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Aug 7th, 2011 at 08:42:01 - Magicka (PC) |
Not sure how much I like this game. It's odd, that's for sure. Magicka is an action RPG, but unique in several ways. First of all, it's a parody of the genre. The NPCs speak out loud in gibberish. Doors everywhere are locked, with accompanying comments when you click, "Locked, locked, locked!" "Why are all the doors always locked?!" "It's open! Oh wait..locked." The map and names of things are over-the-top fantasy or silly nonsense, like there's a named forest and then "That Other Forest." I thought all this was very funny when I first started playing, but it gets...not old...just not that funny. There are also numerous Star Wars, James Bond, and other references throughout.
So the premise is just generic fantasy goblins and orcs invading, being led by someone smarter and more sinister and mysterious behind the lines. Usual stuff. You're a wizard and you have 8 magic spells. Each one is assigned to a key, QWERASDF. You have 5 slots in which to input the spells to cast. So you can do QQQQQ (5 of whatever Q is, Water I think). Or you can mix n match in mostly logical ways, like Fire + Earth (FD) shoots a fireball. Then there are special spells like Haste or Revive that have longer, more elaborate chains. Basically doing like QQQQQ just increases range or power. Each element does different stuff and works in conjunction or against another. So Fire and Ice are opposites. If you soak someone with Water, then use Electricity, they take extra damage. It's a pretty cool system and takes a little getting used to. Also, if you hold Shift + whatever button, it does an AoE. And if you click Mouse 3, is casts whatever on yourself.
The best part about this game is that you get an M60 assault rifle a few chapters in.
So, the spell casting is fun, but I end up just running circles and spamming things. My favorite thing to do is to plant mines (Arcane + Shield; SE) and watch enemies get launched into the air when they explode. Despite the game being sort of fun, it's also sort of annoying because of all this running circles and spamming things. Also, it's nice that the game is making fun of RPGs, but it makes the dull story feel even more pointless. And since the combat doesn't vary a whole lot, and there is no loot or money or anything, I'm really not that motivated to keep playing. It's clever, but just not clever enough to keep me into it.
So I told P about it, since he bought us copies to try, and I'm gonna stop and wait on him to catch up, and then we can try to play some co-op together and see if it's a bit more fun, or involved. There should be some good teamwork to be had. We have to play on the gaming rigs though because for whatever reason, the game destroys all other computers. Slowdowns, framerate issues, mouse lag, really bad. And it's just some indie game! Granted it's pretty, but it should not take gaming rigs to run a little indie title. Anyway, changing status to played occasionally and looking forward to trying co-op sometime.
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Aug 6th, 2011 at 01:27:41 - The Ball (PC) |
I just finished The Ball, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It reminds me of Portal, Marble Madness and Indiana Jones movies. This one is odd in that reviews weren't that great (68 on Metacritic), but I found it to be quite unique and compelling. It was short (6.5 hours according to Steam), and I never got bored. There were a few letdowns (I'm looking at you, boss battles), and the story was cryptic and didn't make too much sense. You unlock story mostly through finding secrets. If you don't find the secrets, of which I got maybe 1/3, you don't get story, and the story you do get just doesn't flow.
My favorite thing about The Ball was...the ball. It looked, felt, and sounded heavy, metal, massive. I loved rolling it around, using it to solve puzzles, and smashing enemies with it. The enemy-smashing could be slightly awkward because they'd tend to run just at the edge of the ball so you couldn't roll them over sometimes. I'd have to back up and shoot it at them, but that combat worked pretty well. It is strange combat, very straightforward until the end, when you start having to set it on fire, cover it with land mines, or electrify it, to kill enemies and solve puzzles. I like the ball more than Portal's companion cube. The ball is your life in this game. Sometimes you get separated from it by necessity to solve puzzles, and it feels like you're helpless because it's the only way you can solve puzzles and fight enemies! I imagine painting a face on it and giving it hair like Wilson in Castaway. It really becomes a companion.
