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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 wasnt quite sure what to expect. It looks like a casual city-builder and mobile game. Its definitely casual and definitely a builder of sorts, but its 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 doesnt net you points. You need points in order to get more tiles. If you run out of tiles, its 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 youre not simply matching sides, but youre 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 dont match like tiles early on, youll 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 youve created. Another thing I realized is that you cant branch out too much. Youve got to remain clustered. If you branch out too much, then each tile you place cant generate many points. Its 10 points per matched side, so if youre 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 youre getting 20 or 30 points per tile, and generating more tiles. Its an interesting balancing act.

    There is no story; its a sandbox. There is infinite replayability to chase high scores and achievements. Id be interested in giving it another shot and doing better, but I think I did really well for my first try. Maybe Ill keep it on hand for a relaxing puzzle game. But Ive got other stuff to get to!

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    Trials of Fire (PC)    by   dkirschner       (Mar 24th, 2024 at 16:38:43)

    I shouldnt 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. Theres nothing wrong with Trials of Fire; it just doesnt 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 cant help but compare the two. The main difference, of course, is that Wildermyth has no cards; its a tactics RPG with procedural storytelling and character development that was really, really cool. Trials of Fire doesnt have anything that is really, really cool. Trials of Fire has:

    - An overworld that manages to be duller than Wildermyths. 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 Wildermyths. 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, its 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 cant 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 Wildermyths (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 cant 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, its 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 theres nothing like that here. Given that the storyline for the quest campaign I did was so generic, Im 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 its just not that compelling! Again though, nothing is bad about the game, but man, I guess its 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 studios former game. I see the DNA in the aesthetics. Its 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. Youre floating through grasslands, intrigued by the beauty of the surroundings and the fact that youre bringing life and color. At the end of one early level, you enliven a big old tree, which grows and blooms. Its 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. Its 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 youre 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 Id miss flowers I thought I touched, or get shocked when I thought Id 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 havent played anything quite like it, but the experience itself wasnt as captivating as Journeys was.

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    1 : dkirschner's Dorfromantik (PC)
    2 : jp's Galactic Quest + Atlantic Quest (DS)
    3 : dkirschner's Trials of Fire (PC)
    4 : dkirschner's Wandersong (PC)
    5 : dkirschner's Rez Infinite (PS4)
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    1 : dkirschner at 2022-10-12 08:51:09
    2 : root beer float at 2021-11-21 13:15:48
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    4 : jp at 2021-04-08 11:25:29
    5 : Oliverqinhao at 2020-01-23 05:11:59
    6 : dkirschner at 2019-10-15 06:47:26
    7 : jp at 2019-04-02 18:53:34
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    Gears of War (360)    by   gmathis

    No comment, yet.
    most recent entry:   Tuesday 15 January, 2008
    Entry#2 (sorry It’s a bit late I misunderstood the assignment)

    GAMEPLAY:
    After playing a substantial amount of Gears of War on co-op mode with my friend, we decided to do play against each other in a death match. We both have a good understanding of the controls and are fairly competent using our surroundings. After playing for about 2 hours against each other on almost every level available to us, Gears of War makes for very intense and exciting player versus player.

    I play many first person shooters almost all of which there is excessive trash talk. Surprisingly, there was not as much trash talk while playing Gears of War. The game required too much concentration and thinking for us to be talking down to each other. The only trash talk was when one of our characters was killed, after which you are able to curb stomp your opponent, most vulgar remakes came after this. It cannot be sure whether this game has less trash talk than others because I have yet to play it online where game play may be different.

    Unlike playing under the ideal conditions of during coop mode, my friend and had some problems facing off against each other. The main problem was that we had only one TV and Xbox 360 so we had to play on the same screen. Once we were familiar with the map the outcome of the game was decided by who was the best “screen looker.” This problem could easily be fixed, but it did dampen our fun. I’m looking forward to playing this game online where strategy and not screen looking are the most important factors. However, on levels that we had never played, going head to head was much more exciting than even Halo 3. Unlike Halo, you really feel attached to your character and dying makes you feel sick to your stomach. Gears of War is a great game and I’m so glad I rented it


    DESIGN:
    I feel Gears of War brings many new design elements to the shooter series, turning away from conventional “shoot’em up” genre. This game requires you to have cover, unlike most shooters were its helpful but not necessary. Other new design features I really enjoyed about this game were the ability to “blind fire”, shooting at the enemy without losing your cover. This really made the game better because it is a much more realistic approach to warfare unlike many shooters were your character transforms into a Rambo and rushes 5 opponents without even thinking about cover.

    My one complaint about Gears of War is in its level design. Understandably, many of the levels are dark to set the tone of the game. However, it seemed at some points that I was actually squinting just to find my way around. This made the game very draining and took a toll eyes physically. I feel the game could have used some work when it came to the lighting and some parts of the level design were confusing. Even though this game got my heart pounding, I still have never wanted a flashlight more in my entire life.

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