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Hollow Knight: Silksong (PC) by dkirschner (May 13th, 2026 at 14:58:07) |
Kicking myself for not writing an entry when I was playing this 6 months ago. I am cleaning up my wishlist, backlog, and etc., and the FEELING I get when I see Silksong "in progress" is anxiety. I had jotted a few notes in December, as follows:
"It’s true, Silksong is hard. Like, really, frustratingly hard. Like punishingly difficult. I hit a wall at the end of Act 1 trying to beat the Last Judge. The game likes to place benches far away from boss fights, such that retrying boss fights involves slogging back through tough platforming and other sections of the map."
I did kill the Last Judge and complete Act 1. I remember that took a very long time, and that after the Last Judge, I died a few more times and, probably, with shaking hands and rapid heartbeat, said, "I can't do this anymore." Actually, it may have been in one of those rooms with waves of enemies. This innovation is new and unwelcome to Silksong, rooms that lock upon entering and spill several waves of challenging enemies at you. Yeah, I think that is what got me, just being pummeled over and over in one of those rooms, getting tired of exploring the maze-like map, tired of dying, tired of corpse runs, just exhausted. The game became a chore.
Besides that, I loved it, haha. I was definitely into it for a while. It was sublime until it wasn't.
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Turnip Boy Robs a Bank (PC) by dkirschner (May 12th, 2026 at 17:20:35) |
I meant to quickly beat this back in April so I could have a "completion" for the month, but I got really busy after spending barely an hour one afternoon with Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, a bizarre little twin-stick shooter about a turnip...who robs a bank. The game builds off previous games in the series, which I have never played, in which Turnip Boy commits tax evasion and, according to this game at least, seems to have started a war. Work has slowed down for the first time in nearly two months, and while I wait for my next contract to begin, I figured I'd knock this out.
The whole game is silly. The world is populated by sentient fruits and vegetables. You are employed by a pickle / mafia gang leader to rob a bank of a garlic bulb / bad guy / killed your dad. You have a base, where you can get new weapon loadouts by bringing weapons from the bank (always try to return with something new or high-powered!), purchase progression items from the "dark web," and upgrade stuff at another vendor. You go on "runs" to the bank, which are timed (starts at 2 or 3 minutes, goes up to 5 or 6 with upgrades). Runs are over when you die or when you exit the bank. Die and you lose half the cash you accumulated in the run. Survive and you are handsomely rewarded. Upgrade stuff. Go back to the bank. It's a roguelite too.
The bank has a specific layout of rooms, but you'll encounter some randomized areas too, and enemies and treasure are somewhat randomized. Throughout the bank are tons of NPCs with little fetch quests that usually reward you with pictures (fun/ny to look at) or hats (fun/ny to equip). A blueberry might want you to find its wedding ring, a lime wants you to get divorce papers from her lemon husband, a scientist pineapple wants you to find a philosopher mango and ask it an ethical question about experimenting on fruits, etc. I had some good laughs.
In each corner of the bank is a boss. Boss fights were fun, but the most challenging were early on. Once you start upgrading stats, the game becomes easy. It definitely ends up being an "upgrade everything and go nuts on all the enemies!" type game, experience being overpowered.
I haven't played a twin-stick shooter in a while, and while this wasn't revolutionary or anything, it was fun and scratched the itch. I gotta get back to Divinity: Original Sin 2. I might have some extra time till my next gig, so maybe I can boot it up, remember what I was doing, and make some progress this week.
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Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS) by jp (Apr 27th, 2026 at 22:04:52) |
I got to that point where I hit a monster/boss that just wasn't that much fun, and then I got a bit lost in terms of where to continue making progress, and the backtracking started to get a bit tiresome...as I explored and searched for different paths. So, time to bail!
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Legacy of Ys Books I & II (DS) by jp (Apr 27th, 2026 at 22:03:27) |
Can you believe that I capped out on character level? I hit level 24, with plenty of game to go (I checked a guide, though I had reached the last 20% or so) and that's it. No more levels. It was a bit of a disappointment to be honest, and I also started to tire of having to backtrack all over the place to talk to different characters and so on. It was fun, and surprising to me in many ways, it's an action RPG with real-time combat, but no real challenge or interest in the combat - limited items and gear, no significant shopping or upgrading...there's boss fights (which are much harder than the regular game), but there wasn't much there to continue to keep my interest. So, I've decided to bail.
I did also spend some time on the Wikipedia page and it looks like the game has been re-released a million times across different formats, and rebundled with new content, and stuff touched up and more. I'm kind of surprised because I wasn't all that impressed to be fair. As in, the game was fun and I enjoyed it for a bit, but I'm not entirely sure that it merits THAT much attention in the re-releases? Maybe I'm missing something and this game really resonated strongly with lots of people?
