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Jan 13th, 2024 at 15:56:04 - The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (PC) |
I want to add some entries to a couple games I've been playing for a long time. I rarely do more than one entry for a game anymore, which often results in long post-game reflections instead of more in-the-moment thoughts. There's a lot of stuff I forget. The Binding of Isaac has left some imprints though. At this point, the game is nearly a decade old and, I imagine, quite different and many times bigger than it once was. I mean, there are currently 637 achievements (of which I have 29). I'm looking at old completion data and someone listed 178 achievements, another 403. I would be annoyed if I got a high percentage of achievements, and then the game expanded, added more achievements, and my percentage dropped. People 100%ed it way back when, and now that first person has 178 out of 637.
Anyway! When I started this, I was planning to compare it to Nuclear Throne, which I thought had a similar art style, but the games are really different. The Binding of Isaac is quite claustrophobic, whereas Nuclear Throne's screen had more space. Nuclear Throne is also faster and more of a bullet hell. In Binding, you progress through a series of chapters, each with a few types of areas (e.g., Chapter 1 has the Basement and the Cellar). Down you go from area to area, chapter to chapter, until you die or kill whatever big bad boss awaits. The game has been added to so much that there are many big bad bosses now. I assume there were fewer originally. It starts with Mom. In the game, you are traumatized by your religious mother, who attempts to kill you with a knife after she becomes brainwashed by Christian TV, and you find a trap door to the basement as you flee (thus starting Isaac in the Basement area).
In each area, you go from room to room until you find the mini-boss and/or exit. There are a variety of room types, from those with just monsters, to shops, to arcades, to treasure rooms, to secret rooms, etc., etc. I am still unclear on the full list and what they all do. But the general strategy here is to acquire items to beef up Isaac so you can go as far as you can in the run. He shoots "tears" as his weapon, and these can be modified to be bigger, faster, wobble, and so on. You can also find upgrades to Isaac's speed and health. There are literally hundreds of items, and I have no clue what the vast majority do (because I haven't found most of them). Even the ones I have found, I still don't know what most of them do. There are no tooltips for the items, or an encyclopedia that provides information. This makes The Binding of Isaac feel very much like groping about in the darkness (appropriate, as is Isaac) and often proceeding on trial and error. Or rather, proceeding on a constant cost-benefit analysis of what you think might happen when you pick up this item or take those pills. The effects are often negative.
It took me a handful of tries to beat Mom for the first time, and that only unlocked new chapters, areas, and bosses. Like I keep saying, there are hundreds of items, hundreds of unlockables, hundreds of achievements. Like, so many hundreds of all this stuff that it is nearing a thousand. Some things unlock after you beat xyz boss; others after you perform xyz action or collect xyz things. I have started playing the game to unlock what it tells me I can unlock (e.g., saving up 50 coins to unlock a new character). Different characters have different starting stats and items. There's one I like who has really low health, but can float, and thus avoid a ton of obstacles and gain access to chests and things that are across gaps that other (walking) characters can't pass.
I finally started looking some things up though because it's still so overwhelming. I haven't played long (about 8 hours over 5 months), and maybe it's a matter of playing more regularly to remember things better, but runs feel really different from one another. The more I played though, the better I have gotten, and I've killed Mom a handful of times now, as well as killed Satan and Mom's Heart (a couple times). I have no idea how long it will take to kill all the bosses (or even to unlock them) and get all the endings (there are like 20-something). But it's really fun, and it's a good one to play when I have like 30 minutes.
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Dec 16th, 2023 at 16:22:27 - Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery (PC) |
Really captivating point-and-click narrative game with gorgeous artwork. This was another freebie on Amazon that looked intriguing. It'll take you around an hour to beat and is time well spent. I've never played anything quite like this. You are an artist, and you are trying to complete a painting to enter into a competition. As you paint, you are preoccupied with the old man in the apartment across the way, and his cat, and the game takes a turn toward telling a beautiful story about a couple. Simple gameplay, and thankfully you don't have to be accurate with your painting, but wow, really something.
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Dec 16th, 2023 at 14:32:03 - One Hand Clapping (PC) |
This one has a novel mechanic: using your voice. A freebie on Amazon one week, it looked too intriguing to pass up. It's a 2d platformer. Move your character with WASD, but solve puzzles by singing. It takes time to get used to, it takes some configuring to get your mic and speaker set up properly, and it is imperfect, but it is neat. I didn't quite finish--it kept losing my attention--but I was pretty close. It's okay if you suck at singing, like I do. You can't die, you aren't punished for failing, and it is somewhat forgiving.