The puzzles generally weren't too difficult, yet I felt they were clever. The variety was good, and the game regularly, but more in the last few levels, added twists to the puzzles. My favorite puzzle was the first time I got to magnetize the ball, giving it like a low-gravity field that, if you stand in, you can jump and float really high. I used it then to get across a big field of lava with sparse platforms. Using the low-grav field, I could jump long distances from platform to platform. My least favorite puzzle was this ridiculous platforming part where you had to launch the ball up into the air to knock a cube off a tall pedestal. It was just an annoyingly difficult feat to perform.
The bosses, like I said, were letdowns, but they looked so cool! The giant gorilla in particular I was anticipating. But all bosses are of the 'hit them 3 times and they die' variety. I killed the zombie gorilla in about a minute once I figured out how to do it. Exact same thing with the sand worms, and then there was the pterodactyl that you don't even fight. You just avoid its fiery eggs for 100 meters. The best enemies were what I would consider mini bosses, even though they were harder than the bosses proper. Actually, the gorilla and pterodactyl were the only real bosses because the sand worms and the lizardmen (the hard mini bosses) reappeared over and over. Then there was the mysterious shaman guy who led me into traps a couple times, but I never got to fight him.
That's really about all. The game was creepier than I thought it would be. I jumped a few times when zombies screamed and came charging at me from around corners. The environment is awesome, inside this churning volcano. I took a lot of screen shots. And at the end, the ball is not what you think it is...
The Ball was part of Portal 2's pre-release party, so there's an extra Portal level that I played a little bit of. The underground volcano opens up into a secret Aperture Science lab with a fully functional GlaDOS. The first thing you do is use the ball to get a companion cube, but I didn't play much further. I'll fire it up and play that level next time, then start on something else.
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Jul 31st, 2011 at 10:39:38 - Defense Grid: The Awakening (PC) |
I'm going to put this one down (bam!). Best tower defense I've ever played, though unsurprising since I've only played free online ones, and Plants vs. Zombies, which has a different enough presentation for me to not lump them too close together. I didn't beat the game. I have one level left. I got stuck for hours on the third-to-last level, which was very open-ended with its space. Basically, the linear levels are easier; the spacious levels are harder. Maybe this is where the game gets its name, Defense Grid, because the later levels are just that, giant scary grids. Instead of the aliens taking their little designed route, they are given a huge amount of space/number of paths to run, and you have to figure out where to block them. They are almost totally re-routable in the later levels. There was a lot of trial and error going on, a lot of studying the map and tracing my finger on the monitor, trying to figure out optimal choke points, temporal tower placements, etc.
DG is a lot of fun, but it gets borderline tedious. I finally decided to stop playing after seeing the last level, which is a, yes, giant scary multi-story grid with two entry/exit points. I just don't even want to try, it's so intimidating. I know it will be fun to mess around with, but I also know it will take for damn ever, and I will die a million times, and I'd rather play something else instead. I did, out of curiosity, look at the extra map packs I got, and they are the same: crazy huge grid-like levels with tons of different spots for choke points and strategy. The levels are just too much.
I would enjoy more creative, less open levels, such as my favorite level in the entire game, the bonus Portal 2 promo level. This one also features GlaDOS. You're at the Aperture Science Lab and GlaDOS is running a test to see how well you would fare in preventing human annihilation at the hands of invading aliens. The level had some unique design that was missing in the whole rest of the game, and no, sadly, it didn't use portals, nor did I get a 'portal tower.' I'd attach a screenshot if I could, but basically enemies entered from one of two spots: the top of the map, where they ran past a 3x3 block of towers, and then over a bridge with some random towers next to it, and then through a door, BEHIND the wall (where you couldn't shoot them) and down a ramp, then back out into the open, along a conveyor belt lined with towers to the cores, then out the exit, which was past another 3x3 or 4x4 or something bunch of towers that I never had to build.
