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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,
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)
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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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World of Goo (PC) by dkirschner |
| Neat little puzzler. The goo is cute. ----------- Fun game, recommend! |
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most recent entry: Wednesday 2 May, 2012
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Finished World of Goo just now. This game has some serious charm. I really didn't know what to expect when I began, just that I've been hearing about it for a few years now and it was some sort of cute puzzle game where you build structures out of goo balls. Didn't know how it worked or anything. Anyway, I very much enjoyed it.
There are a bunch of different species of goo balls that you get throughout that have different properties. Like some you can light on fire and explode, others you can place in a structure and move them later, others stick to surfaces...one thing I liked is that the game doesn't hold your hand in explaining what all the goo balls do. Any instructions the game gives are these somewhat random and silly messages from 'the sign painter.' Sometimes they have to do with what you need to do in a level, and other times not. So you more or less figure out how each type of goo ball works, you pretty much explore the levels on your own by building to reveal more of the map on the larger levels, and you do a good deal of trial and error. In this sense then there were a lot of 'a-ha!' moments, like when I figured out what the pink balloon goo balls did, or when I figured out in the last level just now that I needed to build up, not out, and then cause the rickety upwards tower to fall just right with a balloon attached. The game makes you feel pretty clever at times.
It was never too too hard, a good difficulty, except there was ONE level that I insist was a cheap trick. I remember vividly trying to move this big vertical bar out of the way of a big bomb so that the bomb would roll down and explode what I needed it to. I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to move the bar. Finally I googled it and the solution I never would have figured out. You had to toss a goo ball OFF THE SCREEN over the top of the bar to the other side where the bomb was, then make the goo ball slam against the bar from that side to knock it down. There wasn't any indication that (a) tossing goo balls offscreen was any kind of valid strategy; (b) using a goo ball to hit the bar was any kind of valid strategy; (c) any reason to believe that that strategy was possible, especially given the fact that it was totally a precision thing where even if you tried to toss a goo ball off screen, you have no idea how high the bar goes off the screen, and 90% of the goo balls you toss up don't come down where you need them, so it would seem like it wasn't working anyway. /rant I hated that level. Oh, and you NEVER have to toss anything off screen or hit anything with a goo ball in any level ever before or after that one.
So as you meet your goal for each level, which is always moving x number of goo balls to the pipe at the end, any excess goo balls you save go to this sandbox level where you just try to build as tall a goo tower as you can. It's neat because it keeps an up-to-date world ranking of everyone who has the game and how tall their towers are. And it shows other players' towers' heights as little clouds with their name and the flag of the country they're from. So I had messed around with it earlier in the game and continued my tower today when I was stuck in the story. As you build, you always see other players' clouds above your tower so it kind of gives you an aim to reach for. At the bottom, you are in over 5,000,000th place for tallest tower. I got mine up to like 20 meters and went all the way up to like 30,000. After I beat the game, I went back to the tower and got it up over 30 meters and up to 1,000-something place. Pretty cool how it updates it like that! Then I got too gung-ho and started just building straight up and my tower crumbled :-( I'll probably reset it and see how high I can go at some point! I wonder if I can get below 1,000 or 500 even. I figure since I got somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 on my first try, I can dip into the triple digits. But when the tower fell, my ranking went back down to 5 million, so it's like who knows how many people have gotten it as high as mine and their towers just fell down. It's like half of those 5 million people could have been trying to get higher than just one more person, but toppled their tower in the process! Anyway, fun way to do leaderboards.
Totally recommend this one. I think the game is also on iPad and some other devices besides PC and Wii too. Check it out!
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