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Monster Hunter World (PS4) by jp (Oct 30th, 2026 at 13:18:58) |
I'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".
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Read Only Memories: Neurodiver (NSW) by jp (Oct 30th, 2026 at 13:11:04) |
It 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.
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Fallout 4 (PS4) by jp (Oct 26th, 2026 at 15:08:51) |
Made 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.
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Persona 5 (PS4) by jp (Oct 26th, 2026 at 15:01:25) |
This 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.
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Crime O'Clock (NSW) by jp (Oct 22nd, 2026 at 08:43:00) |
I'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.
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GameLog hopes to be a site where gamers such as yourself keep track of the games that
they are currently playing. A GameLog is basically a record of a game you started playing. If it's open,
you still consider yourself to be playing the game. If it's closed, you finished playing the game. (it doesn't matter
if you got bored, frustrated,etc.) You can also attach short comments to each of your games or even maintain a diary (with more detailed entries)
for that game. Call it a weblog of game playing activity if you will.
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2323 registered gamers and 3395 games. 7935 GameLogs with 13451 journal entries. 5112 games are currently being played.
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Katamari Damacy (PS2) by E4 |
| Bizzare, crazy, and very unique, but addictive and fun to play |
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most recent entry: Saturday 26 January, 2008
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Gamelog entry 2
GAMEPLAY
After playing for a while longer, I've found the game remarkably easy to progress through (the storyline) with the exception of the mission of rolling the katamari to rebuild the moon. Since the mission requires your to roll your katamari all the way from 1 meters to a whopping 300 meters - roughly 10 times the biggest katamari size requirement I'd previously encountered. Even with 25 minutes on the clock, I found myself struggling to get the katamari big enough to effectively roll over islands the first few tries. Regardless, I had a lot of fun with it, since there's this bizzare joy in being able to level a city in a few seconds with a giant ball.
I think one of the other main reasons I found Katamari Damacy to be so fun was that the world was fairly open to exploration, limited only by the size of your katamari, and that you could never die in a mission by hit/being hit by objects larger than the katamari (only get objects in your katamari get knocked out), thus there are negative consequenses to rolling around randomly and having fun. You can still fail the mission, but there's no penalty for failing and you can try again; additionally, each attempt you make makes you more familiar with the map and controls, making it easier to beat the mission, since the game is dependent on player skill, which is very easy to attain once you grasp the control scheme. As to this, I did find it a bit tricky at first, but I had it down within about 2 missions, so I think the simplicity of the game is part of what makes it so easily enjoyable.
However, while the gameplay is fun and the theme of the game was definitely original and funny, I found the storyline a rather weak. As far as I can tell, the protagonist (the tiny prince) never says anything--even in text--but rather, is constantly ragged on by the King of the cosmos as you go from mission to mission unless you happen to do really well on a particular mission in the mission result screen; even so, he'll revert to his condescending tone again when you undertake your next mission however, making it seem kind of pointless. As such, there's essentially only 1 character that ever "talks," giving the storyline no character development. Literally too, since the protagonist prince is still a microscopic few cm when rolling a continental-size katamari (although I don't think he's still drawn at that point).
DESIGN
Straight up, the entire concept of the game is downright innovative. Beyond the concept, I think the simplicity of the control scheme is very innovative as it allows the player to enjoy themselves much more since they don't have to worry about hectic button mashing combos or perfect timing to make a long jump or what-not. The use of just the two thumb sticks to control the katamari means that the player never has to move their thumbs off of the sticks, and gives the player control of the camera implicitly while requiring more skill in controlling the katamari. Since the main game mechanic essentially consists only of rolling the katamari around, this could have been achieved with only 1 thumbstick... but that would have made the game too easy. The use of two sticks requires more skill, and provides a reminder that the Katamari isn't rolling by itself--the sticks control the tiny prince rolling the katamari.
While the control scheme is innovative and quite easy to learn, I continue to have problems using the charge roll, which requires the player to rapidly move both sticks up and down in the opposing directions. Somehow, I can get it to initiate the rapid spin, but then the katamari stops spinning instead of charging forward. I think this could have been implemented differently making it a bit easier to use. Other than this fault, I think the control scheme was brilliant.
After playing for a while, I noticed how well the game scales the player view of the world so that the katamari always appears to be the same size, and the world gets smaller, clipping out objects too small to see and not bother to take into account. There seemed to be several noticeable phases, starting with very small (push-pins, coins, etc.), then moving up to small fruits as being the smallest objects, then people and large appliances/devices (vending machines, etc.), and then finally buildings and structures being the smallest objects visible and taken into account (as far as I've progressed, anyhow). The game seemlessly phases out small objects from the gameworld as the katamari reaches certain sizes, altering the objects in the gameworld and available regions to move in while using the same world map without making any distinct graphical changes aside from clipping objects no longer taken into account.
This structure gives the game strong sense of emergence within each mission. The game does have an overlaying mask as a game of progression with the storyline and the player's progression from mission to mission as he/she clears missions and unlocks new missions, however, within each mission, the game mechanics affect how the player chooses to grow their Katamari. Simultaneously, however, the size of the katamari does restrict where the katamari can go, which is controlled by the level design, a quality of games of progression. Thus, while there is no single category for Katamari Damacy like many other games, Katamari Damacy has a unique combination of level design with game world rules that open up and limit movement, as it is possible to both grow and shrink the katamari by picking up and losing objects.
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