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Nov 21st, 2023 at 17:31:47 - Q.U.B.E. 2 (PC) |
I've seen QUBE and QUBE 2 around the various store fronts for years and always wrote them off as Portal clones. Manipulate cubes (qubes?) in test chambers or some such. QUBE 2 was free on Epic a few weeks ago, so I grabbed it out of curiosity. It's pretty Portal-y, but not as Portal-y as I thought. That is to say, it looks similar and plays similar, but it's definitely its own thing. And it is a strong puzzle game!
There's a vague, but intriguing (and really well voiced) sci-fi story about this sentience called QUBE (or something) that's taken over (or something) Earth, and tests humans to see if they can follow logic, understand the QUBE (it's like a sentient puzzle or something), and choose to either destroy it or learn from it, depending on whether they think it's a threat to humanity or not. I had to read about it after I finished, and some players did great work piecing the story together.
So you are awakened by the QUBE (or just QUBE...I don't know if it needs "the" in front of it, but it is technically supposed to be an acronym--Q.U.B.E.--that I don't want to type) for testing purposes, though you are unaware of what is happening or why. In fact, you are made to believe that you have amnesia or something, but that you will remember what happened in time. There is another person on your comms who you talk to, and who sort of guides you through this QUBE facility thing. The game's tone is totally serious. Wheatley and GLaDOS these entities are not.
You have glove technology that can manipulate the environment. You end up being able to switch between three colors of glove that do different things. Red creates a long block that you can extend; green creates a small detachable block; blue creates a little forcefield that bounces the green blocks. Other mechanics appear as you go on that let you spawn bowling balls, coat objects with oil, and set them on fire. Occasionally, you'll have to smash a cube into a door or use one to set a door on fire to proceed. You get push and pull magnets, have to place cubes on buttons, can "ride" the green cubes (fun), and occasionally will need to figure out how to launch yourself around. So, using combinations of these and a few other mechanics, you solve puzzles in rooms. Solving puzzles generates power, and you're usually trying to power something by solving a bunch of puzzle rooms, like an elevator or a generator, in order to progress.
The puzzles are not terribly difficult, and I was hoping we'd get some really big ones, but they do present a thoughtful challenge. I was stumped a couple times toward the end and, I am ashamed to say, used a walkthrough for part of two rooms. BUT! That's only because when I previously exited the game in the middle of a series of rooms, it made me repeat them all, which was super annoying. And one of those that it made me repeat was tricky and I think I got lucky clicking around the first time. I didn't know what I did, but it wasn't the "correct" solution, and I couldn't replicate it. Thus, the first hint to just finish the room I'd already finished. Then, I was running out of time (i.e., I needed to turn off the game), but I didn't want to repeat all those rooms yet again, so I cheated on one to hurry up. I'm sure I would have gotten it!
There is no teleportation like in Portal, but it nonetheless feels similar. At first I tried to compare it to Portal on every point, but like I said, it quickly became apparent that it is its own game. It's slick. It's got a neat story. It's got puzzles of solid difficulty and some novel mechanics. Oh, BUT! There is no "run" button. You walk agonizingly slowly, which was very annoying. This is a case of "the game would have been 10% shorter if I could run." I just started another game where you can't run, too. What's up with that? Why not include the ability to run? I'm still going to appreciate the puzzle rooms, probably even more since I won't be annoyed by having to trudge around the place!
Anyway, I'm surprised at QUBE 2. I quite enjoyed it. The Epic version that I got for free came with two more DLC chapters, which I read adds a whopping 22 puzzle rooms and new mechanics to the game. I enjoyed playing, but I'm not sure the puzzles are enough to keep me interested for 22 more (probably hard) rooms' worth. I got the story, saw the sights, played the core game, and am satisfied. I'll leave it installed in case I do get an itch for more, but I have Portal Reloaded, Baba Is You, and probably more renowned puzzle games in my library that I'd rather play first.
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Nov 15th, 2023 at 15:59:31 - Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak (PC) |
My time with the Homeworld series has been underwhelming. I don't have the nostalgia for it. RTSes are also not my favorite genre, but I've played many that I prefer over these, including Starcraft 2, the last one I played. Homeworld doesn't come close to how much I enjoyed Starcraft 2. I'm glad I finally got to these though, and that I was able to get through Deserts of Kharak since I couldn't stomach the remastered originals. I enjoyed it overall, but it wasn't great. Like a solid C.
Strengths include the story, which I found intriguing. It's a sci-fi tale about a people who discover technology on their desert planet that is jealously guarded by another civilization. There's some religious prophecy involved, and ultimately the technology allows for hyperspace travel, which is where the original Homeworld games began (your people discovered the technology and spread into space, then are punished for it, and then go looking for their origin world). There's a cool cooperative element to the main campaign, as you end up allying with another civilization. I enjoyed the missions where I was defending their base ship, or clearing a landing zone for their planes to refuel my fleet, or where they were diverting the attention of the big bad guys while I flanked them. Another strength was the variety of vehicles and ships at your command, as well as all the abilities each possessed. It was overwhelming for sure, but I liked the control it gave you over how to use each unit.
I especially liked the main base ship, which was badass. You get this monstrosity to command, that moves like molasses, but that can dish out and take serious damage. The base ship has a heating system, and over the course of the game, you find artifacts that grant bonuses, including giving it better cooling abilities or more energy to spend in its four areas: defense (adds armor); repair (heals itself); range (fires longer distances); and power (does more damage). My general strategy for it was to funnel energy to range and power, sit it at the front of my army, and surround it with support cruisers, which repaired it, while it absorbed damage and the rest of my army sat behind it firing away. The base ship is also a mobile hangar, and can launch three types of ships, as well as missile barrages. So it's never alone if you've got planes built because you can launch them to carpet bomb the variety of enemies you'll face. The base ship and all its tricks were fun to play with and very effective.
