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Jul 18th, 2024 at 15:05:46 - Solar Ash (PC) |
Another stylish one with fluid movement! Solar Ash, it turns out, is a lot like Shadow of the Colossus, except instead of riding a horse, you "skate." It's kind of like if Tony Hawk's Pro Skater were about killing giant monsters instead of doing sick tricks. You play as Rei, a Voidrunner who is trying to activate a device that will prevent her planet from being devoured by a black hole. Neat premise for sure.
You'll explore other planets with unique terrains that were already devastated. I think that each successive planet is more impressive than the one before it! One way Solar Ash impresses is by creating an awe-inspiring sense of scale. You are tiny little Rei, and you are in this giant area with interconnected destroyed planets, each with their own gravity. They've all been infected by "remnants," giant monsters which you need to destroy to progress.
Each planet has four or five smaller remnants and then a huge boss remnant. The smaller ones are all wrapped around buildings, and are timed platforming puzzles. The remnants have weak spots, and you have to skate/climb/jump around hitting the weak spots on timers before the remnant burns you. The bosses are like in Shadow of the Colossus. You climb up on them, then skate around knocking out those weak spots on timers, which is extra tricky because the boss is moving around. Some of them providing a tough challenge, and in a way it felt like playing Neon White in a sci-fi world because you have to hit each weak spot before a timer runs out--speedrunning the boss.
The movement and puzzle-platformy boss fights are where it's at. Narratively, the premise is interesting, but the presentation is a bit dense. I understood the broad picture, but the details, the side characters, didn't coalesce for me. I'm sure there is more there if I found all the logs and did the side quests, learned more about each planet and how its people tried to save them. The game tackles themes like grief and loss, but requires more unpacking than I felt like.
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Jul 17th, 2024 at 12:55:29 - Neon White (PC) |
This was fantastic! It's a speedrunning game with perfect movement, smooth as butter to play. I'm not a speedrunner or someone who tends to chase high scores, but everything about the design of Neon White motivated me to do it here, at least through chapter 7 or so until I just wanted to finish the game because I have so many others to get to on Game Pass before the month is out.
The gameplay is based around using cards, which you pick up during each level. You can hold up to two types of cards and three of each type at any given time. Left mouse uses the active card's primary ability (a gun of some sort) and right mouse uses its discard ability (a movement ability). For example, the green "stomp" card fires a machine gun with the left mouse and with the right mouse you fall quickly and stomp the ground (useful for killing enemies from above, smashing doors in the floor, or, well, falling quickly). The game almost always gives you the cards you need to use in order, such that you don't have to switch cards manually. I thought at the beginning I was going to be switching cards, but very rarely will you need to do this. Adding that pressure on top of an already lightning speed game might have broken my nerves. As it was, I couldn't play too long without taking a break!
Levels are short (I'd say they average 40 seconds or so, shorter in the beginning of the game and longer toward the end) and are worth playing again and again. If you finish, you get a bronze medal, and then there are silver, gold, and "ace" medals for getting better times. As you get better medals in each level, you'll be able to see the ghost of your best time, see a hint for shortcuts, see leaderboards, and see a collectible gift. The hints were neat. It doesn't just tell you or show you what to do; rather, there is a golden hand icon around where the shortcut is, and you still have to figure out what exactly to do there. The collectible gifts are in hard-to-reach places and involve deviating from the path or using your cards in ways unintended by the main path of the level (e.g., figuring out how to use the cards at your disposal to reach a gift that is on top of a spire).
I was feeling really good. Through chapter 7, I'd gotten nearly all ace medals and gifts. And once you get the hang of the game, you'll start to see shortcuts without being shown where they are. After chapter 7, when I stopped replaying levels, I still routinely got ace and gold on my first try, and then that faded to silver and bronze as the levels got more complicated closer to the end.
The gifts unlock special dialogue scenes and challenge levels for the other characters. The challenge levels were really neat. With one character, you can't use discard abilities in their challenge level. Another character's challenge levels were like deathtrap obstacle courses.
I enjoyed the story and characters too. You're all speedrunning and killing demons because you were all very bad in life, and now you're dead, in Heaven, cleaning it up and competing for prizes awarded by angels and "Believers," who are smug little angel/cherub creatures that run the place in the absence of God. You and the other main characters knew each other in life, and as you play through the game, you learn more about that. The characters reminded me of Disgaea or something, like silly JRPG or anime stuff. Of course, you all end up not being too excited about killing demons for the Believers as you learn more about the main characters and the Believers themselves. Everything is not as it appears...
Chalk this up as one that, in hindsight, I would have purchased on Steam to own instead of temporarily having access to on Game Pass. Ah, well! Maybe once a year, I can get some more ace medals!
