Category: PC Gaming

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Mortal Shell

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date January 3, 2023

There are some interesting ideas in this game after all. As I mentioned, the amount of healing items is pretty limited. But one of the characters is able to heal from poison. He also has the lowest health of all of them, though.
Also, there’s no magic outright. But you can find two unlocks for each of the weapons, which are powered by your “rage meter”. Some of those abilities are ranged attacks, while others allow you to imbue the current weapon with one of the elements. Two-handed Martyr’s Blade is especially useful in that regard. It’s cold imbue allows to freeze even some minibosses. At least it worked on Enslaved Grisha.

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PC Gaming

Mortal Shell

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 26, 2022

Almost direct Dark Souls clone. Visual style, stamina based combat, “leaving a bloodstain” and all that.

There are no classes, though. Instead, we have “shells”, dead bodies of different heroes that we inhabit and reanimate.
There are no direct stats or levels: instead we pick perks.
Seems there are no shields: instead we have “hardening”, which can block some attacks completely, but has a cooldown instead of being dependent on stamina.

A bit annoying that there’s no fast travel. Either give me a fast travel or a map, but I’m not going to remember how to get from place to place.
One element I liked in Dark Souls, is that your estus flasks replenish after you die. Here you have a consumable system instead. And those also don’t heal you immediately, which make them pretty useless.
Managed to beat the first boss, ogre funnily called Grisha. Guides say he’s easy. He isn’t. Managed to beat him only with counters, Bloodborne-style.

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PC Gaming

Beast Inside

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 25, 2022

Completed Beast Inside.
For a game I didn’t have any expectations from, I enjoyed it way too much. More than Soma or Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

It’s rough around the edges for sure. Sometimes your character gets stuck in geometry (not permanently, but you still feel it). And physics is a bit wonky. But it gets a lot things right, like giving you clues for puzzles if you struggle with them for more than a few minutes, or always guiding your eyes with light / color for the next objective. Candles, white boards or rusted sheets of iron are like signposts. Not as subtle as some other games, but still I rarely felt stuck for more than a couple of minutes.
The game is full of references. I already mentioned the chapter names are all nods to Lovecraft’s novels and the portraits. At one point we learn that Hyde changed his family name to Stevenson.

But not only horror: there’s a some of “Red Sparrow” being thrown around too. And I think to the Firewatch game as well.

PC Gaming

Panzer General

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 25, 2022

Contrary to Master of Magic Classic, which I enjoyed as a kid, but found hard to play nowadays, I considered Panzer General impossible as a kid.
Now, after completing a few Advance Wars games, I completed the first mission ahead of time.
It’s more of a puzzle than a strategy, though, since you can learn where all the enemy units are after a couple of attempts.
I didn’t know the game had a global campaign. Not only if you complete your objective ahead of the deadline you’ll receive more credits in the next mission, but all your untis from the first mission are transferred to the second one as well.
Interesting, if rather weird mechanic. Artillery is not very efficient against infantry, and not efficient at all against tanks (there’s a special anti-tank artillery for that). But it can counterattack unlimited number of times when any of the adjacent units are attacked. Making it very powerful when put behind a unit defending a city.

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Nintendo PC Gaming Switch

Completed

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 24, 2022

PC:
– Blacksad: Under the Skin
– Darksiders 3
– Dusk
– Prodeus
– Rebel Galaxy Outlaw
– Rise of the Tomb Raider

Switch:
– Return of Obra Dinn

PC Gaming

Beast Inside

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 24, 2022

The gameplay is surprisingly varied. There’s a boss fight that reminds me of Alan Wake. There’s chasing of a spy.

Although the game is all-over the place. There are ghosts, which scare you, but otherwise harmless, and there are zombies, which can kill you, but can be blocked by doors. Most of the zombies are invincible. Sometimes you need to outrun them, sometimes to sneak past, sometimes beat them in QTE.

Name of Chapter 8, “In the Mouth of Darkness” would make any Lovecraft fan smile, not just me. Other chapters are also references, but this was one of the most direct ones.

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PC Gaming

Beast Inside

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 24, 2022

Another Amnesia?
Controls a little weird: to open a door, you need to “drag” it with your mouse. And the developers really went “all in” on that idea. Sometimes you need to drag open multiple drawers to find an item you’re looking for.

Love how they have photos of Alan Poe and Lovecraft hanging around the house.

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PC Gaming

Master of Magic Classic

Funny enough, I did manage to enjoy the original Master of Magic. But only after playing Master of Magic 2022, as it explains a lot of mechanics.
There is “continue move” in the original, just somewhat hidden. And there’s also auto-build, called “Grand Visier”. But you cannot turn it for a specific city. Everything or nothing.
Slightly annoying that heroes sometimes lose artifacts when they die. Although I guess this has to do with the artifact being owned by “neutral” faction. Save often.
Completed my first game with elves, and they are awesome, just as I expected. Decimated everything with my longbowmen. Also randomly found a Ring of Invulnerability, which is quite literally makes a hero invulnerable to most types of attacks 😬 That sure helped a lot.

