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Feb 16th, 2025 at 12:10:31 - Wingspan (PC) |
The tutorial for Wingspan felt overwhelming (over an hour of tutorial!), but once I started playing, everything quickly clicked. I really liked it, and played it until I got all the Steam cards, but there's no narrative or anything to motivate me to continue. Its focus seems to be on multiplayer, though I didn't play against people, just AI matches. There are 50-something achievements, which is what I ended up focusing on until I got the Steam cards. I would keep playing for some achievement hunting (play x points worth of birds; end the game with at least x points; etc.), but that will generally involve starting matches to aim for one specific achievement or another (e.g., I'm only going to focus on high-point birds), which feels grindy. The AI also doesn't provide much of a challenge. On easy, they seem to have no strategy whatsoever. On normal, they...also don't seem to have much of a strategy. And on hard, they...also don't seem to have much of a strategy. At least, I couldn't figure it out, and I obliterated the AI on every difficulty.
The game itself is definitely a nontraditional card game in that you aren't fighting. You're trying to fill your nature preserve with birds, and you simply want to outscore your opponents. I like the emphasis on nature, conservation, and birding. There are many ways to get points, from playing birds with point values, to laying eggs, to caching food, to pursuing randomized round-based objectives. At its heart, the game is about generating and spending resources. You have food, eggs, and birds (cards). You need food and eggs to play birds, and different birds have different effects. Some effects trigger when you play the bird, others trigger when you perform an action in its habitat, others trigger when other players perform a specific action, and so on.
There are three habitats. In the forest, you can get food. In the grasslands, you can lay eggs. And in the wetlands, you can draw cards. When you play a bird, it goes into one of the three habitats (indicated on its card), where it also boosts the action in that habitat. For example, if you lay eggs in the grasslands and have no birds there, you will get two eggs to distribute among your birds. If you have one bird there, you will get two eggs and have the option to discard a card for a third egg. If you have two birds there, you will get three eggs. And so on up to five birds. So, the more birds you have in any habitat, the greater utility that habitat's action will have.
You can immediately see that some strategies might call for focusing on a specific habitat (draw a ton of cards by stacking birds in the wetlands, for example), or balancing birds across all three. Sometimes, strategies will revolve around placing birds you already have, aiming for generating their particular food needs, while other times, you'll want to focus on amassing food and let existing food drive your choice of playing birds. Sometimes, you'll want to focus on meeting round-based objectives to score points, while other times you'll want to focus on laying a ton of eggs, or some variety of means to gain points.
There is no "deckbuilding" per se. It's a card game with a finite deck from which all players draw. So, play is very much dictated by what players tend to draw from the deck, with less ability for overarching strategy. How you play each game will depend on what you start with, what the random round-based objectives are (assuming you want to aim for them), and what other players do. There are a couple expansions that add some more mechanics and cards, but they cost $$. I'd be curious to find some people to play this with and get more into it. Or, perhaps I'll grab the board game!
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Feb 14th, 2025 at 10:30:14 - Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (PS5) |
Spider-Man 2 was great, astounding. This was my first AAA game on the PS5. The audio, the graphics, the animations, all made me feel as if I was in an action movie. It weaves in and out of cut scenes and playable parts, especially during the impressive action sequences and boss battles. I would stop sometimes and just admire what I was seeing. At the same time as I can’t really say anything negative about it, aside from some minor complaints, I can’t really add more positive things either. It was simply stunning to play. Like, everything about it. It’s very similar to the first game, which I said the same things about. But, since I want to write something, here are some slightly more specific thoughts:
• Thank you for including fast travel and making it quickly and easily available. Web-swinging through New York City is fun, but getting to objectives quickly is more fun.
• Combat is ridiculously tight. There is good enemy variety, it’s challenging, and the Spider-Men’s move sets are fun. My one combat gripe is that enemies got spongy at the end when you’re fighting all the symbiotes. It made those optional nest missions especially annoying, and those are the only ones I didn’t happily complete. One other combat comment—not a gripe—is that the variety gadgets and special moves that the Spider-Men have are all useful, but for me they were functionally equivalent. You will end up with four equipped special moves and four equipped gadgets. I used whichever one was available on cooldown. It didn’t matter what it was because they all serve one function: temporarily immobilize enemies (well, two for the special moves I guess because those do deal damage!). So like, two gadgets and two special moves are available. Which do you choose?! Doesn’t matter. They all temporarily immobilize some enemies, letting you get some free punches and kicks in.