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Jul 16th, 2024 at 07:33:40 - The Case of the Golden Idol (PC) |
The Case of the Golden Idol really engaged my brain, until both it and my brain broke. I've never played anything quite like this, though I read that Return of the Obra Dinn is similar, and I've been wanting to play that anyway. This is like a point-and-click detective game. You are presented with a series of narratively and spatially connected chapters. Each chapter contains at least one "room" or "screen", each with various objects to click on. Clicking on the objects reveals information, some of which itself is clickable and gets stored in a book of words. You then use the words to complete mad-lib-type "scrolls" and solutions that explain what happened in the chapter.
The pacing is nice and goes from easy, as you're learning the ropes, to really complex. The story spans several years and is full of political intrigue. In the last couple chapters, you need to refer to previous chapters to remember characters and plot points. If you get stuck, you can access up to four hints in each chapter. The first time I was going to use a hint, on I-forget-which-chapter, I clicked on "access hints" and it brought up four categories of hint. Just reading one of the category names prompted me to re-examine something, and I figured it out! Did I technically use a hint?
Fast forward two or three more chapters, and I'm feeling quite proud of myself, and smug, for solving everything on my own. Enter chapter IX. There was a murder at an estate. Tons of people were there, all with their political backstories and motives. The constable had taken accounts from all the attendees as to their timelines of events, some of which were vague or contradicted others. I knew there were two poisonings and a theft. I thought there was a third poisoning because one of the characters' behaviors seemed to fit the description of side effects, but whether he was or wasn't on something didn't matter. I did miss a second theft, which a hint pointed me to. This chapter ended up frustrating me because you have to work out political motives. There are several different ways you could reason them out, and you just have to try them all until one works. I could not for the life of me figure out the solution scroll on this one, though, and ended up just looking it up online.
"Trying them all until one works" ends up being a strategy you can use, especially if you know you've got most of the solution correct. The game both encourages/discourages this because if you have two or fewer mistakes in your solution, it tells you. You can swap words in and out, and you know you had something right when you swap a word and the "you have two or fewer mistakes" goes away. Other times, it's like answering a multiple choice question where the teacher doesn't account for grammar. If it says, "[name] [name] went to the [noun] to [verb] a [noun]" and your available nouns are like garden, sky, bathroom, idol and your verbs are take, killed, framed, and shoot, then obviously the verb is the present "to take" because the others are past tense except "shoot," and you wouldn't shoot any of those nouns. So someone went to the bathroom to take a shower. But there are so many names, and they always use first and last names (and some people have multiple identities), that the names are the really tricky part! It'll say something like "[name] [name] and [name] [name] went to the [noun] to [verb] [name] [name] because [name] [name] wanted to [verb] [name] [name] with [name] [name]" and you're like "uuuuuh..." So, chapter IX ruined me...
Case X was a brain-scratcher with math that I almost solved, but I swear there was an error in the writing. People are on trial and they get "merit deductions" for violating core virtues. Someone got such a large merit deduction that they were killed. I used one hint to figure out the mode of death. I had thought of entering that mode of death, but didn’t because it sounded weird the way it was worded. So much for my "bad multiple choice question" strategy. One thing you have to do in this chapter is deduce how many merits each core virtue is worth so that you can figure out who died because the person who died had the biggest merit deduction. In the solution, you have to write how many merits they lost. I got the number of merits wrong, but this is not on me! I calculated that the guy was charged with 88 merits (and this was verified by one of the optional solutions that I got right), but one of the other people on trial said that they didn’t charge him for fashion crimes, which would decrease the total merit deduction by 2. He should have 86! Yet the solution is that he lost 88, not 86. Why would they have that character say something that is wrong? Frustrating.
Great. Last chapter! It was another murder-filled doozy like chapter IX. I was slowly working through it but encountered a series of unfortunate bugs that killed the game. First, it stopped letting me open scrolls. I rebooted the game, and the scrolls started working again. I used a hint. It told me the hint and then, for some reason, played the ending scene as if I'd solved the scroll, which I hadn't. I exited out, came back, and sure enough, the scroll was solved. Okay...? Whatever. Let's finish. On to the epilogue, one final case with three scrolls to complete. I completed the first. I was working on the second. In the last chapter and the epilogue, you can revisit old chapters to refresh your memory of characters and past events. I went back to the chapter with the rituals, and the game bugged out again, getting stuck on the scene with the footprints in the forest. Every time I closed it and clicked on something else, it just opened the screen with the footprints again. Click click click click. It wouldn't let me do anything else. Then..."Thanks for playing!" on the ending screen. What?! I went back to the menu, re-opened the chapter, and sure enough, all the scrolls were completed.
I was really enjoying Case of the Golden Idol! Even when it got hard, I was enjoying scratching my head and marveling at the connections, even if the complexity was becoming a bit frustrating. I definitely didn't like that my math was wrong in chapter X, when logically it was correct. And then the game bugged out a few times and messed up the last chapter and the epilogue, which really sucked and left me with a sour taste for the whole experience. I'll have to try Return of the Obra Dinn!
