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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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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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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,
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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 3105 games. 7607 GameLogs with 13096 journal entries. 5074 games are currently being played.
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E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (2600) by belgiancerealbedandbreakfast |
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most recent entry: Monday 21 March, 2016
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E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for Atari 2600
For this game log, I chose the game E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. I played the game on a virtual Atari 2600 at the website virtualatari.org. E.T. is a mystery game rooted in a deeply cryptic story. The player must solve the mystery of how to play the game and find a way to comprehend just what is going on.
On my fist session I was immediately thrown into the middle of what may have been a field. Presumably I was playing as E.T. There was number at the bottom of the screen counting down from 9999 whenever I moved (presumably a timer for your life). When I pressed the button (space on keyboard), the counter would seem to go down even more quickly, and it would seem I was doing some ability though I could not tell what at first. At the top of the screen were these symbols that appeared to have some directional component to them. Often they would be arrows in some direction though sometimes it would be a thing such as a roman numeral 3. The arrows would appear to change at odd points when I walked around a scene.
I was able to walk around a scene and transition to some other location by reaching the edge of a scene. It did not always make sense how I transitioned to the next scene in terms of global space. Some times it would seem I would immediately go in circles while other times I would keep traveling to somewhere different. Other times it would appear that I ended up in the middle of the starting scene.
There were also the pits that I could fall into in some scenes. Most of the pits were empty though I did find one with a flower that increased my life timer thing. In some of them I would find this strange object that would show a c thing on the top of the screen. To leave the pit, I would have to use the button ability which makes E.T.'s neck grow. Once clicking this I was able to levitate upwards out of the pit. Leaving a pit was difficult as you would often fall right back into it after returning to the main scene.
Many scenes would have an additional dark pixel next to the pits. I originally thought these pixels were just part of the sprite for the pits but later learn that I could pick them up. Picking up these pixels started an additional counter next to the timer thing. This number appeared to just keep track of how many I picked up.
There were also these people that would chase you in some scenes. At least one person looked like a detective and another looked like a scientist or doctor. When they grabbed E.T., you would be dragged back to this building thing in the blue scene. They may have have taken some of the things I picked up though it was not really clear what was going on. Using the button ability in these scenes would make E.T. move faster.
E.T. would appear to die once the life counter thing reached zero. A kid would then appear and ressurect E.T. with 1500 on the life counter thing. After a couple times dying, I got a gameover screen. I decided to end the session there.
I decided to read up a little bit about the game before starting the second session. I learned that you are suppose to pick up three pieces of a telephone, call home, and then escape to the departing ship. Apparently those strange objects I picked up once or twice in the pits are suppose to be parts of the telephone. The main goal is apparently to keep search all the pits for those parts. All those black pixels that I could pick up were suppose to be Reese's Pieces. They are suppose to restore energy and when nine are collected I should be able to get a telephone part. The arrow things on the top of the screen I believe were meant to represent a location on a cube map.
With this amount of new understanding of the game I thought I could succeed in it. I was wrong. I still had little idea of what was going on. I collected nine of the Reese's Pieces, but I was still unsure of what then to do to get a telephone part that way. I believe I found two separate parts of the phone in different pits. Though it would appear that I would lose those parts at odd times. When I was playing it did not seem consistent in that being grabbed by a person would cause you to lose a part. I could have continued to experiment more with what was going on and read up things. However, after a couple more frustrating experiences I accidentally ended the game on the virtual Atari. I figured that in order to capture the true spirit of the game I would need to end the session on a low note such as this.
On the surface E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a terrible game. There must exist some compromise that allowed for such a thing to exist. I am probably not enlightened enough to comprehend its deep underlying themes that may have allowed for this. Perhaps it was an experiment for Spielberg to analyze the inner workings of the human soul. Maybe the discoveries he found were too haunting and pushed him back to lighter works such as Schindler's List. Perhaps it was due to corporations being out of touch with their employees and the market and then demanding unrealistic deadlines. Perhaps though, this work of art was never meant to have any meaning in its cause of existence.
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