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Sep 8th, 2025 at 20:20:21 - Not for Broadcast (PC) |
Funny FMV game about working in a TV news editing room over nearly a decade during a period of political change. First off, I read somewhere that this game has the most recorded video of any game (at least at its release). It's impressive how much video content is here to watch. Well, to edit. You WANT to watch the videos, but your job is to edit. It sometimes takes away from the watching that you would rather be doing.
The game reminds me of something like a cross between Don't Feed the Monkeys, Orwell, and Papers, Please. You watch people on the TV screens (like Don't Feed the Monkeys) but in doing so can influence the political direction of the country (like Orwell). And since cutting the TV footage is your job, and you have to earn a wage, there's a little Papers, Please in here too because your decisions at work affect your family, finances, and home life. That home life part is more of a simple textual narrative and serves to pass time, connect you to family, and add additional social context to the news broadcasts.
So you work at this TV station manning an editing board. The various buttons and things on the control board engage you while the TV show is being filmed. You can switch between four cameras, play commercials, cue sound effects (laugh track, clapping, etc.), adjust volume, and you have to deal with various other distractions or problems (a political group trying to hack the station, power outages, wiring issues, maniacal dolls [in a bizarre dream sequence], etc.). The goal is to effectively edit the live feed to increase viewership. You do this by switching to the correct camera (general rule: focus on who is talking), by changing cameras (general rule: don't linger too long on one shot), by minimizing interference, by cuing appropriate audio (e.g., don't cue the laugh track when something serious is happening), and so on. Doing well increases viewership; doing poorly decreases it. If enough viewers leave the channel, you lose and start the broadcast over.
The live news TV show that you'll be editing is so well done. The writing and acting are excellent, the stars of the game. It's so creative. There are news anchors, special guests, recurring segments, and more. The devs have really created a whole universe here, a parody of real-world news, celebrities, and politicians. My favorite actors were the first news anchor and the guy in the first DLC (which was my favorite chunk of the playthrough). In that DLC, the network is airing an old telethon from the mid-20th century. Your job is to edit the broadcast live. The telethon host is this horrible man who is inappropriate with the women answering the phones. They don’t play along with him. When he makes sexist remarks, they roll their eyes, don’t laugh at his jokes, and seem to revel in the fact that his telethon isn’t raising any money. All the guests for the telethon are stuck on a bus in traffic, and so guests are improvised from the telethon staff on hand, including a deadpan Indian performer, a Chinese worker, and a little person. A lot of the jokes rely on the fact that this is race- or body-based humor that we would find offensive today, but was totally normal for the 1950s. So you have fun with the censor button and watching the minorities, man with a disability, and women completely undermine the white male host.
Anyway, that is a DLC…the main game is set over like 8 years and has a political story; it’s not a single event like a telethon (which is, for the record, related to the political story, in a way that I guessed about 5 seconds before it was revealed!). Because of that difference, after the main game the DLC felt cohesive and concise. Broadcasts in the main game will regularly occur a year after the previous broadcast. I’d definitely be curious to buy more DLC when it goes on sale. Broadcasts were usually like 30-45 minutes long, so it’d be a couple bucks for a long episode of funny, interactive TV basically.
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Aug 29th, 2025 at 08:02:10 - Chrono Trigger (PC) |
A classic, completed! I never had an SNES or a DS, so I never found my way to Chrono Trigger. It's one of Sasha's favorites, and a classic JRPG, so I found the Steam port and played over the past several months, most of which was concentrated in the past few weeks. I know it's 30 years old and was revolutionary at the time for the multiple endings, time travel, side character-focused side quests, detailed sprite work, and so on.
I'm playing in 2025 around the time I'm playing JRPGs like Clair Obscur and Persona 5. Chrono Trigger doesn't hold a candle to those games, but those games wouldn't be possible without decades old games like Chrono Trigger paving the way. So, my playthrough of Chrono Trigger was one of trying to appreciate something classic rather than thinking, "This is going to be a great [by today's standards] game!" Indeed, I was often frustrated or bored, going through the motions of leveling up or grinding, making liberal use of the auto battle option, and following occasional walkthroughs to speed things up.