This latter strength though was also a weakness when taking into account the sub-par movement of units, especially the base ship. Their pathfinding could be wonky, vehicles are generally very slow to turn around, and often will make big arcs to turn (dying in the process; don't think you can run effectively). The base ship can't navigate narrow spaces easily (makes sense), but often will try to go around, or will spin circles, or will do like a 10-point turn, when you direct it to make a tight squeeze. I understand if it can't make it, but often even when it can, it will go haywire trying to do it.
The game isn't that difficult on normal (two stars), and one reason is because everything (resources, units) carries over from level to level. If you spend time mining resources on each level, you’ll have a lot of resources to spend to keep your fleet at max capacity. Every few levels, I'd stop and mine everything, and it would see me through a few more levels. For example, in the last two levels, I only mined one area because I had so many resources saved up from exhausting the previous few levels. I was able to hurl my army at the bosses, building new units the entire time as old ones died. Strategic? Not really. Fun? Definitely.
So yeah, overall, I enjoyed my romp through the desert(s of Kharak). I definitely got tired of seeing nothing but sand in every environment. It looked good, but was monotonous. It's not a long game, but it's action-packed, yet simultaneously slow. I hear that Homeworld 3 is on the horizon. I wonder what it'll be like? How much will it stick to the Homeworld formula and what will it update for 2024? Curious, but not dying to know. Eyeing it from afar...!
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Nov 8th, 2023 at 18:09:27 - Homeworld: Remastered Collection (PC) |
Another classic game that I remember playing some as a teenager but never got into. I assumed that a remaster would make it more accessible than a 20-year old space RTS, but it's really...challenging. I'm not sure if this is an issue with the remaster, or it's unsupported, or what is going on, but there were a lot of needlessly complicated things, such as:
- maneuvering the camera in 3d space. I constantly was too high or too low and had trouble viewing what I was trying to view.
- moving units to a specific point. Again, they constantly went too high, too low, or kilometers away. Just like I had trouble looking at what I wanted to see, I had trouble looking at the exact point I wanted units to move to and clicking it.
- friendly AI. This was poor. One thing I noticed is that units kept resetting their stance to "passive," so they'd just sit there getting killed. I kept changing it to aggressive so they'd attack on sight, and they kept changing it back...
- slow. Everything was slow. It took ages for units to move across the map. Production takes a long time. Killing enemies takes a long time.
I was initially enamored with the 3d space and the great atmosphere the game creates. The voiceovers are excellent, the story intriguing. The whole thing has a mood that I liked. But gameplay quickly became a chore. I made it several missions in and quit. I booted up Homeworld 2, and it was exactly like the first one, even with a really similar tutorial and first mission. Decided I'd try the more recent Deserts of Kharak instead. Already enjoying it more, but I do miss being in space!
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Oct 28th, 2023 at 15:18:19 - Black Mesa (PC) |
Finished this recently and whaaaat a game. This Valve-sanctioned fan remaster of Half-Life is blissful. I never actually beat the original Half-Life. Those were my teenage days when I was mostly obsessed with Diablo II, StarCraft, and Final Fantasy games. I didn't seek out PC games back then, but played what I knew I liked. I remember starting Half-Life several times, riding on the tram and doing some opening chapters, but I never got into it. So THANK YOU Black Mesa team for revitalizing Half-Life! It's tight, looks great, sounds great. It really draws a contrast between shooters before it. I just played DUSK recently too, and that game is reminiscent of pre-Half-Life FPSes. Half-Life is leaps and bounds ahead of what came before it and presumably the boomer shooters that are reviving the pre-Half-Life FPS style.
One of the coolest things about playing Black Mesa is seeing so many pre-cursor ideas to portal: teleportation, the basic physics of picking up and manipulating objects, very environmental puzzles, and so on. Every now and then, I'd be like, "Oh! I bet that's where that idea for xyz thing in Portal came from!" Something as simple as picking up a box would trigger that response. I mean, there weren't many games back then with physics like Half-Life's, and then the physics engine was significantly enhanced and manipulating objects became a core part of the gameplay in Half-Life 2, as with the iconic "Pick up the can" tutorial. Picking up a box fast-forwarded me to picking up a testing cube in Portal. Teleporting in Xen fast-forwarded me to creating portals in Portal.
Speaking of Xen, I had always heard people poo-poo the final area as too long, and I thought that the remake fixed it. Xen starts off super cool, but drags by the time you are fighting the Gonarch, running through tunnel after tunnel unsure of when you'll actually get to kill the thing. I thought Xen was the end of the game! But then, no, there's another chapter called Interloper, and it was SO LONG! Interloper is like...just climbing the biggest most pointlessly tall and complicated tower ever. How would any of the aliens even use this tower? Why are there 500 conveyor belts criss-crossing in every direction, transporting enemies, bouncing upward to the next level of conveyor belts, repeated literally like 20 times, with laser puzzles and other time-wasting shit added in? The final boss was an epic battle, and I won with 2hp left! But seriously, when I finished and started jotting notes about the game, I had to bracket aside my distaste for the last several hours of it. So ignore that. Black Mesa (or the original Half-Life, I suppose) is totally worth playing, necessary even.
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