Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1269https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7775This was neat. You basically climb a mountain, but it's like for real mountain climbing. You have to attach ropes and use LT and RT to grab holds with your left and right hands and stuff. I played the whole thing in one long sitting last night, and when I got done, realized by hands were cramped from pressing triggers for four hours. There are some other elements to the climbing mechanics related to the game's fantasy world, like various plants and creatures that help you climb. It's not hard, and I fell into a quiet rhythm. A narrative guides you up the mountain, too. It's about climate change and environmentalism. In the past, there was rain and abundant water. But it seems like people used too much water / mismanaged their resources / polluted and the source from above dried up. Now, people live in a sun-baked wasteland. They go on expeditions into what was once a great ocean to try and find any water. One expedition went up instead to chase a tale of some creatures that brought water to the mountain. Your character is following in the footsteps of that expedition and actually (for some reason) has a baby one of those water creatures. What will you discover at the top? Jusant is a very pretty game, colorful and with impressive scale. I never tired of looking out over the ocean basin or marveling at the vast interior hollows inside the mountain. The sound design complements this, and makes the adventure feel both peaceful and epic. The movement is fluid, and climbing feels good. I encountered some movement quirks, like that the character often won't jump forward, sometimes it can be tricky to get her to do some of the more fine maneuvering, and getting her to detach from a long rope swing doesn't always work how you think it will (she tends to hang on and not want to let go!). There are a lot of texts to find that provide context to the story. The "main" ones chronicling the mountain expedition I enjoyed, and there are more of those as you go higher. Lower on the mountain, there are a lot of collectibles that are just like mail that mountain residents pass to one another with them just chatting. I lost interest real fast in finding those ones. Jusant was definitely something different. It's not a hard game; it's not even a particularly exciting game. It's rather calming and, like I said, sucked me into a rhythm. I was thinking about studies of flow among mountain climbers and it seems this can be reproduced with mountain climbing in a video game!Fri, 26 Jul 2024 09:42:39 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7775&iddiary=13280https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7774A random find on Game Pass, it's got like 30,000 "overwhelmingly positive" Steam reviews. It's a (mostly melee) arena combat game with robots that can slice off body parts. Case in point: I beat the final campaign boss fight with one leg, after systematically slicing off the legs (so it couldn't move) and arms (so it couldn't use weapons) of the boss. The campaign is just a few hours long, has a silly story that is way better than it has any right to be, and has some good humor, especially the announcers in the first two chapters. In the campaign, the first two chapters let you play around with the skill tree and design some custom robots. Do you want to use a sword, hammer, bow, or spear? Do you want your weapon on fire? Do you want a jet pack? Etc. Limited skill points keep you from becoming overpowered. They also introduce the idea of the clones. You can, instead of purchasing a skill, purchase a clone. After I died the first time, and had to start the whole chapter over, I realized that the clones were like extra lives. From then on, I always had a clone purchased in case I got sliced up! The other chapters introduce co-op, further upgrades, and the idea of "transference" where you can take over enemies that kill you. This is strategic. If you know what kinds of enemies are coming, you can purposefully get killed by an enemy type that is strong against the upcoming ones. If a boss is coming up, you can purposefully get killed by a massive flaming-hammer-wielding armored robot or something. After completing the campaign, there is co-op, with a lot of challenges, deathmatch, and some other multiplayer modes. I dabbled a bit. There are far, far better multiplayer battlers out there, but this one certainly has charm. Fri, 26 Jul 2024 09:21:39 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7774&iddiary=13279https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7767Who came up with the idea for this?! It's like watching North Sea Tiktok but there are monsters. Still Wakes the Deep is a horror game set on an oil rig in the North Sea. You play as an electrician named Caz who took the job to escape some legal trouble back home in Scotland. The crew drills into *something* under the ocean, which proceeds to wreak havoc on the crew and the rig. You attempt to escape as the situation becomes bleaker and bleaker. My favorite