I feel the need to include almost everything I play here for some reason.
This weekend I was kind of hopping back and forth between a few things. Quickly, I played a round of Spelunky. One did the trick at the time; I wasn't really feeling in the mood after all.
I also made it through a few more levels of Hexcells Plus, though I'm beginning to get frustrated by the finicky nature of the mistakes and perfect or not status of round completion. I want them all to be perfected, but I don't want to have to redo a long level over a mis-click or careless jumping of the gun. Not that I have a better design solution; I guess maybe I just wish there was no achievement I need to get for doing so. I guess the flaw with the game is that it's possible just to click without any regard for how many mistakes you make to finish levels, though if you did that, you wouldn't earn enough points to continue on to the next level grouping. Maybe just removing the achievement in question would fix this compulsion, after all.
Speaking of compulsion, I'm back in Elite: Dangerous again, determined to get a good exploration run in. I want to go to Sagittarius A*, and I think I'll swing by the Colonia region on the way. It's (as far as I know) the only inhabited region of the galaxy outside the main bubble around Sol. I'm re-learning the game on 360 pad, now, having tired of breaking out the flight stick every time I wanted a quick session of a few jumps from star to star. I managed to get about a thousand LY (about 30 jumps) outbound before a series of mishaps made me want to return to the bubble. I need a second Auto Field-Maintenance Unit for a real journey out into the black. With that and an SRV, it should be possible to be entirely self-sufficient for a very long journey like the one(s) I want to embark on. I'm also wondering if there's anything else I can do to eke out a little bit of a longer jump range, though I may already be to the point where that's not very feasible in my Asp Explorer. I definitely want to keep a shield unit with me as insurance, and even losing that would probably not add too much to my max jump range.
Lastly, I'm taking it upon myself to finish Dishonored 2. With Death of the Outsider coming in just over two weeks, I want to be caught up and ready for what may be the capstone on the series. I'm not sure how far into the game I am, really. I'm going to what I believe is the fourth main mission, the Clockwork Mansion. I understand there are fewer missions in this game as compared to the first, but that each is longer or at least wider, and may then take more time to get through.
Monday, August 28, 2017
Thursday, August 24, 2017
A Mixed Bag
Most of the last week of game time has been with Path of Exile. I've made it to Act II. It's very good, but on the whole I still think Diablo III is the best in the genre. Path of Exile seems to stubbornly stick to some things Diablo II did, which over a longer play time, end up being more hassle than they're worth. Things like no easy item comparison, inventory woes, limited town portal and identification scrolls, and the pre-Adventure Mode model of re-running the campaign ad nauseum at endgame. I haven't verified that last one, to be fair, but that seems to be the case from what I gather. At the same time, while I admire that it's doing something original with its skill system, I feel like Diablo III's solution is better for keeping builds coherent and themed to the class you are playing. Path of Exile characters seem like they could kind of mix and match abilities from outside their starting class range. These are small things on the whole, but in the context of the genre and epically long play lifetimes of these games, they end up making a difference. I do plan to continue playing PoE, though, to see if my hunches on all this bear out.
Hexcells Plus is more of the original with a few new rules added in. It fairly quickly ramps up in difficulty from where Hexcells left off, but it's still all completely logical and fun to play. I'm on the 5th of 6 sets of puzzles, now.
I've had Spiral Knights stuff in my Steam inventory for years now, since I first played that game back in 2011, I believe. I came across it on Steam last night and decided what the hell, let me check this out again for a bit. It's a kind of basic action-adventure dungeon crawler sort of thing, somewhat arcade-y, and presented in a very colorful, fun way. Honestly, though, games that cover these same bases for me are very plentiful, so after just a short time I was satisfied I wasn't missing much by not playing the game. And the stuff is still in my Steam inventory, still not showing its icons correctly. I had thought that at least would be fixed.
