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Apr 9th, 2021 at 22:50:31 - Ruiner (PC) |
This is like a twin-stick shooter / Hotline Miami hybrid. It looks sliiiiick and oooozes style. The art is awesome and the sound design rules. The characters are dark and the setting is effectively cyberpunkish and hyperviolent.
The gameplay is where Ruiner runs into problems. It's samey. Environments look pretty much the same and combat barely evolves from the beginning to the end. The main thing that changes it up is your skill tree, but even then, I spent 95% of the game dashing and slashing, occasionally using the shield, the healing power, and mind control. I killed 95% of enemies the same way. Only later in the game did I start using guns.
The story is fine, and has a nice little twist at the end. It's bolstered by cool characters, creepy bad guys, and like I said earlier, the sweet, audio and visuals that back it all up.
I loved looking at it, but I wish it was more fun to play!
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Mar 18th, 2021 at 12:06:08 - Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm (PC) |
I played Wings of Liberty like 10 years ago, whenever it was released. I grew up on Starcraft, so that was one of the most exciting games I'd ever played. I'm not sure why exactly it took me 10 more years to play the expansions. The motivation wasn't there, I suppose. Anyway, when Starcraft 2 went free-to-play, Heart of the Swarm was a "free gift" (and apparently I have Legacy of the Void too, sweet!), so it's been on my list.
Before playing Heart of the Swarm, I actually went back and replayed 2/3 of Wings of Liberty, assuming I needed a refresher. I forgot Blizzard are kings of tutorials. Once I remembered the story enough and realized that they would probably start players off with the basics in the expansion, I quit replaying Wings of Liberty (fun though it was) and got to the new one. But, wow has a metagame ever built up around Starcraft 2. There seem to be hundreds of challenge modes, weekly events, leagues, and all sorts of shit to keep people into it.
Heart of the Swarm was cool, more nostalgic than anything. I have no desire to "get into" Starcraft 2 as I did a decade ago, and as I had been for my teenage years before that with Starcraft, so this was purely an exercise in beating the game. On normal difficulty, this was a cakewalk. I recall playing Wings of Liberty on Hard and I should have for this too. Ah, well, I'll do it for Legacy of the Void. What's interesting is that as I was breezing through normal, I remembered how fun it was to just screw around with the game, to create AI matches, to try to fill the map with photon cannons or max out units with carriers. I remembered playing against people and setting off nuclear missiles in places they would never find, boxing them in with supply depots and bunkers, landing surgical strikes on their drones.
I suppose what I'm saying is that I didn't get much of that playfulness in this campaign. Every level has some particular rule to it--retreat every 5 minutes so your units don't die of gas, stop what you're doing while lava rises and falls, protect x things, and so on. Rarely, if ever, are you just given a starting area and told to kill the other guys. I appreciate the variety of the levels, but "go kill the other guys" is the core of the game! So you spend the campaign acquiring new units and upgrades but you're always constrained by the level rules and never are told to just "go kill the other guys" with all your fun new toys.
Maybe that's an argument for me playing random AI matches like I used to do. Maybe that's more fun. Maaaaybe...
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Feb 21st, 2021 at 12:20:16 - Into the Breach (PC) |
Well this was surprisingly short! I beat this rogue-lite on my second try. I thought it would give me like 15 hours, but it was about 4. I will chalk this up to the thousands of hours I've spent playing strategy RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics and everything Atlus published in their PS2 SRPG heyday.
In Into the Breach, you guide a squad of three mechs on missions to destroy the Vek, nasty alien bugs who are trying to kill all humans. You begin with a basic squad, one melee unit, one ranged cannon (just like a rook in chess), and one missile launcher. If you've played these kinds of games before, this is all familiar. They attack in different ways, you can level up their health and give them special abilities, yada yada yada.
What sets Into the Breach apart is the focus on moving allies and enemies with attacks. You won't win by simply trying to do damage. All attacks move enemies in some way or another, and that is key to winning. The movement focus makes the game feel a lot like chess. You can push back, pull forward (with purchasable weapons), redirect enemies' attacks by moving them, make them attack one another, shove them into things, and use environmental effects to your advantage. For example, on one level (all of which are environmentally themed), the floor turns to lava and rocks rain down from the sky (thanks volcano!) every turn.
