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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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    God of war 3 (PS3)    by   dkirschner

    Freaking amazing gameplay. I love the fighting and the puzzles. The first battle sets the bar for the rest of the game ----------------- Freaking amazing everything. Play this now.
    most recent entry:   Monday 24 March, 2014
    God of War 3 is epic. It approaches perfection as an action game. I've played all the main trilogy and this one is by far the most memorable. Kratos is still a badass, showcased perhaps more than ever here. There is a part where Kratos is trying to rescue someone, and on the way, you find one of Poseidon's (topless) mistresses. You shove her through the level and then chain her to a wheel that opens a gate so that you can go through. She's screaming the whole time, and halfway to the gate you hear a really loud scream and the gate lowers halfway. I went back to see what happened, and there was just a bloody mess on the ground. I was like "whoa." Kratos isn't as...aimlessly (?)...pissed off anymore. It's all directed at Zeus, and his goals are always crystal clear. As old gods, demigods and titans enter and exit the story, I realized that it has been long intervals between playing these games, as I frequently didn't remember what transpired between Kratos and [character], why Kratos got along with Pandora, why his relationship with Athena was ambivalent, why he hated so-and-so. I wish there'd been an in-game compendium describing old relationships and story events.

    The main reason GoW 3 feels different than the other two are its coherent world and its sense of scale. The other games exist on massive scales too, but GoW 3 makes them look like Kratos on Cronos (ha-ha, bad God of War jokes..). You keep revisiting old areas through new entrances, modifying the old areas in some way, and finding new secrets and new paths. For example, at some point Kratos gets this super strong melee weapon that can destroy onyx. When I figured that out, I thought, "Hey, there was this onyx stuff blocking my way somewhere else." Sure enough, you'll end up going back, and it is very satisfying to see areas becoming discovered and modified throughout the game. All these areas are also linked together. You don't just magically transport anywhere. You actually climb a giant chain to get from Hades to the Judges to Olympus. You actually ride drafts of air with your Icarus wings. Each "hub" room actually connects to many places you go, and one by one, you're able to reach the different doors and portals that get you to new places.

    The size of things in the world blew my mind. This is imprinted on you the moment the game begins, where the first section takes place ON THE BACK OF A TITAN CLIMBING MOUNT OLYMPUS. Yes, you run around on Gaia as she and other titans attempt to reach the summit to destroy Zeus. You fight a giant battle against Poseidon all the while, scampering around Gaia, going inside Gaia's wounds, all the while Gaia is moving, your freaking ground is shifting, talking to you. It was incredible. There's another amazing titan battle when you get to the Pits of Tartarus where you are actually trying to kill a titan. I remember in God of War 2, there was a part on a titan, but it was NOT like this. This is something I've never seen in a game before. The epic sense of scale is also apparent outside these combat situations. Climbing the chains that bind Olympus and Hades, for example, the camera zooms out in parts, showing tiny, tiny Kratos. The sequences in and around the Labyrinth have Kratos platforming and fighting on just massive box structures that move in an enormous cavernous room. For me, the scale has a humbling affect on how I perceive Kratos. In this game, he is still an angry badass, but there's some hesitation there, part of which is because I realize (and he must) how small he really is. I think this shows in his interactions with Pandora as well, and certainly plays out in the end.

    God of War 3 didn't feel as repetitive or samey as the others for reasons I've stated, and also because there is less combat, which is a good thing. God of War 3 doesn't seem to throw as many endless waves of enemies at you. The ratio of platforming to major encounters to moving the narrative to regular fighting is more even.

    The combat didn't feel as difficult this time around. Even the final battles I only died from screwing up quicktime events. I'll say that the hardest part of God of War 3 were the quicktime events, especially rotating the left stick. Platforming also caused a handful of deaths, just because I wouldn't know what was coming and would have to try a few times to learn the sequence. But combat itself, not as difficult as usual. Twice as brutal though! Kratos rips out eyes, pops off heads, disembowels, slices off tails and legs and arms, bashes in faces, and performs all manner of grizzly finishers. Loved it.

    But Kratos isn't just a fighter. He's a lover too! There's another sex scene in this game. I thought the one in GoW 1 was funny, and apparently the designers did too, because this one is written to be funny. Instead of you seeing the action happening or looking at a bedside table, you see two other girls rubbing on each other watching. The first time you go through the scene, they say such things as "Oh my! This is mature content, for adults only!" "You should definitely not let your children watch this!" I loved how they made fun of the controversy like this. If you do the scene again, they comment on it more, like "Oh wow, if it looks that good from here, just imagine...!" and "[gasp] He's going to...! Oh my!" It cracked me up. Maybe next time they'll push the envelope and have two naked male commentators.

    Finally, there are substantial extras on the disc. I watched about an hour-long documentary on the making of the game that spanned 2-3 years of development, showed the team preparing for their first media event, for E3, for alpha and beta and release. It was exceptionally cool to see. When you beat the game, you unlock about 20 more shorter videos showcasing every aspect of development, from animation to streamlining code to user experience to quality assurance. BADASS. I wish more games included things like this.

    Phenomenal game, can't say it enough. 1 and 2 were great, but this blows them out of the water.

    [read this GameLog]

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