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Jun 5th, 2018 at 11:02:29 - Lifeless Planet (PC) |
In Lifeless Planet, you play as an American (?) astronaut crash landed on the titular lifeless planet (surprise: it's not Mars!). Your crew is dead, but there's something perplexing. Your scans showed the planet teeming with life, but it appears barren! As you begin to explore this linear puzzle platformer world, you come across signs that the Russians attempted to colonize the planet during the Cold War after discovering a mysterious portal. The story unfolds from there, as you learn what they set upon doing on the planet, and how everything went wrong. It's actually a sad little story with a surprising amount of emotional punch.
The game nails its atmosphere. It's eerie from the beginning, with equal parts wonder and dread. When you see your first alien construct and the bass rumbles and the orchestral strings rise, you'll feel like you stepped into 2001: A Space Odyssey or something newer like Interstellar or Arrival. I played it on my TV with surround sound, and the bass shook the walls. I can't say enough great things about the score. The visuals look bland and textureless up close, but actually create beautiful landscapes and vistas in the right spots. Some of the game takes place on high places, and you should take the time to look around.
Cool stuff aside, the puzzle platforming is only mediocre. I lost a lost of time redoing platforming sections because the space man is imprecise to control. You can jump and boost once with your jetpack (and multiple times when you get some extra jet fuel for longer platforming sections). It's hard to control his direction. Like, if you jump a little to the left of your target, you can't really correct mid-jump. You'll die a lot because of this. The puzzles are generally easy, and only difficult when you didn't see something that wasn't obvious. For example, I spent about 45 minutes on the crater level trying to walk a wire tightrope to get across a chasm. But that wasn't the solution. Turns out there was a tiny button on a tiny shack inside the crater and then off through a gap to the right. Granted, there was some steam which, in retrospect, signaled to go over there, but the game led me to believe I could walk across this wire. I was to the point of thinking it was bugged, and it's the only thing I looked up online. After I'd started trying to cross the wire, every time I died, it would respawn me on the wire! Why would it respawn me on the wire if that wasn't a checkpoint? I couldn't cross it because another wire came down from above connecting to the one I was walking. I even figured out where the high wire came from, and got really good at getting up to its origin. But then, oddly, I couldn't walk on it; I'd fall through it. This was weird because I could walk on the lower wire, and where the two wires connected, the upper wire stopped me. It also stopped me if I jumped from underneath it and hit it. But I couldn't walk on top of it.
Other puzzle elements and tools to solve them include: ability to pick up and push some objects; a couple 'place/push blocks in correct order' puzzles; a robotic arm tool to push buttons and move objects that your space man can't reach; dangerous plant life that lashes out at you, but if it misses, creates a root bridge you can traverse; power stations to turn on; etc. There could definitely have been more puzzles, or more complicated ones.
Anyway, I definitely enjoyed Lifeless Planet, despite its flaws. It's slow paced and goes longer than it should (clocked 5 hours, 44 minutes, but I'd say it should have been condensed to 4 hours or so). Makes me want a good space exploration game!
* Oh yeah, the ending is really cool. It gave me chills. *
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jun 5th, 2018 at 11:05:53.
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Jun 4th, 2018 at 10:16:01 - Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack (PC) |
Very cool little game! Exceeded my expectations. I'm going through a bunch of games I got for free like three years ago from someone on a forum. He gave me his entire Humble Bundle account, which had every purchase at the time. Back then, I went through and picked out all the ones I was interested in and haven't touched many since.
Mutant Blobs Attack is like a love letter to the late 2000s-early 2010s era indie platformer games, and there are references EVERYWHERE in this game. It plays like part Katamari Damacy, Osmos, and World of Goo combined. You'll also see references to And Yet it Moves, Guacamelee, and various internet videos and memes of the time, such as "oh my god, shoes" and etc.
You play as a blob escaped from a science lab. Each stage, you have to get bigger by eating objects, food when you're small, then up to humans and cars and buildings and so on. The scale changes as you get bigger. The Katamari influence is really strong toward the end when you are rolling over entire cities. You can see what you ingest, which is very Katamari as well. At the end of each zone, there is a news broadcast (just like Katamari) recapping the events thus far.
There is some physics stuff with the platforming, and the art also looks a little like World of Goo. You have a couple powers, such as attracting and repelling from metal objects, and using a telekinesis power to move platforms. None of the puzzles were too hard, and they were all fun.
Osmos may be the biggest influence. The blob usually rolls around, but occasionally you go through a gate that makes you float. You then propel yourself around, just like the thing in Osmos, except you don't lose mass. There are even black holes with gravity to avoid, and the final sequence is basically a level of Osmos.
I love this type of game, and to play a short and sweet one that felt like those from a decade ago was a blast. It took me only 2.5 hours, though you can replay levels for speedruns or to find all the blob friends, if you like. Such fun. Hopefully some more of these old Humble Bundle games are hits with me too!
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Jun 3rd, 2018 at 15:59:01 - Sunless Sea (PC) |
Three more captains have sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Two were rammed by monsters, their ship's hulls shattered. The third was killed by her mutinous crew. The crew mutinies when terror reaches 100. Sunless Sea has some very neat aspects -- its setting and Lovecraftian tone -- but some serious drawbacks, mainly that the game doesn't fit well within the roguelike genre.
