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Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth (NSW) by jp (Sep 22nd, 2026 at 07:38:16) |
The night before last I played some more and beat the gauntlet! I felt very chuffed about that...kept on going, got to another boss (Parn!) beat that, and immediately after was ANOTHER boss...I lost really quickly and got really mad. In my mind it was boss gauntlet + Parn + final boss...with no saves in between and the thought of doing it all over was too much. So, I put the game down pretty confident that I'd just have to watch the ending on Youtube or something.
Last night I picked it up for a "last attempt" of sorts - before that though I scoured the map and found a few secret areas I had missed! And one area that was now accessible I had forgotten about. Good thing I did, I got a new weapon (the Chakram?) with great range, for a little less damage, but just the sort of thing I'd need for the final boss fight. I then stocked up on potions, swapped my spell to one I thought might work better, and went back in.
And success! (I think I had to try twice)
And in the end, was it all a dream. Sure. With some more to it...but still. The epilogue was nice, though it was weird to going back to level 1 with none of the additional movement unlocked - not that there was any challenge.
It feels strange to beat a game like this. I usually bail a lot earlier due to my lack of interest in practicing enough to improve enough so I can clear certain challenges. This game hit the sweet spot for me - it wasn't trivial, and I felt like I improved and learned the game's systems over time.
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Please, Don't Touch Anything! (PC) by jp (Sep 20th, 2026 at 13:12:20) |
It's weird for me to think/write that the most important "contribution" this game has had for me is how useful/intriguing it's been to show students in experimental games class. The game is strange and quirky and funny and genuinely interesting as a puzzle box style game, especially once you've peeled back a few of its layers and understand how the game's support to work.
Over the years fewer students have heard of it, or played it, which is both good and bad. Good means there's more room for it to be genuinely surprising to them, bad means it's also increasingly more "strange" - I've found that students have a lot less to go on with this game since it is so exploratory in the beginning. Hmm. it would have also made a good addition to the "thinky games" cycle when we did the game design seminar...
Now that I'm at a new place with a new group of students, I wonder how it would go with them?
It's been a while since I've played it - and I don't recall which endings I got or anything like that, but it seems like I did make decent progress since I've only got 5 locked achievements. One if for every ending, the other for ending 25 without unnecesary buttons being pressed. 3 are hidden.
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Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth (NSW) by jp (Sep 20th, 2026 at 12:41:02) |
I'd been playing until I got stuck on a fight - it's a two-parter boss against a soldier guy. The second part is against a sort of zombie/ghoul version of this soldier guy who spews green venom and turns into toxic clouds.
After scouring the map for missing things - found a few new upgrades (not interesting ones at this point) and filled in the map a bit more which was nice - I finally realized that I could buy more than one health potion (up to 10!) and I've come to better appreciate how the magic select menu works. So, I devised a new strategy for the boss fight. I'd get to the 2nd phase and swap out the spell with healing potions and try to use those to stay alive. And it worked! I was down to 3 or so...but still.
Yay!
I'm now in Stage 6. I think this might be the last chapter?
So, I kept on moving through new areas...and went back to older areas too - found a few secret areas as well (null space on the map)...and then I hit what I hope does NOT become a new wall.
Maybe this is the end/last battle? It's basically been - so far - a gauntlet of all the bosses (I think all?) in the game. And, while I don't think they've been scaled in difficulty (meaning some are way easier than when I fought them originally), it is quite tiring.. I did quite well until I got to the boss fight I'd just been stuck on earlier. My hands were cramping up and I just...couldn't.
Thankfully after I forget which boss there are items between them to heal up and such...but still. I think I lost this one from nerves and cramps more than difficulty? Though, I dread to see what happens AFTER this one. Will there be another boss? Sigh. I hope not.
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The Silver Case (PS4) by jp (Sep 20th, 2026 at 12:26:42) |
As I was installing the game I wondered why I had picked it up in the first place. So, I flip the case over and read the back - nothing really stands out until I look down and see "Grasshopper Manufacture".
Ah. Ok.
Grasshopper's oeuvre is interesting in that it's always weird, and strange, and they somehow manage to stay in business which makes it also surprising to me. I think the last game of theirs that I played was "Sun Flower..something..something". A strange DS game that was strange and creepy and I don't think I ever finished. I won't open a separate tab to check my gamelog for that one...but whoever reads this might want to.
Anyways. The game has a really striking visual style - and it's really "noisy" i the visual UI sense. Lots of text coming on, and pictures of the characters in different places on the screen (not always the same place), and words that sort of float around in the background...and little animated effects. It's all very busy, attention grabbing, and just - to me - visually noisy in a way that made me less interested.
Apparently the version I have is a remaster of an older one, so I wonder if the low-res poly graphics (e.g. car driving down an embankment at night) and such are kept in smaller windows because it wouldn't look good today and all the rest of the decorative screen stuff is what's been updated?
Anyways. There was lots of reading. Watching stuff, more reading and very little gameplay...and when the gameplay started it was "fine" (moving around a 3D environment in first-person view, but grid-based, like the old CRPGs Bard's Tale or the dungeons in Ultima and Wizardry). It didn't feel interesting - story least of all - so I finished the first chapter and called it quits.
