jacksgamediary

[jacksgamediary]

Entry #2, July 14th-16th, 2017

Grow Home (Reflections/Ubisoft, 2015, PC version)

So it turns out I liked this game even more than I thought. I went back to it the day after I completed the main game and finished the secondary quest, gathering the different “seeds” hidden throughout the environment and bringing them back to the ship teleporters for “analysis.” It was fun just to take on another challenge and explore the areas of this world that I missed the first time around. As a reward for completing this part, the game gives you a ninja suit for B.U.D. that makes him jump twice as high, which is cool but also kinda unwieldy at times. 

I don’t really have much to say about Grow Home here that I didn’t already cover in my first post, except that I underestimated how fun it was to skydive from the ship to the ground - reminded me of the rail grinding sections of Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on the GameCube, when my brother and I would race to complete courses and try to get to the finish faster by jumping off the rail and falling onto an entirely different section of the rail further on. We usually just missed the rail and died.

Also, this game is really fun to take pictures in.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild + DLC Pack #1 (Nintendo, 2017, Switch)

I went back to Breath of the Wild to finish the last sidequest of the game that interested me - “From the Ground Up,” also known as the Tarrey Town sidequest. It was fun, but I had to use a guide to find the Gerudo woman, and I found the ending to be pretty anticlimactic. I think it would have made a greater impact if I had actually discovered the quest on my own and completed it before going to fight Ganon. Still, the wedding was nice. I just wish that Tarrey Town had more functionality to it than a generic marketplace and goddess statue. Maybe some items or armor only available once you finish the town, or a shrine beneath the town that reveals itself only when you finish the quest? I dunno.

Satisfied with the status of my first Breath of the Wild playthrough, I decided it was time to embark upon Master Mode. It’s shocking how different the game feels when the difficulty is ramped up so high, and when you have to re-explore everything on foot rather than just teleporting everywhere. I’ve only completed one shrine and found two stables outside the Great Plateau so far, and died more times than I can count with both hands, mostly due to underestimating how difficult the enemies are. In the regular game, the enemies you encounter are difficult if you just charge in head-on, but they feel doable, even with the weak, low-durability equipment you have access to early in the game. In Master Mode, though, the enemies are so much stronger, with so much more health - which regenerates over time, by the way, so you have to defeat them quickly - and your early-game equipment has the same durability and strength as it did in the regular-difficulty playthrough. As a result, I keep finding myself going through my entire weapons inventory trying to kill a single moblin. I’ve found that the best strategy so far has been to use stealth, then wail on them as much as possible using perfect dodges and flurry rush. Even that has gotten me killed many times though, so for now I’m just trying to avoid enemies and wait until I get some better armor and weapons from Kakariko or elsewhere.

All in all, I’m excited to return to BotW and hopefully discover some new things I missed the first time around, in addition to approaching boss fights and combat in general in a new way. (Really, I’m just biding my time until Super Mario Odyssey releases in a few months... which, by the way, I think will be the Switch’s first actual big exclusive. Not to say that Splatoon 2 won’t be successful, I just don’t think it has the power of a 3D Mario platformer. Few things do.)

Roberta Williams’ Phantasmagoria (Sierra On-Line, 1995, MS-DOS/Windows)

My friends and I have somewhat of a tradition of getting together to play point-and-click adventure games, especially classic Sierra games like the King’s Quest series. I discovered Phantasmagoria through a Humble Bundle a while back, and as soon as I did, knew it would be a perfect fit for us - a supernatural horror story, complete with 90s fashion, full-motion video segments composited into CGI environments, cheesy dialogue, and over-the-top gore.

We played it over the course of a few nights, enjoying it partly because of how dated and cheesy it was, but also enjoying it earnestly, exploring a gaudy, yet interestingly-designed haunted house and interacting with a few genuinely charming characters. Of particular note were Harriet, the homeless woman and amateur psychic that lives in the barn; her dim-witted yet almost unbelievably strong son, Cyrus (at one point he fells a tree by pushing it over with his bare hands, rather than using his axe); the cheerful gossip/antique store owner, Lou; and the sleazy real estate agent Bob, a caricature of every greasy cigar-smoking con-man ever written, whom you can actually walk in on flirting with a prostitute at one point.

