 |
|
Dec 8th, 2021 at 16:01:41 - Dicey Dungeons (PC) |
Going to try and write some more proper reflection entries instead of just summing up when I finish something. I've thankfully got some relaxing time ahead of me in the next month. As usual, I've already subscribed to Xbox Game Pass, so I've got a bunch of stuff from my wishlist queued up. This time, it charged me $1 for three months. I don't understand these platforms enough to know how Microsoft can keep charging me $1. I'll probably play $500 worth of games in the next three months (and probably have played well over $2000 on Game Pass in total, while I've paid like $4). And Epic keeps giving away free stuff with that Fortnite money. When is the last time I even paid for a video game?!
Anywayyy, I have been happily clicking away in Dicey Dungeons this week. It's a roguelike (lite?) card game hybrid thing by Terry Cavanagh (VVVVVV, Super Hexagon). The game is set up like a game show. Lady Luck presides. She'll grant contestants' wishes if they make it through all the challenges. She turns them into dice and sends them into the dungeon, where they fight enemies in turn-based card battles, open chests and shop to get new items, as they go down the 6 levels of the dungeon (always with a boss on level 6). You can play one of a handful of characters, each with unique skillsets and some unique rule sets as they play through different episodes.
Example: The first character you unlock (and by far easiest to play) is the warrior. The warrior's special ability is to re-roll a die up to three times. Dice rolls determine damage/defense values. There is a lot of randomization, but a lot of room for you to be clever or totally screw up on your own. The warrior starts with a sword in his inventory (Do x damage) (x = die roll) and two dice. Did you roll snake eyes? Well, re-roll one and hope for a 6. Later weapons might say something like "Minimum 3. Do 3 damage." This means that you have to roll a 3 or higher to use that card and that it does 3 damage. Other cards can be reused multiple times in a turn. Others can only be used once in a battle, like the one that, upgraded, lets you plug in any four dice and adds 4 burn damage.
I actually killed a boss in two hits using that badass weapon. It was brilliant (I am bragging). I was playing as the inventor, whose special ability is to convert one item after every battle into a once-per-turn ability (that basic warrior sword I mentioned, for example, can be destroyed to gain a 3 damage attack, while the badass weapon can be destroyed to gain a 3 fire damage attack, marginally better). I was on a later episode with different rules. In this episode, the inventor actually destroys TWO pieces of equipment after each battle and gets TWO once-per-turn abilities. I knew the power of that flame weapon from a previous run, so once I got it, I upgraded it and set it in my backpack to wait for the final battle (since you are forced to destroy two items from your inventory after each battle, I didn't want to run the risk of having to destroy the flame weapon, so I kept it safely hidden in my backpack!). I also knew from a previous run that if you destroy a crystal sword (Do 3x damage shown on die, once per battle), you get the ability to double your next action. Finally, another of the inventor's special abilities is to make all your dice sixes for a turn.
SO. Once meticulously prepared, I arrived at the final boss. I equipped the flame weapon. My super power to roll sixes was ready. I converted my dice to sixes, put them in the weapon (6+6+6+6+4 burn damage), used my "repeat ability" action, and then attacked. 28 damage, good lord. Then attacked again! 56! 8 of which was burn damage, which sets enemies' dice on fire. If they want to use a die, they suffer -2hp for the privilege. The AI isn't brilliant, but it's not suicidal. The boss didn't even do anything. Then I killed it on my next turn with regular weapons.
That was one of the best moments playing this game so far. It is full of these kinds of moments where you've sort of created your own good luck. The game stays fresh for a good amount of time with the RNG and varying rulesets in different episodes and of different characters. BUT! I fear it is starting to wear thin. Why? Well, as I mentioned, each character plays differently, and each of them has some unique episodes. However, I've learned that the unique episodes are episodes 2 and 3 (of 6) for each character, and I've already done most of those. Episode 1 is always standard. Check out the variety in episodes 2 and 3!
Warrior 2: Start with two upgraded battle axes. All equipment you find is upgraded. Inflicted with curse (your equipment has a 50% chance to fail once) at the beginning of battle.
Warrior 3: Start with a venus fly trap (weapon that does x damage, and if you roll a 6, it also heals you for 2). Lose 2 max HP when you level up. (This one was challenging!)
