 |
|
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.
read all entries for this GameLog 
- add a comment 
|
|
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!
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
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.
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
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.
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
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.
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
|
|
|
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)
for that game. Call it a weblog of game playing activity if you will.
[latest site fixes and updates]
[read more]
|
view feed xml
|
 |
|
2157 registered gamers and 3105 games. 7607 GameLogs with 13096 journal entries. 5074 games are currently being played.
More stats
|
 |
|
Half Life 2: Episode 2 (360) by ETA |
| No comment, yet. |
|
most recent entry: Wednesday 5 March, 2008
|
GAMELOG #5
ENTRY # 2
GAMEPLAY
After roughly an hour and a half more of gameplay, the action has finally started to pick up. I am, more or less getting to shoot things on a regular basis now. However, I still feel like the game is lacking that certain magic that makes a good game great.
But before I get to that, I’d like to to just say that I really hate the sound in the game. In a game they is story driven and about character just as much as it is about shooting, you would think that they would have the option to just turn up the volume of character’s voices without turning up all the sound effects. But for whatever reason this feature is lacking. So I have the option of not hearing anything anyone is saying during a fire fight, turning my TV up and angering my neighbors because the have to heard gun shots blasting, keep the remote close by so I can rapidly turn the TV volume up or down, or turn on subtitles. All those option suck and really take you out of the gaming experiment this game offers. It wouldn’t even be so bad if this little problem only affect narrative comprehension, but more often then not other character give you hints or objectives during battles (stuff like “fix the elevator!” or “enemies coming from this tunnel!”, you know really important stuff you would like to hear about) and it can cause a great deal of frustration (and sometimes death) to miss these audio queues.
And now back to that lacking magic…At this point I honestly feel like playing this game is more of chore than a rewarding experience. I think that it is a combination between the “same-old-same-old” levels, the disconnection from battles when you have AI controlled team mates, and the lack of consistent rewards for playing.
I generally don’t feel exciting or, in same rare instances, interested while exploring new areas because they are all starting to look alike. A dank and dark cave/underground rail rod/subway is about all you get. In fairness I think that I am about to finally get some outdoors action, but I can only comment on what I have played so far. And so far I have become pretty bored with the repetitive nature of the level themes and atmosphere in the game thus far.
The AI controlled team mates offer another layer of interaction and gameplay options, but they also limit and in same cases exclude you in battle. The prime example of this occurs when ever there is an epic battle and you have an AI controlled team mate. They are pretty much invincible and take no damage. They also have what I can only guess is an unlimited supply of ammo. So not only can they pretty much handle the entire epic battle by themselves, but in some cases they box you out from participating at all because they are crack shoots as well. This has actually been an issue with FPS a lot lately (at least for me), where it is easier to just let teammates do the fighting since you probably won’t do as well and it waste your own ammo.
Lastly, and this is probably why it feels like a chore at this point, I feel rather unrewarded for my efforts thus far. I have gotten one little nugget of honest-to-goodness narrative development (within context to the series and not just plot development for this game) and that is pretty much it. No power-ups, no super powerful weapons, no stunning moments of disbelieve or epic battles (that my teammates didn’t steal from me). I don’t even get that much satisfaction from shooting things with heavy weapons (like shoot guns) because most of the enemies react as if I had just hit them with a spit ball until I unload two or more shoots into them. Then they just fall over in a most unsatisfying fashion.
DIESNG:
Half Life 2: Episode 2 is an amazingly designed game on pretty much ever level. However, as I have expressed above, great design doesn’t automatically mean it is a great game.
Despite my issues with the audio design, it is still pretty impressive (it would be almost perfect if I could hear what the hell everyone was saying). I honestly can’t tell if there is much music in the game (I could but I would have to turn it back on and check), if there is it blends in almost seamlessly with the background. In addition every sound effect, whether it be a zombie charging you or the sound of a bug being squished under your feet, is spot on. The sound always sets the perfect mood and is almost as much of a character as any other “actor” in this game.
Repetitive tone aside, the level design is also quite well done. I have never felt completely lost or disoriented while playing the game. Even though there is rarely any clear marker for the direction that you should be going in, you as a gamer always “know” which is the right way. The down side to this is that the level feel very linear, even though they are far less so than other FPS on the market today. They are open and there is a good variety to them, but you cannot help but shake the feeling that you are on a track and that leads to feeling contained and restricted on the part of the player.
The way that the narrative is presented and advanced is also very well done from a design point of view (though you can tell from my previous entry that I am not always a fan of it). Rarely is the story ever advanced with a non-interactive cut-scene. Instead, other characters talk to you and each other to advance the story in real time via pretty scripted events. All of which are usually very well (voice) acted and staged for maximum dramatic effect. This aspect more than any of the other design choices in the game really brings the world they developers have created to life.
Other nice design touches include the way that hints and objectives are given to you. It is always a good design choice to have as little HUD clutter, pop up box hints/objectives, and anything else that might remind you that you are playing a game on a screen as possible. Especially in a game that is striving to be intense and suspenseful such as this one. In the sense it is great that all of this information is delivered to you, by in game characters, in real time…if only I could hear them. Also worth taking note of is the pacing of the game. It is generally pretty spot on which action slowly escalating towards the climax, then slowly settling down again before hitting bottom. There are of course the occasional issues here and there, but they are rare at best.
[read this GameLog]
|
|
|