The second entry point was new. Masses of enemies ran out from the left side of the screen underneath the conveyor belt to a second core depot, and then ran back across the floor to a second exit where they came from. The first time the mass came, I had no idea it was coming because the entry/exit point there didn't show up on my tactical overlay. There was a chessboard setup of towers on the floor they ran across, so I immediately constructed a central temporal and surrounding concussion towers, then lined the edges with gun and laser turrets. It was a lot of fun killing the giant swarms, and I bet if I played again that level would be super easy. As is, I beat it first try, but with only 1 core left!
So yeah, that's Defense Grid. Fun game. I might come back to it in the future if I ever feel like punishing myself.
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Jul 4th, 2011 at 21:59:17 - Defense Grid: The Awakening (PC) |
Defense Grid is fantastic. I tend not to play tower defense games though because they get too repetitive, each one being practically the same thing. Defense Grid tosses a few new things in the mix. I began playing just last night because of Steam's little Summer Camp sale, a mean trick to make me spend money on games and time playing them for achievements that reward me tickets that get placed in a drawing to win the top 10 games on my wishlist. There are 6 or 7 achievements per day. One always involves something to do with the Steam community, like uploading a screenshot or leaving a comment on someone's profile. Then the others are in-game achievements for various Steam games. So far I've owned, oddly, 1 game each day of the contest. I had to get 7 headshots in a row in Lead & Gold without dying. I got 37 by spawn camping people with lag. I had to get set on fire and put it out by jumping in water in Team Fortress 2. It was fun trying to get burned just right by a pyro and make it into the water before dying, and I finally got it after 45 minutes. There's one for this game called Magicka that P bought me the other day, but I haven't done it. Then this one for Defense Grid to beat this one challenge mode where you can't use Guns and Cannons on 5 different levels.
So what's unique about DG? For one, the levels are purposefully laid out. Of course all TD games' levels are purposefully laid out, but in DG you don't simply have a path and an infinite number of squares on which to build towers. Since each tower has an attack power, a range, and a firing rate, and the 15 enemy types have strengths and weaknesses to the various towers, you really have to think about which towers are ideal for which locations. For example, there are aliens (the enemies) with shield that can only be taken out with Guns or Cannons. So if you don't have Guns or Cannons to take down the shields, those aliens steal your cores. There are also flying aliens that take a different path than ground aliens, and you have to have towers that can shoot flying aliens.
Cores are objects that keep the Defense Grid active, keep the weapons online. If the aliens take all your cores, it's game over. Each map has an entry point and an exit point, often the same point, such that aliens enter the map, take the shortest route to the cores, collect 1-3 cores depending on the alien, and take the shortest route to the exit. Some levels are linear, and some you can create paths for the aliens to walk. I have gotten stuck on both types, the more linear and the more open. Flying aliens have a set route that you cannot alter. If flying aliens get a core, it's gone forever. But if ground aliens get a core, they still have to walk with it to the exit. When you kill an alien carrying a core, it slowly floats back to the...place where the cores are. Aliens, since they take the shortest route to pick up cores, will alter their path to pick up floating cores instead of walking all the way to the place where cores are stored. That's usually not a good thing! There are also 'boss' aliens that take a ton of damage. I think I've encountered like 2.5 types so far, one that moves slow, one that moves fast and is only susceptible to lasers, and the half-boss that spawns additional aliens, which is bad because they draw your towers' fire instead of the half-boss.
Oh, towers are also upgradeable, which is not that unique, but they do have line of sight! I've never played a TD game with LoS. So you want those Gun and Laser towers on the front lines, and those Cannon and Meteor towers with giant ranges and arcing trajectories on the back. And I unlocked the Orbital Laser a level ago, which is a giant blast with a super long recharge that kills everything in a little radius. I'm still learning all the tower/alien types and honing strategy, as I haven't gotten my Steam Summer Camp achievement yet. I've done 3/5 of the challenge levels. Where the other achievements in other games have taken 45 minutes or less, this one requires you to play most of the way through the game first. A relatively steep time investment, but hey, awesome game that I would have played some other time. Might as well play it now!
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