Thief 2: You can keep enemy equipment after each fight (the thief can steal, of course, but usually doesn't get to keep anything).
Thief 3: On your first turn, all rolls are 1. On your second turn, all rolls are 2. And so on... (I haven't beaten this one yet, hard!)
Robot 2: Duplicate dice vanish immediately (yours, not the enemy's...)
Robot 3: No CPU counter. Create any dice you like! (The robot doesn't roll normally. Basically, each die value adds to a counter. If the counter exceeds the maximum, like if you get greedy and keep rolling, it overheats and you can't do anything; so in this episode, you can choose which dice to create, which was neat, but tough because of...) 50% chance that equipment will randomly disappear each time you create a die.
These have all been really fun, interesting, many challenging to complete, and I've done most of them. But episode 4 for each character just gives enemies more HP and all their weapons are upgraded. No other ruleset tweaks. I don't want to just play the exact same thing on hard mode! Then episode 5 changes the same thing for each character too (status effects work differently, enemies still have 10% more HP), and episode 6 just adds random rules each level you go down the dungeon. The RNG is brutal on that last one. I've beaten all the warrior episodes, but don't want to do them all for every character.
Anyway, I feel like I've done the most interesting stuff, and that I won't see much more variety or interesting stuff until I sink a ton of time into this. I might play some more because it's fun and I can probably knock off additional challenges, but I'm going to start something else in the meantime!
add a comment  - read this GameLog  |
|
Dec 7th, 2021 at 21:29:49 - Middle-earth: Shadow of War (PC) |
“Beat” this last night. By that I mean that I completed the main story but neglected to complete the Epilogue (which I gather used to be called Act IV). The Epilogue basically requires you to 100% the game and play the “Shadow Wars,” a series of siege missions that the internet tells me runs several hours long (and used to be much longer before patches) and results in a brief cut scene at the end showing the true ending. I watched the ending on YouTube. Neat connection to the classic trilogy. But I actually like the normal ending!
So, this is the sequel to a game I really enjoyed a couple years ago. Overall impression of this one: more of the same. In fact, too much more of the same! This took me nearly twice as long as the first game and it had no business being so long. Don’t get me wrong. It’s fun and engaging the whole time, but you can see how WB went for “endless play” here. You can continue hunting captains and leveling up your fortresses as you see fit. Then you can do the same thing online forever.
I’m not entirely sure what is different about this game than the first one (I could go back and remember, but meh). There are a lot more skill points to spend, but you’ll unlock all the main skills by halfway through your play time. The rest (of the tons and tons of skill points) just unlock tweaks to the main skills. Combat flows as I remember. It’s hectic, orcs everywhere, and you feel like a badass. You have so many moves; it’s a bit overwhelming! And there are endless map icons to resolve.
The gist of the gameplay is this (there is a story, and it is interesting, but you’re not here for that): You, ultimately, will capture Sauron’s fortress in each zone. Each zone’s fortress is defended by an overlord and several warchiefs. Each zone also has roughly 15 other chiefs. You can hunt these chiefs at your leisure or take on quests to ambush them while they’re attacking one another, going through a trial, or whatever. You want to kill these chiefs, or better yet, dominate them. When you dominate chiefs, you can then command them to do your bidding. Assign them as your bodyguard, force them to fight other chiefs (and gain levels if they win), send them to spy on warchiefs. The latter is particularly useful because your dominated chief spy will betray their warchief when you attack the warchief. Some warchiefs and overlords have like 5 subordinates, and if you task them all with spying, well, the boss is fucked.
This is all part of how the nemesis system works in this series. Chiefs all have strengths and weaknesses. You can strategically pit one (say, with fire weapons) against another (say, with a mortal weakness to fire). Find a chief you like, with a good set of strengths and few weaknesses, and level him up through commanding him to fight other chiefs, taking him into battle and having him kill chiefs, or spending resources to level him up. At the end of the game, when you’re trying to take out a legendary level 45 overlord (and beyond in the Shadow Wars), you’ll appreciate having strong chiefs on your side.