thing about the game is the setting. It reminded me of Dead Space and other horror games where the setting is so well-realized that it feels like a character. You'll go back and forth across the oil rig, watching it slowly be destroyed over the course of the game. You'll learn which crew-member-monsters are terrorizing which areas. And you'll be rooting (hopefully!) for your crew buddies to make it, and be sad (and experience serious dread as another one bites the dust) when they don't. The setting is oppressive, the kind of place where you're waiting for the next bad thing to happen. The weather is stormy, the waves roll beneath the rig, and as it gets progressively destroyed, paths you once took are obstructed and you have to take new ones. It's also incredibly authentic due to the wonderful voice acting by the Scottish cast. Turn on subtitles because, unless you are Scottish, you won't understand a chunk of the dialogue. Interestingly, the subtitles "translate" what they are saying into American English. This was strange because I am used to having subtitles on American English media, where I can just read along with what they are saying, and on foreign media, where I don't understand any of what they are saying and I have to read instead. I can't recall the last time I understood like 80% of what was said and relied on subtitles for the other 20%, and where the subtitles didn't write the words they said, but rather translated them into American English. Gameplay-wise, it's straightforward. I've seen this described as both a survival horror game and a walking simulator, but I don't think it's either. By my definition, it's not survival horror because there are no resources to manage. There is no combat, you have no health, no inventory. There is some light stealth. Yes, you are "surviving," but this doesn't require much special effort on the player's part. And it's not a walking simulator because it's very action-heavy. Walking simulators, to me, are associated with a much slower pace. I'm calling it a linear horror game. You will constantly progress forward. You won't get stuck, you won't get lost, and you'll rarely die. For some, this may make it a bit boring, but we were engaged. Overall, I really enjoyed this. It's a good one to swap the controller back and forth with a friend. Solid story, solid (if simple) gameplay, and thoroughly impressive setting. It kept us on the edge of the couch the whole time. Fri, 26 Jul 2024 09:11:25 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7767&iddiary=13278https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7760Retired this because I've lost interest. I hadn't picked it up in at least a week (I was stuck) and hadn't picked it up another week before that (stuck on the same level!). Well, I finally beat the level I was stuck on, which felt great, but being stuck for two weeks is an indication of how tough it got. Predictably, the following levels stumped me too. I eked my way to the end of the third chapter and called it a day. I did look online to see what new rules the game introduced and, yeah, I made a good call. Humanity is a puzzle game that reminded me of Lemmings. You control a dog that runs around the puzzle area placing commands (interesting, the dog placing commands and not being commanded!) for the humans. Humans emerge from specific spots in the level and walk in a straight line unless commanded otherwise. Your job is to get them to the goal. You have extra challenges in that there are special "Goldy" humans (golden giants) that you can pick up too. Basic commands are like "turn" and "jump," so you can route the humans around the level. It starts introducing all sorts of mechanics like movable blocks, pressure plates that do things if people are walking over them or if a block is moved on them, conveyor belts, wind, and later on even enemy humans. New chapters introduce new rules. I was actually getting bored of the game, and then chapter three did something I liked. Previously, you run around placing commands as the humans are walking. This gave the game an "action" feel, but I wanted to be able to pause or issue commands before the humans started walking. Well, in chapter three, it makes you do just that. You have to set everything up and then you aren't allowed to pause! As such, chapter three was my favorite. If you make a mistake, you can easily restart the level, and there is a handy option to either keep or delete the commands you've placed. If you keep them, you can edit and then start. I'd delete them sometimes if I needed to try and look at a level with a fresh set of eyes. There's a light story here, something about humanity losing their way and being guided toward the light. There are some mysterious entities, you (the dog), some boss fights (neat), and "others" (aka bad people [or are they?]). But, it's the puzzling that'll get you interested. The weakest part of the game, I think, is the dog. One reason I liked chapter three so much is because I didn't have to control the dog in real-time, like while the humans were moving, and do the puzzles simultaneously. I