I have been enjoying Deadlight on the PC. It’s a beautiful little action platformer with relatively simple mechanics, albeit with a frustrating mechanism when shooting and loading a pistol. It’s simple to shoot, but difficult to get the aim right. Luckily, most targets are large and relatively easy to hit. I hope there isn’t an upcoming situation where I need to shoot something in a hurry…
While reading some comments about the game the other day, it seems a lot of people had difficulty around the helicopter scene. Based on the comments, they seemed to found the difficulty spike to be out of the blue, to the point where the shock of it caused many of them to stop playing the game cold turkey. They just aborted it, claiming the scenario was unreasonably challenging. The thing is, I found it tricky too, but only for a short while. I needed to try it several times before I finished it. The point is that I did get through it, even when I screwed up one section royally and thought for sure I was a goner. Just to prove it wasn’t a fluke, I tried it again and completed it with no issues.
The comments in the thread seem a little too caustic, given the games average difficulty level. I am left wondering about the psychology at play here. If a game has established an easy to moderate level of difficulty, and then it bumps the difficulty up a few notches out of the blue, what does that do to the player’s opinion of the game? Are they statistically more likely to drop the game at this point? Do the majority push through these hiccups? Are players nowadays just a tad spoiled in our expectations around the difficulty of a game, once our notions about a title have been established?
Categories: PC, Reflections, Steam
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I finally had an opportunity to play and finish Dead Space for the PC. I had a lot of fun playing this game, and while the camera took some time to get use to and the VSYNC bug that took some time to diagnose, neither detracted measurably from the overall game play experience. I am not going to do a review on this game since the world doesn’t need another one of those. What I have been thinking about, though, is giving you a persona based list of key gaming elements that may help you decide if you want to play it:
- Jumping about in 3D space doesn’t make you queasy (you will literally be jumping about in space with no gravity).
- You like being told what to do and bossed around.
- You can continue to snack while walking through pools of blood and guts.
- You like games that allow you to kill things with visceral tools like bolt guns, saws, and fire.
- You like it when you are low on ammo and there are baddies around the corner.
- Detailed space ship environments make you happy.
- You enjoy long load times as it gives you an opportunity to reflect on how you buggered it all up.
Categories: Games, PC, Steam
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My wife is enjoying this great game using our Analogue console on the big screen. I love this new take on hardware for such a classic console.
Categories: SNES
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 I picked up this used game on Amazon the other day for a steal. I had no idea it even existed before I stumbled upon it being mentioned in one of my favourite game magazines, Retro Gamer. Anyway, I am currently playing Wolfenstein: The Old Blood on my PC and loving it, but perhaps not quite as much as Wolfenstein: The New Order, we shall soon see how it stacks up as I get closer to finishing it!
Categories: Games, Playstation
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I am ashamed to admit that I don’t play every game I own. Some of them haven’t even been fired up a single time on the machine for which they were destined to be played. Why is that?
Well, the easy answer is that I buy too many games for my current life style, and that is definitely true. I just don’t have as much free time as I had before I had kids. However, that answer doesn’t sit quite so well with me. It doesn’t feel like enough of a reason. I know that if I dedicated all of my free time towards the effort, I could play most, if not all, of those titles. It would take time, but I could slog through them. So then, why don’t I just do that?
The more complex answer is that I find many types of games I own to be mentally exhausting. I do tend to gravitate to the ones involving a lot of action and little else because of that. I just can’t bring myself to face the onslaught of constant decision making most of the time. I do play those other types of games, and I will enjoy them to varying degrees, but I find the exercise of unwinding a little harder than when playing a game like Doom. The fact that I play these games at all is ironic, because I often partake in electronic games to unwind.
With games like Doom, it comes down to a constant cycle of challenge, failure, and success. I have a job and home life where I am challenged with all sorts of problems on a daily basis. That reality is stressful, and I often feel like I make very little progress in the day to day. When I play a game like Doom, it is challenging and I do fail often, but I also succeed multiple times as well. I don’t get that kind of tight cycle in a game like Divine Divinity, the cycle is much slower. With Doom or perhaps a good platformer, those short, micro wins are fulfilling. Sure the mental onslaught of fear, anger, and worry while playing these sorts of titles is tiring eventually, but at the end of it I have usually made significant progress and that progression is enjoyable and ultimately, worth the price of admission.
Categories: Games, Reflections
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I took a chance on this little Windows computer to solve a couple of problems:
- I needed a portable Windows game platform
- I needed something small with an appropriate number of USB ports (for joystick support)
- I wanted it to be quiet with very few zero fans whirring and humming
Right out of the gate, I was impressed with this machine. Forget about gaming for a second, this is an excellent machine for those wanting a Windows “desktop” computer without wanting or needing a large machine or laptop. This machine is so small you could easily attach it to the back of most monitors. It has friendly set-up process that everyone in your family should be able to follow with little difficulty (assuming they’ve touched a Windows computer in the last 5 years). The performance is excellent for those wanting to do a little e-mail, web browsing, etc. I have an interest in using it for games, but nothing 3D or with extremely heavy weight processing requirements.
Categories: Game Development, Hardware, PC, Projects, Windows
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 A new device graces my doorstep yesterday: the Turbo Everdrive! For years, I have been using an old device that allowed me to load up home-brew software for the TG-16 via a parallel cable, and old version of Windows, and some obsolete software. With this new device, I can now simply copy the software onto the SD card and away I go. If you get the same device, be aware that it comes pre-set for a PCE device and not a TG-16 game console, so you will simply see a white screen until you toggle the tiny little switch on the right of the card. Also note, that you will need to create a “TGED” directory at the root of the SD card with the device’s operating system file copied into it.
Categories: TG-16
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