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Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments (PS4) by jp (Apr 21st, 2024 at 00:26:13) |
This game is way more interesting than I initially gave it credit for (and I might even play all the cases, I'm that curious!)
There's a bunch of cases, you're Sherlock and you gather clues, investigate locations, use your special "eyesight", interrogate suspects, and more. So far, this is what you'd expect.
Some clues become more important and they show up in your "brain" where you can pair it up with another clue (if it's the correct one) to deduce something. Once you have enough of those, you can reach a conclusion. ALSO, once you've reached a conclusion you can decide how to act on it (usually it's either call the cops or call Mycroft - i think...).
What's really wild is that in the brain-connecting clues interface, you can reach lots of different conclusions! (I think it's 4 per case, at least it has been that so far and I've completed two cases). OH! And, as far as I can tell, the you can get it wrong! And, you just move on...the game calls some of them moral choices - which I'm confused by. But the idea that you could arrive at an incorrect conclusion and the game just moves on to the next case is pretty wild. So far, I've gotten both right (because there's abutton you can press that even warns you - like "spoiler alert" and it shows my result in green - which I assume is that I got it right).
Anyways, that's super cool!
Oh, and the game haslots of little mini-games that you play once, and they're part of the story (e.g. taking sherlock's pulse, or arm-wrestling with a sailor)..
The 2nd case is pretty neat - it takes place in the UK, there's a missing train...and there are rich Chilean (and Mexican) businessmen involved! Whoah.
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Fights in Tight Spaces (PC) by jp (Apr 21st, 2024 at 00:19:38) |
This one's a bit weird and I'll confess I didn't play it that much (just played one mission - which is like 1/5 of a full run?). It looks like it wants to be SuperHot, but it isn't - that's ok. But, it has a "play the movie" of what you just did in a level that you would think would play fast and smooth and super action-y. But now, it's slow and it even pauses between card plays...so it looks rather boring, which is a real shame.
As for the game, there's interesting stuff going on, but I haven't fully understood everything:
a. There's a typical energy system for casting, but a secondary system (combo) that lets you play some cards with a combo cost. If you move in your turn you lose combo so it's sometimes tricky to get everything to pull off.
b. While playing I was disappointed (because it seemed unfair) that there are objectives (bonus ones) in each level - and I wasn't getting any because I didn't know what they were! Apparently they're actually shown on screen, but in a place I did not see or notice.
c. The game seemed a bit slow - I was just moving and getting out of the way as I waited to draw into a good hand of cards. This cuts the momentum for sure and also made it hard/impossible to accidentally hit the secret (not really secret) objectives. So, I'm curious to go back and try again with awareness of the objectives. They should help a lot - in that I'm more likely to try to "solve the puzzle" of each turn and hopefully get the bonus objectives.
d. It's strange that you have to pay to heal, but I thought it was neat that you can upgrade several cards (if you have the money) and that some cards are cheap to upgrade - there's different pricing for them!
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Hadean Tactics (PC) by jp (Apr 21st, 2024 at 00:11:34) |
Ok, I've now cleared the game (not unlocked everything, of course) and it really is quite fun and interesting. The 3rd character (which I was waiting on to try out because I wanted to clear the game with the 2nd one) is pretty neat as well though as I write this all I can really remember is that it has an orb mechanic similar to one of the characters in Slay the Spire.
The harder ending is basically another 3 levels, but they get shorter! The last one, if I remember correctly, is just the boss. I don't remember what deck I was running, but it was pretty good - in the sense that I had picked up some good combos..traps and all.
I'm going to stop playing, for now, mostly because the list of games too look at keeps on growing - one a week - because of the design seminar I'm teaching.
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Before Your Eyes (PC) by dkirschner (Apr 14th, 2024 at 13:51:13) |
I've been looking forward to playing this, especially after playing One Hand Clapping, which had a singing mechanic. That game activates your mic and you use your voice, raising and lowering pitch, to interact with the game. Before Your Eyes was similar in that the game activates your webcam and uses your eye blinks as input. Before Your Eyes works WAY better than One Hand Clapping, and it's the better game all around. I figure that detecting blinks (yes/no) is easier than detecting notes along the range of human vocal pitch, so kudos to One Hand Clapping for trying.
