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
So after falling back in to Pokemon GO for a year (after 4 years of having quit) I decided to (after hitting level 42 in GO) bail and replace with another game. I had heard good things about the mobile version of the Pokemon TCG so I thought I'd give it a try.
People say the game is quite generous (2 free packs a day!), and it is...but the game seems to already have so many cards that it feels like a real uphill battle to get to a collection that lets you put together a semi-decent competitive deck. Or maybe I'm just bad at deckbuilding (or the auto-deck generator is bad, lol, I've been using it as the basis of my decks - and then tweaking)?
Either way it's been fun so far to explore this game - I'm mostly curious about the TCG because it is quite successful commercially, has an active competitive scene - and I wonder how much depth there is to it? (I think less than Magic, but there has to be at least enough to support a healthy competitive scene?)
So far I'm not really all that impressed - I was playing ranked and when I played against people that had way bigger collections (and badges demonstrating prior experience in the competitive seasons) I'd get trounced by decks with cards I had no chance of getting (quickly/easily)/ I'd lose three or four matches in a row and then get matched against a player with a single "regular" sounding username (e.g. "Luke", "Cynthia") - and then I'd easily win. I'm pretty sure I'm getting matched against bots - which is a huge disappointment because from what I can see there's no disclaimer/information about that happening! To be clear this is on the next-to-bottom rung of the competitive ladder (A1?). The big buckets are Beginner, PokeBall, Great Ball, Ultra Ball and then Master Ball - and within these there are 4 ranks. I was at the bottom of PokeBall..
What's really weird (to me) is that the season ended and the game paused the competitive ranked matches for a few days! (while it "calculated" results) and then told me how I placed...and the competitive mode is still unavailable! I find this really surprising - and I guess this means that the game's primary mode of interaction is just the card collecting?
There's a fun feature where you trade in cards you have dupes of to buy a cosmetic filter that's added to that card (similar to what Marvel Snap has - but here you have to buy the new look). There's also features for showcasing your cards and stuff like that, which really speaks to the collecting and sharing collection part of the game. Interesting!
I think I'll keep playing - but now I'm curious if the TCG game is the same digitally as in person - or if it's been "simplified"...and I am getting better at playing the game as well. ;-)
I was telling a friend the other day that I've been playing this game with my kids at night - all co-op. And it's been fun, but I couldn't remember the name of the game because it was like all generic words like "Dwarf Space Mining" or something like that. I was sure it had dwarves and something mining related in the title. And I was wrong, but the title doesn't really evoke the dwarven parts of the game in the way I imagined. Weird how the game's title got so confused in my head.
It's been fun mostly because we're playing co-op and one of us (not me) knows what we're supposed to be doing. At this point I think we're mostly going through the "tutorial" missions that each introduce a different mission type (get this ore, or get these eggs, or fix this thing, etc.). I wonder how much fun we'll have once we've "unlocked" them all? The game seems a bit grindy - you level up each character class, unlock perks, improve your gear, etc. And you have to do this separately for each class - which feels like it would get boring real fast (for me at least) and also means that I'm less likely to try out the other classes because...I don't want to have to "start over"... So far I've played the driller/digger and the engineer class. The engineer is interesting but strange because you lay these turrets that shoot - which means you're then mostly sticking around the turrets (so no exploring/mining) and the game does involve a lot of moving around - so I find I place turrets and then move them along with me (which works quite well - they just fly over and then you build them again).
Mobility is a bit annoying - one of the dwarves has a grappling hook which is pretty sweet - but the other two have an ability (dig really fast or place outcroppings you can use as platforms) which is a lot slower and (IMO) interesting but also more boring given the general gameplay loop that tends to favor moving around (going deeper) and then moving back out (quickly, before you get left behind).
So, it's fun, I'm enjoying it, but a lot of that fun-load is being borne by the co-op...
One of the benefits of playing old games I've been sitting on for a long time is that I know that I picked up the game for (usually) a good reason like "this game was well received or interesting for some reason" and, for some games, by the time I get around to playing it I don't recall exactly what those reasons were. To be fair I sometimes pick up random games because they're cheap and I haven't heard of them and they might be interesting. Anyways, what this means is that when I get around to playing them there's a bit of a discovery process for me which also includes recalling what it was that motivated me to get the game in the first place.
So, Jedi Fallen order!
I don't remember if this game is supposed to be "good" or what (it's sequel Jedi Survivor I remember as being well-regarded critically), so as I start playing I'm thinking ok - this is like an Uncharted game but it's Star Wars! (the initial scenes on a backwater planet in a giant spaceship junkyard where the work being done is stripping old (oftentimes giant!) spaceships...
There's acrobatics, getting to places by jumping, climbing, swinging, and so on. There's also cut scenes without too much backstory. And it's all action-based..and feeling very much like Uncharted. Cool!
But then, things "go bad" - the game takes place AFAIK between episode III and IV. So, Jedi are getting hunted down and my character has force skills! (which he's been keeping hidden). Oho no! Rapidly the bad guys (Imperial inquisitors!) show up and you have to escape.
And here, mostly, in a high-stakes escape sequence (on a moving train! so, again reminded of Uncharted...but not in a bad way!) you're introduced to the different combat moves, and blocking, deflecting blaster shots (you have a lightsaber it turns out), using a force skill, etc.
Ok, this still feels sort of like Uncharted - no shooting, but still action and set-piece oriented!
Of course this is all the prelude - you escape...and cue more cutscenes and you meet some characters and end up on a planet where you're told to investigate (enter) an ancient Jedi vault or something like this.
Ok, I got this! I start wandering around, meet a little robot guy, and waltz into a cave and this monster (with a large health bar) hits me twice and I'm dead.
Oh. That was not like Uncharted - felt much more like, say, a souls-game. I might need to tune down the difficulty. And, of course, I'm not yet really accustomed to the controls and the moves, etc. (I'm also pretty bad at these games).
Slowly, the game starts to open up, I learn there are skills to unlock, you need to level up, killing monsters helps with this, now I can heal (the little robot is your buddy and carries stimpacks).
It's been an interesting introduction to the game - and it's a bit weird how some stuff opens up out of sequence for my exploring (I killed this monster - there was a chest, but I couldn't open it, I still don't really know why, it wasn't a bug though I was suspicious of that for a while because I did have the game crash on me once)....
Anyways, I've finished my work on the planet (got into the vault) and I'm now on a "follow up on the leads" part of the adventure. Fun so far, but we'll see.
I've been enjoying this one so far (slightly over 17 hours of gameplay).
At this point I think I've unlocked all the characters, I've also gotten to the "true ending" but I have yet to "beat a run" with all of the characters. As a deckbuilding rogue-like, of which there are many at this point, I've been enjoying the combo-firing aspects of this game. This is mostly in comparison to some of the other games - I find it easier/more common for you to create nice combos that fire off in satisfying ways (I still lose a fair amount though).
All of the characters (9 is it?) play very differently from each other - to the point that I sometimes have to figure out how they work through multiple runs. I obviously have my favorites, and I'm not exactly sure that they're all equally balanced (they're probably not), but it's given the game more "legs" for me to be able to keep on playing. In a way, the game is cut from the mold of Slay the Spire - but they added more stuff (characters) and more pressure (time pressure within levels).
Strangely the game's name is not really memorable to me and I keep on forgetting it.
I have been keeping track of this information for the past 21 year(s), 11 month(s) and 30 day(s).
