On 3/1/2024 4:25 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> (Double-check the date in the topic? Check.)
>
> I really shouldn't be able to notice the difference in a single-day,
> but having 29 days in February really feels longer than a mere 28. I
> mean, it /is/ longer but you wouldn't expect the month to feel so much
> more robust just because of the addition of 24 hours. But everything
> feels less rushed because its' there. There's not that sense of 'wait,
> the month is over already?' that I usually get from February. It's
> probably just me.
>
> Wait, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, what games we played in
> February. Let's get to that, then.
>
>
>
> The List, It Is Already Done
> ---------------------------------------
> * The Callisto Protocol
> * Superliminal
> * Star Wars: Jedi Survivor
> * Star Wars: Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight
>
>
> It Keeps Going and Going and Going...
> ---------------------------------------
>
> * The Callisto Protocol
> You know that meme?
> "Mom! Buy me Frosties!"
> "Now, kiddo, we have Frosties at home!"
> At home: store brand frosted-flake cereal.
> The Callisto Protocol is the store-brand version of "Dead Space".
>
> That might be selling "The Callisto Protocol" a bit short, though. The
> implication of the meme is that the 'at home' version is an extremely
> sub-par version of the desired product: the store brand compared to
> the name brand, a 'Romex' watch compared to a Rolex. And, in the case
> of "The Callisto Protocol", that's only half true. It's a very, /very/
> obvious clone of "Dead Space", but sub-par? No; not in the least.
> Which isn't to say "The Callisto Protocol" is as good as "Dead Space"
> because, in all honesty, it's not. But it's still a very good game.
> It's just not /as good/.
>
> The comparison between the two is one between a good title and a great
> title. "Dead Space" is undoubtedly great; it's spawned sequels - and
> remakes, and comics, and novels, and even movies! - for a reason. It
> has extremely tight and satisfying gameplay, terrific atmosphere, a
> convincing setting and excellent pacing. It's a masterful example of
> how to write a horror game, with a good mix of suspense, terror and
> action. "The Callisto Protocol" comes close - darn close - but never
> quite matches it.
>
> It's littlest, subtlest things. It's how the levels are so extremely
> linear, for instance. Because you're given so little opportunity to
> determine your own path, the game feels too much like a funhouse ride;
> you can spot the scares before they jump out at you. It's how the game
> relies just /a bit/ too heavily on monsters that attack you before you
> can react, forcing you into a quicktime event to escape. Once or twice
> is fine ("Dead Space" used the mechanic too) but "The Callisto
> Protocol" doesn't /quite/ have the necessary moderation. It's the
> weapons that never really stand out, even from one another. Picking up
> a new boomstick should be exciting, but all "The Callisto Protocol"
> weapons are unimaginative and undifferentiated.
>
> But mostly, "The Callisto Protocol" falls behind because it /is/ such
> an obvious clone. If you've ever played "Dead Space" before (or even
> similar games in the genre), you'll find little new with this one.
> Horror works best when it shocks and surprises, and "The Callisto
> Protocol's" reliance on tropes - and especially "Dead Space" tropes -
> steals a lot of its thunder.
>
> That said, the game is well made. The combat is fun, the visuals are
> impressive and the action is reasonably paced. It's not quite got the
> same atmosphere as "Dead Space" - it's weaker story and flatter
> characters makes it harder to immerse yourself in the world - but if
> you can forgive a bit of ham in your horror sandwich, it's fine. There
> are a lot worse horror games out there, up to and including "Resident
> Evil". I'd put "The Callisto Protocol" ahead of the lot of them.
>
> I'm not upset that I grabbed this game over the "Dead Space" remake.
> Even as much of a clone as it is, I prefer playing a new game rather
> than a remake. And "The Callisto Project" is a fine game. It's just
> not quite as good as "Dead Space".
>
>
>
> * Superliminal
> "Superliminal" is what I would call a 'gimmick game'. It's a game
> wrapped around exploring a really neat idea, but beyond that initial
> concept there's really not much too it. A lot of 'first-person
> puzzlers' - or 'Portal-clones', as they're sometimes unfairly called -
> fall into this trap. The problem with these gimmick games is that -
> because they're so mono-focused on their one idea, they overuse it
> until the game's 'gimmick' loses it sense of wonder and novelty, and
