Cyberpunk 2077

December 27, 2020 by Adam in Adam's Games

Back in the 80s, Colin, Jason and I would play Cyberpunk 2020, which seemed like an impossibly far away future.  It was a pencil and paper RPG inspired by the early cyberpunk writers like William Gibson.  The RPG was updated, along with one of my favorite game studios coming out with a computer game.  Preorders were incredibly high, followed by backlash due to bugs.  Still, I've been really enjoying the world, the look of things, and the roleplaying through the stories.

A Happy Family

November 11, 2020 by Adam in Adam's Games

I've been playing Hades more than I'd like to admit lately.  I was doing a usual run, getting ready to fight the final boss, my father, for the countless time.  Weirdly he says his heart isn't into it and steps aside.  Soon afterward, I'm reuniting the family and the ending credits roll.

I think there are plenty of things to do after this, and I'll likely play a little more, but it was satisfying and I suspect I may start winding down my play time.  Maybe tomorrow.

Hades

September 30, 2020 by Adam in Adam's Games

I've been playing quite a bit of Hades, which is a rogue-lite game where you battle through the same levels over and over again.  It's weird that I'd like a game like that, but it's surprisingly good and rich with dialog and intrigue set in the Greek pantheon.  It's also one of those games that suits my lifestyle where I can pick it up for a little and put it down the next time I have to be responsible.

Plus the dialog resonates with me for some reason.

Gaming Through the Pandemic

September 18, 2020 by Adam in Adam's Games

I've been playing a wide variety of games over the last few months, ranging from cheerful nothing-can-go-wrong games like Littlewood to endless doom games like Call of Cthulu. 

Littlewood is a town management game where you play as the hero who saved the world, but now have to run errands to build up your little town.  It's all very cheerful and there are endless things to do.  Emma played a ton, and I'd fall back to it as stress relief, but it felt a little grindy at the end.

Emma and I have been playing Spiritfarer, where you're the replacement for Chiron, ferrying souls to the afterlife.  It's a great couch co-op game and occasionally very sweet, though I have a harder time getting attached to the jerk souls.

I played through Call of Cthulu, which wasn't exactly great - I saved the world but went mad in the process.  I tried out Vampyr, which had a nice early 19th Century London look, but the story and gameplay were fairly lousy.

I picked up Hades last night, which is a rogue-lite action game, playing as the son of Hades, trying to get to the surface world.  Your dad is Hades, who is particularly funny, and all the Greek gods seem to make an appearance.  I only played a little, but I'm loving it.

Big games like Cyberpunk 2077 are on the horizon, and there's a new VR Star Wars game coming out next month.  As always, I feel like I'm deluged with games.  I guess the weird scifi future we're living in isn't all bad.

The Last of Us 2

June 23, 2020 by Adam in Adam's Games

I'm playing another of those games where a disaster has swept the world and wiped out most of humanity.  There's a beautiful catastrophe with such things - wandering freely in the ruins, the simplicity of surviving until the next day.  Real life seems so complicated, despite our own global pandemic and economic recession.

The game itself is excellent and occasionally soul crushing.  The writing, voice acting, visual storytelling, and gameplay have been coming together to make for a gripping game.

Once I'm done, the plan is box up my PS4 and send it off to Sam as he waits for his life to sort itself out.  Hopefully it will contain useful distractions.

Old Familiar Friends

May 25, 2020 by Adam in Adam's Games

Joanna was up in Portland for the first part of the weekend.  Emma's been slowly wearing herself out playing Stardew Valley, so she suggested to Duncan to play some Minecraft.  He cheerfully agreed and we found ourselves playing for a long while on Saturday and Sunday.

We made a nice little house by the ocean, mining, building, fishing, and exploring our way through the new features that have emerged in the years since I last played.  Duncan and Emma went on a turtle protecting stint, keeping the eggs safe from assorted monsters.  It was lots of fun.

Giant Robots

April 24, 2020 by Adam in Adam's Games

It's been a bit of a hard week on everyone.  Starting school has been hard on the kids and my adjustment to the new team has been occasionally rough.  My allergies have flared up a few times, which Joanna has kindly wiped down and vaccuumed everything in hopes it's not kitty related.

The last few nights I've been playing an old game I got involving giant robots - Titanfall 2.  There's apparently a whole multiplayer thing, but the single player game was short and satisfying.  Driving giant robots around to blow things up is quite cathartic.

Escaping to the Apocalypse

April 10, 2020 by Adam in Adam's Games

I continue to enjoy Half-Life: Alyx.  My favorite parts are when things are going badly, I'm scrounging for ammunition, and alien creatures are closing in from all sides.  The puzzles are generally interesting and do a good job requiring you to use your hands and think in three dimensions.  The writing, voice acting, and visuals are the best I've seen in a VR game.  Getting the time to play is occasionally a challenge as it requires clearing the living room and standing on tired legs, but the results are usually worth it.

