Nylige anmeldelser av Deckbearer // -4482

A friend on the other coast of the US once had me try the original Lumines on a PSP emulator via Parsec. It was not the ideal gameplay experience.

I picked up Remastered at some point, and streamed my first attempts earlier this year. I am extremely nearsighted, haven't gotten new glasses in too long, and have a large desktop screen (which was to accommodate a one-off two-player gaming session), so I was having a not-ideal gameplay experience, to the point that I forgot there was even a way to preview the next blocks. I find flashing lights unpleasant, thus found “SQUARE DANCE”’s background unpleasant to look at, and there was no option to turn the background brightness down (specifically) (and I wouldn't have been able to from the pause menu anyway), so I just noped out. Initially, of what I heard, I only really liked the first track (“SHININ’” by Mondo Grosso AKA Shinichi Osawa, brilliant artist), so I went into Skin Edit, and tried to just play with it endlessly... but Endless needed to be unlocked, still. So I “turned off” background motion, tried the main challenge again, found that “SQUARE DANCE” seemed unaffected, and endured into “JUST...” anyway. Tried other modes a bit, a couple other runs, didn't touch it again for seven months.

Having numerous disabilities, I've mostly relied on phones, for accessibility reasons. A few weeks ago, I mentioned having had some interest in some kind of small laptop running Linux to a friend, who mentioned the “excellent” Steam Deck could run as just a Linux machine. It so happened that my birthday was on the horizon, and my current phone is showing signs of wear, so my mom was saying I should probably get a new one before it dies on me... but, phones suck too much now. Automatic updates, lacks of headphone jacks and expandable storage and removable batteries, whatever other random jank, only to probably not survive three years... not worth the trouble. So, I just immediately went for a Steam Deck. And when it arrived, starving for some games in my life, I tried out a few different things, including Lumines again. Then kept going back to Lumines.

At first, it remained a roundabout way of listening to Mondo Grosso. “SQUARE DANCE” still hurt my eyes. Didn't matter. Squares. I could make SQUARES now, again. But this time I could see what I was doing better, and actually glance at what was coming up now and again and strategize slightly better. And this time...

I...

I HEARD THE MUSIC IN MY SOUL.

That's kinda the key moment, right? Your first break from the steady escalation, when Shinichi Osawa comes back to jam another healing twig in your feeling-like-the-world-is-a-beautiful-place orifice, as he does best. The tempo of “JUST...” probably feels a little overwhelming when you're starting out, so a feeling of relief from everything returning to a manageable pace coincides with being re-energized by an Absolute Banger as you clean up some of the mess you made while frantically trying to make squares to survive in the jungle.

From the next onwards, the vibe of every skin gets a little more interesting, I would say; the character of each piece of music seems to be a little wilder, more distinct, sometimes experimental, and some of the visual styles follow suit. There's never a dull moment — though “HOLIDAY IN SUMMER” and “TAKE A DOG OUT A WALK” mark another much-appreciated *chill* moment. I found most of the last third of the skins pleasant to coast through, the first time getting to them. ... I kinda wonder if there's something to the shape of Challenge’s tension and release arc that's directly conducive to skill growth?

My boards started looking a lot cleaner, and my runs became reliably more complete. Earlier skins grew on me as they became familiar stops on the route. “SQUARE DANCE” stopped hurting my eyes. I was able to make it to the penultimate skin, “FLY INTO THE SKY”, a few times, though the antepenultimate skin “Get up and Go” would always do a number on my board’s tidiness, and it was a struggle to contend with the challenge posed by the visuals — I found it hard to distinguish between the shades of blue under pressure, and made a lot of mistakes that my messy boards couldn't accommodate. At least I had the irresistibly soothing sounds and music to look forward to...

Aside from enjoying my Steam Deck, I've had a few other active Plot Arcs running through my life. Some circumstances relevant to them coincided in some unfortunate ways as the already-hard month of November crossed into December, and so I was intestinally and mentally Going Through It — “It” being what felt like weeks of stages of thinking in the span of days, while having skipped meals and lost a night of sleep.

I started a run early in the day a few days ago, and right about in the middle, I stopped being able to focus. I was having too many thoughts about too many other things that were too complex to maintain the shape of while constructing other shapes to music. I hit pause, and went to try to sort myself out across a few text documents, and had the rest of the day happen to me.

I think I emerged from the pit of my brain and some check-ins with friends having identified some old wounds I need to treat, and formed a better general understanding of myself and my surroundings at this time, and a view of my future that, on-and-off, seems less worrisome. It was exhausting. It's still exhausting, but it was exhausting, too.

