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Feb 17th, 2019 at 18:02:05 - Metroid Prime (Wii) |
Metroid Prime is a metroidvania...wait no, it's just a Metroid game. I sunk 4 hours and 42 minutes into it and completed 15%, but it feels like I've played much longer than that. In fact, I'm sure I have. Maybe 4 play sessions averaging 90-120 minutes each. So I'm not sure how it calculates time. Perhaps it doesn't count time in menus or looking at the map, in which case I believe the timer because I looked at the map SO MUCH.
Why did I look at the map so much? Because for however novel I found Metroid Prime to be (FPS platformer with Wiimote and nunchuck controls!), the backtracking is horrific. Was this normal in 2002? I can't remember. There is no quick travel. If you want to go somewhere, you have to walk there. And since this is a Metroid game, you're unlocking new abilities (weapons, suits, secondary items, etc.) that can get you past previously inaccessible areas, which means you're constantly going back through places you've been.
Making this more irritating, enemies respawn when you leave a room, even if you just go a couple rooms away. This was fine early on when the enemies were simple and avoidable, but when giant rhino ice bugs charge and shoot snowballs, or missile turrets with uncanny aim pummel you, it's demoralizing. I've already killed these missile turrets 10 times. Why are they back again? Combat isn't particularly fun. Using the Wiimote to aim was a bit floaty. Again, it felt novel for a while, but when most of the combat isn't combat you want to be engaged in (i.e., you've cleared this room 10 times before and just want to get back to a save point because it's time for bed), the small issues are magnified.
What I do love about Metroid Prime is the exploration. You're dropped on this planet, Tallon IV, and you just...go. The areas are all a bit different (e.g., ice place, fire place) and full of environmental puzzles you have to solve to get to new areas. Sometimes that involves just finding a new weapon to open a new door type, or using a new ability you got in a neat way, like using the ball boost to roll up half-pipes. Other times you have to scan symbols or other objects to reveal a clue.
Scanning was really fun. I mean, objectively, this was probably the least exciting part of the game. You put on a different visor, look around for a red square, scan it, read the text. But I usually love lore entries and monster-pedias and things in RPGs; this scratched that itch. The game's story wasn't especially riveting, and it was given out in small pieces, but the vague sci-fi narrative coupled with the environment did a lot to pull me into the world.
I decided to quit when I'd made it to a new area in the Phendrana Drifts (courtesy of a helpful hint system that seems to alert you to where you can go next if you are idling) with a big bug boss. I died, but hadn't saved it since forever before. Save points are few and far between, and if you come across a boss having not saved it, you might have in the meantime explored many new areas, found new secrets, and so on...even up to like an hour's play time (oh yeah, there goes another couple hours off the official play timer). There need to be more save points.
I have the Metroid Prime Trilogy and just tried out 2 and 3. They seem very much the same as 1 with minor UI modifications and more prologue in 3, so I think I will retire all these and get on with the other Wii and Wii U games I bought...
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Jan 24th, 2019 at 21:51:33 - Thumper (PC) |
Alright, Thumper is being retired. Fantastic game, slick as hell, but I'm stuck so hard. Since the last time I posted here 10 days ago, I've been chipping away at level 6, and for most of the week that's been boss 6 omega. I can make it reliably to the 4th and final section of the boss, which takes me a while to work up to every time, and then I just can't seem to get the timings. It's so fast, and I have to make it through three sections every time just to see the 4th. Die. Start over. I've played the 1st and 2nd sections probably 200 times. After I play for an hour, I start to lose focus and mess up on the easier sections, which becomes super frustrating. Another super frustrating thing I've discovered is as the game speed gets faster, when you take a hit, the screen shakes and keeps shaking while you need to land targets. The shaking makes it extremely difficult to time properly, so often when I get hit once, I immediately get hit again and die. I wish there wasn't so much screen shake so I could recover from an error and not have it basically cost me twice and kill me.
As the game becomes punishingly difficult, it starts to feel real repetitive. Level 6 didn't add new obstacles, and I looked ahead and there aren't any ahead either. The game speeds up and the patterns become more difficult. I watched someone play level 9 and there's no way. It'd take me like 20 more hours to get there. I really love this game and am recommending it to people who like rhythm games, but I'm tapped out. And I was pleased to see that, even though I can't finish, I'm in the 85-90th percentile according to Steam achievements. Most people never make it past level 3, and less than 5% ever finish the game. Go me!
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Jan 14th, 2019 at 00:07:16 - Thumper (PC) |
Thumper is intense, a "rhythm violence" game, according to its creators. It's deceptively simple, and becomes brutally difficult. You guide a beetle-thing along a track, pressing X in sync with the music track to create additional rhythms and melodies. First, you're just pressing X when passing little squares of blue light, then you're pressing and holding X to go through obstacles, then you're pressing X and left/right on the analog stick to take sharp curves, etc. Each level has added something new (I'm on level 6 of 9).