There are some issues with the generated maps being mostly islands. AI is quite good at managing naval raids. But for me, it was very cumbersome to put my heroes on ships.
I also slightly understand some players razing most of the cities. CPU is very good at finding underdefended towns, and recapturing them. No town – no problem.

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PC Gaming

Master of Magic

One design choice that I find questionable is that the dungeon drops are not prerolled. That means every time you load a save file, you can get completely different set of outcomes from the same dungeon.

All units in the game have to-hit. But the weird thing is that the default to-hit is 30%. Which means that units miss a lot.
The is surprising amount of attention to counter magic. In addition to both combat and global map dispells, there is also an entire mechanic to fail enemy spells before they are being cast.

It is somewhat of a problem how slow the game is. It takes a lot of turns to get started and hire at least one hero. Then it took me about 200 turns to best 3 of my opponents. And I didn’t even get to research yhr Spell of Mastery, which is the alternative way to end the game. Not even mentioning casting it, which probably would have taken even longer.

Part of the fun, I guess, is also to create things that are intentionally broken. You can summon heroes like Torin, essentially an avatar, already extremely powerful, then craft artifacts that grant him invincibility against most types of harm. All you need is enough time.

Tags Master of Magic

PC Gaming

Master of Magic

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 20, 2022

Master of Magic was one of the favorite games of my childhood. Since apparently there’s now a remake, the original one was rename to Master of Magic Classic.

I don’t understand how did I manage to play it as a kid, without any manual and not understanding much English. Because as an adult 25 years later, I got wiped out on my first turns, and couldn’t figure out how to build more soldiers.

The remake feels like an improvement in all areas. There are now battle outcome predictions. And build queues for cities. And you can also let AI manage city development. And you have “continue move”, so you don’t need to remember where your army was heading.

The game mechanics are a bit weird. It’s mostly based around special scout units, spirits. Only they can capture mana nodes for some reasons. Mana nodes are the main sources of mana. And since the game is called Master of Magic, mana is very important. With enough mana, you can summon phantom units during battle. Meaning that it’s enough to have just a single flying spirit and enough mana to wreak havoc and capture some villages.

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PC Gaming

Ultimate ADOM Caverns of Chaos

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 18, 2022
1 Comment on Ultimate ADOM Caverns of Chaos

Played the ASCII version of the original ADOM some 25 years ago. Never managed to get into it, though.
As far as I understand, this is a sequel to the original game. There’s also a remake of the original game with 2D graphics.
This version has a rather friendly UI. But the dungeons it generates aren’t particularly interesting. You get secret walls that don’t lead anywhere, chests that don’t contain anything useful.

While the original had a staring village, here you start right in the dungeon.
There’s a tutorial, which is nice. But the tutorial suggests to butcher an orc, then to graft his arm into yours, without ever explaining why 🤦‍♂️

Managed to create a troll warrior and get to the 4th level of the dungeon. But didn’t enjoy the process much, to be honest.

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PC Gaming

Dusk

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 16, 2022

Completed Dusk.
Riveter is great against bosses. It’s like a combination of a rocket launcher and a machine gun, and simply shreds most of them to pieces in seconds.

But my favorite weapon is the Hunting Rifle. Works just like a railgun. There’s also the Crossbow that even pierces walls, but it was harder to find until Episode 3, and it has that weird recoil that bounces you back.
The Sword is available since Episode 1, albeit it’s usually found in secrets. But it’s still strange they don’t explain how to use it properly until Episode 3. You can charge attack with it, but only with full health. And you can block attacks for chip damage, but only until you have two thirds health left.

Tornado destroying a church is super impressive.

Changing gravity in “Homecoming” is interesting, but was a bit too much, so I tried to finish this level as quickly as possible. Prefinal arena throws everything at you, including some former bosses. Then the final level has two bosses, which is great. One is basically a player, with the same move speed and arsenal of weapons. And the second one is a huge Ancient One.

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PC Gaming

Dusk

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 9, 2022

I like that there are three bosses just in the first episode. Even though the second boss is just a pair of regular cultist enemies that got enlarged. Entire Prodeus had just a single boss in it.
One of my complaints is that weapons are hard to distinguish from each other. Mortar looks just like Riveter, local version of the Rocket Launcher.
Enemies that are invisible until shot, but that leave blood trails are quite fun. Also, the mechanic of breaking your flashlight a couple of times during the game, and spending time in darkness is interesting for a Quake-like.

Other suprises: powerup that lets you climb walls, like in Alien vs Predator games. It’s awkward, but still interesting.
While the first episode was more Blood/Redneck Rampage in terms of level design, the second episode has more of a industrial Quake or even Quake 2 feel. Which I like slightly less.

Tags Dusk

PC Gaming

Dusk

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 6, 2022

Quake visuals and mechanics, Blood style. Level design is quite unorthodox, though. Secrets within secrets, and some of those are hard to find to begin with. And I think some levels contain multiple keys of the same color.

