What I Played Today: February 22

The Witness

I had intended to play Final Fantasy today, but there was a patch, so instead I spent an inordinate amount of time cheating at The Witness. My figuring is that since I've gotten 100% of the trophies all by myself (with only a mild amount of coaxing), I have experienced enough of The Magic, and I just want to know about all the secrets already. Please tell me, website full of spoilers.

So I spent the evening heading straight to areas that gave me a hard time that I just couldn't get. They were mostly sound puzzles, and for one of them, even when I was explicitly told how to solve it, it still didn't make sense so I just traced the answer. Then I went around picking up environmental puzzles based off a long list. Some were pretty clever! One of them was goddamn ridiculous! No, strike that, the most ridiculous one was the one that I was afraid existed in the video room. As soon as I saw the video start I thought, "Oh no oh no you can't be serious" and it turns out that he was. Jonathon Blow made another puzzle that takes nearly a hour of just waiting to solve. Thanks pal.

(I kid, I watched a video of him explaining his process and it was kind of amazing. I still really likehate this game.)

What I Played Today: February 13-14

The Witness

I have played ENOUGH of The Witness. I don't fully understand it, and there are still a ton of things that I just doing get yet, but I think that I am done discovering this game (mostly) on my own. I'm at the "maybe I'll just YouTube the rest of this" phase.

And I gave it a great run! I discovered all the lasers, some of them accidentally, I figure out how to sneak into the magical zone with only a small amount of prompting. I found the secret ending, I found the secret ending again, and I completed the challenge, which was kind of a complete pain in the ass. A timed series of procedurally-generated puzzles requiring you to be well-aware of nearly all the rules of the island and also just kind of lucky because of this bullshit maze room? Yeah, that's me, I did it, I figured it out all by myself. Count me among the 3.3%, because I got all those damn achievements. Now what the hell do these goddamn pillars mean!?!

What I Played Today: February 7

The Witness

I finally made it to the Underground! I'm pretty excited! I did have to cheat a bit because I just couldn't figure out HOW to break into the Underground, but that's fine, that's fine. It's not like I got a solution to a puzzle or anything, just telling me about something I didn't see. I ALSO figured out a terrain puzzle that kinda stumped me the first time I saw it, so that's great.

Anyway, The Witness.

What I Played Today: January 26 - Feburary 3

The Witness, Life is Strange, Darkest Dungeon, Spellweaver

Sorry, I've been way too busy playing games this week than actually typing about them. That's because I've been really into two different games this week, and moderately into a third, and also dicking around with like five others. The important point is that I'm really bad at just doing one thing.

Anyway, The Witness came out and I was apparently waiting on tinterhooks for this, because I downloaded it immediately and was really excited to tackle this, and it's a hell of a game! There are so many puzzles and mysteries and it does a great job of both making puzzles that are just hard based on the rules on the board, and puzzles that explicitly interact with the environment, and also a bunch of puzzles just kind of hidden in the environment. Anyway, I've been playing THE CRAP out of this, and have completed all the main objectives and seen the end of the game, which means, of course, that there are still hundreds more puzzles to find and solve. I'm excited! If you get a chance and you like puzzle games and also like getting increasing just kind of angry at the game designer, check it out.

Also, my sister has really gotten into watching Twitch channels (?) and one game that is popular there is Darkest Dungeon, and I decided that I kinda wanted to try it, the combat seemed cool. So I played through a few weeks off and on, and it's fine. There's a lot of strategy game nonsense, with permadeaths and constant consequences and dealing with upkeep and yada yada. But it's kinda cool! I don't know...I always think I want to like strategy games and I rarely do.

Also I am constantly on the lookout for new CCGs, because I like them! There's a new one of Steam called Spellweaver, and sure it's a Magic/Healthstone clone, but there are so cool mechanics, like the color I chose has cards that use energy to do certain effects, and other cards that provide energy to cards. It's cool! Synergy!

I also got around to finishing Life is Strange, as it seems to be pretty big right now. I guess I could go into every detail of what happens, but that feels like it would take a WHILE, so I'm just going to do a highlight reel.