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Sid Meier's Civilization VI (PC) by dkirschner (Oct 16th, 2026 at 14:13:25) |
Eh. I played for a couple hours and was bored. I know this is one you have to sink time into to learn and thoroughly enjoy. But I'd just rather not, now that I see just how expansive it is. I did enjoy the option to be Teddy Roosevelt, after whom I named my cat. Bully! I got this in a massive Civ Humble Bundle a while back and gave most of the expansion pass keys away. Should have given it all away! On to the next thing!
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Fallout 4 (PS4) by jp (Oct 13th, 2026 at 10:30:59) |
For some daft reason I was sure I had played this - a bit - way back when I was at DePaul on an Xbox 360. I remember starting inside a vault, designing my character, leaving the vault, and then wandering around in the wasteland for a bit. I was also confused by the VATS system, which I thought was cool - but I had trouble with the UI/understanding the controls. And then, I didn't play again...
...and now I realize, having played the beginning of THIS game, that I was confusing it with Fallout 3! Wow. I've never played Fallout 4 prior to a few days ago..which seems kind of wild to me.
I've been having fun so far, and I'm learning how to work the UI - I have to stop myself with the VATS since I often, by mistake, switch between enemies instead of between locations on an enemy. But, think I'm starting to get the handle of it. It's a neat system and I just learned (realized) that you can lock in several shots in a row, which is nice.
I did struggle with the "base building" because it took me a while to realize that when building stuff at the workbench you have to WALK AROUND to place the things - I was just frustrated that I had all the items, but the "x" (to buy/place) was disabled.
I hope to play more over the coming days...having sort-of-recently seen the show, I feel like I'm ready to dive into Fallout more than I have in the past.
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Drop Duchy (PC) by dkirschner (Oct 12th, 2026 at 18:12:59) |
This really grew on me. It's a clever blend of Tetris, a city builder, and a roguelite. There's no story to speak of, so I can just explain how the game works. You choose a faction, say, The Duchy (there are only three aside from DLC). You have a few starting cards. At first, cards are either production buildings or military buildings. Production buildings generate resources (you start with the basics: food, lumber, gold), while military buildings generate troops (archers, axemen, swordsmen). You'll start on a standard roguelite map, the Slay-the-Spire-type three-lane path, and choose to move along it from encounter to encounter. You'll land on resources, peaceful regions, or battles at first (more types get unlocked).
Here's how battles work. You're on a Tetris grid. Tetris pieces appear, just like that game, and you rotate and place them, just like that game. Except the pieces are different types of terrain (say, forest, plains, and rivers). And your production and military buildings are also Tetris pieces that appear. And your enemy's military buildings are also in the deck of Tetris pieces. Buildings have various conditions and results. For example, the Farm (production building) turns nearby plains into fields and generates food. The Watchtower (military building) gives an archer for each plain in range and three archers for each field in range. You already see the synergy between these two buildings! When you complete a row, it is considered "explored", and you get resources for every terrain tile in the row (food for fields, lumber for trees, etc.). The row doesn't disappear (as in Tetris), so you have a limited amount of space to place the blocks in the deck before the round ends. If you explore multiple rows at once, you get bonus resources. So, every match is a game of managing terrain, production, and military buildings to generate resources AND to limit your opponent from generating soldiers. That is, when their Watchtower piece comes up, you want to place it next to some woods or some rocks, definitely not smack in the middle of a bunch of fields, where yours hopefully is.
You are always trying to minimize the army the enemy can raise because at the end of the round, you fight. Battles are a rock-paper-scissors affair between archers, axemen, and swordsmen. You basically move groups of units into other groups of units which stacks groups and sends them into battle. This is kind of hard to explain, but the game provides clear rules for how it works based on the size and type of groups that you're moving around, and the order in which battle happens. Just know that you want to be on the winning end of those rock-paper-scissors battles and you want to really, really think through the order in which you group your troops. One miscalculation can ruin the whole fight and lose the game.
When you complete an encounter, you choose a new card, and are thus always growing your deck. You use the resources harvested during rounds to upgrade cards. So, at the larger deck-building level, you're looking for synergies between cards, building a deck with some sort of theme, and balancing production and military. Not enough production and you can't upgrade stuff. Not enough military and you can't win battles. In my last game, my first full win, I actually had the fewest buildings I'd ever had. I'd unlocked "technology" cards, which are passive (e.g., every time you explore a field, gain 4 additional food; or, all military building upgrades are 20% cheaper; etc.). I was able to synergize really well and build a deck focused on fields. Fields all the way! I turned woods to plains, plains to fields, got food bonuses for fields, had buildings that created plains and fields when placed, military buildings with bonuses for fields, etc. I pretty much annihilated Act 3 and the last boss.
Speaking of bosses, I had no idea how they would do this. I thought bosses would just be like regular battles but with buffed cards, or maybe with more cards. But no! Boss battles fundamentally alter the grid in some way, alter your typical strategies, etc. For example, the last boss (who had killed me once before) requires "bribes," or else it'll throw you military buildings to deal with. To bribe it, you have to generate x resources over y turns and keep it up throughout the match. Every time you don't meet the bribe amount, the enemy sends a military building. And, every time you place a piece, there are squares on the grid that will automatically generate enemy troops if you place a piece there, and the squares change every piece, so you're constantly working around restrictions on the grid too. The first time I fought this boss, I got overwhelmed and lost. This time, the boss didn't send a single military building and I beat it by almost 100 troops, which is a lot.