Kerbal Space Program is a game that's been around for a long time now, that I have always thought I should pick up and play, but have never really felt like doing so. Well, I went through the first tutorial the other night. I guess I'll probably do more.
Hexcells Plus is more of the original with a few new rules added in. It fairly quickly ramps up in difficulty from where Hexcells left off, but it's still all completely logical and fun to play. I'm on the 5th of 6 sets of puzzles, now.
I've had Spiral Knights stuff in my Steam inventory for years now, since I first played that game back in 2011, I believe. I came across it on Steam last night and decided what the hell, let me check this out again for a bit. It's a kind of basic action-adventure dungeon crawler sort of thing, somewhat arcade-y, and presented in a very colorful, fun way. Honestly, though, games that cover these same bases for me are very plentiful, so after just a short time I was satisfied I wasn't missing much by not playing the game. And the stuff is still in my Steam inventory, still not showing its icons correctly. I had thought that at least would be fixed.
Kerbal Space Program is a game that's been around for a long time now, that I have always thought I should pick up and play, but have never really felt like doing so. Well, I went through the first tutorial the other night. I guess I'll probably do more.
Friday, August 18, 2017
Dragon Quest Who?
I have forgotten about Dragon Quest VII this week, drawn to some things new
and shiny.
First, I finally tried out Path of Exile for the weekly GameBytes stream on Monday. It’s really setting a hook in me. The game is very much cast in the mold of Diablo II, though it does do a few pretty original and interesting things, like making your active skills contingent on finding and slotting gems into you gear in various ways. In a very real way, your gear determines how you can play, not just how effectively. I also like the enormity of the passive skill chart, which reminds me more of Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid than anything else.
There are a few little quality of life improvements that I miss from Diablo III and the Torchlight series, but it’s nothing that breaks the deal, at least not at this point. I’ve only put a few hours in yet, being maybe halfway through the first act, if that. I’m definitely going to be playing more Path of Exile, though, a lot more, in all likelihood.
On sale for under a dollar on Steam this week was Hexcells, an elegant little puzzle game I’d had wishlisted for years. I could not pass it up, and I’m glad I did not. This game borrows from Minesweeper and Picross to create a very clever and very addicting rule set in which you look at an arrangement of orange hexagons and determine which should be marked blue, and which should be destroyed to reveal numeric and positional clues about the adjacent hexagons. My favorite thing about this game is that so far it seems mathematically impossible to get stuck without a way of working out the next move you can make with certainty that you won’t make a mistake. At times you start to think maybe all that’s left is to blind-click something in the hopes that the odds are in your favor, but in actuality if you start looking at the situation from different angles or toward different ends (I don’t know which one it is… which ones do I know it definitely isn’t?), you can always find a logical toehold.
I pretty quickly finished and perfected every level (there are only 29, I believe) in the first game, and bought the rest of the series. I’m playing Hexcells Plus, now.
First, I finally tried out Path of Exile for the weekly GameBytes stream on Monday. It’s really setting a hook in me. The game is very much cast in the mold of Diablo II, though it does do a few pretty original and interesting things, like making your active skills contingent on finding and slotting gems into you gear in various ways. In a very real way, your gear determines how you can play, not just how effectively. I also like the enormity of the passive skill chart, which reminds me more of Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid than anything else.
There are a few little quality of life improvements that I miss from Diablo III and the Torchlight series, but it’s nothing that breaks the deal, at least not at this point. I’ve only put a few hours in yet, being maybe halfway through the first act, if that. I’m definitely going to be playing more Path of Exile, though, a lot more, in all likelihood.
On sale for under a dollar on Steam this week was Hexcells, an elegant little puzzle game I’d had wishlisted for years. I could not pass it up, and I’m glad I did not. This game borrows from Minesweeper and Picross to create a very clever and very addicting rule set in which you look at an arrangement of orange hexagons and determine which should be marked blue, and which should be destroyed to reveal numeric and positional clues about the adjacent hexagons. My favorite thing about this game is that so far it seems mathematically impossible to get stuck without a way of working out the next move you can make with certainty that you won’t make a mistake. At times you start to think maybe all that’s left is to blind-click something in the hopes that the odds are in your favor, but in actuality if you start looking at the situation from different angles or toward different ends (I don’t know which one it is… which ones do I know it definitely isn’t?), you can always find a logical toehold.