I’d had the nagging feeling I should unpause and get my run over with, whether my head was ready or not, just because it was Yet *Another* Thing I could say I'd added to my pile of unfinished business. Toward the end of the night, my head seemed ready enough to get it out of the way.

I cleaned up the mess I'd been making earlier, and my board stayed pretty clean throughout afterward. By the time I was taking on “FLY INTO THE SKY”, I wasn't as concerned about simply surviving as I'd usually been, and I didn't have much trouble with the different blues... it literally felt like I was just seeing more clearly, and while I still needed to focus, more of me was able to Become One with what I was listening to.

Then, the music changed, nicely transitioning from the mood set by its predecessor. It was... beautiful. Much more than I had expected it to be. Immediately, I was tearing up, and starting to feel waves of goosebumps, and trying to hold onto myself enough to keep managing the squares. I felt slowness. Release. Finality. The part of me that had to think fast finally broke off from the part of me that was feeling. Of course it was all ending on Shinichi Osawa, brandishing another one of his famous twigs.

It was like that for a minute. Then a couple shifts in the music interrupted my little moment, and pulled all of me back toward the still-a-little-urgent management of squares, until the fanfare of a Steam achievement blended with that of the first appearance of a final result that wasn't an indication of failure.

I don't know if I'd call that the ideal gameplay experience, but it was *an* experience. I was not expecting to be hit by such a wave of emotion thanks to my little square-making escape from reality, which I might well have written off as mostly some bloopy techno and occasionally eye-hurting visuals.

I've loaded up the game once or twice since, and taken on the Hard missions, and somehow gotten revenge on the CPU. There's more to do, but I think I must've hit my peak with it already.

I've been under the vague impression that Lumines was Iconic, in its original time. I can imagine it was well-suited to the PSP, with the devs wanting to take advantage of its audio capabilities alongside its nature as a handheld. It makes a good *wide gesture* PEEE ESSS PEEE game as well. If you, too, might be so affected by the union of cool sounds and pattern-making, this is your purchase to make. It's a simple game, which I don't regret having chosen to accompany me through some not-so-simple things.

I've played Levelhead for 1,500+ hours on mobile, and probably watched about as many hours of it on Twitch, in the span of about one year. I am absolutely obsessed and will recommend it to anyone with at least one half-functional eyeball. I looked up a list of Android/PC/+ more crossplay games, Levelhead was there, I went to a YouTube video, and just the vibe I got from a comment left by the devs before I'd even watched the thing convinced me they deserved my time and money.

While it does a fine job of introducing mechanics and fueling inspiration, the devs' campaign isn't meant to be the star of the show, and you don't need to play it (except two levels, maaaybe?) to unlock anything but level/profile icons. When I first installed, I beelined into the full editor within some minutes (the level you make with the simplified set of items in the tutorial doesn't need to be published), and emerged 8 hours later with a decent level and a solid grasp of more than the basics through my own experimentation. Then I probably slept. Then a few entire consecutive days may have vanished into the game.

Whether you want to flex your creative muscles, or simply enjoy others' flexes, the editor has you covered, and members of the wonderful community will trip over each other to be the ones to help you understand how that is. This game does basic platforming well, it's the main draw, but it can go FAR beyond that - you'll find gameplay reminiscent of metroidvanias, shmups, classic arcade games and puzzles, tower defense, rhythm games, you name it. CPU? Morse code interpreter? Conway's Game of Life? Boxing? Minesweeper? Picross? Cryptic puzzles that take ages to solve with the combined efforts of the community? Toasters? Incomprehensible masses of garbage that are oddly compelling to optimize runs through? yep them's all things what people done gone and made be built. Pinball is kind of a weak point because it's hard to shake up the physics of items so much, but even then, I was able to throw together something playable that resembled a pinball table, with distinct modes (including a wizard mode), largely within one session of a few hours, because that's what I felt like trying to make at that time. No real prior game design experience necessary, just some familiarity, logic and intuition.

If you make cool, creative, high-effort stuff, of course you want to see it played and appreciated, and of course, you are in luck! If you want to actively watch and interact with players, at this time, you can expect at least some kind of Levelhead Twitch stream to happen every day. Many of them will accept levels from viewers, sometimes with a queue management bot, with features that may include checking to see if the streamer has previously played what you're submitting, sorting levels into a fair rotation, and whispering to you when a level ends if you don't want to be spoiled. Inside the actual game you have the Marketing Department: Playing others' levels nets you Exposure Bucks, which can be tipped to underplayed levels (your own or others') until enough individual players have had a go for them to enter the permanent archive, the Tower. The threshold is currently at 50 guaranteed players before a level moves on, but in more active/less inflated times, it's been set at 100. Levels that meet certain criteria (loosely, accessible levels on the short side) have a chance of receiving additional exposure by being randomly selected for Tower Trials, daily playlists of 5 levels from the Tower with score and speedrun incentives.