wanted to just not be the dog and place the commands myself using the mouse. See, to place a command, you actually have to move the dog to the tile. This is often annoying. The dog doesn't control all that well, and although it can jump, it can't jump over everything, so you can't easily get to all the places you want to put commands. I'm not sure why there is the need for the dog. If you remove it, it takes nothing away from the experience (at least as far as I played), and the controls would be more intuitive and easier. Did they just put the dog because people like dogs and would think it's cute? I have no idea. If you want some Lemmings throwback, this is a no-brainer. The puzzles are smart, the levels really well designed, and you're gonna have to think hard! Ultimately, it didn't hold my interest though, and I stopped playing about a third of the way through.Tue, 23 Jul 2024 07:05:16 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7760&iddiary=13277https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7773Cute little adventure. You're a lil gator who just wants to do fantasy role-playing with your big sis, but she's home from college and glued to her laptop working on assignments. Disappointed, you round up your friends and create your own fantasy village and role-playing game, hoping to impress your sister enough so that she'll shut the laptop and come play too. It's sweet, well-written, funny, and reminded me of the carefree days of being a kid. Gameplay is Zelda-lite. You can jump, attack, climb, and use a variety of toys (the dart gun fires foam darts; the teddy bear lets you ragdoll and just toss your limp body around, funny to watch; the variety of "shields" [a cardboard box, a pot lid, etc.] let you slide down hills; you can wear different hats; etc.). As you set about your adventure, you'll meet dozens of other kids, help them with their problems, and recruit them to your fantasy town. Chill few hours of a simple, fun, clever, well-thought-out game. Tue, 23 Jul 2024 06:40:36 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7773&iddiary=13276https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7770This one didn't land with me. It's like Tony Hawk with guns. And I just played Solar Ash, which had skating, in a way, but this one is more Tony Hawk because you have to do tricks. Note that I always disliked skating and snowboarding games where you are supposed to learn tricks and rack up points with combos, just skating around urban environments or whatever. I always found them really boring. So, I immediately was like "ugh" with all the tricks. But that's only half of it. The other half is combat. The premise of the game is that you're a new entry in this year's Rollerdrome tournament. In Rollerdrome, contestants are pitted against "house players," who try to disable the contestants. You have to eliminate all the house players to clear the level and move on in the tournament. You not only need to eliminate all the house players, but you need to complete various achievements (reach a certain high score, do certain types of tricks, kill enemies in certain ways, etc.) because subsequent rounds of the tournament are locked behind you having completed a certain number of achievements. This all started out pretty fun for me, skating around, shooting people, dodging sniper fire. It quickly becomes really hard though, as new enemy types are introduced and there are more and more of them. It becomes something like a 3d bullet hell! Except in bullet hells, you can see everything because they're usually top-down. In this one, you'll get nailed from every angle, and you'll die constantly without knowing what hit you. You'll end up with four guns, two of which also have a sort of skill shot you can do. And you can dodge and slow time. Getting perfect dodges, doing tricks, grinding, etc. are how you refill your ammo. Killing enemies is how you refill your health. Doing both is how you rack up combo points. So, you cannot avoid doing tricks, or else you'll run out of ammo and there's no way you can dodge all the stuff flying at you for that long! Also, of the four heavily movement-focused games I have recently played, this one had the least fluid, least precise of them all (behind Neon White [which was perfect], Velocity 2x, and Solar Ash). It's hard not to compare. I was going to quit in the semifinals because it was getting too hard for me and because the narrative is practically nonexistant, and therefore nothing else was motivating me, until I saw that I could turn on invincibility and infinite ammo. Well there we go! No regrets, I turned it on, plowed my way through the rest of the game, including the last boss fight, trying to get achievements without fear of dying, and had some fun before finishing. To the people who beat this without cheats, I am impressed! The final boss looked crazy. I definitely thought this would be a bit different than it was. I expected less focus on arena combat and something more akin to roller derby or Rocket League (i.e., multiplayer). It is baffling to me that there is no multiplayer. This seems