1. Coming to Bust-a-Move Deluxe as someone unfamiliar w/ the series, I can say now that it seems like it's a pretty okay series of ball-based puzzle games.
2. The object is you shoot little balls at a bunch of other balls and if you get three balls of the same kind touching, well, something good happens. This is just like real life.
3. The main mode is called puzzle mode. You are given a setup of a variety balls in a preordained pattern. The balls you get to shoot at the puzzle balls are not completely random balls but neither are they balls in a completely in fixed order as far as I can tell. The puzzle is in getting rid of all the balls as efficiently as possible.
4. The balls are actually called bubbles. This is set in the extended Bubble Bobble universe, which is a thing that exists for some reason. I'm going to keep calling them balls.
5. In addition to the standard colored balls, there are specialty balls. Some of these balls are really good. One ball makes all balls of whatever color it touches disappear. There is also a ball that just blows up any ball it runs into.
6. There are also a few balls that will only ever show up in the preordained ball patterns. These include balls that have no matchable ball color so must be dropped by removing the balls that connect them to the rest of the balls. Then there is an even more insidious ball that does not fall until every ball touching it is removed. I hate these balls.
7. Bust-a-Move is generally considered a puzzle game but really the challenge tends to be more in putting your balls exactly where you want them. You will really spend more time developing your ability to place your balls than anything else really.
8. Number 7 is slightly less true when you get good enough to really start going for high scores and the time it takes to shoot a few extra balls has a big impact on your bonus scores.
9. Speaking of time, the aiming reticle in this moves at a rate that can be frustratingly slow. It moves constantly at the speed you would use for finer adjustments so when you gotta one ball somewhere vastly different than the ball before it, it can take a minute.
10. There are 300 puzzle levels, which is plenty really. They all seem the same after a while and there's no rhyme or reason to how hard they are. They do not get progressively more difficult, which makes each session a game of attrition. It's all about not making mistakes and really nailing your ball-shots.
11. Additionally, there are like six or ten extra game modes which are fun distractions but none of them feel essentially different than the main mode. One mode that is noticeably missing is some sort of marathon mode where new balls come down from the top of the level until you can no longer handle any more balls.
12. Overall, having thought about this a considerable amount, I stand by my opinion this is an okay ball-based puzzle game. When you are playing it, it gets addictive and you want to keep pushing on but it does not persist in your memory well enough that you continually feel an urge to play with these balls when you aren't already doing so.
13. I think I could have done more w/ these ball jokes. (That's what she said.)
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
13 Points on A Story About My Uncle - Gone North Games - 2014 [PC]
1. I kinda figured this would be a walking sim w/ some platforming
thrown on top but it's the opposite. It is a platforming game first w/
cute, sentimental fantasy plot thrown on top.
2. I start playing a 3D platformer and I immediately reach for the controller out of habit. This was the wrong move. There is no aim assist and this, makes the accuracy of a mouse absolutely essential.
3. While I was still using the controller, I stacked a bunch of pillows on the side of my couch so I could have a place to safely chuck it at the wall. This wasn't as satisfying as crushing the thing to smithereens in a fit of nerd rage but a whole lot cheaper.
4. It's not really the same kind of game but this reminds me of Portal as much as anything. There is a story overlayed via narration but you are not really involved in it. It just comes at you bit by bit as you progress. It's also a first person game where you have to aim and shoot but can't kill anything.
5. The way A Story About My Uncle works is, basically, you are Spiderman w/ rocket shoes. This is obviously pretty sweet. Grappling is the gameplay focus. There is a bit of challenge puzzling your way into finding the best root through a given set of obstacles but it's mostly about getting the timing right and aiming quickly. This works well and for the most part the game flows smoothly.
6. You play as a young boy who goes off looking for his uncle. In his house, you find a magic space suit and somehow manage to transport yourself out to a bizarre world of floating rocks and frog people. Adventure ensues.
7. I don't know where the hell the voice actors for this game from but they all speak like people who learned English as a second language and spent years perfecting it but still ended up like 1% short of speaking it perfectly. They are in the accent uncanny valley. It is strikes me as kind of creepy at times but sort of works for the fantasy setting. If you tell me frog people from outer-space speak like northern Europeans who majored in English, who am I to say any different?
8. I found this much more difficult than most people. That is partly because I stubbornly stuck w/ a controller for longer than I should have and also because I was drunk half the time. Not gonna lie.
9. The graphics here are not a technical marvel or anything but are quite pretty and alluring so I feel the artists accomplished what they wanted so good for them.
