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    Dorfromantik (PC)    by   dkirschner       (Mar 24th, 2024 at 19:54:36)

    Got this for free at some point and decided to give it a shot since it is well-reviewed and seemed like something outside of my usual. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. It looks like a casual city-builder and mobile game. It’s definitely casual and definitely a builder of sorts, but it’s more of a puzzle game than anything.

    Your goal is to place various sorts of hexagonal tiles to build a landscape. Tiles can have, on any of their six sides, water, trees, grassland, fields, houses, and railroad tracks. You can rotate tiles and, ideally, match like sides. This nets you points. Not matching sides doesn’t net you points. You need points in order to get more tiles. If you run out of tiles, it’s game over. So, you have to strategically place tiles such that you maximize aligning edges with the same properties.

    To complicate this, some tiles have “quests,” which require you to string together x number of trees, houses, railroads, etc. So then you’re not simply matching sides, but you’re also trying to cluster certain types together in certain places depending on which quests you get.

    I found myself lost in it before realizing that I was almost out of tiles. I refocused and hit a stride, getting achievement after achievement for making long railroads, villages with tons of houses, etc., and built my stack of tiles back up. However, I have realized that if you don’t match like tiles early on, you’ll be disadvantaged later because you are “missing out” on points that you would have earned had you been more careful, and it will be difficult to “fill in” gaps that you’ve created. Another thing I realized is that you can’t “branch out” too much. You’ve got to remain clustered. If you branch out too much, then each tile you place can’t generate many points. It’s 10 points per matched side, so if you’re just like building a river straight out, each tile is only netting 10 points. If you are more clustered and placing each tile next to two or three others, then you’re getting 20 or 30 points per tile, and generating more tiles. It’s an interesting balancing act.

    There is no story; it’s a sandbox. There is infinite replayability to chase high scores and achievements. I’d be interested in giving it another shot and doing better, but I think I did really well for my first try. Maybe I’ll keep it on hand for a relaxing puzzle game. But I’ve got other stuff to get to!

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    Trials of Fire (PC)    by   dkirschner       (Mar 24th, 2024 at 16:38:43)

    I shouldn’t have purchased this. I must have been on a card battler kick, probably when I was playing Slay the Spire and Monster Train last year. There’s nothing wrong with Trials of Fire; it just doesn’t have the personality or the pizzazz that better card battlers have. In fact, playing it after Wildermyth, it comes off as a way less interesting take on the card battler/tactical RPG genre, and I can’t help but compare the two. The main difference, of course, is that Wildermyth has no cards; it’s a tactics RPG with procedural storytelling and character development that was really, really cool. Trials of Fire doesn’t have anything that is really, really cool. Trials of Fire has:

    - An overworld that manages to be duller than Wildermyth’s. The landscape is drab, and you just move around following a quest arrow, stopping on whatever blue question marks are around to try and find crafting supplies, food, obsidian (money), equipment, followers, battles (which is how you level up), and so on.
    - A stamina bar that means you have to rest and eat food. Resting or dragging food onto a character is also how you recover health lost in battle or through random events. As your stamina drops, your characters get stuck with debuff cards in battle, so you have to stop to restore stamina.
    - Time management that is not as interesting as Wildermyth’s. You have to make progress toward the golden quest arrow on the edge of the map, and if you are too slow, then your morale drops. If it drops all the way, it’s game over. So you are basically balancing your morale with your stamina and trying to keep your characters’ level high enough to win combat encounters (i.e., since combat is how you gain XP, you have to stop and fight to level up, but can’t stop too much lest you spend too much time fighting and your morale drops). This was less interesting than the incursion and enemy strength timers in Wildermyth.
    - Cards to collect and upgrade. Upon each level up, you can replace one of your existing class cards with another one, or choose to upgrade an existing class card.
    - Equipment to wear and upgrade. Equipment can be upgraded with crafting supplies when resting. Each piece of equipment bestows various cards on the wearer, and upgrading the equipment upgrades its cards, which is cool.
    - Unlockable character classes that can level up to award more class cards. The classes level up after a campaign, and I suppose that newly unlocked cards are available in future campaigns.
    - A bare bones story, random and generic events, simple quests, all of which totally pale in comparison to Wildermyth’s (and most other games).
    - Characters with no personality whatsoever, such a stark contrast to Wildermyth.
    - Bosses that pose a real threat!

    Regarding the latter, at the end of each quest stage (there were three stages in the quest campaign I played), there is a boss battle. The first two of these were easy enough, but the last one just about killed me. It was a dragon with 90 health (double the previous boss). It killed two of my characters, and only my hunter remained. My hunter had like 13 health and 11 armor, and the dragon was at about the same. My hunter was also backed into a corner, and in one more turn, the dragon would have moved in melee range and my hunter would have been stuck (you can’t use ranged attacks in melee range of your target). But I drew like the perfect combination of cards, did double damage with my first attack and then my last card did x damage, and if the target was then below y HP, it automatically died. Well, the math was perfect, and I killed the dragon. If I had drawn different cards, the dragon would have killed me. Intense for sure, but what the hell! The difficulty came out of nowhere in the last battle. Battles are not repeatable, by the way. If your party wipes, it’s game over and you start the whole campaign over. I would have been pissed, because, like Wildermyth, these campaigns are not short.

