 |
|
007 Quantum of Solace (DS) by jp (Oct 13th, 2024 at 21:34:09) |
I guess what's most interesting about this game - from what I played - is how it is almost entirely controlled using the stylus. At this point in the platforms lifecycle I get the sense that game companies where either forced to (or desirous to try out?) to implement mostly stylus-controls. Here's it's stylus all the time except that you can sometimes press a button (or keep it pressed), any button to toggle a state change. For example, to enter shooting mode, and stuff like that.
The game is also, curiously, played with the DS sideways - book mode?. This results in a taller but narrow screen. It's interesting, and reasonably comfortable, but I felt the camera was pulled in too tight so I was often getting shot at by baddies who were out of camera. Sure, you can look at the radar/map on the other screen, but it's all dots with no facing, so it's only marginally useful (when it comes to combat). The game itself has some interesting ideas, though the controls took too long to get used to for my tastes and things were still rather imprecise and wonky. Interesting ideas (for a Bond game):
a. This one's interesting, but probably bad. You can pick up different weapons and they have stats - like better aim and damage. So, you need to be careful. I didn't like this too much because, while firing isn't hard - you miss a lot and it's hard to tell if you missed because you were bad at aiming/tapping the stylus or if the gun's stats betrayed you.
b. Enemies sometimes drop playing cards. They each do something different (bonuses to melee damage, for example) and you can equip five of them at a time. BUT, you get special combo bonuses if you have special poker hands! Pair, two pair, that sort of thing.
c. Reloading is really annoying - you have to enter inventory and drag a clip over to the gun. It's annoying to do in the middle of combat. An auto-reload might have been the better design choice here?
d. Melee combat is a special mode, you walk up to an enemy, press the button and then enter melee where you must swipe the screen in different ways to do different punches. Sometimes they'll block - or be ready to block, so you need to be careful. It's a neat system, and is definitely more interesting than just tapping a button. It feels more involved.
I think the game is also voice acted - by the actors, and there's images from the film. So, it's pretty authentic in that sense. Mostly I'm impressed by how smooth the game runs (for being polygonal 3D and so on) even if the camera often gets in the way - I mean, the level geometry gets in the way of the camera.
read all entries for this GameLog 
- add a comment 
|
|
The Eternal Cylinder (PC) by dkirschner (Oct 6th, 2024 at 10:58:31) |
Played a couple hours and this did not click for me. Neat art design and silly enemies were the highlights, as well as, of course, the titular eternal cylinder, a massive thing that rolls forward, destroying everything in its path as the game progresses. You play as "trebhums," little creatures that can eat stuff and gain mutations, which allow them to do things like "take no damage from gas clouds" or "become a square and fit in some holes" or "convert food to water" or "jump higher." You can collect up to 5 trebhums, each of which can be mutated and has its own inventory. So, you run around with your little group of pals, eating stuff and finding water (because you have hunger, hydration, energy, and stamina meters to manage) and generally trying to figure out how to solve puzzles and where to go next. You can explore around, but it's rather minimal. The world is procedurally generated and quickly looked same-y. You are contained in little biomes. If you leave, the eternal cylinder starts rolling again, and you can stop it by getting to the next in a series of towers before the cylinder gets there and crushes it. Like, it's interesting in theory, but really weird and boring in practice. I also didn't like that the narrator tells you that you can run ahead and your other trebhums won't die, that they'll find their way to you, but they definitely do die for no reason sometimes. It costs resources to get new trebhums, and you have to find them, and you may have spent mutation resources on them, so this is not cool. They can also lose all the mutations you put on them, which I also disliked. In all, the game felt tedious, like a chore to play.
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
Children of Morta (PC) by dkirschner (Oct 4th, 2024 at 13:42:18) |
Another hidden gem in a Humble Bundle. This is like an action RPG roguelike with narrative emphasis. The thing that makes this stand out is that you don't play as a single character, or various character classes, but as a whole family. The Bergsons live together and are the protectors of a mountain. They love each other and have a happy life, but then some corruption starts spreading and they have to figure out what's going on and stop it. They free three guardian spirits and then confront a god.
Over time, you unlock more family members for play, and the unlocks coincide with story developments. The young daughter, for example, trains and hones her fire-slinging abilities. You see this in various scenes and interactions. Eventually, she joins you with another character in a dungeon, and then she's ready for you to play. The characters are not terribly different from one another, the main difference being either melee or ranged. But I mean, one melee character is really slow and strong (and sucks), a couple are pretty fast, one has a shield, one uses a spear and is more a mid-range fighter. But ultimately, the two ranged characters steal the show, the mage and the archer. Once they get leveled up a bit, it's easy breezy time. There are three main areas, each with three dungeons, and most of the dungeons have three levels. I beat the entire third area without dying (and maybe the last dungeon of the second area, if I remember) alternating between the archer and the mage.
You'll want to experiment with all the characters, not only because it's fun to learn their playstyles, but because of the family element, they unlock skills that help other family members. For example, as you move up each of their skill trees, you might unlock a skill that gives the whole family more critical hit chance or more speed or whatever. There are a whole host of other upgrades too, which you need to spend gold on (gold is found in dungeons), and all those other upgrades affect the whole family (every character). So there's a neat mixture of character specialization and unlocking things for the benefit of everyone. Also, you will HAVE to change characters sometimes because they will get "corruption fatigue" if they spend too much time in dungeons. That decreases their maximum HP for a while. So, use other characters for a couple dungeons, then that fatigued character will be good to go again.