10. Number 10 being said, I did have two issues w/ the graphics. Firstly, there are spots where it is too dark to see your various grappling points in the distance. Towards the end, I had to crank the gamma way up to see what I was doing and I liked the look of the game much less once I did that. Also, often, I felt that at times it was not clear based solely on their appearance what points you could grapple. This made some sections a little more trial-and-error based than I thought they should be.
11. I played this solely on Linux. Thanks for the support! It worked almost perfectly but I did have some trouble w/ menus becoming unresponsive. Still, not nearly bad enough to avoid the Linux version.
12. Most of the replayability here is going to come from just wanting to play it again. There are also opportunities to find collectables to encourage some off-course exploration and a time trial mode if you are into such things.
13. It'd be a stretch to call A Story About My Uncle a perfect game if I'm being honest. The plot wasn't great, the platforming certainly had annoyances but it's cute, almost always fun and is the kind of thing you can knock out over the course of a weekend w/o having to block off a huge section of time so it doesn't overstay it's welcome. People looking for a little something different in a platformer won't go wrong by checking this out.
2. I start playing a 3D platformer and I immediately reach for the controller out of habit. This was the wrong move. There is no aim assist and this, makes the accuracy of a mouse absolutely essential.
3. While I was still using the controller, I stacked a bunch of pillows on the side of my couch so I could have a place to safely chuck it at the wall. This wasn't as satisfying as crushing the thing to smithereens in a fit of nerd rage but a whole lot cheaper.
4. It's not really the same kind of game but this reminds me of Portal as much as anything. There is a story overlayed via narration but you are not really involved in it. It just comes at you bit by bit as you progress. It's also a first person game where you have to aim and shoot but can't kill anything.
5. The way A Story About My Uncle works is, basically, you are Spiderman w/ rocket shoes. This is obviously pretty sweet. Grappling is the gameplay focus. There is a bit of challenge puzzling your way into finding the best root through a given set of obstacles but it's mostly about getting the timing right and aiming quickly. This works well and for the most part the game flows smoothly.
6. You play as a young boy who goes off looking for his uncle. In his house, you find a magic space suit and somehow manage to transport yourself out to a bizarre world of floating rocks and frog people. Adventure ensues.
7. I don't know where the hell the voice actors for this game from but they all speak like people who learned English as a second language and spent years perfecting it but still ended up like 1% short of speaking it perfectly. They are in the accent uncanny valley. It is strikes me as kind of creepy at times but sort of works for the fantasy setting. If you tell me frog people from outer-space speak like northern Europeans who majored in English, who am I to say any different?
8. I found this much more difficult than most people. That is partly because I stubbornly stuck w/ a controller for longer than I should have and also because I was drunk half the time. Not gonna lie.
9. The graphics here are not a technical marvel or anything but are quite pretty and alluring so I feel the artists accomplished what they wanted so good for them.
10. Number 10 being said, I did have two issues w/ the graphics. Firstly, there are spots where it is too dark to see your various grappling points in the distance. Towards the end, I had to crank the gamma way up to see what I was doing and I liked the look of the game much less once I did that. Also, often, I felt that at times it was not clear based solely on their appearance what points you could grapple. This made some sections a little more trial-and-error based than I thought they should be.
11. I played this solely on Linux. Thanks for the support! It worked almost perfectly but I did have some trouble w/ menus becoming unresponsive. Still, not nearly bad enough to avoid the Linux version.
12. Most of the replayability here is going to come from just wanting to play it again. There are also opportunities to find collectables to encourage some off-course exploration and a time trial mode if you are into such things.
13. It'd be a stretch to call A Story About My Uncle a perfect game if I'm being honest. The plot wasn't great, the platforming certainly had annoyances but it's cute, almost always fun and is the kind of thing you can knock out over the course of a weekend w/o having to block off a huge section of time so it doesn't overstay it's welcome. People looking for a little something different in a platformer won't go wrong by checking this out.
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
13 Points on Fallout: New Vegas - Obsidian Entertainment - 2010 [PC]
1. If you like Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 but got the
sneaking suspicion that despite the open world nature of those games,
their stories were on rails and no choice you made really mattered,
congratulations, you're right! You win Fallout: New Vegas which is a completely identical game except almost everything you do matters.
2. Your first dozen or so hours in Windows 10 will be fraught w/ peril w/ untimely crashes abound. Google yourself up some New Vegas Scrip Extender and New Vegas Anti-Crash (in that order) to get things up and running smoothly. I had to do this on all three PCs I ran this on.
