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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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GameLog hopes to be a site where gamers such as yourself keep track of the games that
they are currently playing. A GameLog is basically a record of a game you started playing. If it's open,
you still consider yourself to be playing the game. If it's closed, you finished playing the game. (it doesn't matter
if you got bored, frustrated,etc.) You can also attach short comments to each of your games or even maintain a diary (with more detailed entries)
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2157 registered gamers and 3103 games. 7605 GameLogs with 13093 journal entries. 5072 games are currently being played.
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Heavy Rain (PS3) by bt455 |
| This game is unique and excellent! Recommend everyone has a PS3 to play it |
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most recent entry: Thursday 25 April, 2013
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Heavy Rain is an interactive drama action-adventure video game that was developed exclusively for the PlayStation 3 by Quantic Dream. I have finished the game twice, the first time was one year ago and I just finished the game again 2 weeks ago. This game has brought me an unique experience in the gameplay and a very strong impression on the story.
-Story and Characters-
In this game, you will have 4 playable characters and the game is divided in to a number of scenes, each scene you can only play one of them and learn the story via their actions. This is like a Point-of-view type of novel (A Song of Fire and Ice is a great example of this). You will start by playing Ethan Mars, an architect who has a happy family with his wife and two sons. Later, his son Jason dies in a accident which is kind of his fault, and he blames himself so much after that. Everything falls apart after that. After that, you will learn a story about a serial killer, which is called The Origami Killer, who takes his second son Shaun and test Ethan to make him sacrifice in order to get his son back. Other characters are Norman Jayden, a detective FBI who tries to catch the Origami Killer with the police force, Madison Paige, a pretty journalist who meets and becomes friend of Ethan, then later help him find the killer and his son. The last character is Scott Shelby, a former police officer and currently working as private detective, also works on the case of the killer. All of them have their all troubles, they have different stories, motives and methods to work on this case, and their perspective help you understand the story in different way. The story of the game is intense, depressed at times but very intriguing, once the you get a better understanding about the game you will not want to stop playing it to know what happen next.
-Gameplay-
This game has very special gameplay, but it does not mean that is greater than other games. Half of the time the player has to move the character around and make them interact with other people or objects by pushing series of button of shaking the controller vertically or horizontally. Also, they can pull up "thoughts" to show clues about what they are supposed to do. Although it is quite boring and frustrated sometimes because there are not much you can do, sometimes you can still feel happy after finding an important clue about the game, which will greatly change the outcome. The other half of the time is quick time event. It is quite simple, you just have to push the required buttons showing up on the screen in a limited time, or your character will fail at that event. This is kind of easy in my opinion, and in some events, when you screw up most of the quick time events, the outcome does not actually change. It only matters in the later of the game.
The game has 3 difficulties: Easy, Normal and Hard.There are not much difference between the three level, and even the Hard difficulty is not challenging at all, so if you are a hardcore gamer who just want a tough game, you will not find it in this game.
-Design-
The graphics in this game is great. The characters are well design, and they are model after certain people in real life. The voice acting, the animation is also developed very careful, however sometimes it seems a little bit chunky and awkward (characters walk with their head straight forward most of the time). The environmental design is not just good, they are excellent, when the environmental atmosphere serves the purpose of the game very well. There are rains, lots and lots of rain, which is very depressing, and of course the story is also very depressing too. The way the Origami Killer kills his victim is by putting them in a sewer and wait for them to drown when it rains too much, so the environmental atmosphere is not just to make players feel sad, it serves the killing method as well. The sound effect and the background music of this game are also spectacular, they fit the scene perfectly. The game takes place in a real world with normal people so it is very realistic, there are no abstract levels of this game.
-Ending-
This game has so many different endings, and what makes it even more special is there are no "game over" screen. Even when player has screwed up and could not find the killer, there is still an ending. For the playable characters, they can die in the middle of the game as well, and the story still continues. When a character dies, the follow chapters in which the player can control him/her is skipped, so the player cannot learn further clues from his/her perspective. However, at a point you will still know who is the killer, only the other characters in the game might not know, and the killer might escape when the game ends. This is an unique feature of the game, and no matter what ending you get, it all makes sense.
-Replayability-
Although the game has numerous of endings, it is a very linear game and the killer is revealed the same way every time so you might not want to play it more than once. Just be happy with whatever the ending you have.
-Gamelog-
It took me about 8 hours to finish one play-through. The epilogue of this game seems a bit too long, although it is necessary as it builds up the later part of the story. After about two hours of epilogue and getting to know all the character background, the main story of finding the Origami Killer began. Every chapter is important in the game, they are not made just to make the game long enough, they are there to provide you clues about the origami killer. However, I am not a big fan of the control of this game. I started playing in hard difficulty, and I felt very frustrated after shaking my controller so many times, so I switched back to easy. The point is the hard difficulty is not hard, it has more complicated series of button but it is not more challenging, I just did not want to destroy my controller. I think it would be better if I played with PlayStation Move.
Without spoiling major things, let's just say I screwed up 2 parts when playing Ethan Mars, not because I failed at something, just because I decided not to choose to listen to the killer's instruction (I felt very sorry for Ethan so I did not want to do it to him). The result is I ended up having to guess where is his son with 3 over 5 clues he is supposed to get. Turned out later when I played Madison Paige I found who is the killer. I was very surprised and excited when I made it. Later I was able to save Ethan's son and catch the Killer, so I was very happy about the game. In the second play-through I only play to get to know better about the game and test several different things to see if it may affect the outcome. Turns out there are not many things that affect the consequences, even when I fail intentionally on some quick time event scenes. Only in the later part of the game, you will receive real different consequences if you fail at something.
-Verdict-
This is a very well made game with an intense story and detailed design. I cannot express my feeling when I first finish the game. For what I feel that is not good enough, it is definitely the gameplay and the control. Although the developer tried the best they could to deliver unique gameplay and experience, I think it would be better if the gameplay was various. For example, there was a shooting scene but all you do is still pushing buttons in the quick time event, that just feels disappointed in my opinion. However, If you are the type of player who likes to appreciate many aspects of a game, not just gameplay, I highly recommend this game. It is like reading a book or watching a movie where it is up to you to decide what the ending is going to be.
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