Each addition allows for greater musical complexity, but also feels like a punishment. In level 5, the game adds rings that encircle the track and force you to perfect a sequence or else it kills you with a laser. I'm sure I've died hundreds times in Thumper so far. The first point is the most interesting. Since every correct button press you make and obstacle you clear generates a sound, the better you do, and the more you can hear sub-rhythms and melodies. Skill reinforces skill. The more you learn what the full music track CAN sound like, the better able you are to time inputs to create the track that you're learning. It's neat, and I really like it.
Each level has a ton of sub-levels, usually around 30, plus a few boss battles. The boss battles are awesome, and I feel like a master every time I beat one. They are made up of four sections, and you have to complete all four sections without dying. Each section loops until you get it right and pass on to the next one. The boss battles require you to learn the music and be flawless in your timing, sort of like those rings in level 5. You time the X press on yellow-green lights, and as you get more correct, new lights appear, sometimes new obstacles appear, and at the end of the sequence, you press on a large yellow light that injures the boss and moves you to the next sequence.
Thumper's sound and visual style are trippy. The score is industrial electronic music, very rhythmic and repetitive. The visuals are nightmarish. Google screenshots or watch a video to see. The bosses are undulating symmetrical shapes and otherworldly creatures like this firey skull guy who keeps reappearing. It feels like a horror game, and I guess this is something they mean when they say rhythm violence. There's no (stated) story to speak of, and the game is starting to feel a little repetitive as the difficulty ramps up. I may be approaching a skill wall where the time I'll have to put it isn't worth the reward, but we'll see. I'm sure I would feel like a god if I managed to beat it.
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Jan 9th, 2019 at 22:54:40 - Alien: Isolation (PC) |
Just finished. This is a long game for its genre. Horror/Survival games usually don't last me 25 hours. I could have done it shorter (I recall texting while playing a fair amount), but I doubt it would have been any shorter than 20 hours. While I enjoyed all its content, it did begin to overstay its welcome. The worst thing about the length wasn't the eye-rolling Murphy's Law in action that kept extending the campaign, but that the longer the game went on, the less scary and intense it became. The longer the game went on, the more you realize that you spend the majority of your time slowly walking or crouch-walking from place to place, and when a xenomorph comes, you learn that you can just hide and wait for it to leave, then resume your walking. It becomes more of a nuisance than a threat.
But the later-game leveling intensity aside, I thought the game was brilliantly done. It recreated the atmosphere of the original Alien film wonderfully. Very authentic. The story was excellent, telling of Amanda Ripley, Ellen Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver) daughter, traveling with a crew to collect the Nostromo's (Ellen Ripley's ship) flight recorder from a space station named Sevastopol, which is going to hell. Therein, Ripley learns of her mother's fate, gets double-crossed a lot, deals with hostile human survivors and androids whose controlling AI has been instructed by Weyland-Yutani to protect the alien, and, of course, there are xenomorphs.
Another brilliant part of the game that received a lot of attention is the xenomorph AI. It really feels like you're being hunted, especially if you crank the difficulty up a notch. Turn it down, and the xenomorph doesn't seem all that smart, wandering around and rarely finding you. But on hard, it seems to sniff you out, takes longer to leave, and comes quicker at less sound. A lot of the game was a white-knuckle situation, silently pleading with the alien not to turn around and see me. When I was playing earlier on, I'd spend an hour cautiously trying to get from Point A to Point B and died a lot.
The sound design added immensely to the alien's realism. You hear it stomping when near you, breathing and making its raspy growl. When it's in the vents above or around you, you hear it moving. You can press spacebar to pull out a motion tracker, which beeps and blips, showing you where any moving thing is...if it's close. But its beeps and blips will give your location away. Any time you make a loud noise, you want to have a plan to hide immediately thereafter. Want to shoot a human? Find a locker to hide in first, then kill him. Want to sprint? You better hope there's a hidey hole or that you're sprinting to a checkpoint, because the xenomorph will hear you and head your way. Need to trigger a generator, use the plasma torch to open a door, anything that makes noise? Here comes the xenomorph. It makes nearly everything a potential death trigger.
The game has a rudimentary crafting system. Find components scattered here and there, and use them to make molotov cocktails, noise makers, EMP bombs, and so forth. I so rarely used any of these (mostly just to get the achievements for using them), and the component collection and crafting seemed like filler. I maxed out my inventory maybe halfway through the game, always had plenty of ammo, and was never at risk of running out of health kits. I'd still open up all the containers and check desks and stuff for ammo and to replenish components when I'd make a thing, but the crafting didn't add to the experience.
That's all I've got off the top of my head now. Definitely worth playing if you like Alien or a good survival horror game.
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