The story and characters were less serious than I thought they would be. I was thinking that this would be more on par with FFVII, but the "silliness level" of this was a middle ground between FFVII (which could be profound) and Earthbound (which was often funny). The characters and story weren't that interesting to me. Chrono could have been a jug of milk. The 65,000,000 BC cave woman (whom I so creatively named "Wolfy" because she wore animal skins) made me laugh because of how dumb she talked, and at the end because she basically says she's ready to have a lot of sex with her boyfriend. The frog was over-dramatic. I named him Queen (I don't remember why), which became really confusing because there are actual queens in the story. Characters also often referred to the frog with his original name instead of what I selected for him.
But what was cool was the centrality of Lavos, this ever-looming threat across time. I liked that you could challenge Lavos whenever you wanted. By the time I was ready to give him a serious attempt, I was around level 50 and he annihilated me with a magic attack right off the bat. I changed my party composition and used the three characters with the highest magic defense, which worked like a charm...until he used a massive physical damage attack. Turns out characters with high magic defense often have low physical defense. I only had two characters who were fairly balanced with defense (Chrono and the frog), so I figured I should do some of the side quests that the game offered me. That would get me some more levels and probably some better gear. Turns out I had done a few of those side quests already, and I did almost all the rest. Yes, better gear and a few more levels. Now we're around level 55 and have significantly improved defense and attack, having gotten ultimate weapons for most characters.
I annihilated Lavos and saved the world. Hooray!
This is something very "classic JRPG" about Chrono Trigger. If a boss defeats you, you can just go grind away for a while, come back, and smack it to death. I did this two or three times during the game. And given that you can turn on auto battle, the grinding feels almost automated. I would just sit by Sasha, watch an episode of something, and run back and forth through whatever area auto-battling my way to higher levels. It took no thought. I think that's a larger critique of this game for me, is that I didn't have to think much. Sure, some enemies have strengths and weaknesses, and bosses often had a trick to figure out, but that was such a small percentage of battles. I'm comparing it to something like Clair Obscur where EVERY battle could go horribly wrong, where you could parry and dodge. Or something like Persona 5 where the combat system is predicated on enemy strengths and weaknesses that you need to pay attention to (plus 10 other combat mechanics).
Chrono Trigger (understandably) feels basic in 2025. It was really cool getting to experience a classic, basic as it feels today. Next time I play a game with time travel, I'll compare it to Chrono Trigger! Next time the hero's mother steps through a time portal at the end of the game (cue laugh track), I'll also think of Chrono Trigger! And the next time someone refers to Chrono Trigger, I will confidently say that yes, I have played Chrono Trigger (instead of being shamed for having no gamer cred)!
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Aug 29th, 2025 at 06:56:47 - The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood (PC) |
Okay, this was REALLY good. It's from the people who made The Red Strings Club, which I also liked. Deconstructeam has a knack for thought-provoking philosophical narratives, strong writing, diverse characters, and novel mechanics for a point-and-click. I don't even know if I'd describe this as a point-and-click because most of it takes place in one two-story building and you don't really move your character anywhere in the sense of typical point-and-click adventures. It's more of an interactive visual novel with cards. But it's not a card game either. Let's back up...
In The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, you play as Fortuna, a witch with the power of divination. You've been exiled for reading in your Tarot deck that your coven will be destroyed. 200 years into your 1000-year exile, you summon a Behemoth (very illegal), who helps you reflect on your circumstances and regain power. Regaining your power involves learning to create your own (non-Tarot) deck of cards. As the story unfolds, you end up being allowed to get visitors whose futures you can read with your cards. So, depending on the cards you create, which are imbued with different elements that have different affinities (i.e., fire is fear, earth is power, water is emotion, etc.), your readings are flavored differently. For example, if you create a ton of fire-heavy cards, your readings will be related to fear, lust, violence, revenge, and so on.
Now, there is a huge and awesome narrative twist that I will not give away that makes the divination system so interesting and makes an already cool game even cooler. This is contextualized in the overarching story of your exile, regaining your powers, reconnecting with witches in your coven, meeting witches in other covens, and dealing with the political upheaval in your coven. Without discussing that twist, I really can't talk much more about the game, except just mechanics stuff. Suffice it to say, if you like playing politics, you'll be surprised.