• One major improvement that Spider-Man 2 has over the first one is that stealth is better integrated. In the first game, I disliked MJ’s and Miles’s stealth sequences. But, MJ’s are really fun in this game. She gets a gun, which is part of it, but somehow they were just better sequences, more engaging. Maybe they were shorter than the first game’s too? Maybe it was the switching back and forth between three playable protagonists, who were often collaborating on a mission, that made her parts more exciting? The first game would switch to MJ, and I’d lean back in my seat: “Sigh.” This game would switch to MJ, and I’d lean forward: “Time to taze some fools!”
• I completed all the side missions early (except for the nests, which unlock later and I ignored). It was funny when Pete and Miles would say, “let’s see what needs doing around the city first,” in between main missions to encourage exploration and side missions, and there was nothing to do because I did all the side missions already. So I’d go pet my cats for five minutes and come back to a new main mission. As with the first game, side missions are so well woven into the gameplay, narrative, and exploration, that you don’t even notice you’re “just” doing optional open world content.
• Speaking of side content, there are a bunch of suits to unlock. Many of the suits have three styles, so there are literally probably a couple hundred. There are also a ton of upgrades to gadgets, health, and so on. You’ll get many of these just as a matter of course. They generally didn’t feel that important, but I am sure they served me well.
• The overarching and interweaving stories are really strong again. I remember being impressed with this in the first game, too. It’s cool that here all the villains from the first game are rehabilitated (or rehabilitating). You think that the main bad guy is Kraven and his hunters, but it turns out that’s just a set-up for the main antagonist in the game’s latter third. I suppose you could see it coming, maybe clearer if you are a big Spider-Man fan. I didn’t see it coming, but looking back, it’s awesome how those parallel storylines built up and then intersected. The only story gripe I have is that, man, these young adults are melodramatic. They are in their feelings so hard. It was a little exhausting.
• On the other hand, the representation in this game is great. If you want to see diversity in video games, Spider-Man 2 is a shining example. There is a deaf character who signs, and Miles and some others speak with her in sign language. The game references African American history in terms of museum exhibits about jazz music, it talks about BIPOC artists, your playable characters are a White man, a White woman, and a biracial Black and Hispanic man, who speaks Spanish sometimes with his mother (and signs with his friend). The New York City in the game feels culturally rich and like a celebration of the real New York City, its people, and its culture.
• One final note is that I recall thinking that the first game felt a bit bloated with all the side missions and the forced-feeling stealth sequences and the constant twists and turns of the story that kept it going and going. I did not feel that at all in this one, except perhaps with the health sponge enemies at the end, but that’s so minor taking the whole package together.
Wonder when the third one is coming out!
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Feb 11th, 2025 at 14:21:02 - Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles (PC) |
Hidden gem! This was free on Epic a few months ago, and I'd never heard of it, but it sounded cool. Astrea is like Slay the Spire but with dice instead of cards. It's a "dice builder" instead of a deck builder and has some other novel mechanics.
Here's how it works. Imagine the set-up is the same as Slay the Spire. Instead of cards, you have dice. Each die is really like six potential outcomes. Some outcomes are positive and others are negative. This is referred to as "purification" and "corruption." You are healed by purification, but damaged by corruption, and vice versa for the enemies. You and enemies both have a "corruption meter" (which functions as a health bar for you). If your corruption meter fills, you lose a heart. You get three hearts per level, and if you beat the level boss, your hearts refill. If the enemy's corruption meter fills, then they trigger a corruption action, which could be dealing corruption damage to you or buffing themselves or whatever.
So, you are generally trying to kill enemies by doing purification damage to them, while making sure not to do too much corruption to them because it heals them and eventually triggers corruption actions. And you are also trying to manage your corruption level. Corruption needs to be "managed" instead of necessarily prevented because you trigger abilities called "virtues" when you receive enough corruption. So, taking damage is necessary for using powerful abilities. Virtues vary depending on the character, but could include rerolling x dice, dealing purification, converting a die from purification to corruption or vice versa, and so on.
Dice will generally be focused around some particular action, such as dealing purification or rerolling or any one of the many actions associated with various characters, and there are three categories of dice: safe, balanced, and risky. Imagine a purification die. The safe version might have all six faces dealing a small amount of purification. The balanced version might have four faces dealing a moderate amount of purification but two faces dealing some corruption. The risky version might have two faces dealing a large amount of purification, but four faces dealing a fair amount of corruption. You build your deck around being safe, balanced, risky, or whatever combination. If you find a risky die that aligns with your build, then you will be more inclined to take it, but if it doesn't seem to align with your build, then you might decide that the chance for the strong positive faces doesn't outweigh the potential drawbacks of the negative faces. Oh yeah, I should mention that during your turn, you can pass on playing dice with purification and other positive effects, but if a die lands on corruption, you have to play it. So if your deck is full of risky dice, then you are constantly going to be forced to play dangerous corruption...but you're also going to have some powerful purification and other actions. The trick is being able to manipulate dice to increase your chances of positive outcomes.