Blinking in Before Your Eyes doesn't do anything unless you do it over a prompt (mouse over the prompt, then blink to interact) or unless you do it when the metronome icon is visible, which progresses the story to the next scene. The rules are simple, and it became a game in and of itself for me to blink strategically. I imagined that at the end of A Clockwork Orange, Alex's eyes are forced open so that he could successfully complete this game. At times, I felt like holding my eyes open with my fingers. This is because your eyes will get tired/dry/itchy while playing and you will screw up and blink when you don't mean to, skipping dialogue or ending a scene early. That's frustrating enough. Make sure you do the blink calibration, but I think that no matter how well you do it, it will still occasionally register some non-blinks as blinks. This really didn't happen much for me; through calibration, I think I turned the sensitivity way down, and I wonder what effect wearing glasses had. But like I said, it works surprisingly well.
So, the game itself is narrative-heavy. It's an obvious play on the idea that a life can pass in the "blink of an eye." You're picked up by a ferryman of souls who asks you to tell the story of your life. Back in time you go to remember it: your childhood, your parents, your career, etc., blinking your way through each scene. I won't spoil the story, but there is a twist that I absolutely did not see coming (though I should have paid more attention to the mysterious dark scenes) that changes the narrative and the tone of the game. This is one you can spend time reflecting on.
Aesthetically, it's got a simple visual presentation, sort of painterly, with some really nice piano music. The voice acting is good, with the exception of the girl-next-door (who sounds the same at 10 as she does at 40). For some reason, they also used the same voice actor for your dad and her dad, which made the one scene with her dad calling her very confusing ("Why is my dad at her house?!"). But I liked the dad and mom's performances. I was wondering through the whole game if your character was mute and/or on the spectrum because he doesn't talk--only through a typewriter later in the game--and otherwise expresses himself through his prodigious musical and artistic talents. But I think he's just a silent main character, not actually mute.
Anyway, the game won a BAFTA for a reason. It didn't blow my mind, but it's a neat experience that's worth having. It's short too, doesn't waste your time. I'm considering incorporating it into a class.
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Stray (PC) by dkirschner (Apr 13th, 2024 at 12:00:39) |
Patrick and I have been playing this together this semester, and finished it a couple weeks ago. We were talking after beating it about despite how simple and straightforward of a game this is, it manages to be something new. Playing as a cat (and being able to do cat things like curl up and sleep, scratch things, knock objects off tables, etc., so cuuuute) was novel, and the setting and story were interesting. But really, playing as a cat. I smiled a whole lot throughout the game. The lil companion robot was cute too.
On the other hand, I was often tired and bored while playing, and literally fell asleep during several sessions. Patrick would be making dinner or something in the kitchen, and I'd snap awake, cat walking into a wall, and I'd pretend I had not fallen asleep, and that I was just watching the cat walk into the wall and thinking. Like how my dad always used to claim he was "resting his eyes" when he'd fall asleep on the couch.
I would not call the game exciting. It was a lot of wandering around the city and talking to robot NPCs, fetching things for them. The city is a really good-looking dystopia, and the robots are quirky, but I wish they had more dialogue. You don't get a sense that many of them have personalities besides whatever one-note thing they do. I mean, the lack of dialogue makes sense, and it's not really "dialogue" since the cat can't talk. The fact that you are a cat adds a whole layer of silly to the game. Like, why has this lil robot befriended a cat? Why are all these robots putting all their faith in a cat to save them? Cats don't understand what we're saying to them, and cats do whatever they want! Playing as a cat in a game where you're doing fetch quests (fetching is dog stuff!) and doing things to help people is very un-cat-like.
But, you know what? The ability to play as a cat and do cat things trumps how little sense it makes, and I would play as a cat in this dystopia again. Idea for next time: more cats. And what do you think? Were there cats at the end?! Optimistically, I think so.
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2157 registered gamers and 3105 games. 7607 GameLogs with 13096 journal entries. 5074 games are currently being played.
