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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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Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (PC) by dkirschner |
| Heroes of Might & Magic crossed with Gwent. Badass. --------- Certainly fun, but starts to drag, is really long, too big maps, too easy. |
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most recent entry: Thursday 20 July, 2023
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This is a CCG + Heroes of Might & Magic style Witcher game. One draw of Thronebreaker is that you can acquire cards to use in Gwent. It was well reviewed on its own though, so it was a no-brainer to play (and I paused Gwent until I finished!). Thronebreaker is extremely engaging, though it does peter off after the halfway mark as the game begins to drag for its length. The maps may be a bit bland, but the characters and especially the cards are well drawn and animated. I always like looking at and reading the Gwent cards. The writing is excellent. Gwent itself is fun, but dulled down for this single-player experience, though the addition of puzzles added some interesting situations. You play as Meve, a backstabbed and deposed queen, who travels far and wide, building an army, to expel a conquering army from her land, punish the traitors, and take back the throne.
In the beginning, Thronebreaker seemed to provide some challenge, but unfortunately once you get some specific cards, learn the enemy AI, and develop some fairly basic strategies, it is really easy, even on the hard difficulty (and then you fight the final boss, geez. It took me about 10 tries, some strategizing about my deck, and a dose of luck to win. There should have been more of this difficulty!). This could also be because I’ve played a fair amount of Gwent and other CCGs, but it’s really not that complex here, being distilled from the full Gwent game.
I found a lot of these “insta-win” strategies across my playthrough and rarely had to vary them; they applied to almost all situations. For example, the card Reyna has an “order” ability (which means you can perform an action with the card once it’s played) that lets you choose a card to play from your deck. I had another card with an order ability to give two charges to another card’s order ability. So, of course I always chose that card, then just gave the two charges to Reyna, who could then choose two more cards from the deck. I had yet a third card that gave one charge to any card that had exhausted its order cards. So I always picked that one last and Reyna got another charge, and so did that card that gives cards other charges (so I could give Reyna yet another charge). All in all, by playing Reyna, I started a combo that resulted in me putting like 6 hand-picked cards on the board, which is absurd. No enemy ever was able to match that. That’s part of the problem with the difficulty. The enemy can’t match you. You pull off these crazy combos (that are not hard to set up) and the enemy can do nothing. But, in the story, Reyna massacred some dwarven prisoners because she is racist and I kicked her out of my party, so I lost her card. This happened a few other times too. I thought the game would get a bit more challenging after these characters left and I lost their cards, but not really. There are numerous other insta-win strategies to find.
For example, my last one (near the end of the game, not the final boss) was to play literally the most basic card in the game. It’s a farmer with 10 power who gains +7 power when Meve uses her leader ability (which you can get down to every 2 or 3 turns). Then, on the second turn I play an artifact that lets me play all copies of any card I have on the board. So I play four more copies of the farmer. Then I use Meve’s leader ability. That makes 17x5 = 85 points on turn two. And the artifact is a golden card, and the first time I play a golden card, there’s a cool dog card that automatically plays. So really like 92 points after turn 2. The enemy has no hope of keeping up after that. Another insta-win strategy is to set both enemy rows on fire (I have two cards that set a row on fire) and bounce enemies back and forth between rows (I have five cards and a leader ability that move three cards at a time to a different row and damage them). I mean, these strategies just decimate the AI. The AI, by the way, frustratingly refuses to give up or pass when it’s clearly losing, and forces you to play rounds far longer than is necessary. I’ll be up 200-20 and the enemy AI is still considering its next move. Annoying. A variety of changes could make Thronebreaker meaningfully shorter, and this is one of them. The other main one is smaller maps. They’re unnecessarily large.
So about halfway through the game, I realized it wasn’t going to get any harder. It was a cakewalk. And you basically do the same thing across five giant maps (and yet another small map after you technically beat the game. It keeps fucking going!), traversing the land, clicking on resources, clicking on encounters, making some story decisions, and stomping the enemy in battles. Luckily, as per CD Projekt Red and The Witcher games, the story is thrilling and characters are dark and complex. Every little side branch, every character, every engagement, it’s all so well written, often dreary with unexpected twists, that it’s what has kept me going. Battles are still fun, of course, but knowing I’m going to win makes them feel like time-wasters. One very cool addition though is the puzzle battles. These give you specific cards, specific rules, and a specific objective, and you usually have to figure out a specific order in which to perform actions to meet the objective. Some of these have been quite tricky! Puzzle battles are where the game’s challenge lies, instead of the regular battles (which are also usually arbitrarily shortened to one round, which at first I didn’t like, but now I like because they’re too easy and I want them to go faster). One puzzle battle took the form of a game of memory. Another riffed on Hearthstone, and was hilarious. Another challenged you to get that cute dog I mentioned through a dungeon, eating all the food along the way. Each one is unique.
Finally, you’re collecting all those resources on the map for a reason. You can upgrade your camp, which is interesting enough, but like the realization that the game is easy, you’ll realize you don’t need to think about upgrades either. You’ll have enough resources to upgrade everything and create every card. There aren’t tough gameplay choices to make here.
I’m looking forward to seeing what all I unlocked in Gwent because it turns out I just about 100%ed Thronebreaker! Just. About. I missed a weapon somewhere and got 38/39 achievements. I 97%ed it. Damn mystery weapon!
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