Backlogged: Final Fantasy

January 23, 2017May 4, 2020Kluwes1 Comment

The story is relatively simple. Four warriors of light appear in the Kingdom of Coneria each holding a darkened orb. After meeting the the king sends them on a quest to rescue his daughter from the castle next door. Here the warriors fight Garland, an evil night, and save the princess. Once they return with her the king is inspired to build a bridge and the warriors of light go on their merry way. After roughing up some pirates and stealing their ship they go on a bunch of fetch quests until they learn about uniting the crystals to save the world.

After collecting all the crystals and defeating the big bad boss monster, my time with the first installment of Final Fantasy has come to an end. What can I say about such a classic game? I’m still not really sure I had fun playing this or if the curiosity of how games used to be got me through this.

There were parts I genuinely enjoyed. The first couple of areas were fun and scratched an itch for a really simple turn based combat game. I liked the first quest where the four heroes had to save a princess from Garland. The few adventures we had along the way were also really fun. Without a map I was stumbling around the wilderness just praying my heroes could survive until we saw town again. It probably took a lot of extra time but I think that was the best experience I had with this game

Some of the dungeons are tough as nails. I didn’t think an 8-bit rpg could give me so much anxiety. In Grugu Volcano after I defeated the boss my party was in bad shape. the white mage was dead we were down to our last precious health potions. As the party made its way back to the entrance the monk and the red mage were picked off. Enemies only hit my warrior for 1 damage each turn and he had a lot of health as long as he wasn’t poisoned. 3 squares from the exit a pack of adders spawned which poisoned the warrior and then destroyed his remaining health. That was an hour of playtime gone. It was disheartening but nothing a little grinding couldn’t solve.

It was around the 10 hour mark that my interest/enjoyment started to wane. It was right around the time I actually decided to follow a map. It’s frustrating when you don’t know where your going or who the last NPC was that had some useful information. The story became not so entertaining as I was flying from point to point on the map wondering when I would run into the next crystal.

Around the 15 hour mark I was bored but it looked like I was almost to the final location so I buckled down and pulled up a walk through for the final dungeon. Even with a decently leveled party and full inventory of items I barely made it through on the first try. The walk through explained a lot like that the healing staff could be used as an item to lightly heal the whole group.

It also gave me a map of the dungeon which would not have been fun to figure out on my own. I know it’s an end game dungeon but there are so many dead ends. This final dungeon has you face all of the previous bosses and then the big bad horribleness. I almost lost this fight. By the time I got there even with the walk through I was out of my 99 healing potions and my white mage was on his last leg. What surprised me was that he only had one form which my master and his fists of overpoweredness were able to dispatch easily.

Was it fun? Yes, for a little while but it got old after the first 3rd. My total play time was 20hrs I felt like I got my moneys worth out of this one though. It was interesting to play through a game that is one of the pillars of classic RPGs. It wasn’t as basic as I thought it would be. I was surprised that I got to form my own party in the beginning. On top of that,I could pick different classes too. It really made me miss tool tips, item descriptions, and quest journals a lot.

Since I got the Origins edition for the PS Vita I also own Final Fantasy 2. I’ve heard some terrible, awful, horrendous things about FF2 and it’s weird leveling system. I’m excited to try it out. How bad could it really be?

Backlogged: Titanfall 2

December 1, 2016May 4, 2020KluwesLeave a comment

Titanfall™ 2_20161201103021 The last time I thought to myself “you know what I need in my life right now, a multiplayer fps” was in 2007 when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare came out. Well after a 9 year hiatus I decided I needed a new shooter in my gaming rotation. Enter Titanfall 2.

OK maybe it hasn’t been that long, I played a lot of Destiny’s multiplayer, I played Battlefield 4 for a while and I did get Rainbow Six Siege at the beginning of the year. Destiny was always kind of a side thing when I was bored of the PVE, I didn’t really play Battlefield 4 all that much, and my time with Rainbow Six Siege was mostly spent in the Player versus AI Terrorist Hunt. I will admit this was kind of an impulse buy. I wanted something with quick matches and I wanted to shoot things with Mechs. Plus, who’s game would capture the feel of Modern Warfare better than Respawn, the guys who made Modern Warfare.

It came out on the heels of Battlefield 1 like just a few days after. Kind of a weird plan releasing right after one of the most anticipated shooters of the year but it looks like its doing OK. I really hadn’t heard much about it before release. but afterward the internet was hailing the campaign as one of the best in years and praising the multiplayer for fixing the problems the last game had. The internet was also full of “lol this game will die in 6 months gg scrubs” predicting the fall off of players that plagued the first game.

