Persona 5

I decided to play Persona 5 on hard difficulty, because of my conviction that by and large, this is the mode that provides the adequate amount of challenge in vast majority of modern titles, and for the most part I've enjoyed my journey. Tough opponents not only forced me to optimize my tactics in boss battles, which became like puzzles with precise and detailed solutions, but I've also had to consider HP and SP as resources that determined how far into the dungeon I can go, while simultaneously I needed to gain experience and farm money for better equipment, and do it fast enough to be able to finish my mission before the deadline. This sort of nagging feeling that I'm running out of time and have to be smart about how I use it was probably the main attraction of the game for me. But heading towards the 150 hour mark, it started to get ridiculous. The enemies were only getting stronger and stronger and I didn't even have the option to grind because I would simply deplete my life and energy and be forced to return to the real world, wasting a day of Mr Protag's life without making progress. It got to the point where I've had to carefully plan every single encounter on my way - which team members I run, which Persona I use, and the exact order of actions I will take to preserve enough resources to last me until the next save point. I've had to defeat the "final boss" by using a ludicrous cheese strategy - using a Persona that repelled physical damage, planning how I use each healing and resurrecting item as well as buffing and debuffing spells, remembering the common order of my opponent’s spell usage so that I can select right Persona each turn, and hoping that RNG goes a little my way and makes the Boss choose his Physical attack as often as possible. And finally, I did it. But of course this was only the "final boss", and there was actually another 20-30 hour section of the game awaiting me. And of course that had its own difficulty bump, which meant that I would have to continue my dance of remembering the order of opponents and strategizing against each one of them for something like 100 more fights. Or just grind, because at that point I got access to free replenishing of HP/SP and there was no deadline. After 5 hours of banging my head against the wall I desperately checked the settings to find out that, luckily, the title does have an option to change the difficulty mid-game. I immediately lowered it to easy and breezed through the rest of the game feeling like I was on some debug cheats, with no satisfaction to speak of.

Golf Peaks

On the few occasions that I delved into the scary world of mobile gaming, it was really hard to find something for myself from under the pile of gachas, grinders, endless runners and such. In theory phone market should have a lot in common with flash and arcade games - low barrier of entry, immediately hook the player and then give them acquirable goals to keep them coming back, but I guess microtransactions ruined everything. The one bastion of ingenuity left appears to be the puzzle genre, and that’s the field of battle studio Afterburn decided to enter with their first fully-fledged title, Golf Peaks.

Krawędź Lustra: Katalizator

Zadziwiające jest to, jak mocne można czasem odnieść wrażenie, że twórcy sequela nie mają najmniejszego pojęcia o tym, co uczyniło oryginał sukcesem. I nie mówię tutaj o braku w rzemiośle czy dopracowaniu, które zepsułyby dobry produkt. Nie mówię o grach czy filmach, które niby są złożone z tych samych klocków co poprzednik, ale jednak czegoś im brak i w efekcie nie spełniają oczekiwań. Mówię o tych przypadkach, gdzie wiodąca myśl projektancka ewidentnie różni się od tego, co prezentował sobą pierwowzór i dzieło wyraźnie na tym cierpi. Tak, jakby wartość pioniera była dziełem przypadku, albo oddolnej pracy kogoś, kto nie ma wiele do powiedzenia przy następcy.

Miejsce Dalej Niż Wszechświat

“Podróż” jako motyw przewodni serii wydaje się być czymś banalnym. W końcu jak powie wam każdy fanatyk popkultury, znaczna większość moich i waszych ulubionych historii wpisuje się w szablon tzw. “Wędrówki Bohatera”, czyli mniej lub bardziej metaforycznej wyprawy poza to, co znane. Może to być zarówno eskapada Frodo i przyjaciół z wrzucaniem rzeczy do wulkanu, jak i opowieść o tym, że poznanie Tylera Durdena zmieniło życie pewnego lunatyka. Rzecz w tym, że mówię tutaj o czymś innym, niż o popularnym schemacie fabuły - chodzi o narracje na temat podróżników, skupiające się nie tylko na tym, jak wojaże zmieniają ich charakter i osobowość, ale też na aspektach czysto praktycznych. O przygotowaniach, przyzwyczajeniach i pokonywaniu trudów. Nie ogólnych i abstrakcyjnych, ale bardzo konkretnych i rzeczywistych. Tego typu opowiadań też oczywiście nie brakuje, ale wśród nich zostało chyba jeszcze kilka nisz, które nie są jeszcze w pełni wyeksplorowane. Na przykład, co powiecie na relację z wyprawy na biegun południowy, wśród uczestników której były cztery licealistki?

The warmth of Star vs Forces of Evil

I was following “Star vs Forces of Evil” from the very beginning, intrigued by the western take on Magical Princess concept, an extremely catchy theme and a lot of bizarreness. I thought I liked the show, with it’s colorful, vibrant designs and great comedic timing, but I just watched an episode here and there, and only recently bothered to finally catch up with it. It took some time for the characters to grow on me, but now that they have, it’s one of the most warm, homely shows I’ve had the pleasure to watch in recent years.

Playeruknown's Battleground's use of open world

15 years ago, I watched a TV program about The Elders Scrolls 3: Morrowind. I was completely blown away by the scale and scope of this title, and its huge, detailed world with seemingly endless possibilities. When I got the game, I walked into every house, talked to every person and grabbed every item I could. This excitement lasted for around 10 hours, before a realization hit me - there was no purpose in doing any of this. The tableware I was collecting was worth next to nothing, and no character I talked to had anything interesting to say. At best I would get a quest added to my log, which would just point me in a direction of where fighting awaited. And combat in this game was pretty simple, both mechanically and strategically, relying heavily on your equipment and stats instead.

Top 10 Albums of 2017

Why hello, hi. Blog has over a year now, and to celebrate, I present you with yet another of my famous yearly Top 10 Albums lists. Now, I don’t really see a good way to summarize the entire year. There was a lot of good music, and some of it helped me discover artists I wish I’d known long ago. But other than that... It was pretty standard. So instead of trying to somehow fit the entire year worth of riffs and chords into one paragraph, let’s focus on the few albums that really stood out, starting with a few honorable mentions.

Note - all the album covers link to a song of my choosing from that album.