Speaking of secrets, there are different styles of secrets in games. Destructible objects. Explosive walls. Secret walls. Fake walls. Hidden buttons. Shooting buttons. Unpaved paths. Jump secrets. Teleport secrets. Usually, games establish that they’re doing just a subset of those. Quake does maybe 3-4 of those. Duke Nukem 3D or more widely the Build Engine games, which are notorious for their secretes, do most of them. Dusk does all of them.

One one level, there’s a baseball hoop, which is quite an obvious cue. But the baseball itself is found in another secret. The only way I found about this is from a video guide.

Tags Dusk

PC Gaming

Prodeus

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 4, 2022

Completed Prodeus.
I didn’t collect enough ore pieces, so didn’t even get to test one of the weapons, the Mammoth revolver. Doesn’t matter, though.
Was surprised that the final gun you get is a chem-gun from Unreal. Not Doom-like weapon at all.
Glad they did add at least one boss to the game. And it’s a rather good boss fight too, if a bit chaotic.

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PC Gaming

Prodeus

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 3, 2022

The game managed to surprise me with the sniper level. Snipers telegraphing with laser sights aren’t new. But I certainly didn’t expect to dodge between covers in a Doom-like. You can’t kill them until you reach the end of the level, because they’re behind a force barrier too.
Just like the surrealists rejected photography, that game rejects modern physics engines. Instead we have platforms floating in radioactive waste animated manually, and even more impressively, ruins raising from the sand effects done all by hand.
A problem inherited from the original games, I think: all enemies are introduced quite early. There’s the ice throwing one that appears in the 3rd episode, but most of them are there with you from the 1st. There are reskins (think Hell Knight and Hell Baron from Doom 2) that have more health and some additional attacks, but that doesn’t help much.
Same problem with the arsenal: shotgun becomes obsolete after getting supershotgun, and SMGs are obsolete after you get the Minigun.

Tags Prodeus

PC Gaming

Prodeus

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date November 26, 2022

Feels like downport of Doom 2016, which isn’t a bad thing. Imps are just a carbon copy, but other enemies are pretty similar as well: zombies, shotgun zombies, flying round demons that shoot fireballs, bulls-demons that run at you. Arsenal is pretty standard: pistol, double SMGs, minigun. The only slight surprise is that a shotgun can be charged, and that the plasma rifle can “latch” to a target once you land your first shot.

Each level contains multiple ore fragments. And as far as I can tell, some weapons can only be purchased with these. Also, each level contains multiple checkpoints, but if you quit it in the middle, you’ll have to replay it from the beginning. Luckily, those are pretty short: 15 minutes on average.

Although enemies are 2D, the authors did something very smart and rendered them from the top as well, in different perspectives. When you look at them from they top, their sprites aren’t distorted, like in Ion Maiden.

Tags Prodeus

PC Gaming

Blacksad

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date November 21, 2022

Completed Blacksad: Under the Skin.
That’s probably the best noir detective game I’ve played. Certainly better than Chicken Police, LA Noire or Backbone, and on-par with Wolf Among Us.

The story was surprisingly ruthless. I certainly didn’t expect the German doctor or how that episode turned out.

Monkey Craigg sacrificing himself was extremely well directed, when a lot of motives come together: his baseball glove that he uses to stop the fan, and him dying to a heart attack as he imagines that he plays his last game.

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PC Gaming

Blacksad

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date November 20, 2022

Didn’t expect to enjoy this game so much. Voice acting is absolutely brilliant, as well as the writing. And there are new mechanics added from time to time. At one point, you’re given a flashlight, to highlight objects in the dark. At another point, you need to try and remember what happened in the past to get the right answers for an interrogation. And the baseball question game, when only the person with the baseball can ask the question is interesting as well.

There’s an interesting episode, when you see a person about to be executed by a mob boss, and you can try and prevent this. But first, you discover that he threatened a widow. Then you learn that he did so by almost drowning her son in the toilet. So by the end of it, you may decide not to save him at all.

Tags Blacksad

PC Gaming

Blacksad

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date November 16, 2022

Blacksad, that is the original comics, is probably the reason there are so many noir games about furries. Backbone is just one example.
Taking place somewhen after World War 2, we play as a private detective from New York. A boxing champion went missing, and his manager apparently committed a very inconvenient suicide.

Of course there are racial jokes, about a wife of a rhino “tearing his horn off” for being unfaithful. And the fact that Blacksad is a black cat:

The problem with presented dilemmas is that you, as a player, don’t have a skin in the game. You’re offered a bribe, but you can’t spend that money. You’re threatened with beatings and death, but you know your character can’t die. So, you can be as honest and blunt as you’d like. It won’t change a thing.

The game is made beautifully. Not LA Noire, of course, but still very impressive camera work, well written and all voiced dialogs, all that stuff. I don’t like how cats look basically like humans with cat ears, but that’s the original style.