designed for it! And I always like a good racing combat game, so I admit to being disappointed that it wasn't roller derby with guns. That would have appealed to me more than Tony Hawk with guns. Mon, 22 Jul 2024 16:06:28 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7770&iddiary=13275https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7768Best looking game I've ever played. I hardly ever play new stuff, but thanks to Game Pass, I get to see brand new games! Seriously, you feel like you are walking over the volcanic rocks in Iceland, getting sprayed by ocean surf. The environment is amazing. The game has the most realistic rocks I've ever seen. The sound design is also incredible. Wear headphones. As with the first game, the "furies" (the voices inside Senua's head) are in your left and right ear, respectively, and other audio is also directional and will "swirl" around your head. Some cool effects. I found the furies to be less hostile to Senua in this game compared to the first. That's probably due to the fact that she has accepted her psychosis and sees it more as a strength rather than something that terrifies her. Indeed, she becomes something of a leader in this game. It's similar to the first game, but everything is refined. I re-read what I wrote 4 years ago, and I said that the combat and puzzles were tiring and frustrating. I had no problems with either in this one. I thoroughly enjoyed the combat and the puzzles. Combat may play largely the same, but it was more challenging than I recall, and it's really meaty. The puzzles may have been more straightforward than the previous game, where I said they were tedious. There aren't many of them, and most of them involve "focusing" on these spheres of liquid, which either hide or show various parts of the environment, revealing and concealing paths. You just have to figure out how to reveal where you need to go to line up the runes, like the last game. The game is linear, with side paths here and there for some additional lore. The only possible negative thing I can say is that some segments of the game are incredibly slow. One part in particular, Senua is pulling herself through some rocks on her back. It was s-l-o-w and took probably two minutes for her to pull herself through. There were a few other really slow moments like that. And I get the point of it. She's struggling, it's building serious atmosphere, etc. But man, I wonder how much game time would be shaved off if she moved faster. Anyway, I thought Hellblade II was incredible. The settings are jaw-dropping, the story is compelling, you're always moving forward. It sucked me right in. Mon, 22 Jul 2024 15:34:36 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7768&iddiary=13274https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7766Another stylish one with fluid movement! Solar Ash, it turns out, is a lot like Shadow of the Colossus, except instead of riding a horse, you "skate." It's kind of like if Tony Hawk's Pro Skater were about killing giant monsters instead of doing sick tricks. You play as Rei, a Voidrunner who is trying to activate a device that will prevent her planet from being devoured by a black hole. Neat premise for sure. You'll explore other planets with unique terrains that were already devastated. I think that each successive planet is more impressive than the one before it! One way Solar Ash impresses is by creating an awe-inspiring sense of scale. You are tiny little Rei, and you are in this giant area with interconnected destroyed planets, each with their own gravity. They've all been infected by "remnants," giant monsters which you need to destroy to progress. Each planet has four or five smaller remnants and then a huge boss remnant. The smaller ones are all wrapped around buildings, and are timed platforming puzzles. The remnants have weak spots, and you have to skate/climb/jump around hitting the weak spots on timers before the remnant burns you. The bosses are like in Shadow of the Colossus. You climb up on them, then skate around knocking out those weak spots on timers, which is extra tricky because the boss is moving around. Some of them providing a tough challenge, and in a way it felt like playing Neon White in a sci-fi world because you have to hit each weak spot before a timer runs out--speedrunning the boss. The movement and puzzle-platformy boss fights are where it's at. Narratively, the premise is interesting, but the presentation is a bit dense. I understood the broad picture, but the details, the side characters, didn't coalesce for me. I'm sure there is more there if I found all the logs and did the side quests, learned more about each planet and how its people tried to save them. The game tackles themes like grief and loss, but requires more unpacking than I felt like. Thu, 18 Jul 2024 15:05:46 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7766&iddiary=13271https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7763This was fantastic! It's a speedrunning game with perfect movement, smooth as butter to play. I'm not a speedrunner or someone who tends to chase high