Of course, if your chief loses, he’s gone and your enemy levels up and often gains more brutal traits. It’s especially demoralizing when a chief kills you. Your penalty for death is that the orc that killed you becomes stronger (and gloats). If it was already a tough fight, then this may make it borderline impossible. One time when I was in the high-20s, I attacked a captain in the mid-30s. He had some crazy bow-and-arrow tracking shot that I couldn’t dodge. One of his straights was to be super strong, so he basically one-shot me and I couldn’t help it. Well, he leveled up close to 40 and became “legendary” (i.e., even super stronger with bonus traits). I didn’t tackle him until when I was nearly done with the game. I had forgotten about that bow-and-arrow tracking shot! When he hit me with it (-50% health, ouch), I quickly realized the trick was to close in and not let him get a shot off. I had to kill him before any of the other orcs around, avoiding like 10 regular orcs and another couple captains while chipping away at him, not letting him fire. Easier said than done, but I managed it!
The game entices you with tense risk/reward calculations constantly. Battles become so hectic and high-stakes, with orcs everywhere, knowing that if you die, some orc becomes especially deadly (and you can use even this to your advantage, as higher level orcs drop higher level gear, so you can purposefully make them stronger to get loot or to level up your followers more quickly). By the end of the game, I was in battles with 5 captains simultaneously. 5 powerful orcs running around using special moves, me trying my best to keep an eye on them all, exploit their weaknesses, and not let them level up. Like I said, it’s certainly fun. But ultimately, that’s the game. Killing orcs. You’ll kill thousands of them, and a hundred captains. Eventually, it gets repetitive. At that point, you might choose to avoid the Shadow Wars, like I did. But that’s okay. The nemesis system is worth experimenting with no matter how far you decide to go.
add a comment - read this GameLog |
|
Nov 18th, 2021 at 07:57:45 - Twelve Minutes (PC) |
Twelve Minutes came on my radar with an interesting time loop premise (which, as I recently discovered, seems to be all the rage right now) and polarizing reviews. Another games academic friend of mine was asking me about it, so I had read some before picking it up on Xbox Game Pass (yes, winter vacation, and therefore Game Pass, are upon us!).
So, that premise, totally interesting. You're stuck in a time loop in your apartment. You walk in the door, your wife greets you. You can sit on the couch with her, wander around the apartment picking up objects and clicking around, but you're supposed to have dessert with your wife, who surprises you that she's pregnant. No matter what you do, after a few minutes, a cop knocks on the door, accuses your wife of killing her father, cuffs you both, and either knocks you out or strangles you to death.
You die, you come through the door of the apartment with full memory of what just happened. You try to explain to your wife, who thinks you're crazy. You can press her on the murder charges, tell her a cop is about to bust in, plead with her to not open the door or to temporarily leave the apartment. Therein lies the puzzle of this game. You've got to get to the bottom of what is happening and you have 10-minute loops (no idea why the game is called Twelve Minutes when the loops are 10 minutes) within which to figure out a way forward.
I thought the game was pretty cool for the first hour-and-a-half or so. The whole game (as far as I played) takes place in the apartment, from a top-down perspective. Honestly, it looks like the Sims! Especially considering that the first thing I did was pick up a knife and, seriously not thinking it would do anything--I was just playing around with "using" items on other objects--, I stabbed my wife. There was a gruesome animation and I felt terrible. I don't know why the game let me do that, as it serves no purpose whatsoever for the plot. This reminded me of the Sims because when your sim does something bad, they panic, or when they make a mess, they frantically try to clean it up. The main character panicked and frantically tried to fix the situation and I laughed at the absurdity of it.
However, what the knife scene taught me (I thought) is that the interactions are near limitless, that anything I click on will have surprising effects. This is not the case. Most things you attempt to combine do nothing and, once the novelty of the time loop wears off, Twelve Minutes devolves into agonizing trial-and-error, point-and-click, explore-dialogue-trees gameplay. You, like the poor main character, must relive the same conversations and events over and over. You can fast forward only to the end of sentences. Why they didn't make it so you could fast forward more or faster, I have no idea. You will spend the majority of the game re-watching stuff you've already seen so you can make one tweak to the timeline (try dialogue option C this time, or try to give the cop the pocket watch). Then you'll die and repeat to make one more small tweak (okay this time dialogue option D, or put the pocket watch on the table for the cop to find...).
Here are some examples demonstrating interactions that don't make sense, that should be possible, bugs, or just nonsensical interactions.
