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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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Hadean Tactics (PC) by jp (Apr 7th, 2024 at 13:32:36) |
This game is supposed to be a deck-building tactical game and it sort of isn't, but very lightly is - at least in my experience so far.
So, like CD2: Trap Master this game REALLY wears it's Slay the Spire inspirations on its sleeve. Again, there's a path you that branches and you need to pick which nodes to visit - and there's fights, boss fights, resting spots, stores, artifact/rewards, and shops. Oh, there's also "story encounters" where you make a choice that often results in a benefit and a drawback. VERY Slay the Spire - though I noticed the way the events are distributed is different and that it's much more important to plan your way through it since the paths intersect a lot less and you can, for example in my last run, set yourself up with 4 rest/upgrade a card spots in a row!
In addition to a deck of cards you have the character you chose and two "minions" (they're all monsters) that exist on a 2D grid that's quite typical of tactical games. The enemies will spawn, you have energy to cast your cards - generally you cast your cards, unpause and wait for the timer to pause the game when it hits the threshold (7 seconds) for your hand to flush, a new hand is drawn, and you get more mana to cast spells. What isn't really tactical about it is that all the fighting on the tactical grid (which includes everyone having abilities they cast once their mana is full) happens automatically. You can't (afaik) give orders to anyone. At best, if you have the right spells, you can move creatures around (your own or enemy), but they then move back to whatever it is they want to do (e.g. attack the nearest enemy).
One of my runs used a character that had access to "trap" cards which are pretty neat since you lay them on the grid and then have to trigger them (with a different card) and ALL the trap laid will trigger. Some do damage, others heal your allies, and so on. So, the game isn't tactical at all in the turn-by-turn combat and movement decision-making sense. Yes, you choose whom to roll into a fight with, which spells to cast on whom, and when to cast things. But, since you don't directly control your combat units it all feels pretty indirect.
Where the game goes pretty wild (and above/beyond what Slay the Spire does) is that once you've cleared a run - you gain access to making your own hero - choose skills/talents from a list AND choose which spells will be available (again from a list, which only has the ones you've unlocked). So, in this sense the game has a lot, lot more options/replayability and that sort of thing. But, I'm not sure it's that much more interesting?
Oh, there is a meta-progression. When I beat my first run a giant death/reaper creature appeared and said "ok, now you can start to make progress towards winning - you have to collect wings". And I've collected a few since, you get them from killing the stage end bosses (which is nice in that you don't have to get all the way to the end). I need to get 7 - so I wonder if I'll just have to play over and over until I randomly get the right bosses or will the game feed me different ones until I get them all? I've also unlocked a new (third) character...but I kind of don't want to use it because I want to get all the wings with the character I've made some progress with.
I've played about 4 hours and I've really enjoyed the "decay" and "trap" mechanics... we'll see how it goes!
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Deathloop (PS4) by jp (Apr 4th, 2024 at 11:14:36) |
Argh. The longer you go without playing, the worse this game's experience becomes. This is almost entirely due to me forgetting both how to play, but also all the localized information and knowledge you pick up - like who is where, when, and so on.
I love the idea of a "clockwork" game where you deftly navigate your way through things that happen and certain times and places - there's a sense of beauty and elegance to the choreography you develop and create (sort of like when you watch those time loop movies and see a character weave through people and places because they know what's going to happen when and they've just learned it). BUT, that beauty also creates an entry barrier - at least a psychological one for me, because the game's on-ramp is past and now you're in the thick of it. But you've forgotten everything...
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Devil May Cry 5 (PS4) by jp (Apr 4th, 2024 at 11:09:05) |
So I took a break - and then came back to the game and had forgotten how to play. It took a bit to remember (I purposefully avoided looking stuff up because I wanted to see how easy it was for me to remember). So, some of the fights with V took longer than they should have - because I had forgotten that V has to "finish off" the enemies...lol.
While I often focus (for my own personal interests) on game play and game design aspects of a game - I realized as I was playing this game that..wow, the visual design of the large enemies really is phenomenal. They're both beautiful, awesome, creepy, gross, and disgusting. It's quite the accomplishment and I really appreciated it. And, this is in the context of me playing a game that is ~7 years old and running on last gen hardware. Perhaps I haven't played enough PS5 games yet so I'm still too impressionable? Have things moved that far in terms of photorealism?
I have decided to move on even though I realize, from the back of the box, that I'll miss out on the 3rd playable character. It's no fault or problem with DMC5...it's just that I've got too many games to play and I think I've understood enough about this game to move on to another.
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Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (PC) by dkirschner |
| Ok, good atmosphere, interesting plot so far. Voice acting bad, some other irritating things. Buggy. We shall see... ------------ Really engrossing game. I got the blue light bug though :-( |
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most recent entry: Saturday 2 August, 2014
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Well that was short and sweet...and buggy as hell!