There are a lot of factors that go into this, from choosing a character (there are six to unlock) to wisely choosing your dice (based on risk, having a good amount of dice in your pool), to choosing good sentinels (up to two little robot dudes that you control and that each roll a die each turn). You also need to be strategic about pathing, which involves getting into fights, choosing dice, getting blessings, and spending cash on upgrades. I eventually determined that a strong strategy was to focus on landing on nodes where you can modify dice and then duplicating those dice. This lets you, for example, take a risky die and replace the worst corruption faces with really good actions. If you get lucky, you can, for example, stack one die with six strong faces and then duplicate that die three or four times. The logic here is replacing corruption with, well, anything else. I also enjoyed trying to keep my dice pool small and to accumulate blessings. This is really well done by aiming for the node that lets you destroy four non-starter die to receive one blessing.
There are so many different strategies for builds, multiplied further by the six characters, each of which has a unique play style. One focuses on converting dice; another focuses on damaging himself for strength; another focuses on doing damage over time; another plays like that robot in Slay the Spire that has orbs; another leans into randomness even more; another emphasizes managing sentinels.
Regardless of your choices though, one unique thing about Astrea is the amount of math you have to do. The game handles calculating base damage, but beyond that, you need to be able to calculate in your head to plan optimal moves. So for example, you might have a blessing that adds one purification to safe die, that deals five purification to an enemy whenever you deal corruption damage, that adds two purification when you have only one heart, and on and on and on. But the game doesn't adjust values to reflect all these modifications. You'll use a die that deals three purification, the outcome will be like 10 purification to two enemies, 11 to another enemy, 4 purification to your sentinels, and 8 purification to you, and you're like..."what...?" There is a lot to keep track of, and by the end of a run, when you have like 15 blessings, it's so complicated! But if you've made it to that point (at least on Astrea 0 or Astrea 1, the lowest of the difficulty levels), you are steamrolling enemies, so it doesn't really matter. But while I was learning, before I got the hang of things, I spent a lot of time doing math in my head. I liked it though; it felt that the game was challenging me to think.
I eventually did get pretty good at it and beat the game with all the characters, and then beat Astrea's Heart with one (which is like the actual final boss when the credits roll). By that time, I was one-shotting bosses. You can increase the difficulty level, and I am sure it gets ridiculous as you go on! I can't imagine the complexity ramping up when the difficulty also ramps up in a run.
So, this was definitely a happy find. I'm glad I gave it a shot and didn't ignore it just because I'd never heard of it and it sounded like a Slay the Spire clone. It really is unique with the dice. The presentation and all that isn't up to Slay the Spire standards or anything. There's a story that didn't do anything for me. But, I really enjoyed the dice-rolling and ability to harness the randomness. It's a thoughtful game, definitely recommend if you like these.
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Feb 6th, 2025 at 16:55:18 - Trombone Champ (PC) |
Trombone Champ is so weird and fun. It's a rhythm game mimicking the unique sliding feature of the trombone. As the notes move across the screen from right to left, you move the mouse up and down depending on where the note is and press/hold any button on the keyboard or mouse to play the sound. So, one hand is moving the mouse up and down, while the other is mashing a button over and over.
There are tons of tracks, some song originally with trombone in them, and others remixed with trombone (and sometimes drum and bass, and always an airhorn). The addition of trombone to classical music, national anthems, folk songs, and so on is often funny. I never thought about it before, but trombones are a funny sounding instrument.
Songs are rated 1-10 stars for difficulty and you are scored on ranks F through S. It starts off nice and slow, and I was hitting S rank on everything until four or five stars, when some songs started presenting a challenge. By the time I finished, I was hitting S rank on some 8-star songs. The difficulty range within each star was off, I think, because while I S-ranked some 8-star songs on the first try, I could only B rank others, and there were some 7- and 6-rank songs that were still giving me trouble. Or, I was just much better at certain types of music. Familiarity with songs helps tremendously, especially on songs with lots of fast notes, like triplets. If you know what it sounds like already, it's much easier to hit the notes.
Some notes are held, while others slide. Some songs are slow, while others are fast. The crazy ones would be blazing fast with all sorts of staccato rhythms, slides like crazy (hold a button and move the mouse up or down), and big intervals between notes, such that your mouse is flying up and down and your button finger is mash mash mashing away. All coordinated, of course!
That's the rhythm game part. There's also a collectible card aspect of sorts with real musicians but fake facts about them (usually involving how many hot dogs they are rumored to have been able to eat) and some bizarre lore about baboons and the treble and bass clefs and the universe and the Trombone Champ of legend. It's weird, like I said, but I found it all highly entertaining. Would definitely play more.
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