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Jul 26th, 2024 at 09:42:39 - Jusant (PC) |
This was neat. You basically climb a mountain, but it's like for real mountain climbing. You have to attach ropes and use LT and RT to grab holds with your left and right hands and stuff. I played the whole thing in one long sitting last night, and when I got done, realized by hands were cramped from pressing triggers for four hours. There are some other elements to the climbing mechanics related to the game's fantasy world, like various plants and creatures that help you climb. It's not hard, and I fell into a quiet rhythm.
A narrative guides you up the mountain, too. It's about climate change and environmentalism. In the past, there was rain and abundant water. But it seems like people used too much water / mismanaged their resources / polluted and the source from above dried up. Now, people live in a sun-baked wasteland. They go on expeditions into what was once a great ocean to try and find any water. One expedition went up instead to chase a tale of some creatures that brought water to the mountain. Your character is following in the footsteps of that expedition and actually (for some reason) has a baby one of those water creatures. What will you discover at the top?
Jusant is a very pretty game, colorful and with impressive scale. I never tired of looking out over the ocean basin or marveling at the vast interior hollows inside the mountain. The sound design complements this, and makes the adventure feel both peaceful and epic. The movement is fluid, and climbing feels good. I encountered some movement quirks, like that the character often won't jump forward, sometimes it can be tricky to get her to do some of the more fine maneuvering, and getting her to detach from a long rope swing doesn't always work how you think it will (she tends to hang on and not want to let go!). There are a lot of texts to find that provide context to the story. The "main" ones chronicling the mountain expedition I enjoyed, and there are more of those as you go higher. Lower on the mountain, there are a lot of collectibles that are just like mail that mountain residents pass to one another with them just chatting. I lost interest real fast in finding those ones.
Jusant was definitely something different. It's not a hard game; it's not even a particularly exciting game. It's rather calming and, like I said, sucked me into a rhythm. I was thinking about studies of flow among mountain climbers and it seems this can be reproduced with mountain climbing in a video game!
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Jul 26th, 2024 at 09:21:39 - Clone Drone in the Danger Zone (PC) |
A random find on Game Pass, it's got like 30,000 "overwhelmingly positive" Steam reviews. It's a (mostly melee) arena combat game with robots that can slice off body parts. Case in point: I beat the final campaign boss fight with one leg, after systematically slicing off the legs (so it couldn't move) and arms (so it couldn't use weapons) of the boss. The campaign is just a few hours long, has a silly story that is way better than it has any right to be, and has some good humor, especially the announcers in the first two chapters.
In the campaign, the first two chapters let you play around with the skill tree and design some custom robots. Do you want to use a sword, hammer, bow, or spear? Do you want your weapon on fire? Do you want a jet pack? Etc. Limited skill points keep you from becoming overpowered. They also introduce the idea of the clones. You can, instead of purchasing a skill, purchase a clone. After I died the first time, and had to start the whole chapter over, I realized that the clones were like extra lives. From then on, I always had a clone purchased in case I got sliced up! The other chapters introduce co-op, further upgrades, and the idea of "transference" where you can take over enemies that kill you. This is strategic. If you know what kinds of enemies are coming, you can purposefully get killed by an enemy type that is strong against the upcoming ones. If a boss is coming up, you can purposefully get killed by a massive flaming-hammer-wielding armored robot or something.
After completing the campaign, there is co-op, with a lot of challenges, deathmatch, and some other multiplayer modes. I dabbled a bit. There are far, far better multiplayer battlers out there, but this one certainly has charm.
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Jul 26th, 2024 at 09:11:25 - Still Wakes the Deep (PC) |
Who came up with the idea for this?! It's like watching North Sea Tiktok but there are monsters. Still Wakes the Deep is a horror game set on an oil rig in the North Sea. You play as an electrician named Caz who took the job to escape some legal trouble back home in Scotland. The crew drills into *something* under the ocean, which proceeds to wreak havoc on the crew and the rig. You attempt to escape as the situation becomes bleaker and bleaker.
My favorite thing about the game is the setting. It reminded me of Dead Space and other horror games where the setting is so well-realized that it feels like a character. You'll go back and forth across the oil rig, watching it slowly be destroyed over the course of the game. You'll learn which crew-member-monsters are terrorizing which areas. And you'll be rooting (hopefully!) for your crew buddies to make it, and be sad (and experience serious dread as another one bites the dust) when they don't. The setting is oppressive, the kind of place where you're waiting for the next bad thing to happen. The weather is stormy, the waves roll beneath the rig, and as it gets progressively destroyed, paths you once took are obstructed and you have to take new ones.