    Upon winning, your classes level up and you unlock some new cards for each of them. I unlocked a new class for achieving something or other. Then you just go back to the menu and start over with another quest. Wildermyth has that cool Legacy system with persistent characters that grow over time, but there’s nothing like that here. Given that the storyline for the quest campaign I did was so generic, I’m not motivated to play another one (and there is only one more story quest, then the others are like roguelike situations where you just play with daily modifiers or create custom campaigns or do a seasonal challenge or whatever). There are surely a bunch more cards to unlock, and there are 9 classes in total to unlock (for completing x quests, for killing y bosses, for spending z crafting materials, etc.), so there is more to do in terms of progression. But it’s just not that compelling! Again though, nothing is bad about the game, but man, I guess it’s just rare that I play something that is so disappointlingly generic.

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    Galactic Quest + Atlantic Quest (DS)    by   jp       (Mar 24th, 2024 at 13:19:19)

    This is a 2-in-1 game collection of match 3 games that, as far as I've played each, are exactly the same in terms of gameplay even though the story and art is completely different.

    The one notable thing about these is that it's a match-3 game that supports three different types of matching which you can switch between whenever you want. It's interesting because it means it's a lot harder to get stuck, and that you have to think in a few more ways in order to identify matches and such.

    The three ways to match are:
    1. Typical swap two tiles to make a match
    2. Connect three tiles orthogonally to make a match
    3. Tap on group of tiles that are orthogonally adjacent to each other to make a match.

    There's overlap between the three modes, of course, and in the 3rd one matches don't happen automatically when new tiles drop to fill in the space of tiles that were removed due to a match. So, there's an interesting effect that happens when you've made a match in the 3rd mode and then switch to the 1st mode! You can get a lot of tiles to auto-match and disappear if you've left the board with lots of groups of 3-in-a-row.

    Other than this little wrinkle, which was interesting to be fair, there wasn't much else to note in either game. There's trophies and interstitial puzzles to play between every 10 or so match-3 levels, but it's pretty light on everything.

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    Super Princess Peach (DS)    by   jp       (Mar 24th, 2024 at 13:12:25)

    Made it all the way to the final boss fight - against Bowser, obviously? - but I've struggled enough with it that I decided to call it a day. It's a multi-stage battle that, as far as I can tell, requires you to use your rage ability. That's ok, except that it's hard for me to recharge it during the battle so it's a bit more frustrating than simply having to learn attack patterns and dodge attacks.

    Now that I think about it, I might be "underpowered" for the end? There's lots of things I could have purchased but have not and I don't really feel like returning to old levels to "farm" them, so I feel it's better to simply move on.

    And this is a strange thing to say about a Nintendo game! (that it's grindy...)

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    Flower (PS4)    by   dkirschner       (Mar 21st, 2024 at 13:13:56)

    Played this after Journey, knowing that it was the same studio’s former game. I see the DNA in the aesthetics. It’s visually striking, with an emphasis on the musical score, which harmonizes as the player guides their flower petals through other flowers in the levels. Basically, you control flower petals, first a single petal in each level, and then a “swarm” of them by the end of each level.

    Early levels are really peaceful and serene. You’re floating through grasslands, intrigued by the beauty of the surroundings and the fact that you’re bringing life and color. At the end of one early level, you “enliven” a big old tree, which grows and blooms. It’s all very majestic. The first half was the best.

    Later levels change the tone significantly, as you float through areas that are like cold, dead, electrical grids or something. There are lots of power lines and electrical towers. It’s all very grey and drab. Gone is the color of the first half of the game. Touching towers can shock you, so you have to slow down and navigate between the metal to touch the flowers beneath them. Navigating the petals could be tedious, like when you miss a flower and keep circling around trying to get it, or in this later level when you’re trying to slowly creep through electrical towers. I was often unclear as to the “hit boxes,” for lack of a better word, of my petals and the other objects, which is why I’d miss flowers I thought I touched, or get shocked when I thought I’d avoided a tower.

    Anyway, the last level is like a triumphant return of nature to the gray city-scape, smashing through the electrical towers now. Take that, cities! Take this, industry! Eat dirt, electricity! Flowers rule! I did enjoy the revenge of destroying electrical towers. Interesting game for sure, and haven’t played anything quite like it, but the experience itself wasn’t as captivating as Journey’s was.

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    Batman: Arkham Asylum (PC)    by   jlb1185

    No comment, yet.
    most recent entry:   Friday 19 April, 2013
    Batman Arkham Asylum: Monday, Aug. 9,2013

    Batman Arkham Asylum is an action adventure game based on the hit comic book series. The player plays as the famous superhero Batman has he fights his way through the insanity that is Arkham Asylum.