The puzzles were much easier than the typical Sierra game, for the most part, and the protagonist’s animations often had long, nonsensical pauses at the beginning and end of movements. That being said, it’s clear this was a project of passion and of great innovation for the time, and an altogether worthwhile experience, especially if played with friends.

[jacksgamediary]

What I’ve been playing lately

Hey there, internet, especially the three of you reading this. I’ve wanted to start a game diary for a while now, chronicling my experiences through different video games (and who knows, maybe tabletop games and other stuff too) as I play them. I love using Letterboxd to keep track of what movies I watch when, and as far as I have seen, there’s nothing out there as good for video games. So I started this tumblr instead. Because playing games is a series of unique experiences, more so than with passive media like film and TV, I figured it would be a fun and hopefully worthwhile experience to not just keep track of what games I play, but also how I experienced them.

I’m already in the middle of a few games right now, so I thought to start things off I’d write up a short post detailing what I’ve been playing recently and my thoughts on them.

Let’s start with my most recent playthrough:

The Turing Test (Bulkhead Interactive, 2016, PC version)

This is a game I’ve had my eye on for a while, since it encompasses a lot of things I love - science fiction, puzzles, first-person exploration and environmental storytelling - but I didn’t get around to playing it until a kind user over at the /r/GiftOfGames subreddit sent me a Steam key. (Awesome subreddit, go check it out if you have some spare Humble Bundle keys that need a loving home.) 

Overall, I definitely enjoyed the experience - it felt a lot like a cross between Portal and The Talos Principle, with a lot of philosophizing about artificial intelligence and the nature of free will, and the player moving from room to room solving puzzles with laser bridges and balls of electricity and whatnot. The story was pretty much your standard “AI gone rogue, and also it’s in space” plot, albeit with a few clever twists I didn’t see coming. Gameplay was pretty standard first-person puzzle solving a la Portal and the dozens of games it inspired, and while it was fun and challenging, it wasn’t terribly original, and the puzzles started to grate on me after a while. I wanted to get on with the story but had to force myself through the last couple puzzles to make it to the end. 

Ultimately, The Turing Test wasn’t really anything we haven’t seen before, but it was still largely very well executed and enjoyable. If this sounds like your kind of thing, I certainly recommend it. Favorite part: all the extra-challenging optional side puzzles that reward you with more story details.

Grow Home (Reflections/Ubisoft, 2015, PC version)

Grow Home is delightful. It’s a gorgeous game with a clean, low-poly art style and some unique platforming gameplay. You play as a robot named B.U.D., who is the best. He makes silly robot noises.

Your goal is to grow this giant plant from one floating island to the next and climb it until you can reach your spaceship. Gameplay consists entirely of walking, jumping, climbing, and (almost always accidentally) falling. To climb, you push the right stick in whatever direction you want to go and alternate pressing the left and right triggers, which lifts and sets down each hand. It can get tedious after a while, but has the advantage of making you really feel like you’re climbing, since it’s an actual gameplay challenge and not a throwaway “hold forward to climb” mechanic. Plus, there’s nothing more thrilling and satisfying than falling from a vine, reaching terminal velocity, and saving yourself from certain doom at the last second with a well-timed grab of another vine.

All the while, your AI protector M.O.M. is cheering you on with little messages of encouragement, and making comments about the plants and animals you meet along the way. SPEAKING OF WHICH:

He is my friend. My adorable sheepy friend. We will be together forever.

It’s a pretty short game, and the controls can be a little unwieldy at times, but overall I had a great time. Recommended.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Monolith Productions, 2014, PC version)

Pictured above: an orc who was born in the darkness, molded by it, and when Mordor is ashes, you have his permission to die #goodjoke

I got Shadow of Mordor for like $4 during the Steam Summer Sale a few weeks ago, hopeful for a worthwhile experience but not expecting much. For the first couple days though, I was pleasantly surprised, and played it pretty much non-stop (or, whenever I could). I liked the Arkham-style combat (I’ve played all the Arkham games and completed Arkham Knight to 100% three times over), the open-world setting, the option to be stealthy, and some of the abilities you gain over time - especially the teleport-to-an-enemy-a-hundred-feet-away ability. That was cool.

