 |
|
Aug 25th, 2014 at 09:49:48 - Burnout Paradise (PC) |
"Beat" this yesterday, which is to say that I acquired the Burnout License, which took an additional 40 or so wins. Credits roll here.
Not much to say...the game is fun, but the longer I played, the smaller it felt. Every time you upgrade your license, all the events you've discovered reset, so you can get credit for winning them again. You basically do the same race, marked man, stunt and road rage events over and over and over, driving between the same 8 locations around the city.
The more you win, the more cars you unlock, which is the only real sense of progression besides upgrading your license. But since upgrading your license and acquiring cars requires simply winning the same events over and over, it actually doesn't feel like you're doing much of anything. A fast, shiny, destructible treadmill, really. Case in point: After acquiring the Burnout license, you can get the "Expert" Burnout license by...guess what?...doing ALL the events on the map..AGAIN! Yay!
I did discover the classical music and EA's electronic tracks in the soundtrack, which are a billion times more preferable than the painful pop hard rock that the series sells. Unfortunately I never figured out how to silence "DJ Atomica," the irritating radio host who pipes up with inane comments from time to time. What this game desperately needs is (a) the ability to play your own music, and (b) the ability to silence DJ Atomica. I would enjoy racing around Paradise City so much more if I could do these two things.
I screwed around online a bit, but it's not very exciting. Get dropped in an open world with a few other people and drive around together. You can complete some stunt challenges together and maybe race each other, but nothing I would care to do unless I knew the person.
That's that. What's next in the queue?
add a comment  - read this GameLog  |
|
Aug 19th, 2014 at 18:23:02 - Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft (PC) |
The greatest thing happened when I was clearing out my dailies today. Let me provide the context:
I save up dailies until I have 3, try to synergize them and quickly knock them out. Today after I finished the two synergized mage win quests, I still had the "Play 30 minions under 2 mana" quest leftover. I have a rogue deck reserved for those 30-under-2 and 20-over-5 quests. What does the 30-under-2 deck look like? Well, it is full of 1 and 2 mana cost minions, in addition to every draw card I have. The idea is certainly not to win, but just to pump out cards to finish the quest in 2 games. If the opponent's deck isn't prepared, this deck will swarm pretty good.
So today, I was playing around with the 30-under-2 deck and put all my murlocs in for fun. I have like 10 low-cost murlocs, one of which is the one that gives all the other murlocs +1 attack.
I was playing against a priest, who didn't have a very good deck anyway, and somehow near the end of the game I wound up with 5 or 6 murlocs on the board that he couldn't wipe. The next turn I played the +1 murloc and about killed him. He surrendered to me.
So. Today I won with a deck full of 1 and 2 mana cards. I won with murlocs. I had a good laugh, couldn't believe it.
Still really enjoying this game. The Naxxramas expansion is fun. Each boss provides a little unique challenge to overcome. None have been terribly difficult. I'll lose sometimes, but haven't replayed a boss more than maybe 4 times. And I really like getting so many new cards! I've even built a warrior deathrattle deck using many of them that is fun to play. What IS hard though are the heroic bosses. I tried one a month ago and got clobbered. Eventually I will buckle down and challenge myself to develop decks to beat them, but I wager I'll need some better (non-Naxx) cards first. Since I've been putting all my gold toward Naxx, I haven't gotten any normal cards or done any arenas in a long time.
I do have the gist of all the classes now though, which has made me a much smarter player. My favorite is still my mage spell power deck. With this deck, I put in all my + spell power cards. When I can get a few on the board, my spells become really deadly. I've hit people with 10 damage fireballs, wiped the board with 4 damage arcane explosions, that kind of thing. Players really have to be vigilant about killing my + spell power minions because things can quickly go south for them! I do like to keep a few cheap ones in my hand, and play a couple at once along with a spell for a surprise attack.
My other favorite classes are the priest and warrior. I think this is because, like my mage, they have more unique decks. The priest deck I have is an inner fire / divine spirit one. The strategy is that you use is put a minion out, use divine spirit to double its health and inner fire to make its attack equal to its health. Obviously this can get insane. My minions for this deck are almost all high health/low attack minions to maximize this gimmick. The other day against one of the Naxx bosses I got an Oasis Snapjaw up to 30/30 and killed the boss in one shot. That was Oasis Snapjaw, then +2 health, divine spirit, divine spirit, inner fire. It took a couple turns, but the AI doesn't recognize *potential* threats a lot of the time.