scores, but everything about the design of Neon White motivated me to do it here, at least through chapter 7 or so until I just wanted to finish the game because I have so many others to get to on Game Pass before the month is out. The gameplay is based around using cards, which you pick up during each level. You can hold up to two types of cards and three of each type at any given time. Left mouse uses the active card's primary ability (a gun of some sort) and right mouse uses its discard ability (a movement ability). For example, the green "stomp" card fires a machine gun with the left mouse and with the right mouse you fall quickly and stomp the ground (useful for killing enemies from above, smashing doors in the floor, or, well, falling quickly). The game almost always gives you the cards you need to use in order, such that you don't have to switch cards manually. I thought at the beginning I was going to be switching cards, but very rarely will you need to do this. Adding that pressure on top of an already lightning speed game might have broken my nerves. As it was, I couldn't play too long without taking a break! Levels are short (I'd say they average 40 seconds or so, shorter in the beginning of the game and longer toward the end) and are worth playing again and again. If you finish, you get a bronze medal, and then there are silver, gold, and "ace" medals for getting better times. As you get better medals in each level, you'll be able to see the ghost of your best time, see a hint for shortcuts, see leaderboards, and see a collectible gift. The hints were neat. It doesn't just tell you or show you what to do; rather, there is a golden hand icon around where the shortcut is, and you still have to figure out what exactly to do there. The collectible gifts are in hard-to-reach places and involve deviating from the path or using your cards in ways unintended by the main path of the level (e.g., figuring out how to use the cards at your disposal to reach a gift that is on top of a spire). I was feeling really good. Through chapter 7, I'd gotten nearly all ace medals and gifts. And once you get the hang of the game, you'll start to see shortcuts without being shown where they are. After chapter 7, when I stopped replaying levels, I still routinely got ace and gold on my first try, and then that faded to silver and bronze as the levels got more complicated closer to the end. The gifts unlock special dialogue scenes and challenge levels for the other characters. The challenge levels were really neat. With one character, you can't use discard abilities in their challenge level. Another character's challenge levels were like deathtrap obstacle courses. I enjoyed the story and characters too. You're all speedrunning and killing demons because you were all very bad in life, and now you're dead, in Heaven, cleaning it up and competing for prizes awarded by angels and "Believers," who are smug little angel/cherub creatures that run the place in the absence of God. You and the other main characters knew each other in life, and as you play through the game, you learn more about that. The characters reminded me of Disgaea or something, like silly JRPG or anime stuff. Of course, you all end up not being too excited about killing demons for the Believers as you learn more about the main characters and the Believers themselves. Everything is not as it appears... Chalk this up as one that, in hindsight, I would have purchased on Steam to own instead of temporarily having access to on Game Pass. Ah, well! Maybe once a year, I can get some more ace medals! Wed, 17 Jul 2024 12:55:29 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7763&iddiary=13270https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7761The Case of the Golden Idol really engaged my brain, until both it and my brain broke. I've never played anything quite like this, though I read that Return of the Obra Dinn is similar, and I've been wanting to play that anyway. This is like a point-and-click detective game. You are presented with a series of narratively and spatially connected chapters. Each chapter contains at least one "room" or "screen", each with various objects to click on. Clicking on the objects reveals information, some of which itself is clickable and gets stored in a book of words. You then use the words to complete mad-lib-type "scrolls" and solutions that explain what happened in the chapter. The pacing is nice and goes from easy, as you're learning the ropes, to really complex. The story spans several years and is full of political intrigue. In the last couple chapters, you need to refer to previous chapters to remember characters and plot points. If you get stuck, you can access up to four hints in each chapter. The first time I was going to use a hint, on I-forget-which-chapter, I clicked on "access hints" and it brought up four categories of hint. Just reading one of the category names prompted me to re-examine something, and I figured it out! Did I technically use a hint? Fast forward two or three more chapters, and I'm feeling quite proud of myself, and smug, for