I pretty quickly finished and perfected every level (there are only 29, I believe) in the first game, and bought the rest of the series. I’m playing Hexcells Plus, now.
Saturday, August 12, 2017
Phases
After a good week and a half or so, I decided to shelve Elite once again. I made some pretty good money pretty quickly, at least by the standards I'm used to. The problem with Elite is that it's too easy for me to pour a whole evening in, to the detriment of other hobby and leisure activities. As much as I like the game and would like to wander the galaxy, I do have other aims for my free time.
Arguably first among my gaming concerns over the last week or two has been Dragon Quest VII. For someone with minimal experience with the series, having played some the first on NES, and otherwise only having played DQVIII on PS2, albeit to completion, I have felt oddly compelled to collect as much of it as I could, across the Super Famicom and DS and 3DS platforms. VII was previously a PSX game, but last year got a nice remake for the 3DS. It's known for being very long, around 100 hours, having a slow pace, and having allegedly bad graphics and releasing so late in the life of the PSX that the PS2 was already solidly in the market and about to enter its prime.
The 3DS remake seems to have fixed those issues, or addressed them as well as you might assume possible with the limited horsepower available to it. Random battles are gone, replaced with a compromise in the vein of Earthbound or Chrono Trigger, where the enemies are visible on the map and if you actually run into them, you fight. The graphics have had a total overhaul as well, but I suspect I might actually prefer the PSX's when I get the chance to finally play it, having never picked it up in its original incarnation. I just ordered a copy from eBay. As far as playing the game, it's a solid RPG in the classic Japanese sense, being one of that genre's cornerstone series. I've long been a fan of the genre, of course. This game feels very comfortable.
Something brought me back to Torchlight II this week. An unexpected, inexplicable urge to play more of the game I only got perhaps a quarter into when it first released, if that. Maybe it was being effectively done with Diablo III's content without being rid of the siren's call of that type of game. Whatever the actual reason, I have it re-installed and I've picked up my Engineer at level 28 and begun the experience and gear climb once more. It's fun.
Arguably first among my gaming concerns over the last week or two has been Dragon Quest VII. For someone with minimal experience with the series, having played some the first on NES, and otherwise only having played DQVIII on PS2, albeit to completion, I have felt oddly compelled to collect as much of it as I could, across the Super Famicom and DS and 3DS platforms. VII was previously a PSX game, but last year got a nice remake for the 3DS. It's known for being very long, around 100 hours, having a slow pace, and having allegedly bad graphics and releasing so late in the life of the PSX that the PS2 was already solidly in the market and about to enter its prime.
The 3DS remake seems to have fixed those issues, or addressed them as well as you might assume possible with the limited horsepower available to it. Random battles are gone, replaced with a compromise in the vein of Earthbound or Chrono Trigger, where the enemies are visible on the map and if you actually run into them, you fight. The graphics have had a total overhaul as well, but I suspect I might actually prefer the PSX's when I get the chance to finally play it, having never picked it up in its original incarnation. I just ordered a copy from eBay. As far as playing the game, it's a solid RPG in the classic Japanese sense, being one of that genre's cornerstone series. I've long been a fan of the genre, of course. This game feels very comfortable.
Something brought me back to Torchlight II this week. An unexpected, inexplicable urge to play more of the game I only got perhaps a quarter into when it first released, if that. Maybe it was being effectively done with Diablo III's content without being rid of the siren's call of that type of game. Whatever the actual reason, I have it re-installed and I've picked up my Engineer at level 28 and begun the experience and gear climb once more. It's fun.
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