For the warrior, I've come up with a cool deathrattle deck, that is, playing a lot of cards that have positive deathrattles. The warrior has a couple cards (warlock would be good for this too actually) that damage ALL cards. So if you have cards that do good things for you when they die, and you can kill them, then, wow, hitting everyone's cards is bad for the enemy and good for you. I just put in two legendaries from the last Naxx wing too, so it should be even cooler next time.
I have also played some opponents with incredibly cool decks. Last time I did dailies, I had a priest who was using wild pyromancer (deals 1 damage to ALL cards whenever its hero casts a spell). The priest kept casting spells and then healing the wile pyromancer. I had a lot of trouble killing it and it just wasted a lot of my cards. Then the priest went into shadow mode (never seen that before) which, instead of healing 2 for his hero power, dealt 2 damage...to anything on the board! He kicked my ass pretty handily, and it was awesome to watch.
Good times. Looking forward to one more Naxx wing, then playing the arena some more. I think I will be much better now than last time I played!
add a comment - read this GameLog |
|
Aug 19th, 2014 at 08:25:02 - Zombie Gunship (Other) |
Some of these humble bundles are hit or miss. I grabbed the last one I did primarily for the Android version of Settlers of Catan because I've never really played the board game. I played Zombie Gunship for either 1 or 2 hours on the airplane yesterday. I lose track of time on planes. It is fitting to have played Zombie Gunship on a plane because in it, you shoot zombies from a plane.
And there, I have summed up the whole game! Just kidding. It's got a slight amount of depth to it. I played the same 1 level over and over again. There are 3 others unlockable with coins, which you earn through killing zombies. The zombies in each level slowly swarm from the edges of the map to your bunker. When they get too close to the bunker door, the door seals and ends the level. There are also civilians running toward the bunker. The game tallies how many citizens you save (though not sure why) and if you kill more than 3, the level ends. Zombies will attack civilians, and there was one achievement to kill 5 zombies attacking civilians in one level (achieved!).
As you accumulate coins, you can purchase 2 new guns, and you can upgrade the ones you have. You can also upgrade 'extras' like where zombie kills give you more coins. As you can see, the game is really just a vicious loop of coin generation. You do the same few levels over and over (once you unlock them with coins) to kill zombies to get coins to upgrade your guns to kill more zombies to get more coins to upgrade your guns to kill more zombies to upgrade your guns to kill more zombies........
As such, the game became mind-numbingly repetitive after the 1 or 2 hours I played. Each level I unlocked was practically the same as the others. Occasionally a larger zombie was tossed into the mix. These facilitated little challenge and required no evolved strategy. The game's achievements, or missions that reward you with 'rank,' were thin. They included "Use two bombs" which required me to spend 2000 coins to buy two bombs, "Kill 100 zombies" which doesn't deviate from normal gameplay at all, "Save 15 humans" which also doesn't deviate from normal gameplay at all, and a bunch of other uninspired "challenges."
That's it for this one. I'm saving Settlers for last, but I've got 2 others to check out from this Humble Bundle first...
add a comment - read this GameLog |
|
Aug 9th, 2014 at 14:59:16 - 140 (PC) |
This was a really cool little music platformer. Obstacles in the level move according to the music. The music tracks build over time as you progress through the level, capturing little eyeballs and putting them in an eye. I was smiling for the whole 45 minutes it took to finish.
The boss battles are especially clever, and the last one was dizzying. You can shoot a laser in 4 directions, but as the battle goes on, you start spinning to the beat, so the direction you aim isn't the direction you shoot. And it goes on a 1-2-1-2 pattern for each 90 degrees it turns. So by the end, you're like ok, the enemy is on the right, and I am spinning left, and it's the 2 beat, so I need to aim...left...to hit it. Except you only have a quick 4 count to think all that and do it right or you die. Very very cool.
I hope they make more levels or another game with similar ideas. It reminded me a bit of And Yet it Moves, which, if I remember, had some music platforming bits at the end. I grabbed this (and KAMI and Ballpoint Universe) from a bundle. KAMI I didn't care for, this pays for the bundle alone, and Ballpoint looks cool, but I'll get to that another day.
add a comment - read this GameLog |
|
|
 |
| dkirschner's GameLogs |
|
dkirschner has been with GameLog for 16 years, 4 months, and 5 days |
view feed xml
|
| Entries written to date: 1033 |
|