From simple, good-feelin' controls and forgiveness mechanics, a plethora of nuanced advanced techniques emerged, which the campaign won't explicitly teach you. In particular, mastering usage of the package will get you far. The tip of the iceberg is that you can ("super")jump on the package in midair while you and it are both falling, whether you throw it straight up, bounce it off a ceiling, have it shot toward you, or however it ends up at your feet. Good thing to be aware of off the bat as a builder - as a general rule, don't expect height alone to be an impenetrable progress gate. You can get over 10 tiles with even the most basic type of superjump! The level fhf5fns is a good place to practice some of these. Search YouTube for "glossary of levelhead tech" to see a bunch more in action.

Other quick highlights of the builder and player experiences: players compete not just for the best time but for a top 3 time AND/OR a top 3 score (thus, placing/hiding jems [yes with a J] along your intended route is a good way to incentivize playing your level properly for more than just the player's personal satisfaction, even if it winds up having cheese that cuts 90% of the level out of the speed route or something + outside of a platforming context, rewarding performance in a minigame is straightforward + a level can cater to and effectively reward multiple subsets of players simultaneously + obviously it's satisfying to see yourself even close to the top), you can publish as many levels as you want, they don't need to be popular to be kept online, cloud slots in the workshop allow for easy transfers of in-progress levels between platforms, there are no penalties for utilizing fun exploits, checkpoint placement is unlimited, you don't need to re-clear levels from checkpoints to publish, levels come with no inherent time limits, respawning only takes about one second, web integration makes it convenient to bookmark levels in-game from outside the game to be played later, and at least for me, in all my hours, the soundtrack has never gotten old - note that a couple tracks in the standalone soundtrack (Dripline for one) seem like beta versions of what ended up in the game, where they sound even better!

have you been CONVINCED YET

do you OWN the GAME YET

are YOU, TOO, RECOMMENDING THIS GAME to EVERYONE you have EVER KNOWN

it is so MASSIVELY UNDERAPPRECIATED everyone who loves it right now is hurting, we NEED. *YOU.* to love it, sooo it's a good thing Levelhead makes the job of making you love it easy by being what it is, eh? 8) EH???

Dropping my "Not Recommended" here. Hi-Rez has a history of killing games with greed. Paladins is not an exception.

I stopped playing after 330 hours. I had a LOT of fun... for a while, with the game in the state it was in 20+ patches ago, but the trends were already clear: Simple fixes to polish the game were being ignored, champions were becoming more unbalanced, in-game currency grinding was becoming more of a chore (and was HARDER ON NEW PLAYERS ESPECIALLY - accessibility to new players [i.e. your friends] was one of the best things Paladins previously had going for it), the minimum requirements to experiment with gameplay in new and exciting ways were being pushed further out of reach, community feedback was being ignored, and unique core aspects of the game that made it what it was - that made it *fun* - were being eroded bit by bit.

... and let's not even get into the bugs - actually, a bug with mouse input (which probably still hasn't been acknowledged) made the game unplayable for me, and that's why I really quit. By the way, mouse sensitivity options were *awful* last I played, where 0 was no movement, 1 was sluggish, and 2 was out of control for me. You don't get to enter a decimal, like in certain other games, like a thriving, polished hero shooter that gives me far fewer reasons to complain. The name starts with Overwat. anyway.

I haven't opened the game for any reason since May, but I've paid attention to patch notes, and occasionally watched gameplay. It's clear that all of these trends have been spiraling out of control, and testing the patience of the community more and more. This last update should be the nail in its coffin: The previous, relatively balanced loadout system NO LONGER EXISTS - BOUND MODE IS NOT THE SAME. Unbound mode - which seems to be the new focus for development - NUMERICALLY PUTS NEW PLAYERS AND FREE-TO-PLAY PLAYERS AT A DISADVANTAGE AGAINST VETERANS AND BIG SPENDERS. If someone were to spend LITERAL THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS to have their champion builds maxed today, the grind for a free player to catch up before facing them would be INSURMOUNTABLE.

What's left of [the backbone of what was once a promising game worth sinking hundreds of hours into] may lure in and briefly entertain new players. Loyal players may want to believe this isn't a big deal. Hi-Rez may offer the equivalent of lots of expired candies with pocket lint stuck to them to keep the above groups from immediately escaping their grasp. But if you're looking for a game that is either currently or foreseeably polished and fair for everyone, don't let anyone convince you that this is it.