Although dungeons are not particularly varied (some of the same enemy types appear throughout the game), it scratches the itch of being methodical, clearing the map of each dungeon to make sure you find all the chests, items, quests, and so on. This was probably more important in the early-mid game, when the difficulty was highest. Toward the end, you'll be stacked with buffs and, like I said, it becomes pretty easy, at least with the ranged characters. So yeah, very cool. I really liked this. Oh, also, it's got great pixel art!
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
Suzerain (PC) by dkirschner (Sep 24th, 2024 at 19:39:01) |
I bought a narrative game bundle from Humble Bundle recently because it had a couple games on my wishlist on it, plus Immortality, which I played on Game Pass and which I loved, so now I own it on Steam. It had some others I'd never heard of, like Suzerain. It looked interesting, a political strategy narrative game. I've not played anything quite like it, but after playing it for a while, I realized I was nodding off every time I opened it. Even tonight, I'm not tired, but I'm starting to drift to sleep. That's a sign that I'm not engaged!
That's not to say I dislike it. It's well written and detailed, and the premise is intriguing. You play as the newly elected President of a fictional country with a revolutionary past. The country is in a recession and needs to carve out space for itself in the international landscape so that it can thrive. There are other alliances of countries, those which are capitalist, communist, and monarchies. You'll sort of chart your country's course (though I...doubt [?]...that you can become a monarchy), meeting with advisers and reading a lot of policy, deciding what to enact, who to ally with, and so on.
My favorite parts of the game are when the non-policy narratives move forward--when it's about your family adjusting to their husband/father becoming President, when it delves into the history between you and other cabinet members, when it explores the political history of the fictional world, when you get to attend a funeral of a communist poet and make a speech, when a violent event happens and you see how political violence affects you, your family, security, citizens in various political groups, relationships to other factions, and so on.
My least favorite parts are reading newspapers and reports, and talking with advisers about policy. There are like 6 different newspapers, and boy are they busy writing stories! It seems like after every decision you make, up to a dozen articles will be published. Papers span the range of political ideologies; one is communist, one is capitalist, one is centrist, one looks at international news, and so on. Similarly, reports from various cities and countries are constantly produced and icons beg you to read them. This all lets you know what's going on and lets you know the public's opinion on things, but it's a lot of tedium, I found. Policy wonks will love this game. Most of it is meeting with advisers about policies, listening to them banter back and forth about what they think you should do, reading about policy positions and deciding which ones to enact, then seeing their consequences on the story and the political scene.
I played about 5 hours in total, and it's losing its novelty and morphing into drudgery for the most part. I'm not committed to learning the ins and outs of the political scene. I think something like this could be used pedagogically to teach about politics, policy, and institutions for sure. Actually, I learned a new word. The game's title is an actual word in politics referring to when a state has control over another autonomous state, I suppose by influence or something. I learned this when I was giving a talk on interaction and socialization in digital games last week, and someone asked me what I was playing. I mispronounced the title of Suzerain and said I had no idea what it referred to, and some historians in the audience had their moment to shine.
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
A Highland Song (PC) by jp (Sep 22nd, 2024 at 21:30:35) |
I loved the rhythm action sections of the game - I looked forward to seeing a deer (which you sort of chase/follow while doing a song). They were neither too hard nor too easy, and the music was fun. I think I might have to look it up separately because I'm sure there's a way to buy the tunes...
Anyways... it's an interesting game - there's more climbing and exploring than I expected and I'll admit I was starting to get a bit frustrated because I was late for Beltane and it seemed really hard to make progress sometimes. Mostly frustrating because there was a place I was sure had a path - but nothing. So I had to backtrack around a bunch until I found a map that showed a path to the place I was sure had the path. So that was annoying.
But, I enjoyed how much stronger Moira gets and I began to worry less about the weather and more about enjoying the views and the landscape and the journey. Some might call this careless hiking and they'd be correct. But hey, it's a videogame!
I also enjoyed the slight mystical/magical things? I mean, I got picked up by an eagle at a point, and I met a "person who lives under the mountains" also... There was lots of that sort of stuff to discover and learn. Some of it doesn't quite work - at least in terms of helping me understand when I was making progress. For example I'd find maps that had clues to parts I'd already passed through/by..so that was a bit of a waste.
But overall? Yes, not too long, not too short even if my trip was longer than it should have been? I took 10 days to get to the sea. Found 9 maps, climbed 16 peaks, named 10 of them, and blessed one. The one from which the eagles picked me up!
It seems like I can play again with the maps I've found, so perhaps it gets easier in this sense. So, is this game a sort of narrative rogue-lite with a metaprogression ?
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
|
|
|
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.
[latest site fixes and updates]
[read more]
|
view feed xml
|
 |
|
2250 registered gamers and 3195 games. 7715 GameLogs with 13197 journal entries. 5095 games are currently being played.
More stats
|
 |
|
Shadow of the Colossus (PS2) by gcontrer |
| No comment, yet. |
|
most recent entry: Friday 19 January, 2007
|
Grand Theft Auto- San Andreas is by far the best game for Play Station 2. This game is related to the gang violence and thats what makes it so good. I own this video game and I never get bored of it. In Grand Theft Auto San Andreas you play the role of a young man you returns to his home town Los Santos. He just got out of jail and is being confronted with his past enemies. As he makes is way home he reunites with his old gang members. This game is really fun and the graphics are pretty cool. The missions sometimes could be kind of challenging do to the fact that I have to shoot a lot. This game is really good the thing that I like is the music. It combines it with a lot. But as your driving around a enemies area you could listen to rap that makes the gang violence more exciting. Shooting is the best thing in this game and being able to drive any car you want makes it more amazing. This game is by far the best classic for Play Station 2.
[read this GameLog]
|
|
|
