enemies, blowing up the environment, trying to get gold (to purchase wands and spells), find secrets, do whatever, and ultimately get to the bottom of the biome, where you enter a portal and can buy upgrades and rearrange your spells, and then you go to the next biome. There is often a lot of fire/poison/projectiles/etc. on screen at once and it can feel pretty hectic. I certainly appreciate the game and the ways that it makes something like Spelunky 2 feel traditional. There's a ton of customization with the wands, strategy in manipulating the environment, and so many things to discover. But having recently bashed my head against the Spelunky 2 roguelike wall for a while, I realize I have little interest in a similar head-bashing-against-the-wall experience playing Noita.dkirschnerSun, 18 Oct 2026 15:12:28 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8028&iddiary=13564http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8027Ugh. I'm not sure I want to continue playing. We'll see. I've hit level 7 and I would say that the experience so far is really mixed. The game seems to want to encourage scavenging all the things. But, you hit a weight limit super fast - and it becomes really annoying to manage that, especially since you can't fast travel when you're encumbered. So, why bother? I've also picked up all kinds of things that...I can't do anything with? Tings have "value" but I've yet to run into a store or any place where I can sell. So far everything has involved killing all the raiders/enemies - and the towns I've been setting up/helping out (two so far) don't have shops. Though I think I can build one if I get the materials? (something to try out the next time I play). I also nearly worked myself into an unrecoverable position - I left a car manufacturing plant (running away from enemies) only to load immediately into 4 enemies right there. I don't know how I was able to survive them - a lot of luck I think, and more than a few tries. But it was really bad. I might have quit there if a few more tries hadn't worked out... Also, so far at least, there's surprisingly little in the way of story/narrative. I'm surprised because it's a Bethesda game - so I was expecting a lot more. I'm ignoring the wonky glitches and weird graphical things because that would be a bit unfair at this point (old game and all that, and I don't think it downloaded an update because I think the game's content servers are offline by now?) Anyways, we'll see how much further I go... Oh! The other thing that's really annoying is how hard/rare it is to find the item that decontaminates you such that you can heal back up. Every rad lowers your max health, but getting rid of rad has been SUPER hard/rare. Most of my time I'm running around with 1/2 health just because of the rad capping it.jpSat, 17 Oct 2026 17:37:02 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8027&iddiary=13563