It's also incredibly authentic due to the wonderful voice acting by the Scottish cast. Turn on subtitles because, unless you are Scottish, you won't understand a chunk of the dialogue. Interestingly, the subtitles "translate" what they are saying into American English. This was strange because I am used to having subtitles on American English media, where I can just read along with what they are saying, and on foreign media, where I don't understand any of what they are saying and I have to read instead. I can't recall the last time I understood like 80% of what was said and relied on subtitles for the other 20%, and where the subtitles didn't write the words they said, but rather translated them into American English.
Gameplay-wise, it's straightforward. I've seen this described as both a survival horror game and a walking simulator, but I don't think it's either. By my definition, it's not survival horror because there are no resources to manage. There is no combat, you have no health, no inventory. There is some light stealth. Yes, you are "surviving," but this doesn't require much special effort on the player's part. And it's not a walking simulator because it's very action-heavy. Walking simulators, to me, are associated with a much slower pace. I'm calling it a linear horror game. You will constantly progress forward. You won't get stuck, you won't get lost, and you'll rarely die. For some, this may make it a bit boring, but we were engaged.
Overall, I really enjoyed this. It's a good one to swap the controller back and forth with a friend. Solid story, solid (if simple) gameplay, and thoroughly impressive setting. It kept us on the edge of the couch the whole time.
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Jul 23rd, 2024 at 07:05:16 - Humanity (PC) |
Retired this because I've lost interest. I hadn't picked it up in at least a week (I was stuck) and hadn't picked it up another week before that (stuck on the same level!). Well, I finally beat the level I was stuck on, which felt great, but being stuck for two weeks is an indication of how tough it got. Predictably, the following levels stumped me too. I eked my way to the end of the third chapter and called it a day. I did look online to see what new rules the game introduced and, yeah, I made a good call.
Humanity is a puzzle game that reminded me of Lemmings. You control a dog that runs around the puzzle area placing commands (interesting, the dog placing commands and not being commanded!) for the humans. Humans emerge from specific spots in the level and walk in a straight line unless commanded otherwise. Your job is to get them to the goal. You have extra challenges in that there are special "Goldy" humans (golden giants) that you can pick up too. Basic commands are like "turn" and "jump," so you can route the humans around the level. It starts introducing all sorts of mechanics like movable blocks, pressure plates that do things if people are walking over them or if a block is moved on them, conveyor belts, wind, and later on even enemy humans.
New chapters introduce new rules. I was actually getting bored of the game, and then chapter three did something I liked. Previously, you run around placing commands as the humans are walking. This gave the game an "action" feel, but I wanted to be able to pause or issue commands before the humans started walking. Well, in chapter three, it makes you do just that. You have to set everything up and then you aren't allowed to pause! As such, chapter three was my favorite. If you make a mistake, you can easily restart the level, and there is a handy option to either keep or delete the commands you've placed. If you keep them, you can edit and then start. I'd delete them sometimes if I needed to try and look at a level with a fresh set of eyes.
There's a light story here, something about humanity losing their way and being guided toward the light. There are some mysterious entities, you (the dog), some boss fights (neat), and "others" (aka bad people [or are they?]). But, it's the puzzling that'll get you interested. The weakest part of the game, I think, is the dog. One reason I liked chapter three so much is because I didn't have to control the dog in real-time, like while the humans were moving, and do the puzzles simultaneously. I wanted to just not be the dog and place the commands myself using the mouse. See, to place a command, you actually have to move the dog to the tile. This is often annoying. The dog doesn't control all that well, and although it can jump, it can't jump over everything, so you can't easily get to all the places you want to put commands. I'm not sure why there is the need for the dog. If you remove it, it takes nothing away from the experience (at least as far as I played), and the controls would be more intuitive and easier. Did they just put the dog because people like dogs and would think it's cute? I have no idea.
If you want some Lemmings throwback, this is a no-brainer. The puzzles are smart, the levels really well designed, and you're gonna have to think hard! Ultimately, it didn't hold my interest though, and I stopped playing about a third of the way through.
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