I just bounced off the writing, the story/context seemed strange but not intriguing...so, time to move on.
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Pokémon TCG Pocket (iPd) by jp (Sep 17th, 2026 at 20:24:16) |
Hmm, still "playing" though I would very often forget to "check in" when I first arrived in Rochester. So, for a hot minute, I though I might have been done with it.
The other night I played the card game - demo at a store - and was surprised to learn that the card game is basically a super set of this game. I guess I didn't have a real conception of the difference between them - I thought that the cards were all the same, but they're not! This actually made me a bit less interested in this game, since it really is a watered down version of the regular card game.
I do think it's an interesting approach that I don't know of other examples? Because it really does seem like a subset rather than a "new" or "different" or "variant" version. I wonder if someone's looked closely at them?
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Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas (PS2) by otacon2488 |
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most recent entry: Wednesday 3 November, 2010
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After three separate occasions of playing Grand Theft Auto for around two hours each time, I am still very much stuck in the beginning stages of the game. I'll start with my criticisms first, then move into the ethics of the game. The controls are stiff, repetitive, and the cars have no handling at all. It has taken me so long to get anything done because I still haven't been able to get a good handle on the cars. Killing pedestrians is unavoidable. But the biggest complain I have is that there is no direction in the game for the missions. They set you off to do the mission and expect you to find your way around, which is realistic in life, but the game should treat the player better. A lot of wasted time goes into driving (or jetpacking) around the city looking for the next part of the mission.
Alright, now onto the important part, the ethics. As I'm still not very far into the story, I cannot comment too much on the narrative. But from what I have seen, criminal acts are dealt with very nonchalantly. Drive-bys, robberies, vandalism, and murder are all just ways to continue on with the game, and not important events at all. The game almost takes an objective look at violence, but then makes the player become subjective by forcing him to do bad things. In the mission where you "clean up the neighborhood," cleaning up means killing the drug dealers. Even the good things CJ does are innately bad. I saw some rival gang members shooting at pedestrians on the street, and to stop them I did the only thing I could; I ran over them repeatedly. I felt justified in my actions, but there were the farthest thing from just. The game limits the choices a player has so much that killing is often the only way to solve arguments. Calling a cop can only happen if you crash into him or punch him in the face.
The food choices are also pretty limited, which is definitely a social commentary on food deserts in urban areas. The pimple faced teen at the pizza joint actually asks, "How would you like your cheese and fat?" This raises questions about the ethical responsibility city governments have to their citizens to ensure they have a healthy diet. Moreover, the entire social climate of the game is a call to action for governments to help the lower class. When you are not the one firing gunshots, someone else is. The city is packed with cops, not just because they are potential player foils, but because gang ridden neighborhoods have increased police activity in real life. As much as critics claim that the video game glamorized violence and criminal activity, I would argue it does the opposite. It actually shows a very realistic snapshot of intercity neighborhoods, not just of the 90s, but of today. You do not live in a mansion, and neither do any of your friends in the game. You are all literally on the same block, growing up together and building a family to replace the broken one you are from. There is no glamour in CJ's lifestyle, only brutal realism.
While in my earlier post, I discussed how the virtue of loyalty is somewhat twisted in this game, but I have now seen where it presents itself in a positive way. When talking about the local barber, an older man who cut your and your friends' hairs when you lived in Los Santos, Ryder says that he's gone crazy and has not talent for the craft anymore. But you "decide" (it's not really a decision, it's part of the mission) to get your hair cut by him anyway. CJ has a sense of loyalty, not only to his gang brothers, but also to those members of the community that have shaped the person he is. Also, despite murder being a wrong act no matter who it is against, the attempt to reclaim the neighborhood by killing drug lords shows loyalty to the community. While the virtue of loyalty may by skewed, I don't know how much more realistic it could be. There are only shades of gray in life.
All the music of the game is made up of real recorded songs from real artists, so the lyrics were around way before the game. But the lyrics do add to the environment and message of the game. The radio messages also do this, but they are made specifically for the game. They are highly exaggerated and overblown, and usually humorous. They also parody real life issues, like drug dependance and youth drug use (Sooth Cough Medicine), materialism, false self-esteem, and lack of fitness (Pump Up Shoes), and misogyny and careless sexual encounters (Bouche Cologne). These all make fun of issues that affect urban communities.
I enjoyed playing the game, and in the end see it as a fun, entertaining, highly detailed work of art. But does it hold any true ethical choices? No. There is a single path your character can walk down, and it heavily if not only involves crime. It also should be noted that a majority of the main characters from the GTA games are from minorities, stereotyping them as the only ones involved in crime. All the cops other than Officer Tenpenny are white as they walk the streets of Los Santos. The game is almost a parody of real life, making fun and exposing serious problems among the urban landscapes of today. This is done by forcing the player, more than likely a teenage boy who has enough money to own a game console, to sit down and be part of the desperate, violent, threatening urban environment. This would be a great way to teach him about others' struggles, if there was any way to help. But the boy can do nothing but engage in criminal activity, ultimately making the hardships real people face everyday into fun and games.
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