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Legacy of Ys Books I & II (DS) by jp (Apr 26th, 2026 at 10:06:39) |
I need to look up more info on this. I had assumed it was a bundle of the two first Ys games, but upon starting the first one (Book I), the 3D graphics make it seem like it's a newer game? So I'm really curious what the backstory here is...
It started out pretty frustrating - because I wandered into a field outside of town and died immediately. I had to start over which was a drag - lots of text to skip past, and died again! Sigh. I eventually figured out how to save your game, which helped. So, I decided to then book it, dodge enemies and made it to a city! Here I bought a sword and some armor...and figured I wouldn't die again immediately but I did! It turns out I hadn't figured out how to equip the items and that solved EVERYTHING.
I've been playing since, and the game's quite interesting in its camera perspective - it's a very unusual sort of 3D isometric view, but it's not at an angle, but rather it's sort of straight? (like vertical/top to bottom). It's a weird perspective because there's lots that gets occluded (if you walk down towards a wall, the wall blocks you from seeing what's close to it when you come from the top part of the scree). I mean, it makes sense spatially, but it's a weird perspective in a game - you also cannot rotate the camera AFAIK.
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GameLog hopes to be a site where gamers such as yourself keep track of the games that
they are currently playing. A GameLog is basically a record of a game you started playing. If it's open,
you still consider yourself to be playing the game. If it's closed, you finished playing the game. (it doesn't matter
if you got bored, frustrated,etc.) You can also attach short comments to each of your games or even maintain a diary (with more detailed entries)
for that game. Call it a weblog of game playing activity if you will.
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2323 registered gamers and 3357 games. 7894 GameLogs with 13388 journal entries. 5125 games are currently being played.
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Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2) by batman.jenkins |
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most recent entry: Wednesday 3 November, 2010
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For my final game log I decided to go back to my GTA roots, so to speak, and do my own thing. My own thing usually means that I carjack someone (killing them if possible), cruise around the city looking for a kickass motorcycle, and then cruise around town generally wreaking havoc upon innocents. The hardest part is not getting caught, since after killing as many people as I like to my star rating skyrockets. That’s why cheats come in handy, because San Andreas has one for weapon aiming while driving and making it possible to punch people so hard they fly away. I quite literally threw all my ethical standards out the window in order and beat the shit out of hookers. It’s arguable that by allowing this sort of side action in the game, the GTA franchise promotes ethical egoism. I’m not following any missions or gaining respect by committing all this crime, I am doing it simply because I want to and it makes me laugh. It’s probably worrisome that I get so gleeful cruising around on my bike making childish revving noises when I turn corners until I hop off to kill somebody, but I don’t care. It’s not real life and that is what matters, at least in my (expert) opinion.
Since I had already obtained a bike the last time I played, I had to ditch it to steal somebody’s car and then run them over with it. I followed the pattern of running people over as they strolled along the sidewalk until I found a prettier motorcycle than the last one I had and it was time to switch up my ride. It’s not easy killing people on a motorcycle unless you, say, enter the vehicle of death cheat that makes any mode of transportation invulnerable. Once that baby’s in place you don’t even need to pull out a gun. My ride was my weapon. Basically how this usually goes is that I’ll play like this and avoid the cops for as long as possible, then find the weapons cheat and fire some heavy artillery on their asses until they strike me down. If this entire rampage doesn’t perfectly demonstrate the concept of (maniacal) ethical egoism, I don’t know what does.
Overall this game has a terrible message. Racial and gender profiling aside, this game sends a negative message about the government via the corrupt police force, and portrays justice in a murky light. Violence is more than okay; it’s even applauded at times. There is nowhere in the game that dissuades you from killing or maiming. Several—if not all—of the missions involve violence on some level. Beating up drug dealers, fighting with rival gangs, and stealing people’s cars is all in a day’s work for San Andreas. Its message about self image is also insulting, considering the only way you can really make it through the game is to get specific hairstyles and stay buff enough to be attractive to other people. Fat characters are mocked, and if you aren’t driving a decent ride it affects you negatively. Stereotypes for women are everywhere in this game. The ones who aren’t prostitutes are either dressed like prostitutes or are complete weaklings who are down in a fight after one punch. They’re displayed as moronic, promiscuous weaklings and it’s appalling. I don’t consider myself a feminist, but honestly it’s terrible that this is the only image of women they were willing to work into the game. It says something to disprove people’s belief that video games have some sort of mind or behavior-altering affect on people because if it was true, I would have no hope for women as a gender. I would also be in jail for several different crimes, the very least being vehicular homicide.
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