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Portal Stories: Mel (PC) by dkirschner (Apr 26th, 2024 at 17:11:51) |
I had some Portal 2 mod sitting in my Steam library and then saw some other one released recently that was highly, highly reviewed. I thought, "I wonder what are some other fully self-contained Portal story mods with great reviews," and Portal Stories: Mel jumped out. Downloaded it, played it. It's ridiculously impressive, basically a full prequel to Portal 2. But man, is it challenging! I made it most of the way through without using a walkthrough, but eventually caved in and then relied on it to solve four or five levels. Initially, I had luck putting the game down and coming back to it later, seeing the puzzles fresh, but after a while that quit working.
It's hard in part because it begins where the difficulty in Portal 2 ended. It's a full game, but not in terms of introducing mechanics. That is to say, it doesn't introduce mechanics. It assumes you know everything and are a portal genius. That's fine as a mod. So its puzzles are difficult, and they are really clever. You have to learn new tricks, not used in previous Portal games, that it doesn't teach you. You just have to figure out, for example, that "destroying a cube" is occasionally what you need to do to solve a puzzle. It never would have crossed my mind that I would need to purposefully destroy a cube for any reason, but it pulls that trick a few times. Other times, you need to move a cube from afar using an excursion funnel. In the second level I caved in for the walkthrough, you combine these tricks, using an excursion funnel to destroy a cube, so that you can get a new cube in a different spot.
In the third level I used a walkthrough for, there is actually a decoy button and panel that you don’t need at all. I spent a lot of time messing with that button and panel! That level honestly felt mean! There is also some guesswork involved in some levels in shooting a portal where you can’t see, which was also kind of a mean trick. One trick (that I figured out, go me!) that I saw a lot of people stuck on involved sliding a cube down a slope to break the paths of a series of lasers, which opened up a series of red laser grids so that you could get to the next area. That one took a while because, annoyingly, you have to slide the cube down the slope and get it to land in a portal. You have to open the other portal after you pass the red laser grids and get the cube. But getting the cube to slide into a good spot to be able to pick it up was a pain. All these super hard levels made me feel brilliant when I solved them (typical Portal!), and like an idiot when I saw the solution online ("Ah, of course!" Or actually in this game's case sometimes, "What the hell?!?").
The story and production values are great. You play as another test subject, there is another maintenance core, and there is another AI trying to kill you. It's a direct prequel to Portal 2, which you learn after the credits. Very cool. If you're a Portal fan, it's worth playing, but just know that it'll really test you!
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Wandersong (PC) by dkirschner (Apr 26th, 2024 at 16:46:54) |
This was a freebie from somewhere or another, and it is totally worth playing. I picked it up because it looked like it had an interesting "singing" mechanic. You use the right stick to navigate an action wheel, where each of eight directions is represented by a color and produces a note. Your character is a bard, so you're basically singing with the right stick. It's pretty simple, but it is implemented in a variety of ways throughout the game. For example, you don't select dialogue options like in most games. You use the right stick to choose the option on the action wheel and the bard "sings" the dialogue option, one click on the wheel per syllable. So, "I'm a singing bard" would be like right, right, left, up, down-right. For dialogue, it doesn't matter which notes you sing, just sing the syllables. Other times, you'll have to match colors like in a typical rhythm game, or during some very cool boss fights sing notes according to colors of projectiles and environmental cues. Like I said, it's not terribly difficult, but it is such a different take on how a character interacts with the game world, and it's done in such a playful way, that it's consistently fun. I smiled through most of the game.
The entire game has a playful tone, not just the singing mechanic. The story itself plays with the typical RPG hero narrative. You aren't a hero; you're an overly positive little bard who thinks he can sing a song to save the world. There is a hero with a giant sword who calls lightning from the sky, and constantly foils your adventure, saving the world in the traditional way by killing all the bosses, but she's a jerk. The game is all about "believing in yourself" and "friendship" and "being positive" and etc. In most RPGs, you learn special moves, gain equipment to better kill enemies, get money (the bard never has any money), and so on. What does the bard find hidden throughout his adventures? A man in a mask who teaches him dances. Very silly dances. What purpose do the dances serve? None whatsoever, except to entertain you. You can dance-walk (instead of regular walk) at any time, and it is pretty funny.
The writing is also consistently funny, and there are many characters to meet. The game is broken up into seven acts, some of which are more interesting than others. They generally have a "talk to all the people" phase, then a "complete the area (side)quests" phase, then a "puzzle platform" phase, then an encounter of some sort with a fairy or a boss or the hero or someone. Admittedly, there is a lot of dialogue, and yes, I read all of it because it's good. But the characters are talkative. And admittedly the quests are not always that exciting. And admittedly the puzzle platforming leaves something to be desired in terms of how well the bard controls and in terms of length (they almost always feel too long). But damn if the whole package isn't a 9 out of 10!