- The cop is looking for a pocket watch that your wife has. It would stand to reason that, once you find the pocket watch in the house, you could just GIVE HIM THE POCKET WATCH. But no, there is no option for that. After that inexplicably did nothing, I tried leaving it on a table for him to find. He broke in, cuffed my wife, picked up the pocket watch without a word, cuffed me, and strangled me to death.
- The cop ALWAYS shows up as soon as your wife leaves, even though he otherwise comes in after x minutes. Other things in the timeline happen at the exact same time every time. Bumblebee is doing x depending on when you call her; your wife comes out at the same time and does the same thing to greet you; it thunders at the same time; the same song is on the radio; etc. But if you get your wife to leave, the cop intercepts her at the elevator every time. And no, he's not waiting at the elevator the whole game because you hear it ding and hear him step out.
- There is a loop where your wife confesses to a murder. She spills it all out to you. Then, as per the loop, the cop bangs on the door. After JUST CONFESSING A MURDER TO YOU, and after YOU TOLD HER A COP IS GOING TO COME ARREST HER, she goes and lets a police officer in. It's like she didn't remember what she just did.
- There are several vents you can open with a knife. For one of them, she will get upset with you and say like, "You're going to break the vent!" One time she got stuck in her own loop! She was saying it over and over. Then the cop came, knocked on the door. I had locked it and told her not to open it, so while he's attempting to break it down, she's just yelling at me, "You're going to break the vent!" The cop handcuffs me and throws me to the ground ("You're going to break the vent!"). She switches dialogue when he handcuffs her. That one was funny.
There are...many other examples of this kind of thing in just the time that I played. So yeah, I eventually got bored/frustrated and looked up the rest online. The story sounds...like it wouldn't have landed with me. Hard pass. But dang, I love the experimentation with the time loop. I am sure someone will nail something like this soon!
add a comment - read this GameLog |
|
Nov 12th, 2021 at 09:50:59 - Hollow Knight (PC) |
Phenomenal experience. Beautiful/sad story, haunting setting, exploration-heavy, challenging combat, creative enemies, outstanding level design. The one gripe I imagine people having with this is its difficulty--a coupling of the Souls-like death system and the definitely-sometimes-annoying checkpoint system.
I'll start briefly with those gripes, and then gush about the rest of it. This is a 2d metroidvania that most reminds me of the Ori games (also phenomenal). But it certainly takes inspiration from Dark Souls. When you kill enemies, you get Geo (money). Geo is precious for the first half of the game because purchasing items from the world's vendors is key to survival and exploration. As you explore, you will find benches. These are "save points" of sorts. Sit at one and it records your progress, updates your map, and serves as a respawn point. When you die, a shadow of you spawns where you died and you respawn at the last bench you sat at, with 0 Geo and decreased health capacity. You are supposed to trek back to your shadow, kill it, and retrieve your Geo. Not always easy! Often, you will have died far, far, far away from the last bench and have to traverse 10 minutes of deadly enemies and environments to find your shadow (which is VERY handily marked on your map!). But if you die again before you kill your shadow, you respawn back at your bench and permanently lose your Geo. Brutal. This happened to me a few times. The risk to carrying around tons of Geo (without spending it regularly or depositing it in the bank) is huge, and when you die and go to find your shadow again, you need to be very, very careful.
Once you get farther in the game, the death/Geo loss risk decreases significantly. You'll eventually buy everything from all the vendors and Geo becomes a mere trophy. And as you unlock more and more areas, benches, stag stations (fast travel locations), and upgrades, all the backtracking becomes less tedious. And backtrack you will do, especially if you're seeking out all of Hallownest's secrets. But the character movement is tight, the environments are eerily beautiful, the enemies are fun, and so all the walking back and forth was rarely bad for me (except the one night I stayed up till 2am playing this and couldn't stop because I was stuck in an anxiety-inducing loop of dying, killing my shadow, trying to get out of the ridiculously dangerous area I had stumbled into called Deepnest, dying again, killing my shadow, etc. I was so tired, which just made me die more.). Otherwise, I enjoyed zooming around to revisit previously inaccessible secrets that I had marked on my map after obtaining movement upgrades. Plus, you will become more powerful and the enemies and environmental hazards will stop posing much threat.