3. You play as an unnamed courier who gets shot in the head in the course of a delivery and then revived by a plucky town doctor. One of few choices you don't get to make is to just up and leave town, which is probably what would make the most sense in that situation. I guess maybe you are worried you'll never find another doctor good enough to cure bullet wounds to the head w/o any special equipment. This much is not covered in game. Use your imagination.
4. There is a brief tutorial section you can do but by and large this is not very helpful.
5. The graphics used to be pretty good but now they're just graphics. If you've played Fallout 3, it looks exactly like that but where that game is blueish, this game is orangeish.
6. The musical theme here is the same basic theme as the other games in the series but there's variations in terms of orchestration. As is always the case, it's one of the best parts of the game.
7. There are four major pathways to the end game which are spelled out for you pretty early on. You can decide right away which one you wish to take or try to hedge your bets and see what's going on before choosing. Delaying your choice actually makes a difference in how the game plays out in the end.
8. Many of the NPC enemies which were just called raiders in other Fallout games are actually from built-out factions complete w/ backstories and leadership. You don't actually have to be enemies w/ everyone just because they are ruthless killers that nobody in their right mind would align themselves w/.
9. Gunplay in this game is kind of balls, no way around it. That is until you bring in the existence of VATS which is sort of a realtime/turn based hybrid system that you can use to aim at specific body parts, esp. heads, which then have a chance to explode fantastically if your shot lands. Not gonna lie: exploding enemies heads is so much fun I'd probably have put ten hours into this game if it was literally just that.
10. There is a crafting system which is pretty well built out but I was too busy blowing up heads to use it. Sue me.
11. The worst thing about this game is the inventory system. There is no way to sort by anything but alphabetical. I was forever just carrying about a hundred pounds of crap I didn't need for no reason just because I didn't want to deal w/ sorting through that garbage.
12. For some reason, I drank out of toilets a lot less than I generally do when playing Fallout games.
13. End of the day, of the 3D Fallout games, this is best RPG in the series. All of them have similar appeal in the just go around and do whatever vein but this has the most adaptive world where it feels like your actions as the randomly most important person in the world have an effect. It might lose some of its sheer openness and scope in being like this but it is worth the trade-off to not just feel like you are going through the motions at the endgame.
2. Your first dozen or so hours in Windows 10 will be fraught w/ peril w/ untimely crashes abound. Google yourself up some New Vegas Scrip Extender and New Vegas Anti-Crash (in that order) to get things up and running smoothly. I had to do this on all three PCs I ran this on.
3. You play as an unnamed courier who gets shot in the head in the course of a delivery and then revived by a plucky town doctor. One of few choices you don't get to make is to just up and leave town, which is probably what would make the most sense in that situation. I guess maybe you are worried you'll never find another doctor good enough to cure bullet wounds to the head w/o any special equipment. This much is not covered in game. Use your imagination.
4. There is a brief tutorial section you can do but by and large this is not very helpful.
5. The graphics used to be pretty good but now they're just graphics. If you've played Fallout 3, it looks exactly like that but where that game is blueish, this game is orangeish.
6. The musical theme here is the same basic theme as the other games in the series but there's variations in terms of orchestration. As is always the case, it's one of the best parts of the game.
7. There are four major pathways to the end game which are spelled out for you pretty early on. You can decide right away which one you wish to take or try to hedge your bets and see what's going on before choosing. Delaying your choice actually makes a difference in how the game plays out in the end.
8. Many of the NPC enemies which were just called raiders in other Fallout games are actually from built-out factions complete w/ backstories and leadership. You don't actually have to be enemies w/ everyone just because they are ruthless killers that nobody in their right mind would align themselves w/.
9. Gunplay in this game is kind of balls, no way around it. That is until you bring in the existence of VATS which is sort of a realtime/turn based hybrid system that you can use to aim at specific body parts, esp. heads, which then have a chance to explode fantastically if your shot lands. Not gonna lie: exploding enemies heads is so much fun I'd probably have put ten hours into this game if it was literally just that.
10. There is a crafting system which is pretty well built out but I was too busy blowing up heads to use it. Sue me.
11. The worst thing about this game is the inventory system. There is no way to sort by anything but alphabetical. I was forever just carrying about a hundred pounds of crap I didn't need for no reason just because I didn't want to deal w/ sorting through that garbage.
12. For some reason, I drank out of toilets a lot less than I generally do when playing Fallout games.
13. End of the day, of the 3D Fallout games, this is best RPG in the series. All of them have similar appeal in the just go around and do whatever vein but this has the most adaptive world where it feels like your actions as the randomly most important person in the world have an effect. It might lose some of its sheer openness and scope in being like this but it is worth the trade-off to not just feel like you are going through the motions at the endgame.
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