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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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Killzone 3 (PS3) by dkirschner |
| Very good, high production value. Gameplay a little disjointed, action/story somewhat over the top. Fun! ------------ Not as great as 2, but still good! |
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most recent entry: Tuesday 8 October, 2013
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Killzone 3 refines the gunplay that I felt was already excellent in Killzone 2. By "refinement" I mean it is more sleek and feels like every other AAA FPS in the 2010s. Killzone 2 had no auto-aiming and felt a little old-school in the gun department. I appreciate the crispness of aiming in 3, but it does feel like it bent to conformity. I think that's a big theme in the game's design, is just bending to what's hot. This involves a lot of Gearing like I talked about in my Killzone 2 entry, which is odd because I thought Gears of War was very unique. Maybe I should call it CoD-ing. I dunno. Either way, the production value was ramped up even higher. The game looks amazing and sounds great too. The "stealth" part through the Helghast wilderness was a visual wonder.
The story took a turn for the better too. There's more they try to tell in this game, which made it a little more interesting. You get to see some of the internal conflict in Helghast high command. Killzone 2 had these out-of-place Soviet-style propaganda posters up all over the Helghast city. They were weird because there wasn't really anything Soviet about the Helghast besides that they were very militarized. Like, no communist-leaning ideology, and I don't think they needed propaganda because everyone seemed to be on board with being a completely militarized society. Anyway, in Killzone 3, you meet the Helghast high command, or Senate or whatever they are called, and they are designed to look exactly like Nazis or Soviet-era Communists. I think this is silly more than anything since the society still has nothing to do with Nazism or Communism. One of the members even had a Hitler mustache. Go google pictures of the Helghast senate to see what I mean. Questionable artistic choices aside, their internal politics add a little depth to the story and that was a good thing.
They tried to tell more narrative with your squad too, not in the sense of backstory or anything, which I think is a shame and something that I would have WANTED them to do like Gears of War, but in terms of the relationships between the characters and having them display more emotions and things. This was still welcome, like Rico expressing regret for spoiler spoiler and Narville finally admitting his plans aren't always correct and letting Sev and Rico gung-go it. The only problem with this approach is that sometimes it interrupted otherwise exciting gameplay segments with cut scenes. I only didn't like this when those gameplay segments were too short. Other times it was fine, but the length of gameplay segments/frequency of cut scenes was disjointed.
Another aspect of the game that made it feel disjointed were many of the "gunner" segments. These were the times when you get in a vehicle that is 100% on rails and you just aim and shoot at things. This actually happened a lot and, while visually and kinaesthetically pleasing, was just sort of lame because you can never actually drive the vehicles and you have no control over anything in the segment except shooting at things. And all the weapons for all these vehicles are the same. Left trigger fires missiles or rockets. Right trigger is the machine gun. These didn't even have to be in the game. They just felt tacked on, there because they had to be because gunner segments are cool and that's what Call of Duty does. Since they did put them in, they should have been more open-ended and given the player more control over driving at least, or changed up the weapon types or something to add variety. There were also "did it because we have to" style stealth and horror elements. One level in particular has you stealthing through a gorgeous Helghan environment sniping and stealth-killing (another addition to the game, Gearing) enemies silently by pressing L1 when you get near them. Very out of place gameplay in the context of the rest of the game. The horror bit was lame too, felt forced, and reminded me exactly of when you go in the refinery or whatever in Gears and find the mutated spider thingies...what a coincidence, you're also in a refinery here and find mutated spider thingies!
There was *slightly* more gun variety in Killzone 3 than 2. They added some type of energy gun that was fun to use and...I think the bolt gun was new. They also let you detach machine gun turrets and carry them around, which was sweet. You can carry 2 primary weapons in Killzone 3 instead of K2's 1 primary. So you can always have 1 "heavy" weapon like the machine gun turret or sniper rifle and 1 normal weapon like a submachine gun or assault rifle, and then of course the pistol. This was an obvious improvement from Killzone 2 because you could switch weapons on the fly and expand your tactical repertoire to deal with a variety of situations.
Unfortunately though, again, there isn't much enemy variety. You fight all Helghast soldiers with different guns. This time there is a melee version that rushes you, some with lightning guns and one with a jetpack. Oh, by the way, I was excited to be able to use a jetpack. I think it was a feature on the box. You only get it for one level! It was lame. They also had tiny bits of levels with low gravity, which was also poorly done. Anyway, jetpack enemies. There were like no boss fights in the game, which was disappointing. There was a giant segment where you take down a big walker but it wasn't that great. Toward the end of the game, the levels get very corridor-y. You just go down corridor after corridor after corridor and fly an underwhelming spaceship gunner part for the finale. It was in the corridor-y parts that they bring the low gravity trick. The low gravity trick could have been cool if it was used for anything at all, but it wasn't. Enemies don't take advantage of low gravity and neither can you. If you jump you just float up in the air, a simple target for enemies to shoot down. Yet when your AI teammates jump, they don't float. Hmm. Enemies also float when you kill them, for whatever reason. Alive - grounded. Dead - float. Huh?
Oh yeah, before I forget, one more Gearing thing. You can revive your AI teammates and they revive you too. This was sort of stupid because half the time they wouldn't revive you and half the time they would. When they won't, they say things like "There's too much enemy fire" and "You're too far away." Most of the time I argue they definitely could reach me if they'd just run and do it. Then sometimes like they wouldn't revive you if they'd recently revived you and other times they'd do it 3 times in a row without a problem. I didn't like that there were no hard and fast rules so that I never could guess very well whether or not I'd be revived. Anyway, not that huge a deal.
Last thing I'll say to wrap up...the end sucked. It ends abruptly, no epilogue or anything. After a trilogy of games, I expect an epilogue or some wrapping up or something. Then there was a little part in the middle of the credits that I won't ruin, but was just dumb.
Killzone 3: fun game, worth playing especially if you like the series. Beautiful game. Killzone 2 is the better one. Read there's a sequel for PS4 on launch. Wonder how it'll compare?
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