I really liked how once difficult areas became a breeze to zip through later in the game. Deepnest, for example, so terrified me after that marathon session lasting till 2am that I avoided it for probably 10 hours of playtime and did everything else I could before revisiting it. When I did revisit it, I was pleased to find that the enemies that had once seemed impossible were now relatively easy (and could be farmed for Geo!).
The game takes place in a ruined city, Hallownest, that fell into misfortune some time ago. Explorers delve into it seeking knowledge, treasure, and adventure. As you explore, you'll meet other adventurers, characters who still live there, and corrupted denizens. The story is drip-fed to you through cryptic dialogue and environmental storytelling. Basically, some sort of infection consumed the city and the king tried to stop it by creating a vessel, which he locked away and sealed. But the vessel was tainted and the infection continued to wreak havoc on the city. So you, adventurer, learn about what you are doing as you go along (your character doesn't speak, so this is all through others speaking/thinking about you). You need to open the seal and destroy the vessel (though in the process...).
You'll explore a huge, huge map (huuuge, look up a picture) with different parts of the city that connect in various ways. There are the cliffs above the city, the royal quarters, the waterways, gardens, a beehive (did they produce honey?!), and more. Each section is aesthetically unique with different kinds of enemies. Sections are gated off in various ways and as you get new abilities, you can open the paths to them. Despite this, I imagine that no two players will take the exact same path through the game. Exploration was one of the best parts of Hollow Knight because you never knew when you would come upon a new area and you never knew what was there. When you enter a new area, you have no map of it until you locate the Cartographer. You'll hear him humming a tune and you'll see map fragments on the ground. Follow the sound and paper trail to find him and purchase the area map. Sometimes he's pretty close to where you enter the area and you can methodically map it out. I mean, you'll methodically map it out whether you actually have the map or not! In some areas, the Cartographer is not easy to find, which makes "find the Cartographer" like your first objective whenever you discover a new area. One area, Fog Canyon, I had completely memorized because it connected a couple other areas and I never found the Cartographer until just before I beat the game. I heard his humming and saw a paper scrap, but he was behind some impassable barrier (which I never found the way to open until looking it up after beating the game). I eventually found a different way to him, but yeah, you have to do the work to get the maps!
I said that you never know what is coming next. "Surprise" is another of my favorite things about Hollow Knight. And bosses! There are a lot of bosses. Some were pretty difficult, especially sort of in the mid-point of the game for me. Early on, bosses didn't give me much trouble, I think just because they were easy enough to read and I'm good at video games (/flex). Half-way through, though, I ran across several that gave me trouble, and a couple that I just ignored after repeated attempts (like the Grimm Troupe in the expansion pack and some of the "enhanced" versions of some regular bosses). I think these bosses were objectively more difficult and meant to be tackled later, plus I think I was slow to upgrade my weapon. Once I found the weaponsmith, I had materials to upgrade two or three times, and most of the rest of the game sailed by. I wound up beating later bosses by just equipping "weapon upgrade" type runes and spamming XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, only pausing when my health was low, and sometimes even killing the boss before I even had to heal. I wound up killing the last boss like this, while taking advantage of his choreographed "pauses" to heal. Spam XXXXXXXXX. Boss pauses to catch his breath. Heal. Spam XXXXXXX. Win. There are definitely some MUCH harder fights than the final one, including some nerve-wracking arena wave battles. I never did beat the final arena challenge.
SO. I hear there's a sequel to this on the way. Sign me up. I did not expect to like this so much. Metroidvanias are not my favorite genre, but I seem to get into some of them. I haven't yet identified what makes one "click" with me. I'm going back through old metroidvanias or metroidvania-adjacent 2d puzzle/platformers seeing which ones I liked a lot: the Ori games, the Guacamelee! games, Outland, Carrion, The Swapper (definitely more puzzle there). But then others have really not clicked (...Metroid Prime, most metroidvanias that mix roguelike elements like Dead Cells, although other roguelikes like Spelunky or FTL I have really enjoyed...). Truly, a mystery. I should reflect on this more. Until then, it's time to dust off Breath of the Wild, which I remember nothing about but am determined to complete over winter break!
add a comment - read this GameLog |