The game does a lot of interesting things in its relatively short time and confined space. One interesting thing about this game is that it takes place wholly (except for some flashback sequences) in the place of Fortuna's exile, a two-story home in the middle of space. There are like four things you end up being able to click on in the house, so nearly all interaction happens via dialogue windows and the card creation and selection screens. Despite the simplicity, nothing ever got boring or repetitive. The game regularly changes up what you are doing and the story moves at a good pace.
At the end, I find myself curious about a second playthrough, or seeing if my girlfriend is interested in it so I can watch her play. It seems like your choices have massive impact on how the game unfolds, but sometimes this can be deceptive. I would like to see how much things change if you make different choices. HIGHLY recommend!
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Aug 22nd, 2025 at 15:46:42 - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (PC) |
I'm most of the way through the third case and retiring this one. I played most of it (about 10 hours) while walking on the treadmill over the past 4 months or so. I do walk on the treadmill more often than that! The first thing that struck me about Ace Attorney is that it totally inspired Paradise Killer, which I really liked. I had never played anything quite like Paradise Killer, and now its pedigree is obvious. It even uses some of the same sound effects, like the chime noise when something is suspicious.
I liked the first two cases; they were a good introduction to the game and its characters. The detective work does get tedious, moving the magnifying glass around the screens to hear Phoenix's comments and to try and find clues. This gets worse as there are more places to explore. By the third case, which involves moving around a movie studio, the detective work was getting boring.
The trials were more fun, but even those were getting boring by the third case. I think the trials suffer from the problem of being too scripted. You listen to witness testimony, cross-examine the witness (wherein you hear the testimony again and yell "objection!" [always amusing] when you want to press the witness), successfully press the witness, listen to their revised testimony, cross-examine the revised testimony, and so on. If you mess up on any of these parts or want to hear something again, you have to click through all the dialogue from that part again. The third case is more complicated than the first two, so I have been listening to testimony over and over trying to figure out when and how witnesses are lying. If you accuse them too often by presenting incorrect evidence, you lose and have to start over, which is annoying. So, you can't just guess over and over, even though the game's logic is such that you'll have to guess sometimes.
Sometimes, you know when and how the witness is lying, but it's unclear what dialogue option is the correct one. For example, I have been cross-examining a child in the third case. He witnessed fight that ended in a murder, but didn't actually see the murder. He didn't see the murder because he was fiddling with his camera, which I had figured out. When you press him on this, there are three options. You can claim that he didn't see the murder because he couldn't see it, because he was looking at something else, or you can present evidence. Well, if he was looking through his camera, you could imagine that he couldn't see the murder because he had it pointed in the wrong direction or something. If he was messing with his camera, you could also say that he was looking at something else (the camera). Or, you can present the camera as evidence. These all seem reasonable to me, but the game is so scripted that you have to present the camera as evidence; the other two are wrong, even though the second one especially makes sense: he didn't see the murder because he was looking at something else, his camera.
Other times, you just have no clue what you are supposed to guess. Like, now this kid is talking about how he took photos but deleted them. I've pressed him on every part of his revised testimony, but don't know what I'm supposed to present as evidence when. I presented the camera a couple times because it seems to me the photos might still be on the camera. I presented the photo of the Steel Samurai because like somehow that might be his photo (even though it came from security footage, who knows?!). I presented the spear (murder weapon). I was wrong enough that I got a game over.
This has happened enough times that I'm just going to call it quits on Phoenix Wright. I like the game. It's funny. The character animations especially are great. I love watching the witnesses get all bent out of shape. I like the absurd narratives. But that does make it hard to impose logic to solve a case! The game has its own logic and I'm tired of trying to follow it. I did look up rankings for cases, and it seems that cases 4 and 5 in this game are among the best ones. Of course I got tired of it during the 3rd case! I can't imagine another 10 hours of this though, even if the next two are supposed to be really good. I've got other "treadmill games" lined up to try.
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