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The campaign took me around 10 hours to beat. I’ve never been great at shooters even against AI so I died a whole lot even though I was playing the easier difficulty. The story is pretty forgettable, as in I beat this 3 weeks ago and faintly remember what its about. It’s story of a generic solider turned elite Mech Pilot who has to stop the bad guys from using a weapon to destroy the world. To Jack some credit, he was training to be a Pilot before the battle that wiped out most of the landing party. His mentor, the Pilot of the lovable Titan BT-7427 doesn’t make it and gives Jack the reins to BT seeing as he’s the only one still alive there isn’t much of a choice. BT is your typical computer AI that takes everything too literally but he’s endearing and I never got tired of hearing him talk. The banter between BT and Jack is great.

So you may be wondering, if the story was meh why has the campaign been getting all this praise. Well, it’s the levels, the levels are really unique and I haven’t played anything like them. Each level comes with a mix of shooting things, stretching your platforming muscles, wall running, and using BT to shoot even more things.My favorite two are the factory level with all of its platforming goodness and the time travel level which adds something wholly unique to Titanfall 2.

One of the best things about the campaign is collecting all of the Titan Kits as you progress. These correspond with the Titan load outs in multiplayer so you can get a feel for each Titan before diving in. It’s also really fun to switch load outs on a whim in the campaign. One titan not working for the particular boss fight? Switch to a different one. Since theirs not cool down penalties for switching in the middle of a fight you can pull off some interesting combinations. Too bad you can’t do this in multiplayer.

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Speaking of multiplayer, Titanfall 2 has an interesting take on it. I didn’t play or follow the first one so when I jumped in to Attrition, the main game mode, I was surprised to find AI enemies as well as other players. This really helps less than talented players, like me, contribute. They may not give as many points as an enemy player but they stand still long enough to shoot. Later in the match they seem to gain the ability to aim and do plenty of damage where they can almost kill you which just adds to the fun. At that point you most likely have your titan and are ripping through them anyways. The movement is really well done and it constantly makes you feel like an elite solider wall running and sliding around the battle field. There are constantly those moments of “whoa did you see what they just did”. From my experience, even if your at the bottom of the score board you’re still getting your titan pretty often in battle which is nice because I don’t feel like I’m missing out on part of the game because I’m not doing well.

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All in all, I’m happy with my purchase. The campaign was short but fun and the multiplayer is fun even if your bad at shooters. The multiplayer definitely has that one more round feel and the matches are short enough that you can’t get too mad about losing. I’ve been playing for a few weeks and learning and improving has been the main hook. But that level up bar is always fun to watch fill up at the end of the match. Who doesn’t love a good level up bar?

Backlogged: Tengami and Where is My Heart?

July 27, 2016May 4, 2020KluwesLeave a comment

I haven’t done this in a while. July has been a crazy month for me in my non gaming life. Between going on vacation and taking on some more responsibilities at work there hasn’t been a whole lot of time to work on my backlog. These games I actually finished back in June but haven’t had the chance to write about them. Both were under 2 hours long, I wish Tengami was longer but Where is My Heart? couldn’t end soon enough.

Tengami

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Developer: Nyamnyam

Playtime: 114 minutes

Tengami is a point and click puzzle game in a world that looks like its made out of paper. The game itself reminds me of an interactive pop-up book complete with tabs to pull and flaps to flip. The goal of the game is to go through each level and find a flower to put back onto the Cherry Blossom tree.

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Each of the four levels reflect the four changing seasons and have a few puzzles to solve on each. The puzzles are difficult but not impossible to solve without hints. The glowing circles on the interactive parts of the world were very helpful. While I tried to use hints sparingly, there were some puzzles I just couldn’t wrap my head around to start until I looked up a walkthrough.

At the end of each level you are rewarded with a Haiku

While it did feel a like cheating to use a walkthrough for some puzzles, I really wanted to see more of the world. I love the art in this game, it’s simple,unique and very visually pleasing. Couple that with the great soundtrack and you can see why I didn’t want to spend hours figuring out that a few symbols were actually Japanese numbers.

I wish the game was longer. It seemed as soon as I was really getting into it it was over. That’s one of the issues with short games. Overall it plays really well, the character walks a bit slow but other than that it’s a really enjoyable experience that I highly recommend.