Here's a basic example of how it works. You need to jump across a gap, but the gap is too wide. Hold a specific note to make a platform appear. Jump on the platform (keep holding the note) to the other side. Voila. If you go off key, the platform disappears. The rest of the game is basically a series of increasingly complicated variations on this one thing. Maybe there are three colors of platforms, and each color appears to the hum of a specific note. Maybe your voice moves the platforms back and forth. Etc., etc.
I said that the game is somewhat forgiving. True, you can make mistakes. But if you suck at singing (again, like I do), then you will make a lot of mistakes, and you will be retrying over and over and over. You aren't always told what you need to do, either, so you'll need to use your voice to experiment. See what different notes do. See how singing changes the environment. It can be frustrating. I was quite frustrated at the beginning, but this was partly because I hadn't taken the time to properly follow the games' audio calibration instructions. This is very important, and I didn't get it reliable enough to play until I pulled out my good quality external microphone, put in headphones, and made sure there wasn't background noise. There's no other way to play it!
The longer the game went on, the more creative it got, but also the more it was like, "there's more? really?" So yeah, neat game for sure, something different, but I did tire of it before the end. Now I need to go play Before Your Eyes and blink through a game.
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Dec 3rd, 2023 at 15:13:46 - The Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibbia (PC) |
I cannot type anymore, my hand is so cramped. The Textorcist is such a great idea for a game. The story is silly, there are typos throughout the dialogue, the music loops in a strangely distracting way, the function of items and various UI elements is not transparent, but my goodness, I loved playing this. The most intense typing game. This was a freebie on Epic (and maybe Amazon, too), and sounded so strange, that I had to try.
You play as the titular Ray Bibbia, an exorcist trying to root out demons from the Vatican and save his daughter. Ray has a holy Bible from which he shoots "hollets" (holy bullets; the puns and portmanteaus are painful) at demons by reading. You, the player, type the text that Ray reads. It sounds simple enough, but takes some next-level dexterity. The first enemies (and every enemy is a boss fight) stand still and shoot at you. Then, the enemies start moving, slowly at first, then quickly, then one takes up half the screen, another teleports. Their bullet hell projectiles begin easy, one at a time, as you practice typing and moving. Then multiple projectiles, homing projectiles, projectiles shot at various speeds, exploding projectiles, giant projectiles, lasers, an entire screen of projectiles, and on and on.
You might be thinking, how can you dodge all these projectiles, move, and type at the same time? Good question. The default key binding is to move with the arrow keys, which means you are moving with one hand and typing with the other, or you are moving with your right hand, then quickly typing with both hands, then right hand back to the arrows to move again. This quickly becomes untenable. I changed the key bindings first to Shift + WASD to move, then because that's not home position, Shift + ESDF. That was the trick. So, to move, bring your pinky down on shift and use ESDF (same movements as WASD but one key to the right). If you need to use ESDF to type, lift your pinky and get the letter out, then put it back and keep dodging those projectiles. While you're moving with your left hand, you can type with your right hand.
This is all complicated enough when you are typing complete sentences in English like "I cast you into darkness. Come to the divine light of Jesus Christ." or something. Then the game starts throwing Latin at you. "Et absinthium dissisitum obliteratis jesu sau aeternum quotaun vadis..." (I typed Latin-esque gibberish, and that's exactly what it feels like while playing!). The letter combinations and hand movements to make them are unfamiliar, which significantly increases the difficulty. And this is happening as the bosses are getting harder. THEN! Some of the bosses start messing with your bible. One scrambled Latin words. Come on! So not only are you grappling with typing "aeternium glorius facie suae diabolis," but now you have to wrap your head around "aetrmiut sirulgo icfai uesa bsaliido." Another boss changes some "I"s to "1"s and "O"s to "0"s. So then you're like, "aetern1um gl0r1us fac1e suae diab0l1s," and COME ON!
The game is nuts. I loved it. I died my fair share of times, but I'm a very fast and accurate typist, so I feel like I did well. One death on the last boss, for example, no deaths on the next-to-last boss, maybe three or four deaths on the third-from-the-last. I had to get up and take a break a few times during that trio because my hands were starting to cramp/shake and my nerves were so on edge. I was literally laughing during the last boss because of how absurdly difficult it was and how absurdly close I was to winning, but I COULD NOT get my fingers to type the letter C right before the final "Amen" that would have finished it, while moving through the most ridiculous bullet hell part of the game.
There is a DLC that I appear to have, but the game won't recognize it for some reason. Seems like it's a known issue. I would definitely play more of this, despite the irony of a typing game having loads of typos.
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