Other roguelike games that I've played and enjoyed (e.g., FTL, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Spelunky) are not story heavy; or, when they do have a good story, it does not have to be repeated in the same way upon death. Sunless Sea, on the other hand, has a fleshed out world and stories within it, but every time your captain dies, you start over and have the same stories tossed at you again. This means you will have read most of the text you encounter, until you discover new ports and unlock new storylets, every single time you play. As clicking through story text in port is a large part of the game, this becomes extremely repetitive.
Another drawback is that, unlike other roguelikes that are are fast-paced and often skill-based, the pace of Sunless Sea is slow and there isn't much action. Most of your time is spent sailing from place to place and skimming text to speed along storylet completions to get echoes (money). The game does impose a sense of dread in that sea creatures will kill you, you will run out of fuel and food, and other bad things will happen, but most of these things don't result from the player not playing well. Or, they do, but the player not playing well may be a result of trying to move the game along to make something happen, to get from A to B faster and I just want to outrun this stupid zee monster or why is this ship shooting at me (??). In an attempt to speed up the game, I wasted resources, was less careful, didn't explore as much, and ultimately died more quickly. As I just wanted it to move along, I didn't mind the consequences at the time; however, reflecting back, the slow pace of the game was punishment for dead captains that created a negative feedback loop diminishing my desire to press onward.
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May 28th, 2018 at 07:31:14 - Sunless Sea (PC) |
First Captain--David
Wow, there's a lot going on in Sunless Sea, a text-heavy Lovecraftian roguelike. I chose a history for my captain, David, a natural philosopher, whose win condition was to find the bones of his father. I thought I'd channel Darwin. After reading through a tutorial book in my inventory, I accidentally sold it. Error #1 and the internal monologue begins, "The sea is merciless." Rather, the "zee." Some words beginning withe "s" begin with "z" (zailor, for example). I don't know why. It's set in and around Fallen London (so my German accent theory was wrong).
My initial crew of 6 included a ferret ship mascot and a surgeon. In Fallen London, where the game begins, I learned that some terrible event befell the world and the land dropped below the sea. Imagine the game taking place in an underground cavern. I gathered news from Fallen London, picked up some cargo (including the world's version of a leper), browsed the shops to see the upgrade trees for my ship, weapons, and lamp, hired more crew, and set out exploring. There were several ports I'd been asked to stop in--to drop off the leper, to find the first clue as to the whereabouts of my father's bones, to drop off a student doing his dissertation on a beast washed ashore--and I hoped they were nearby because the map was an expanse of blackness.
I quickly found an island with a house inhabited by three sisters, who fed me and told me stories. In Sunless Sea, you trade in stories. People want to hear tales of other lands. I also made a report on their island. You can submit reports to the Admiralty in Fallen London and earn favor and echoes (money). So, some of Sunless Sea seems to be about trading goods like any other trading game (buy this cheap here, sell it for more there), with the inclusion of stories.
Not long into my journey, I was alerted to an enemy's presence! Luckily, it was just a 20HP swarm of bats that I killed with two blasts from my forward gun. Okay, easy entry into combat. Five minutes later, and many latitudes north, I encountered a moving iceberg, called a lifeberg. It had 400HP, but I managed to kill it by realizing that it used a charge attack, and if I kept moving backward it would charge and stop just where my ship was, not where it is. It did ram me a couple times and almost capsized by boat. I needed repairs in Fallen London. Combat in Sunless Sea is (so far) straightforward. You keep the enemy in your lamp light as best you can, and fire your weapon when it's off cooldown. Sail around and avoid being hit. This worked well enough with all the "zee monsters" I encountered, but one time I got into a skirmish with a 200HP ship that fired cannons at me from afar and almost capsized me. I had no chance, and needed more echoes to upgrade my ship from beginner tier.
After going far north, I was low on fuel and supplies, so I found a port to restock and headed back to Fallen London for repairs, to turn in port reports, and purchase additional fuel and supplies. I discovered that the essentials are priced differently in different ports, and that I'd spent twice as much in the north than I would have in London. I've since found a big port called The Iron Republic that sells fuel even cheaper. After conducting various business in Fallen London, I headed out the opposite way, south.
It was too late when I observed that I had forgotten to purchase supplies and my crew was beginning to starve. Error #2: always check fuel and supplies. The hunger meter began to fill and with it, the terror meter, because as my crew became hungrier, they began eating rats, and then turned to cannibalism. I made a sacrifice to one of the three zee gods and found out that some zee creature enemies can be scavenged for food, supplies, or knowledge. The zee creatures and cannibalism was enough to keep my ship afloat, but eventually I got into the aforementioned gun boat skirmish and a jellyfish finished me off. To the depths we went.
Sunless Sea repeatedly warns you that your first captain, and likely many more, will die. But when that happens, some of your captain's stats, equipment, money, and so on can be transferred to your next captain. You can actually create a will (I don't know when or where, never saw an option) and leave more stuff, but I was able to leave my chart to Captain David's successor. I guess if you leave the chart, then the next time round, the Unterzee looks the same; otherwise, it shifts a bit. It might shift anyway and the map may just be approximate.
That was my first attempt. I explored most of the west side of the map (maybe 20%), not including underneath the sea or above the sea. I completed a couple small storylets (quests), made no progress on Captain David's win condition to find his father's bones, learned how combat works, learned more of the game's odd terminology, my crew began eating one another, and those remaining all drowned. Looking forward to another round. The writing is excellent, which is the main reason I purchased the game in the first place, and the Unterzee induces dread and wonder. There's a lot left to explore.
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