Where Is My Heart?

Developer: Schulenburg Software

Playtime: 98 minutes

I picked up this game in a Humble bundle a year or two ago. What started off as a cute platformer with an interesting idea became a headache after about 10 levels. Where is My Heart tells the story of a family of forest spirits whose world has been fractured. You are tasked with guiding them through each level to put their world back together and gather hearts.

The main feature of the game is the shattered world, the level is broken up into different pieces and shuffled around. This adds a challenge to the platforming. Jumping out of one square could drop you into one across the screen. After a few levels, this becomes more of an annoyance than anything special. It’s not the easiest platforming and when you don’t know exactly where your character is jumping to, it ends in a lot of missed jumps and miserable deaths.I wouldn’t recommend trying to play this in one sitting, I ended up with a headache trying to keep track of how all the shattered pieces were connected together.

Each forest spirit can power up and transform to have different abilities. This adds a few more mechanics to the game. For example the Rainbow spirit, who looks like a fluffy marshmallow, jump and rotate the screens to get to hard to reach places. The Deer spirit can jump higher than the rest and the bat spirit can reveal hidden passages and platforms.

The spirits are allergic to spikes and water. I must have died 50 times on this levle.

I think I would have liked the game if it was a normal platformer. It’s challenging enough as such but throwing in the confusing, jigsaw, shattered levels makes it frustrating. I understand why they did this, it’s a unique idea and it is fun for the first few levels and if you took this feature away, it’d be just another retro looking platformer.

Backlogged: Out There Somewhere

June 22, 2016May 4, 2020KluwesLeave a comment

Screenshot (130).png Developer: MiniBoss

Time to Beat: 2 hrs

It’s a puzzle platformer with teleportation and shooting aliens how could it not be fun? After getting shot out of the sky and landing on an unknown planet one loan astronaut and his trust teleportation gun must make his way across the planet collecting ship upgrades and health canisters to repair his ship and beat the big bad boss.

I’ve been playing this game off and on for months. It came in a bundle with Polarity and a few other indie games. Every once and a while I remember I have it and complete a level or two, get stuck and stop playing. My backlog challenge has actually forced me to finally beat it.

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The mechanics are quite simple. You can jump, you have a teleportation gun that will teleport you to a location where the beam hits a wall, and while teleporting you carry your momentum with you. This leads to a lot of puzzles being solved by jumping, firing the beam, landing on the ground and then jumping as soon as the beam hits the wall to jump higher. Along the way there are (insert name of item here cause I can’t remember it) that you can collect that will make your ship stronger, I think, I didn’t go out of my way to collect them which is why the boss fight at the end was so difficult.

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Let’s talk about the last boss real quick. So most of the game is a puzzle platformer except for the very beginning and the very game. At these two points in time, the game is a side scrolling space shooter a la R-Type.

I was not prepared for this, the game didn’t prepare me for it, it just threw me in there and said “hey, if you want to actually beat this game play a completely different game.” It’s not that it was hard, it was unexpected and took more than a few tries to get through. I’ve never been that great at dodging bullets and missiles in games like that. What I enjoyed a lot more was the mini boss fight which actually had you use the skills you’d developed through the game and put them to the test. That fight was a lot more fun and a lot less frustrating.

I actually want to go back after the backlog challenge is over, and try to find all the ship upgrades. I would like to know how much easier it makes the final fight plus it’ll add some extra puzzles. I’m not going to lie, I actually had to look up the solutions to two puzzles. As a rule I don’t like doing this but I was banging my head against the wall trying to figure out where exactly to jump. In my search for the solution, I saw that the entire game can be beaten in 17 minutes which gives me hope my next play through can be under 2 hours.

Backlogged: Polarity and Cosmic DJ

June 8, 2016May 4, 2020Kluwes1 Comment

The great thing about short games is that they’re short. You can sit down, start the game, beat it, see the credits, and have plenty day left to spare. This week I was able to check two games off my backlog list. Well, one was a game. The other was more of a muppet infused fever dream.

Polarity

Total Play Time: 2 hours

Polarity has you take on the role of a hacker trying to break in to one of the most secure systems in the world. And by hacking, I mean solving 3D platforming puzzles. It’s kind of like portal except the portals are replaced with moving colored cubes around.