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Jul 15th, 2024 at 08:12:30 - Brotato (PC) |
Brotato...silly name, simple game. This wasn't on my radar until I was browsing the Game Pass catalog looking stuff up, and saw it was rated "overwhelmingly positive" with like 50,000 reviews on Steam. That's a compelling recommendation! I like these twin stick shooter/bullet hell/roguelike hybrids (Binding of Isaac, Nuclear Throne, etc.) so I downloaded it. It's got a whiff of Vampire Survivors, too, the auto-play (whatever that's called), which I also enjoyed.
After thoroughly trouncing the game, I am unsure why it's at like 97% overwhelmingly positive with so many reviews on Steam. Like, it's good, but it's not THAT good! The gimmick here is that you can equip 6 weapons (or 12 with one of the unlockable characters) and that there are about 50 characters to unlock and play with. It is undeniably fun to equip 6 weapons and try out all the wacky characters. It's so over-the-top. Weapons are either melee or ranged, they go from tier 1-4 (weaker to stronger) and they come in different sets like precise weapons, medieval weapons, unarmed weapons, ethereal weapons, and so on. Having multiple weapons of any given set grants set bonuses. You can upgrade your weapons by combining two of the same thing (e.g., two tier 2 ethereal axes become a tier 3 ethereal axe). There are also explosions, mines, turrets, and other manner of thing that can damage enemies. You'll also be able to purchase a ton of items that affect your stats. Most add something but take away somewhere else (e.g., +2hp but -1 damage%).
So, as you progress through the 20 waves of enemies in a run, you accumulate experience and materials to level up and buy things. Based on what's available in the shop, you might start building out your character in many different ways (e.g., focusing on melee damage, focusing on high HP and regen, etc.). Your character affects this too, and this was a lot of fun tinkering with different characters. Dealing with constraints imposed by their specific limitations was cool. For example, Crazy gets 100% range with precise weapons, +25% attack speed, starts with a knife, has -30% dodge, -10% engineering, and -10% ranged damage. So basically, you want to buff up his melee and attack stats, and since his dodge sucks, you will avoid +dodge items and go with HP, armor, or something else. I think I had my first win with Crazy.
Other characters I remember having fun with include: Old (-25% enemy speed, +10% harvesting, -33% map size, -10% enemies, -10% speed [he was fun because of the compact map]), Loud (+30% damage, +50% enemies, -3 harvesting at the end of a wave [fun because of massive hordes of enemies]), Ghost (10% damage with Ethereal weapons, +30% dodge, dodge is capped at 90% instead of 60%, -100 armor [super fun, and my Danger 5 victory, because you can reach 90% dodge chance, but you have to build so as not to get one-shot because you start out taking almost double damage!]), the Artificer and the Glutton, who are both built around creating massive explosions, and the Masochist (+5% damage every time you take damage until the end of the wave, +10 max HP, +20 HP regen, +8 armor, -100% damage). I think the Masochist was my Danger 4 victory, and he was a lot of fun because each wave you start off with super low damage, and you need to get hit a lot to increase your damage. So, I built around boosting HP, regen, life steal, and armor so I could take a lot of hits, and then started getting + damage items later to negate some of the damage starting penalty. By the end of later waves, I was doing nearly +300% damage, which is insane. Basically, your damage % stops increasing later in the wave because you are one-shotting everything before you can get hit!
After you win a run on Danger 0 (the first difficulty), you unlock Danger 1, and it goes up to Danger 5. I considered beating the game at Danger 5, so that's what I did. I started questioning the overwhelmingly positive ratings when the game started getting repetitive and easy, which, all things considered, didn't take that long. It took me a handful of tries to beat Danger 0 and Danger 1, but Danger 2, 3, 4, and 5 each took 1-2 tries. And I used a different character each run, so it's not like I was perfecting my strategy with any given character. I just figured out how the game worked, some generally optimal strategies and items, and it was easy after that.
There is also only one map. The entire game takes place in a small space, and every run is basically the same in terms of what enemies spawn each wave. There are only a handful of enemy types, mostly of the "they're going to charge you" variety, and even bosses only have like three attacks between them. I'd see a new boss and be like "yeah! What's this one do?" and it would attack the same way as the last one. And every run is also basically the same toward the end. You've built a beast of a character, and you wade through enemies without a care in the world because you do so much damage, or your armor is so high, or you have 90% dodge chance, or there are health pickups everywhere, or whatever. So, by the time you've beaten a couple runs, you've probably kind of seen everything. There are more characters to unlock, some more rare items to get, but fun as it is for what it is. Worth playing if you like these kinds of games, but others have more longevity and variety.
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