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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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Kill Knight (PC) by dkirschner (Oct 18th, 2026 at 15:28:37) |
Retiring 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...
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Noita (PC) by dkirschner (Oct 18th, 2026 at 15:12:28) |
My 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.
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2323 registered gamers and 3394 games. 7934 GameLogs with 13449 journal entries. 5111 games are currently being played.
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Batman: Arkham City (360) by dkirschner |
| Amazing action game. I hope this series continues. |
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most recent entry: Sunday 20 May, 2012
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Started and finished Arkham City over the weekend. I thought the game was supposed to be longer. The previews went on and on about it being five times the size of Arkham Asylum, but it was all just space! There wasn't any more content, and probably even less buildings to go in. The campaign on the whole took me I don't know how long, but like a few hours Friday night, most of the day Saturday and like an hour to wrap up Sunday...maybe 12 hours or so. But it doesn't matter because it was awesome. The space wasn't a bad thing at all, as it let Batman focus on one thing he does well -- flying through Gotham. The controls and movement are way better in this game (or is it on Xbox vs PC?). Everything was tight and fluid, and the fighting is incredible. I didn't get it as much in the first one, but this one the combat really did it for me. I think it is mostly the Xbox controller, but there were also a lot of new moves, like practically endless combat techniques to master, and it looked and felt better.
Other than the larger amount of space with which to play in, the rest of the game is basically the same and sequel to the first one. All the characters are great, story is really interesting, game feels gritty as hell. This one was different in that Joker isn't like THE bad guy. There are a few villains prominent, and most of the ones you take down last time show up in side quests or just briefly -- Killer Croc, Bane, Victor Zsasz, to name a few -- and there are a bunch of great parts and story tie-ins with characters who weren't in the last one. My favorites were OF COURSE the ones that make Batman trip. Since the Sandman isn't in this one, and he was by far my favorite last time (besides Joker), I was thrilled to see that Batman still trips thanks to the Mad Hatter and Ra's al Ghul, both sequences of which were great, and both of whom turn out to be integral to the storyline.
I have to compare Arkham City to Assassin's Creed 2, which I recently played. They are both free-form movement/fighting action/stealth games. I like Assassin's Creed, I really do. But seriously, it has nothing on Arkham City (or the previous Arkham Asylum). Batman and Joker and all the rest are just infinitely more interesting than Ezio and faceless conspirator bad guys. Rich Venetian merchant bad guy vs. oh, I don't know...Victor Zsasz. Florentine nobleman vs. Mr. Freeze. Seriously, which are more interesting? Arkham City basically kicks the crap out of Assassin's Creed in most categories. The controls are tighter, the fighting is more fun, the location and characters are more interesting, the extras are more interesting and more fun to find and relate to the story better...on and on. The one thing I love about Assassin's Creed are the assassinations of course. Batman doesn't actually kill anyone, so there understandably aren't many of those badass moments when you've been hunting said Venetian nobleman for an hour and finally get him. However, what makes a Batman story a Batman story are the moral dilemmas he faces, such as what's it worth to stick to your guns and never kill. Then again Ezio's storyline revolves around him becoming an assassin, so they both work great. I'm glad I played AC first because I might have been disappointed if I'd played it after Batman...I do still have AC: Brotherhood, but I swear I will wait a good long time on that one to forget about Batman for a while.
Regarding the extras, good lord is there a lot of additional content here. I thought Assassin's Creed 2 had a lot with its 300 treasure chests and storyless sidequests to get you to assassinate someone or deliver a letter. Batman has REAL sidequests with stories that aren't just pretenses to get you to run through the city and deliver mail. Find Mr. Freeze's wife. Track down a sniper as he kills again and again. Answer Victor Zsasz's incessant phone calls as he leads you deeper and deeper into his homicidal beginnings. Oh yes, and bigger than all of them again is the Riddler. I love the Riddler. He placed 400...yes 400...Riddler Trophies across Arkham City. I found about 1/4 of them through the game. Wow. Many of them you just go into detective mode and find weak spots in walls or go the opposite direction of where you're supposed to or explore like usual, but a lot too are real brainteasers. He stepped up his game this time around. You have to make use of like ALL your gadgets and brains to get these Riddler Trophies. I have half a mind to keep going with my post-game to collect some more. Bonus: collecting Riddler Trophies unlocks Riddler hostage events, where you have to go solve a riddle before he kills his next victim. The last one I couldn't figure out because he cheats! Silly me, trusting that the Riddler would play by the rules. It's the only time I turned to a FAQ and when I read it I was like...wtf! Of course! All this is SO much more interesting than Assassin's Creed's "buy a treasure map. ok, now they're all marked on your map. go methodically search for them to fill your capitalist need to accumulate wealth." Games with Batman's type of extra content make me want to keep playing. Games with Assassin's Creed's type of extra content make me annoyed and want to finish the main game ASAP and never pick it up again. This is a really important lesson in game design for real. Putting things all over the map for players to collect because they are compelled to collect is cheap. Give them a better reason to collect, one that is meaningful, and not just in terms of in-game money. Batman is a great example.
The game looks incredible like the last one did. Gotham's skyline, seriously, great job. Arkham City is divided up into districts, but I liked the way Arkham Asylum was set up better. So in City, there's basically Joker's district, Penguin's district, and government offices, and the TYGER zone. They're not too distinct and they're always infiltrating each other's space. Anyway, in Asylum, one of my favorite things about the game was the way the environment changed over the course of it. I particularly remember that as Joker gained more control over the asylum, he did some interior decorating and began leaving his marks everywhere, changing signs, painting walls, laying traps. The other transformation was Poison Ivy's base. That was incredible. Like that entire part of town got taken over by plants. There wasn't anything like that in City. The closest thing was when the steel mill got flooded, but that was nothing like the game-long transformations of Joker's and Poison Ivy's domains in Asylum. Oh, well I guess near the end there is one, but you're not really in the city like you were the rest of the game. It's still cool, but different.
So to wrap up, there are all these extra Riddler trophies to get. There are like 80 special levels where you fight and get points for leaderboards, including levels you can customize, fighting challenges and 'predator' challenges, and like 180 Riddler campaigns to play where you choose mutators in each level and have to play through like 3 levels using all the mutators they give you. Looks challenging! If I wanted to try and hone my Batman skills, I would have plenty of opportunity. And it's tempting, but unfortunately, as usual, I have a billion other games waiting. Perhaps I'll come back to it later to complete some more extras. There is also some Catwoman DLC with apparently a totally different storyline (and her own Riddler trophies!). I'm not big on DLCs, especially if the normal game didn't feel finished enough, but Arkham City rules, and I'm borrowing it from a friend, so I haven't paid anything, and am therefore looking into buying my first non-bundle-sale-pack DLC. We shall see if it appears worth it!
Play this game!
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