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R Type Final (PS2) by E4 |
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most recent entry: Saturday 9 February, 2008
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entry 2
GAMEPLAY
Upon further play of R-type Final, I've been able to unlock quite a few ships and found a few alternate routes (stages). While some of the alternate routes are re-hashes/modifications of the original stage, some of the stages seem to have completely random themes only possibly related to the R-type storyline iyou have a very active imagination. But then again, no storyline has been explicitly been told in the game (as far as I know/can remember), so nothing cabe ruled out, I suppose; looking on the back of the instruction manual, it turns out the game is rated E for everyone because it's only "Fantasy Violence"... which might explain some of the random oddities, such as the "Mr. Heli" R-type space ship. Aside from the few random oddities, I got relatively little satisfaction from the game overall apart from beating the story mode (albeit in the easiest difficulty). To summarize, my experience was that the game caused too much frustration through much of the game in comparison to the satisfaction of completing game objectives, thus leaving me wanting more (unsatisfied with the game).
The game may have been more fun and engaging if it had a co-op support, allowing players to play with the friends, adding a social element into the mix to help keep players interested. However, since players return to the last previous check point when they die, this would have to set back either both players or keep the deceased player out of the game until the other player dies and both respawn together. On this front, R-type Final loses out on the possibility of co-op functionality such as that in Gradius V. Without any other people to engage with, the game lacked sufficient motivation to make me want to legitimately play through the rest of the game.
DESIGN
Since I've played long enough to understand the mechanics of the game, for the purpose of "study," I've let the game fly through stages w/ the invulnerability cheat on so I can safely ignore the game and occupy myself with other activities while the game burns time with different ships so that I can unlock new ships and see if the boasted number of ships if R-Type Final isn't just advertising fodder. While the ships that I unlocked in my initial play through introduced new weapon types and wave cannons (special laser attack), they did not introduce any new bits (pods that follow the player ship and provide some support function).
Additionally, ships unlocked after the first set of ships turned out to be re-hashes of those prior to them, with mostly just minor changes to them. However, after cheating my way through many hours of flight time, I was finally able to unlock some new ships with new bits, and new weaponry, proving that there is at least some function for the 99+ unlockable ships. However, given the amount of time required to unlock the few ships that I was able to unlock, and that a normal player would not use the invulnerability cheat, most players would either give up the game (as I would) either after finding the game too hard or beating it once; only a hardcore shmup gamer would be able to put the hours in to legitimately unlock every ship and reap the rewards, rendering the use of the large mass of unlockable ships relatively useless except for 1 horrifying fact: the tougher difficulty levels seem to require much more powerful weapon arsenals--those carried by the late unlocked ships, turning the wheel of hardcore shmup gamers around once again, putting us back in square one again. While R-type Final does have an easy mode, most of the game content will never be accessible to casual gamers who don't have the dedication to get access to the best ships and experience the coolest flashing colors the game has to offer.
To me, this game content structure (discussed above) is the greatest pitfall of R-type Final. Without a good content and reward/punishment structure, players will be discouraged from playing and lose interest in the game--the end of a game. However, R-type Final did have a number of innovative elements that make can be learned from. The 3D graphics are used well in a number of background transitions to create the illusion of moving the active game space around re-orienting it in within the game world, zooming in, zooming out, moving into objects or areas, etc. While the underlying structure of the 2D shooter interface does not change, the 3D engine's effective implementation allows the designers to create levels with shifting perspectives to better remove the effect of one-direction linear movement in the game through the illusion of 3D movement.
Integrated well with the 3D graphical illusion was the level design, which utilized the 3D space to bring enemies in from different angled planes onto the player's plane of reference for combat, or by shifting the player's plane itself in several cases. The level design also implemented classic shmup spacial control and predefined enemy movement patterns with emergent attack AI script to automate enemy attacks to try and restrict the player's movement and require good tactics to and skillful movement to navigate to tight spaces and fields covered with enemies and bullets. R-type Final added the presumed usage of the Force for either lasers or remote shooting into the mix, specifically creating instances where the Force has to be docked to the read of the ship, or had to be undocked and shooting at something in an area inaccessible by the player, thus requiring the player to make good use of the Force and it's functions.
While the Force pod concept, stylized weapons and level design are well done, the implementation through the poor content structure leaves the player unable to experience much of the game content, leaving many players desiring more from the game, knowing that there is more content in game, but not seeing it as worth spending the time to acquire. Without a well balanced reward system to keep the player interested in continuing the play the game, there's little point to a mass of unlockable content that the player will never unlock.
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