> there's little else in the game to fall back upon.
>
> Admittedly, "Superliminal's" 'gimmick' is clever than most, and they
> explore it in a number of ways. The way you perceive things has actual
> effects on the reality of the world; the game uses perspective, depth
> perception, and darkness to trick you in lots of inventive ways. Is
> that object tiny because it's far away or because it's actually small?
> In this game, it's both. Is that a shadow on the ground or a dark pit?
> Yes. Is that a picture on the wall or a 3D object? Depending on where
> you're standing, it's one or the other. Manipulating how you perceive
> things is the key to puzzling your way through the game, and it's fun
> seeing how they developers mess around with a player's expectations.
>
> But once you get past the novelty of it all, there's very little to
> this game. It's puzzles are ridiculously easy once you understand the
> basics. The game is incredibly short; you can finish it in a single
> hour. There's very little world building, no real characters, and the
> messaging is trite. Not to mention, the whole point of the game is to
> "reshape your perceptions" so you can "think outside the box"...
> except you can't do anything EXCEPT for what is intended by the
> developers. You'll NEVER be outside the box in this game.
>
> The end result is that "Superliminal" feels very much like a
> tech-demo. It's got terrific ideas, but not enough content to make it
> an easy recommendation for anyone to play, much less pay for. Were it
> a bit more fleshed out, this would be an awesome experience, but right
> now it's a bit shallow for my taste.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> * Star Wars: Jedi Survivor
> This is another of those games that's hard for me to rate.
>
> "Survivor" is, arguably, a better game in almost every regard than its
> predecessor, "Fallen Order". It's got superior production values, a
> larger game world, a more mature story, and more intricate mechanics.
> It's got more enemies and more things to do overall. It's not without
> its flaws but overall "Survivor" is the more polished game.
>
> So why don't I like it as much?
>
> Maybe it's the fact that its story seems sort of pointless; it's a
> tale answering a question that didn't really need to be asked. "Fallen
> Order" told an interesting tale of a lost Jedi trainee trying to find
> his place in the New Order (a.k.a the evil Galactic Empire). For all
> its space-fantasy bombast and operatic ridiculousness, it was a
> relatable tale; who am I now that my guardians (whether they are elder
> Jedi or parents) have left me in the wild and dangerous world?
> "Survivor's" quest was more mundane, seemingly intended to answer a
> question of canon: if Luke Skywalker was the last Jedi, what happened
> to all the other Jedi survivors (answer: the game's hero, Cal Kestis,
> found them a bolt-hole beyond the reach of the Empire). It's an
> interesting quest, but lacks the impact of the original.
>
> It could be the overly-large open world, too. "Fallen Order" also had
> fairly large maps to explore, but most of the maps were dedicated to
> the main quest, and you'd visit most areas simply by playing through
> the main campaign. "Survivor's" worlds are much, much less linear, and
> have a good number of side-quests and hidden-treasures to unearth.
> This gives the player a lot more to do, but absolutely destroys the
> pacing of the story. So much time is wasted searching for plants, or
> 'Force echoes' or solving puzzle-like challenge rooms... or simply
> running through regions previously explored to get to the new bits.
>
> It could be the sometimes lackluster game design. There were a number
> of times when the solution to the problem wasn't as obvious as it
> could be; an interactable object hidden up on the ceiling that only
> became usable if you were /just/ at the right distance, or a climbable
> wall that wasn't obviously climbable. Some of the new combat skills
> felt a bit pointless, added more to increase the skill-count than for
> any real utility. A lot of the new things-to-do (locating fish for
> your base's fishtank, or seeds for the rooftop garden) seemed
> unnecessary grind that offered no real benefit except to increment the
> completion percentage.
>
> There were a few minor technical snafus too. The fact that the game
> had to recompile its shaders on every startup seemed wasteful. There
> were a couple bugs and crashes too. It all felt a bit sloppy and
> unfinished.
>
> "Survivor" is a good game; do not mistake these issues for serious
> flaws. If you liked the original game of the series, you will almost
> certainly enjoy this one. But for whatever reason, I'm just not sure
> that you'll like it MORE.
>
>
>
>