solving everything on my own. Enter chapter IX. There was a murder at an estate. Tons of people were there, all with their political backstories and motives. The constable had taken accounts from all the attendees as to their timelines of events, some of which were vague or contradicted others. I knew there were two poisonings and a theft. I thought there was a third poisoning because one of the characters' behaviors seemed to fit the description of side effects, but whether he was or wasn't on something didn't matter. I did miss a second theft, which a hint pointed me to. This chapter ended up frustrating me because you have to work out political motives. There are several different ways you could reason them out, and you just have to try them all until one works. I could not for the life of me figure out the solution scroll on this one, though, and ended up just looking it up online. "Trying them all until one works" ends up being a strategy you can use, especially if you know you've got most of the solution correct. The game both encourages/discourages this because if you have two or fewer mistakes in your solution, it tells you. You can swap words in and out, and you know you had something right when you swap a word and the "you have two or fewer mistakes" goes away. Other times, it's like answering a multiple choice question where the teacher doesn't account for grammar. If it says, "[name] [name] went to the [noun] to [verb] a [noun]" and your available nouns are like garden, sky, bathroom, idol and your verbs are take, killed, framed, and shoot, then obviously the verb is the present "to take" because the others are past tense except "shoot," and you wouldn't shoot any of those nouns. So someone went to the bathroom to take a shower. But there are so many names, and they always use first and last names (and some people have multiple identities), that the names are the really tricky part! It'll say something like "[name] [name] and [name] [name] went to the [noun] to [verb] [name] [name] because [name] [name] wanted to [verb] [name] [name] with [name] [name]" and you're like "uuuuuh..." So, chapter IX ruined me... Case X was a brain-scratcher with math that I almost solved, but I swear there was an error in the writing. People are on trial and they get "merit deductions" for violating core virtues. Someone got such a large merit deduction that they were killed. I used one hint to figure out the mode of death. I had thought of entering that mode of death, but didn’t because it sounded weird the way it was worded. So much for my "bad multiple choice question" strategy. One thing you have to do in this chapter is deduce how many merits each core virtue is worth so that you can figure out who died because the person who died had the biggest merit deduction. In the solution, you have to write how many merits they lost. I got the number of merits wrong, but this is not on me! I calculated that the guy was charged with 88 merits (and this was verified by one of the optional solutions that I got right), but one of the other people on trial said that they didn’t charge him for fashion crimes, which would decrease the total merit deduction by 2. He should have 86! Yet the solution is that he lost 88, not 86. Why would they have that character say something that is wrong? Frustrating. Great. Last chapter! It was another murder-filled doozy like chapter IX. I was slowly working through it but encountered a series of unfortunate bugs that killed the game. First, it stopped letting me open scrolls. I rebooted the game, and the scrolls started working again. I used a hint. It told me the hint and then, for some reason, played the ending scene as if I'd solved the scroll, which I hadn't. I exited out, came back, and sure enough, the scroll was solved. Okay...? Whatever. Let's finish. On to the epilogue, one final case with three scrolls to complete. I completed the first. I was working on the second. In the last chapter and the epilogue, you can revisit old chapters to refresh your memory of characters and past events. I went back to the chapter with the rituals, and the game bugged out again, getting stuck on the scene with the footprints in the forest. Every time I closed it and clicked on something else, it just opened the screen with the footprints again. Click click click click. It wouldn't let me do anything else. Then..."Thanks for playing!" on the ending screen. What?! I went back to the menu, re-opened the chapter, and sure enough, all the scrolls were completed. I was really enjoying Case of the Golden Idol! Even when it got hard, I was enjoying scratching my head and marveling at the connections, even if the complexity was becoming a bit frustrating. I definitely didn't like that my math was wrong in chapter X, when logically it was correct. And then the game bugged out a few times and messed up the last chapter and the epilogue, which really sucked and left me with a sour taste for the whole experience. I'll have to try Return of the Obra Dinn!Tue, 16 Jul 2024 07:33:40 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7761&iddiary=13269