It's definitely a little rough around the edges, which only added to its charm for me. The bard sometimes glitched into the terrain, so I'd have to exit and re-enter a screen. The pirate ship occasionally just refused to move in one act. Also, for some reason, when the camera was zoomed out, the dialogue could become unreadable. I assumed this had to do with the fact that the game ran in a low resolution on a TV, but it was the same on my laptop. I've watched videos where it looks fine for other people. I mean, it was like 1% of scenes that were unreadable. Most were fine, and at worst, some scenes were like looking at one of those "did u kno u can raed tihs senentce bceause the frist and lsat ltetrs are the smae??" things, which was...honestly kind of fun, like word puzzles. Obviously not ideal, but it didn't detract from how much I liked the game.
So, a big hit for me that I never would have heard of had it not been offered for free. Definitely recommend for those who like RPGs and quirky indie games.
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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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Call of Duty: World at War (PS3) by dkirschner |
| Shooting at targets...Not impressed so far, but enjoying the WWII era throwback. Tough time telling apart Japanese from Americans. --------------- Nah. PS3 won't read disc anyway. |
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most recent entry: Saturday 5 October, 2013
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Ok, my first two PS3 games ever are failing left and right. Or I'm just making poor choices. I inherited my brother's PS3 recently and have just finished getting missing accessories and buying most every PS3 exclusive I wanted to play and most every game that was supposed to be better on PS3 or that was region locked on my NTSC-J 360. Began with one of my brother's games, one that I would never have bought on my own. I'm not a Call of Duty fan, but if a friend has one I'll play through the campaign just to watch big explosions and see how disjointed the story is.
World at War, in the 2 hours I played it, succeeded in having big explosions and a disjointed story, par for the CoD course. Unfortunately, my PS3 won't read the disc anymore. I read online that this is a not uncommon problem with World at War, which is weird. The disc is cosmetically perfect and the PS3 reads everything else I put in it. People online reported the same phenomenon. But anyway, I can only review based on the first two hours.
I enjoyed the WWII setting. I know there are a zillion WWII games, but I don't play many of them so I don't have era burnout. I play more futuristic sci-fi games and was glad for the return of fighting with MACHINES instead of cyber-weapons. The audio was fantastic, the sounds of the guns rang in my ears. It sounded (to the best of my knowledge) really like firing old guns from that era. As you would expect, the game looked gorgeous too.
The difference between this WWII game and most others is that this was set in the Pacific theatre. There is no D-Day level. A couple early levels had me going through an island jungle getting ambushed by tricksy Japanese soldiers who like to yell "BANZAIIII" and charge. They also liked to pretend to be dead, then get up and yell banzai, hide in the bushes and emerge yelling banzai, kill your allies and hide under them and get up and yell banzai, hide in the bed of a truck or near a crashed airplane and come out and yell banzai, hide in trees and yell banzai...It was startling at first and I would tense up and bayonet them like my life depended on it! But it quickly became an old trick.
Therein lies the problem with World at War, and is one reason why I don't care one way or the other for CoD games. That is, the game boils down to shooting rubber ducks at a carnival. You and your squad roam around shooting anything that moves. Segments are over fast, enemies usually come from one direction, they're easy to spot, easy to kill, and there are hordes. I realize that this is often a staple of the genre in general, but coupled with the lame stories CoD games tend to have, I notice these things more. I am pretty sure that World at War actually did use infinitely spawning enemies that continue until you move forward or reach an objective. NOT A FAN of infinitely spawning enemies because there is no feedback saying "Yes, you are doing this right. Keep doing what you are doing." Infinitely spawning enemies say, "Keep killing them until they stop. Stay right there." Because the assumption is that there AREN'T infinite enemies so the player would notice if they were doing something right. But these would just run along the same trajectory as the previous one I just killed, hide behind the same cover.
The narrative was typical. You play from the jostling perspectives of a handful of people. After two hours I'd been two characters and had jumped in time twice or thrice. I had NO IDEA what was going on outside my immediate objective. No idea how the characters related to one another, why I was in 1941 then 1944, and on and on. Unless I'm in love with the gameplay, it's hard for me to keep going when there's a story I don't care about. Lots of soldiers die and the alive ones scream about it. Lots of people yell at my character and curse and are really macho and war is hell man. Everyone's courageous and a real soldier and this is how it really was, right? I did find some of the squad commentary funny about the Japanese bonzai soldiers. Some character kept saying, after every time you would be ambushed, things like "I can't believe they booby trap our dead soldiers!" or "These Japanese are really low!" or something that conveyed the effect of naive surprise. As the player, I was like "It's war. Get over it." Why comment on that stuff? It's the reality of war that tricks are involved. The enemies (from whichever perspective) are always dubious in character. There's no time to take the moral high ground when you're wandering through the jungle being ambushed. What's weird is that naive character never died.
There you have it. Two hours with CoD: World at War before my PS3 quit reading the disc. I hope it's the disc's fault and that none of my other games suffer a similar fate!
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