This was inevitable, I think, because there are a ton of upgrades in the meta-progression. Tons of new cards, even new mechanics. For example, you can unlock religious buildings and the "faith" mechanic, unlock mercenaries, unlock the "constellation" mechanic (which lets you manipulate a piece every 10 or so pieces, depending), you can unlock technology cards, "noble" cards, and so on. You also upgrade your starting decks and resources with each faction as you play them. I am really tempted to win with each faction before setting the game aside, but I have so much other stuff to play. I'll keep it installed and probably come back in the future!
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Beacon Pines (PC) by dkirschner (Oct 9th, 2026 at 11:18:41) |
Cute little narrative game with a good, darker-than-expected story. The art style is excellent (I love the different ways that tears come out of the characters’ eyes) and the sound and music perfectly complement the setting and story. You play as Luka, a kid in Beacon Pines who discovers that some strange things are happening, and all the adults, including his grandmother, seem to be involved. Hmm…! Pal up with some friends to uncover the town’s secrets.
It features a mechanic where the narrative branches based on words that you discover (e.g., shame, fight, flight, chill, etc.). In certain situations (“turning points”), you can select from some words to use, which will change the course of the story. This was intriguing, but wasn’t used to its full potential. The game’s description oversells the impact of turning points. If you use the “wrong” word, you get a “the end” shortly thereafter. The game’s description says that using different words DRASTICALLY CHANGES EVERYTHING THAT FOLLOWS and that you’ll jump back and forth between ENTIRELY DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF THE STORY! Not really. At a “the end” screen, you go back to the turning point (through a menu) and choose a different word. You’ll either get another ending in a second, or it’ll be the “correct” word that continues the story. There are some actual branches, but interestingly, the game still proceeds linearly. For example, you have to go down branch A to get to branch B to get back to branch A. In other words, there is only one way through the story. Oddly, there are some words that are never used. You can’t just choose any word in your stock during turning points; only specific ones are available, which narrows the potential of this mechanic further.
This mechanic reminded me a bit of Great God Grove, which is another “word game”, wherein you use phrases spoken by NPCs to solve dialogue puzzles. Instead of using whole phrases or sentences, here you just occasionally are prompted to use a word to complete a storybook narration, which determines what a character does and therefore what happens. Great God Grove also felt limiting. I suppose that is because language is near limitless, and that makes for tough narrative design.
Despite its simplicity, I thoroughly enjoyed playing through the mystery of Beacon Pines. I wonder if they’ll make a sequel. I’d be interested to see what Luka and his friends get up to next!
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Crime O'Clock (NSW) by jp (Oct 8th, 2026 at 09:44:19) |
First, what a banger of a name for a game. Ha!
I picked this up from the box art. It looked like this was "MicroMacro: Crime City" in videogame form. A good thing in my mind. What made MicroMacro cool/fun is that it's a giant "where's wally" with an extra twist - you have to find things but then also "trace" them over time. So, a character might be dead in part of the "map", but you can look around to and see the character still alive walking to the place where they're dead, and so on. So, you trace time through space.. it's hard to describe.
This game - at least from what I've played so far does exactly the same thing with two differences. First, the map (illustration) changes - so, there are different maps for different snapshots in time (some things change others stay the same from what I can tell). Second, there are occasional mini-interactive activities you have to do (not quite enough depth to call them minigames) - these represent "computer analysis" moments - like tracing a cell phone being used to towers, or identi-kit-style assembling the portrait of a perp. They take place in a sort of "computer network" visualization that's all black background which is in direct contrast to the main map that's on white.
The art style is all black line drawing comic-style characters (like MicroMacro, but different enough) on a white background with color used very sparingly for UI-stuff.. I think it looks great.
The maps (only played on one, the tutorial and the first case) are fun to look at with lots of little easter egg style details.
I think I'm going to enjoy this!
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Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation 2 (GBA) by Daizengar |
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most recent entry: Friday 8 February, 2008
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GAMEPLAY
HAHA! THE INSPECTORS ARE DEAD! I KILLED THEM! After the very involved process of eliminating the inspectors, I get my rewards for the effort: The three most powerful upgrade items in the game, and two secret weapons. The fight is very rewarding, not just in that it really does up the quality of your armory, but how quickly you get atttached to killing them.
These new items greatly improved my performance in the missions to come. I am really glad I stuck around to fight rather than giving up. One of the best features of OG2 is its challenge and reward system for its secret units and items. You can do things the easy way and just get through the game, or you can do it the hard way and reap the rewards. This way it apeals to both causal, lets try it out types, and those who enjoy massive challenges.
DESIGN
OG2 contains several new elements not seen in its predecessor that I reviewed before, Super Robot Taisen 3. Now, weapons are upgradable in addition to mechs and people, and that does add a new challenge in figuring out how you want to configure your units. To add even more customization, you can also change the weapons load out of each unit. Unlike the previous version, where you could only chose what kinds of action units took in reaction to enemy attacks, you can now make them a lot more specific and varied. My favorite new innovation for OG2, is the ability to skip combat animations, resulting in much faster gameplay.
As stated in the gameplay I really like the challenge/reward system established with the secret units. It really does make a huge difference in the quality of the game. What I however do not like, is how the designers tried to vary the levels this time around. In OG1 levels were made more difficult with terrain elements, improved enemy support skills, and more powerful enemy formations. This led to the increased challenge being a strategic one. Now the levels seem to be varied by how many opponents can the throw at me at one tome, making it less about stategy, and more about how fast can I slaugter units.
My last concern comes from a secret unit I just recived, which has a weapon that can paralyse bosses, allowing me to pound on them without consequence. It just seems a little game breaking. Worst comes to worse, I can just not use it.
Despite its faults, I highly recomend this game, and consider it to be the best game I have ever purchased for the GBA.
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