You can switch between 2 polarities, blue and red. While your polarity is red, you can pass through red gates and lasers and vis versa for blue. There are blue and red cubes that when placed on corresponding platforms, will unlock doors, turn on jump pads, and raise or lower platforms. The levels are a mix between puzzles solving and obstacle courses that test how well you can switch polarities on the fly.

Screenshot (116).png — Each level has 3 data pieces to collect that unlock additional levels

I think this one is also a mobile or tablet game. It ran really smooth on my laptop even with the graphics all the way up. I finished the first 11 “story” levels in just under an hour but I enjoyed the gameplay so I took a swing at completing the bonus levels as well. I’m glad I did, the bonus levels were a lot more interesting. They took longer to complete and required a little more thinking and reflexes. There was only one pesky data piece I wasn’t able to collect in the single player puzzles but I can live with that. Sadly I was not able to try out the co-op campaign because the game didn’t recognize the PS4 controller.

Cosmic DJ

Total Play Time: 70 minutes

This was an experience. I have no idea why this game was in my steam library, maybe a friend gave it to me, maybe it came in a bundle I honestly don’t know but it was there. I played it and it was glorious.

You are a Cosmic DJ spoken to by a disembodied voice who calls himself the Cosmic Conductor. Steve4 (really that’s not a typo) has invaded the universe and is pumping out bad vibes. The Cosmic Conducter decides it’s your job to fight off the bad vibes and fix the 5 Jamtennas. Each Jamtenna has its own weird story to play through including but not limited to headless corgis, robot bands, and two felt puppet best friends. You’re only goal is to make sweet jams by looping sounds togetherr, eventually filling up the jam bar, and moving on to the next scene.

It’s hard to put into words exactly how strange this game is so here’s a bunch of screen shots instead:

So if you ever find this game lurking in your steam library turn the lights off, put on some headphones, and save the universe with the power of music.

Backlogged: Back To Bed

May 31, 2016May 4, 2020KluwesLeave a comment

How Long To Beat Average Time: 1 Hour

My Time to Beat: 2 Hours

My cat woke me up earlier than I wanted this morning, so I decided to get started on my backlog challenge. There’s something to be said about playing a game about keeping a man asleep while not being able to get back to sleep myself. But I’m not clever enough to find it. So once the cat was fed and watered, I took a journey into some one else’s dreams.

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Back to Bed tells the story of Bob. Bob has narcolepsy and Bob has a tendency to sleep walk on the roofs of buildings. I didn’t play as Bob, I played some sort of green dog with a persons face. As Bob’s spirit animal, it’s apparently my job to make sure Bob is returned to his bed without him falling to his death or waking him up.

B2B Feature — The foot prints show which way Bob will walk, I would have been so lost without them

The game starts out simple enough, as a puzzle game should. Bob walks in a straight line until he runs into something, then he turns clockwise and walks in a straight line again. You can move apples around for Bob to walk in to. Usually one or two of these can be found in each level. Sometimes there are portals that Bob will walk through and end up on the other side of the map. Other levels have “enemies” like dogs and alarm clocks which must be avoided or Bob will wake up. In the second chapter, there are fish that can be moved around to act as bridges.

The Fish…

…is actually a bridge

I’m not sure which cam first the PC or the mobile version, but Back to Bed recommends to play with a controller. Luckily the PS4 controller works with the game and the controls are really smooth.

Back to Bed has 2 story chapters each consisting of 15 levels. Once complete, 2 additional “Nightmare” chapters are unlocked which add an extra challenge.

There wasn’t one way to complete each level either. Sometimes puzzle games frustrate me because there is only one answer and if you miss a detail its not solved. This game had as much to do with timing as it did with the positioning of objects to guide Bob across. It lead to some pretty tense moments of shifting apples around frantically to stop Bob from falling off.

Screenshot (102) — Beware Walking Alarm Clocks

At first the Escher inspired levels, the weird robotic voice, and the subtly strange background music were unsettling. By the time I was five or so levels in I began to enjoy the whole surreal setting. It adds to the challenge, not everything is as it seems. After the first chapter, I didn’t want to stop until I completed the game.

I forgot how relaxing and fun simple puzzle games can be. A good puzzle game should introduce you to the concepts and then mix them up to give the player a challenge. Back to Bed does a fine job of doing. I felt pretty accomplished when I finally found the solution to a level I’d been stuck on for a while. It was a nice change of pace from what I usually play.

Well it’s still early, and I think I myself will go Back to Bed… Screenshot (100)