I'd heard this game was buggy. After the first hour, I'd already gotten stuck on a curb, run into an invisible wall, and when I minimized the game to look up how to open a safe, not only is the way to open it different than the game tells you (game says enter the numbers clockwise, you actually have to go right, left, right, left turning the dial, NOT clockwise!), but the game window disappeared, yet is still running on my computer. I cannot find it anywhere, and it won't shut down through the task manager. So I have to restart my computer! Since then, I learned that the game crashes if you minimize it, I hit several more annoying bugs, like one where I couldn't get on some moving box properly, and then the sound would screw up every time I did it.
Finally, I encountered one of the game-stopping bugs, which I learned is referred to as the 'blue lights' bug, closely related to the 'invisible reef' bug. This happens about 80% of the way through the game. You're on a ship sailing toward Devil's Reef (or Demon's Reef, or something like that), and you have to look through a cannon's zoom to target 3 enemies on the reef and kill them. The enemies are supposed to be represented by blue lights, but in my game, when I zoomed in, I was like, wait what am I supposed to shoot?! There were no blue lights! So where were the enemies? How can I kill them?
I looked this up online and some people had come up with clever solutions, such as mapping where to aim, where the blue lights should be. You're supposed to memorize the locations. Even then, it takes these experts about 15 minutes to kill the 3 enemies. It would have taken me god knows how long. The cannon zoom view barely moved, and I had to increase the mouse sensitivity to max, but even then, by the time I'd find about where I thought I should target, the enemies would cause another tidal wave, and I'd have to go hide somewhere while it passed.
So, I finished the game watching a walkthrough on YouTube where a guy was going for an "A" ranking by saving less than 5 times and meeting some other insane requirements.
Why is saving less than 5 times insane? Because this game is not easy! I'd read that it was frustratingly difficult, and I assumed that was in the typical survival horror way where ammo and health are scarce. However, neither were scarce, and the game was hard for surprising reasons. First, your character, Jack, dies fairly easily. I suppose it's realistic in that way. Instead of just getting shot and losing health, you lose mobility if you get shot in the leg, aim if in the arm, you get dizzy from head injuries and so on. Further, you can have just scratches (require bandages), deep cuts (require sutures), breaks (require splints) and so on. So the health and healing system was more involved than normal. I actually thought it was pretty cool, but it does make things difficult at times! You can't just pop a medkit. Jack actually pulls out the healing supplies and performs the action on himself, vulnerable the whole time. So it's usually a good idea to hide before healing. Sometimes it was eyeball-rolling because he would get hurt so easily. For example, if you jump off a crate, you might break your leg.
Jack can also go insane, which was an obvious influence on Amnesia. The screen shakes, he sees bugs, hears voices, becomes paranoid, that kind of thing. It was cool. He loses sanity from looking at disturbing things mostly, like corpses, or statues of Cthulhu and whatnot.
There are plenty of little puzzles. Many are annoyingly obscure to solve, and the game definitely had an adventure/puzzle game element where you have to use items on things and it is sometimes something I'd never ever think to do. Opening safes was particularly stupid. I swear the game tells you exactly how to open that first one, then you have to do it a different way. Lots of the puzzles were just trial and error type things. Sometimes I wouldn't know where to go next because what I thought would work would keep getting me killed, but nothing would deter me from thinking it was the right thing. For example, this one time I was trying to escape Innsmouth. I found a way to go with lots of enemies. I kept trying to get past them, shooting my way through. After many deaths, I finally decided the enemies were infinitely spawning (they do that sometimes, very irritating!). If they are infinitely spawning then what am I supposed to do?! I know I have to go that way. I used a walkthrough a good 5 times to figure out what the hell to do next. In this case, I had to go find a key and let a guy out of jail first. He gets a truck and then we DRIVE that way. OH OF COURSE.
Why else was it hard? Hmm..Oh yes, the AI. At times they were your typical omniscient goons, knowing exactly where you are. At other times, they were complete idiots, running around in circles while you stood right in front of them. They'd patrol sometimes. Sometimes they just seemed erratic. Their aim was usually terrible, but sometimes the game would decide that they could blast you from the other side of the room with ease. Yeah, just very unpredictable. I guess that made it important to learn to be stealthy. Once you get guns, especially in the later areas, the combat became easier.
Oh, and Jack is a perma-walker. He never runs. Even when caves are crumbling or buildings are burning, he walks. And if he hurts his legs, he walks.real.slow. That's another weird thing that seems inconsistent with the plot. You think you'd run if you were being chased by fishmen. He's also never out of breath. His speech is always completely level, normal, and he's always got attitude. Even if he's going insane or his friend just got killed or both his legs are broken, he's a sassy 1920s cop. His best line was when some fishmen trapped him in a tunnel, one said "I don't believe you're on the guest list for our little party." Jack replied, "Just check the guest list again. I'm on the section not reserved for ugly freaks." I laughed at that one.
Anyway, cool game, great atmosphere, genuinely creepy. I'm glad I played it, even with all the bugs and the eventual gamestopper.
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