After a while, though, everything started to feel the same. It got repetitive pretty quickly, and while the nemesis system was really cool for a while, there wasn’t enough to differentiate each of the Uruks from each other, so it felt like a gimmick more than a real or personal narrative connection. On top of all that, the world of Shadow of Mordor seemed like a duller downgrade of the world I saw in Peter Jackson’s films and read about in The Hobbit, and the revenge-driven plot seemed really out of place for the LOTR mythos - not that I’m an expert or anything, it just felt tonally wrong. Plus, I really didn’t care about Celebrimbor and whoever the protagonist was. I don’t remember his name, all I remember is that he was Troy Baker. And I knew his wife and son for all of three minutes before they were killed off. Not the strongest introduction.

If you love open-world fantasy action games, or Rocksteady’s Batman games, you’ll probably like Shadow of Mordor. If you’re just a huge fan of LOTR, I’d guess that the plot would probably just make you angry, or at least annoyed. If you like hearing the dulcet tones of Troy Baker talking with a British accent to an elf ghost who sounds kinda like Hugo Weaving, you’re in for a real treat.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - DLC Pack 1 (Nintendo, 2017, Switch)

After hearing all the great things about Master Mode and the Trial of the Sword, I finally caved and bought the Breath of the Wild Expansion Pass. And the minute I entered Hyrule again with something new to do, I had this feeling of comfort and euphoria - like, “ah, it’s good to be home.” To be back in Hyrule with new goals and challenges ahead, it brought Breath of the Wild back to life in a wonderful way.

So far, I haven’t tried Master Mode, but I have collected every DLC item and cleared the Trial of the Sword (after several tries). The third and final set of trials was far more difficult than the first two, and it was only with a lot of patience and careful resource management that I was able to eventually complete it. (Protip: don’t move on to the next level until you’ve found every useful item in the room. And save your Ancient Arrows for the end. Also: when you get to the white-maned Lynel, that’s not the final level. Not at all.)

The Trial of the Sword was almost more of a test of endurance and strategy than a test of skill. It reminded me a lot of The Challenge caves from The Witness last year - which was my favorite part of that game - in that it was a long, arduous process full of trial-and-error and figuring out new strategies, and which ended with a feeling of utter triumph and joyous pride at my accomplishment. (For the record, The Challenge took me a lot longer and I found it much harder. Still can’t listen to “In The Hall Of The Mountain King” without getting a little anxious.) I’m disappointed that none of the DLC outfits are upgradeable - I really wanted to beat Ganon wearing the Switch t-shirt and Tingle pants - but they’re still nice to have.

If you loved Breath of the Wild and wish there was more to do, the DLC pack is worth it. Plus, there’s still the story DLC pack coming later this year, which you also get if you bought this one. Definitely worth the twenty bucks, if you ask me.

Welp, that’s it for now. Here’s a list of the games I’m currently playing:

Final Fantasy VII (I have some THOUGHTS on this one. So so so good)

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Maybe? Not sure if I want to finish it, I played a couple hours and got bored. Might just not be for me.)

VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

Shovel Knight (my second full playthrough, this time on Switch; eventually I’ll play Specter of Torment and Plague of Shadows, too)

Sound Shapes

I also need to finish Luigi’s Mansion (which I borrowed from a friend like six months ago or something - sorry @nierlaw), Bastion, The Talos Principle, Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Season One and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, all of which I’ve gotten at least halfway through but haven’t played in months. Plus, I’ve got a long list of games that I own but have yet to play, including Ico, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Spec Ops: The Line, Broken Age, L.A. Noire, Valkyria Chronicles, and Beyond Good and Evil. Thus is the struggle of a man attempting to be games-literate, whatever that might mean.

See you soon with a much shorter post!