    =Controls =
    For my play though of the game, I utilized wired X-box 360 remote connected to desktop computer. The game is on PC, X-Box 360, and PS3. With the PC version, there are keyboard and mouse input, but as a matter of personal preference, I used a controller. The controls as followed: Left Analog stick-Move, Right Analog Stick-Camera control, Directional Pad-Equipment Selection, A+Left Analog Stick-Run, X-Attack, B-Cape Stun, Y-Counter, Holding Right Back Trigger(R.B.T.)-Crouch, Y+R.B.T-Takedown, Pressing R.B.T-Quick Batclaw, Pressing Left Back Trigger(L.B.T)-Quick Batarang, Holding L.B.T-Prepare Equipment, Holding L.B.T+Pressing R.B.T-Use prepared equipment, Right Upper Back Button-Grappling Hook, Holding Left Upper Back Button-Detective Mode, Pressing Left Upper Back Button-Enviroment Analyzer

    =Story=
    The story begins as Batman has just captured Joker and is returning him to Arkham Asylum. Upon being released into the hands of the guards of Arkham, Joker manages to escape their grip, and with the help of his evil sidekick, Harley Quinn, begins taking over Arkham. As the story progressing, you learn that Joker has actually been working with one of the doctors of Arkham, Dr. Young, to develop a formula for a superhuman. It then become you job to stop Joker from building a superhuman army to take over Gotham. There are a few twist and turns in the story with some debut for some iconic Batman characters until the inevitable battle with the Joker himself.

    = Game Play =
    For my initial game play, I choose to do it on Hard mode, the highest difficulty, as a matter of preference, but I later went back to analysis the difference by playing it on the easy settings. As the overall game goes, there are the basic game elements that are used thought the game. These are the traveling element, the stealth element, and the combat element.
    The traveling element was very easy because it was simply get from point A to point B. At these parts of the game, it’s really hard to fail due to the fact that in a place where you would fall off into the abyss, the game would give you the option to grapple back up and try again. Without the ability to fail at these stages, the mazes become a simple state of trial and error till the player gets it right.
    The stealth element was a little more challenging. These parts of the game primarily consisted of the Scarecrow fear stages and the hostage situation stages, but there is also the stages in which the room is filled with criminals armed with guns and it is suggested that you eliminate them using the stealth approach. In the Scarecrow stage, the objective is to get through the stage without being seen by a giant Scarecrow or else it is game over. In the hostage stage, the player must make it to the villain holding the person hostage and take them out, without being seen by the villain or the criminals patrolling the stage, but if you are seen, the hostage is kill and it’s game over. As far as the stages with only armed criminals, on easier difficulties, it is sometimes possible to take out the criminals without using much stealth, but on hard, I found that this is not an option at all.
    The combat element is actually the only place in which difficulty makes a difference. The only difference in difficulty is the amount of damage the player does and the amount of damage the enemies deal. Combat is composed of three different stages. These are the group criminal fights, the “Bain” boss fights, and the miscellaneous boss fights. In group criminal fights, the player is surrounded with basic criminals that attack the player. In these stages, the main objective is to take down all of the surrounding enemies. This can be done by using the takedown ability while an enemy is on the ground or damaging the enemies to a point where they are knocked out. The second option on hard is a little more difficult as well as time consuming to a point where it’s best to use the takedown technique. In this group fight, there are some special enemies that require the use of advanced fighting techniques like countering and stunning to be taken down. The next combat stage I’ll be discussing is the “Bain” style boss fights, and I have named this because throughout the game there are 5 or 6 boss fights in which the player has to use the same techniques that are used to take out Bain to take out these bosses. The basic technique is to as the “Bain” enemy is running at you, throw a Batarang at them stunning them and then attacking them until they recover. The game increases the difficulty of these fights as the game progresses by adding in criminals that fight alongside the “Bain” boss and even putting two “Bain” bosses in the same stage. Overall, these stages to me fill the game considering they are supposed to be set up as boss fights. Lastly, in the miscellaneous boss fight, the player gets to go up against one of few extra villains in the asylum. Each of these bosses has their own strategy in which the player has to use to take them down.

    =Extra Content=
    In the game, there is some extra content which helps keep the game going a little after the story is done. The first extra content is the Riddler Challenges which are actually done throughout the story mode but can’t be completed until the very end of the story. These challenges are interesting because they unlock bones content like Character Bios, Character Trophies, and give a little more back story into the game of Arkam Asylum and the villains that are there. Then there is Challenge Mode for the players who want to keep playing long after the story mode is over. In these challenges, a player has to complete some part of the story mode while either obtaining a high score or completing a series of tasks. There isn’t anything to unlock with completing these challenges but they can be fun to do.

    = Overall =
    Batman Arkam Asylum is a pretty good game overall. It has some issues with the combat system in the case that if feel like the player is doing just a lot of button mashing and the “Bain” boss fight to me personally just feel repetitive after a while. Also the player is more drawn to stay in detective mode though most of the gameplay. What makes this a good game is the story. The story is very solid as far as a Batman story goes, and the extra content involving villain profiles helped me learn more about the Batman universe. So, even though it falls short on some of the gameplay element, it’s still a good game do to the fact that it tailors to its audience, Batman fans. It gives them what they want, Batman being Batman.

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