My GameLog
A person who is seriously interested in games, game studies, and game design should play a lot of games.
To the right you will see the latest GameLog (diary)
entries I have recorded for the games I'm currently playing and my thought and feelings on the game, the experience of playing it, and so on.
If you want to see all the games I'm playing, or the ones
I'm no longer playing you can follow the "List of Games I'm Currently Playing" and the "
List of Games I've Finished Playing".
During the summer of 2003 I started a little project to keep track of the videogames I had been playing. I also wanted to keep track of my thoughts as I played them.
Thus, GameLog was born as a blogging tool for gamers. If you are interested you can hop on over and register. I personally enjoy reading about other people's thoughts
on the games they play and the more the merrier! www.gamelog.cl
|
[ Games I'm Currently Playing ] -
[ Games I've Finished Playing ]
|
|
Saturday 3 January, 2026 // Diablo IV (PS4)
|
I spent almost the entirety of Jan 1 playing this game co-op with my son. It's been a long time since I've played a game for that long in a single stretch! It was fun and I've really been enjoying it. That first day we almost finished Act III, which was kind of shocking because, for a hot minute, I thought that was the end of the game...it turns out there are something like 6 acts, and at the moment we've just finished act 5. So, getting there?
We're playing on the hardest difficulty allowed, and it's been surprisingly easy. I'm not sure exactly why except that maybe we're over-levelled? The only reason this may be is because, when we run around the overworld map and we always do "public events" when we see them, and these drop nice loot. On the other hand, we've been playing super fast and wild - just making a beeline for the campaign goal, ignoring all sidequests, monsters on the way, etc. We barrel through everything when on horseback - no looking back. So, from that angle we should be under-levelled. It's not like we never die, it just happens rarely and often surprisingly, and mostly from inattention rather than actual challenge.
I've been playing a sorceror - using only fire-based attacks, but I really like the free re-speccing and want to try something new out. My son's playing a necromancer, and it's only annoying because the screen is full of enemies all the time so it's like walking around with a posse.
|
|
Saturday 3 January, 2026 // Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom (PS4)
|
So, it's time to head over to another kingdom to see if they're interested in joining!
I've gotten to a point where I'm slightly underleveled, but I don't want to grind. And while the combat is more challenging (and thus interesting)...I've realized that I should be doing a bunch of sidequests and such...and, it's ok?
The fast travel system is great, and it's unlocked really early in the game - and I love wandering around the environments - the overworld map just looks pretty and interesting and I get nice warm StudioGhibli+DragonQuest vibes... but I'm also looking at a stack of other unplayed games, and...at 20 hours in I feel like I've given this one a fair shake? (as in, I've gotten my entertainment value's worth for sure). But also, I'm curious about how the story will continue...and also, since the whole kindgom building kicked in, I've enjoyed that too and I wonder if there are some other surprises down the road?
Sigh. I haven't made a decision yet, but we'll see.
Oh, another thing that's kind of interesting - for me at least. There's a million different resources to collect and pick up, and it makes the game feel really rich...but, you don't have to really engage with it deeply (you probably could for some extra benefit) - but I kind of like that you can (automatically, through the kingdom) accrue all these items and then suddenly some are helpful - like when doing the bonus-quests(?) as soon as you pick up the quest. (there's a guy who appears in the cities and has quests - and many of them allow you to recruit people for the kingdom, so that's where it's helpful).
|
|
Tuesday 30 December, 2025 // Chaosbane (PS4)
|
When we first played, we played with the "basic" (not updated/patched) version - because the patch was downloading and we wanted to start playing straight away. That might have been a mistake...
When we booted it up again to continue playing (we really wanted to finish Chapter 4, and felt like we were almost there...) - we got a message that the "God skills" had been reset or something and that we should re-spec them. Not a problem because we hadn't unlocked any yet (there's three tiers of skills you can unlock, with the God skills very exciting-at least in name!)...
...but my son's character was Level 1 (instead of 18 or so). Well, that sucked! We played a bit with him running away in the background while I tanked and he quickly hit level 2. As an experiment we then closed the game, and booted it up again to see if the character levelling disappeared again. It did not, so we assume the patching process screwed that up.
So, what to do?
We did finish the chapter - and it was a bit more fun to be fair. Well, for me at least! This is because the game was a bit on the easy-side, and now it was more challenging since it was scaled for two characters (I think), but only one was viable. The final boss fight was particularly exciting as I had to dance around, carefully fire of shots, and be very careful about crowd control - using the potion carefully, since the cooldown was also something I had to watch out for.
I had thought about playing solo a bit on his account to level up the character a bit - but really, I want to know if he wants to play more or if we should try another co-op game.
|
|
Monday 29 December, 2025 // Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom (PS4)
|
Color me surprised!
I probably would have known this had I played the game soon after it came out (which I could not because I bought it a lot later when it was really cheap). But, this game has really surprised me by adding two things unexpectedly to (what I thought was going to be) the "usual" JRPG format...
a. There's sort-of-RTS-battle system! You control 2 (at first, but then you get more people to join, but it's capped at 4) "squads" of soldiers in a battle - there are different types of squads (there's a rock-paper-scissors thing that's color coded red/green/blue) with the yellow squads ranged units. It's weird because your character - young Kind Evan - stands in the middle (chibi!) with the 2 (then 4) squads arranged around him. It's sort of like he stands in the center of a compass, and the squads (I forget how many soldiers they have) are clumped in a circle on the W and E compass sports (and later all 4 cardinal directions, N/S/W/E). Everyone moves as a single unit but you can rotate the squads clock- and counter-clockwise, again, Evan always in the center and acting as the axis of rotation. So, when you move forward you can rotate the squads so, say, the red one is in front and will thus run into the opponent of the (worse-of) color first. And then fighting happens and the units that are killed fly off and disappear. You really have to pay attention to the color matching, squads gain experience and level up (different battles are tougher enemies), and terrain also plays a role. Additionally you have a set number of points that you can spend during battle to do special attacks/effects or re-supply your squads. Timing also matters, you rarely want to rush forward to attack, and I've found that probing and retreating (goading the enemy into rushing forward) can be effective. It's a fun system, and the battles aren't easy! (you often face waves of enemies over the battlefield space - so, enemy has more than 4 squads and they all move separately from each other).
b. Base building!
King Evan decides to start a new kingdom...and so you do (like there was a large swatch of empty unclaimed land? Sure, let's go with it)... At this point it's just a city (well, village) - so more like a City-State than a kingdom? (in size). You build buildings, assign people to work in them, do research to improve your stuff - like better spells - and more. You then have to do sidequests to find people to recruit to your kingdom! (so you can put them to work in the right places). I'm currently stuck unable to level up my Kingdom to level two because I don't have enough citizens (you need 25 I think)... It's also a neat little system, and it's kind of fun to have to wander around meeting NPCs and talking to the ones who are recruitable (indicated by a different color in the map).
|
|