> * Star Wars: Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight
> I guess I'm in a Star Warsy mood this month.
>
> Of course, the real reason I installed this was to check out the "Jedi
> Knight Remastered" https://www.moddb.com/mods/jedi-knight-remastered
> mod I mentioned earlier this month. And... it's fine. It does what it
> advertised, improving many of the models, upscaling the textures, and
> working magic with the original game's old, creaky lighting model. The
> Stormtroopers are now recognizably Stormtroopers, and not some
> nightmarish amalgamation of triangles that - if you squint and hope -
> sort of resemble a Stormtrooper. The rest of the game itself remains
> the same. Which is both its strength and undoing.
>
> "Jedi Knight" is oh-so-very-much a game released in 1997. Caught in
> that turbulent period between the release of "Quake" and the release
> of "Half Life", it shares qualities of both games and is a satisfying
> clone of neither.
>
> Its "Quake" lineage (in style, not engine) are obvious. There was, at
> the time, an impetus to push FPS games out of the narrow corridors and
> abstract locations of Doom into ever-larger, ever-more detailed maps.
> The desire for scale overcame almost every other consideration,
> including whether all this added space actually added to the FUN of
> the game. "Jedi Knight's" maps are impressively large, especially for
> a game released in 1997, but they're often tedious to traverse, with
> gigantic rooms that are often devoid of all but a handful of enemies.
> The remastered mod helps with this a bit; it was a lot worse in 1997,
> when the tiny textures made everything muddy and grey. There's also a
> lot of back-n-forth across areas previously visited; a reminder of the
> mazelike design that was common to games of that era. Oh, and let's
> not forget the ever-present hunt for the colored keycards necessary to
> progress to the next area of the map. Yes, this is very much a game
> born in an era when Quake was still held up as the king of FPS games.
>
> But you can also see the inklings of "Half Life" peeking through.
> There are random NPCs sprinkled throughout. Many of the maps have a
> visibly recognizable purpose in the game-world, even if the technology
> wasn't quite up to the 'environmental storytelling' that "Half Life"
> would later perfect. Story progression was still limited to cutscenes,
> other than a few comments made by the characters. But, oh, what
> terrific cutscenes! Live-action Star Wars, two years before "The
> Phantom Menace" released; it was an oasis in a drought of all things
> Star Wars! Jason Court does a wonderful job of portraying the hero
> Kyle Katarn, and Christopher Neame hams it up as villain Jerec.
>
> You can also see the lineage of the original "Dark Forces" game too,
> which spiced up the original "Doom" formula with a variety of puzzles.
> 'More is better' seemed to be the watchword during "Jedi Knight's"
> development, and while some of the puzzles were interesting and
> well-integrated into the world, a good number unnecessarily dragged
> down the gameplay and ruined the pacing. I could have done with less
> puzzles... but I get why they were there. They were part of the
> franchise's genetics from the start.
>
> I could have done with a lot less of the platforming too. "Jedi
> Knight's" weird jump mechanics meant you'd often bounce off objects if
> you didn't completely clear them with your leap, which made some jumps
> a lot harder than they should have been. I personally found the
> lightsaber combat to be more aggravating than fun, too... although
> having just come from playing "Jedi: Survivor" (which had excellent
> lightsaber combat) that is probably to be expected. When I could, I
> stuck with guns; "Jedi Knight" is a lot better as a Star Wars shooter
> than a sword-fighting game.
>
> I honestly can't say if I actually enjoyed playing "Jedi Knight". It
> was entrancing to revisit and analyze the title as a snapshot of
> gaming trends of the late 90s. The cutscenes were quite enjoyable. I
> was impressed by how much improved the visuals were thanks to the
> Remaster mod. But the gameplay? I struggled to keep playing the game
> at times. It's got neither the smooth style of earlier FPS
> 'Doom-clones' nor the well-paced design of later 'Half-Life alikes'.
> It's the awkward teenage years of the franchise; not quite lovable yet
> sharing qualities we loved from when it was younger and showing signs
> of becoming something great. Fun? Not really. But definitely
> interesting.
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------
>
> And that's it for me. February may be a short month, but my lists
> never are! And you?
>
> What Have You Been Playing... in FEBRUARY 2024?
>
>
>

Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> What Have You Been Playing... in FEBRUARY 2024?
>

This is going to be pretty short and lacking in formatting, so
appologies in advance.

- The Great Ace Attorney: Resolve
Second game in the Collected edition. It's a lot better that the first
one, and we finally get to see the Real "Watson" Working with Sholmes
(game was released before the copyright expired in the US), but at 40
hours, it left me extenuated.

That game has taken me quite a few months to complete, with considerable
breaks due to the January exam season. Ever since I took the final exam
in early February (and passed with flying colours), I have been jumping
from one game to another, unable to settle on one. But to name a few ones...

Owlboy, Turnip Boy commits tax evasion, Clannad, Wonderboy: The Dragon's
Trap, Super Mario Land 2 (on an actual Snes with a Super Gameboy
adapter), Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade... Just a few hours each.

In the end, I settled on Splatoon 3 and I am halfway through the story mode.

H1M3M <wipnoah@gmail.com> wrote at 12:59 this Tuesday (GMT):
> Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>>
>> What Have You Been Playing... in FEBRUARY 2024?
>>
>
> This is going to be pretty short and lacking in formatting, so
> appologies in advance.
>
> - The Great Ace Attorney: Resolve
> Second game in the Collected edition. It's a lot better that the first
> one, and we finally get to see the Real "Watson" Working with Sholmes
> (game was released before the copyright expired in the US), but at 40
> hours, it left me extenuated.
>
> That game has taken me quite a few months to complete, with considerable
> breaks due to the January exam season. Ever since I took the final exam
> in early February (and passed with flying colours), I have been jumping
> from one game to another, unable to settle on one. But to name a few ones...
>
> Owlboy, Turnip Boy commits tax evasion, Clannad, Wonderboy: The Dragon's
> Trap, Super Mario Land 2 (on an actual Snes with a Super Gameboy
> adapter), Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade... Just a few hours each.

Retro gamer, nice!

> In the end, I settled on Splatoon 3 and I am halfway through the story mode.

--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

On Tue, 5 Mar 2024 10:22:47 +0100, kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>I actually remember only playing two things properly: Demon's Tilt, the
>pinball shooter that once was a free game on Epic, and Middle-Earth:
>Shadow of War. I already finished the first game, Shadow of Mordor two
>years ago and was a bit burned out on the endless slaughtering of orcs,
>but it does have some really nice gameplay mechanics that keep me engaged.
>I just hope the storyline is going to end soon because I am getting
>tired of slaughtering poor little orcs in ever more gruesome ways.

>On the other hand it has some amazing Orc characters which the game
>randomly creates and keeps developing through encounters with you and
>other orcs. One of my favorite ones are the rhymer and bard characters
>which dress like medieval minstrels and keep talking in rhymes. They are
>absolutely annoying, but I love the idea that there's a whole bunch of
>orcish minstrels hopping through Mordor busting out some phat rhymes
>before beating giant monsters into submission with their lute.

I have only finished the first one. I was underwhelmed to the point
that - playing the second soon after - I just couldn't keep at it.

A lot of fuss was made about that game's monsters leveling up when you
defeated them (or they defeated you), but honestly it seemed a lot of
fuss made about nothing. Some random orc kills me, then - in the
background - levels up until at some point I meet him again and kill
him. The thing about it was, none of the orcs really differentiated
themselves from any of the others. You could see how they were
procedurally generated from too-small a sample set. I had no emotional
connection to any of them, so when I met an orc a second time I really
didn't care that he was the same guy I'd a run in with a few hours
back. He was just another in a long line of hitpoint bars that needed
to be whittled down to zero.

I didn't play the second game very long, but the mechanics seemed
pretty much the same in that one too. And - regardless of their level
- killing orcs got pretty old after a while.

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> writes:

> I had no emotional connection to any of them, so when I met an orc a
> second time I really didn't care that he was the same guy I'd a run in
> with a few hours back. He was just another in a long line of hitpoint
> bars that needed to be whittled down to zero.

I actually did care, because the same stupid orc would keep showing up
despite being killed! I think I googled to the conclusion that you have
to remove their ugly heads from their shoulders or otherwise really
really kill them to cause permanent death but it wasn't always that
easy.

Other than the fighting, I did like the little glimpses of Middle-earth
lore in the original.

> I didn't play the second game very long, but the mechanics seemed
> pretty much the same in that one too. And - regardless of their level
> - killing orcs got pretty old after a while.

I think the reviews said much the same so I didn't bother.