Into the Breach gives you all the information you need to plan your moves. All enemy attacks are shown, all environmental damage is shown, you know where enemies will spawn each turn...enemies plan their attacks, and then it's your turn to respond. They don't attack until you take your turn. You can sit there and figure out the most ideal way to handle all the stuff that's going on to minimize damage to your mechs, and to the power grid (you're always defending buildings--if the power grid goes down, it's game over), and to maximize damage to the Vek. In that sense, the game is incredibly fair. The one time I died (one, ha), it was definitely my fault.
There's some other stuff going on here too--some resource management, some risk-reward choices, leveling up pilots (which is important not least of all because you get to choose who you carry to your next game when you die), and so on. In the end, this is just a super tight tactics game. It wins for simplicity on the surface, but with a lot of depth down below. It's highly replayable, as when you complete achievements you unlock more "squads" with different types of mechs. This would be my motivation to continue playing, to follow this progression path, so I'll keep the game installed just in case. In the meantime, what's next?
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Feb 21st, 2021 at 07:42:21 - 80 Days (PC) |
This is a fantastic homage to the Jules Verne classic. If you've read the book, I think you will get a lot more out of the game (you'll understand more context, the personalities and relationship between Passepartout and Fogg, the one random appearance of Fix in my game, the Chinese opium den scene, etc.). But, essentially, it's an interactive visual novel re-telling of the story. The main change is that it drops the story in more of a steampunk setting. Instead of it being the 18xx of our history, this timeline has airships, commercial submarines, automata, and so on. This makes it different for those who know the original story and inspires wonder all over again.
So, as you might expect, you have 80 days to circumnavigate the globe. As Passepartout, Fogg's loyal servant and valet, you are in charge of choosing your route, managing money and items, talking to people, and keeping Fogg comfortable. As you travel, you can buy and sell items (some of which fetch high prices in specific cities), but are confounded in this by the fact that different modes of transportation allow different numbers of suitcases, so you cannot just carry around all the useful and valuable items. Useful items include those that are part of "sets" (e.g., an altimeter and binoculars for the Airman's Set), which allow you to negotiate ticket prices and departure dates for modes of transportation, or may allow special conversations. Despite that, I never ran out of money until the very end, and I suspect that everyone runs out of money near the very end because the final leg of the journey suspiciously cost me nearly all I had left (a very random amount of $5300 of my $5476 for tickets, which set my heart beating quickly).
Part of the excitement comes in seeing which routes open up as you travel, as your path will be winding! You start in London. I went from there east into Germany (or Prussia? Ouch, my history...). I had a route planned taking the Trans Siberian Railroad, but then decided to go south because I obtained some valuable item that could be sold in Southern Europe somewhere. Long story short, I wound up in the Middle East, headed toward India, and eventually took a wild airship ride all the way to Hong Kong. Then to Japan, then across the Pacific (with much drama, and my favorite part of my playthrough!) to the US. Across the US and over the Atlantic to London in 75 days. I definitely wanted to see other cities (like Singapore) and parts of the world (like the Caribbean and South America), but my time was running out! At some point it really did feel like a mad race to the finish, hoping that I could find efficient and affordable routes to finish within 80 days.
The only thing I didn't like about the game is the conversation system. When you travel, you can talk to drivers, crew, other civilians, and Fogg. You can ask them about cities and routes (that's it) and they often reply with nonsense. "Can you tell me about the route from Atlanta to New York?" "I dare say! You can buy amethyst in Atlanta that sell for a fortune in San Pedro!" "What? Okay, that's not what I asked..." These conversations broke with the otherwise stellar writing. Seriously, playing this is like reading a book. It's so well done. I'm tempted to play it again to see more cities, try for a tough achievement, and read some more great writing. There are achievements for finishing as quickly as 40 days, not using banks (which I only did once just to try it! I would have gotten that achievement!), and not staying in hotels (which means Fogg has to sleep on the street, ha). Maybe sometime!
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