Half-Life: Alyx

April 01, 2020 by Adam in Adam's Games

Last night I left our battered world, torn apart by disease and chaos to step into a virtual world, torn apart by alien invasions and chaos.  The first Half-Life game in nearly a decade came out, exclusively for VR.  I donned my headset and immersed myself back into that world.

Though I limited myself to an hour or two of play, it's fairly amazing so far.  The physics are spot-on - I pushed a bike around and the wheels spun as expected before wobbling over.  My one great moment was when I dropped something important under some shelves and used a broom handle to flick it out.

State of Emergency, Bro!

March 22, 2020 by Adam in Adam's Games

We've been playing quite a few games with the kids, with Ben and Emma being the most enthusiastic about such things.  We dusted off TKO, a t-shirt making game where you have to make drawings and logos and then other players put them together.  This was the winner of our most recent game.

The New VR Gods

March 09, 2020 by Adam in Adam's Games

One of the games Duncan and Ben play all the time is Roblox, which apparently just got improved VR support.  It's more of a game ecosystem where people can make their own games.  In this case, the game was really a series of geometric platforms where players could spawn in and move around, but the game play was completely different depending on whether or not you had a VR headset.

Normal players could walk around, talk with little speech bubbles, perform a few animations, jump between places, and that's about it.  VR players could make themselves giant, fly around the map, and pick up other non-VR players and move them around.

This led to an immediate divinity imparted on VR players.  They were either benevolent or vengeful gods, able to move people to isolated platforms which Ben called his "colony" where only the chosen people would live.  Other VR players would fling the little people far into the sky or push them into the raging sea below to certain death.

Both Ben and Duncan played for a surprising amount of time over the weekend.  There wasn't really any rules to this game, but different behaviors popped up and quickly Ben developed favorites for the little people.  It was fascinating.

Slaying It

February 03, 2020 by Adam in Adam's Games

I continue to play Slay the Spire a little obsessively.  Yesterday I had the perfect run, generating infinite energy and damage with a relic that let me draw a card if my hand was empty.  I managed to get a hand full of zero cost cards and a card that gave me energy, meaning I could kill anything before my opponent took a turn.  I managed to unlock three different achievements that run.  It was a thing of beauty.

Slaying the Spire Again

January 18, 2020 by Adam in Adam's Games

Slay the Spire is one of my favorite games - a well-crafted deck building roguelike game where you take one of four characters and build a deck as you slowly climb this spire until you reach the final boss.  They added a new character last week and I've been trying to beat the boss with it.  This morning I succeeded with the Watcher with a slow burn deck that had to hold on long enough to deal massive damage in a couple turns.  It was pretty fun, though I think I need a little Spire break.

The good news is that I have two other excellent games I'm slowly wrapping up.  I think we're approaching the end of Outer Wilds, down to one or two more mysteries to resolve.  Emma and I are also playing Return of the Obra Dinn, which we refer to as the murder scrapbook game.  Basically you revisit various scenes on a ship and try to piece together who died in what way.  With Emma's knowledge of shipboard life, it feels like I have an unfair advantage.  She knows all about where midshipmen would be bunked, the parts of the ship and all the titles of the crewmembers.  It's cool seeing her quirky nautical trivia become relevant.

Outer Wilds

January 14, 2020 by Adam in Adam's Games

I'm working my way through the award-winning games of 2019 - Disco Elysium was a quirky dialog-heavy detective game.  Now I'm playing through Outer Wilds, which is an exploration game where you explore the mysteries of your solar system and try to piece together another mystery.  They're both excellent and I find I'm becoming jaded and unwilling to play less engaging games.

Emma's been playing with me on occasion, taking the controls and flying our little spaceship through weird and bizarre worlds.

Disco Elysium

January 02, 2020 by Adam in Adam's Games

I've always been a fan of the text-heavy philosophical games like Planescape: Torment.  Disco Elysium is a weird game where you play a detective in a worn-down world similar to ours, solving small mysteries in the most bizarre way possible.  I had fun playing as an occasionally psychic, slightly communist detective.  Many of the main quests were bumbled through, though I did manage to make it to the end and generally solve the case.  The end was sad and whistful in a way, the end of some great writing and storytelling.  While I'm not sure I'll ever manage myself, I'd love to play around with making a similarly thoughtful game.

I did manage to sing a really sad karaoke song before solving the case with my trusty sidekick Kim, so that's a plus.