|
Post by Sarge on Jul 3, 2019 12:16:51 GMT -5
Man, that sounds like serious business. Interesting, although if I ever played, I'd probably go arcade mode...
|
|
|
Post by Ex on Jul 3, 2019 13:30:03 GMT -5
Man, that sounds like serious business. Interesting, although if I ever played, I'd probably go arcade mode... I wouldn't blame anyone for playing Diver - Deep Water Adventures in arcade mode. However this is the first SCUBA game I've played that goes into this level of detail. (I mean concerning the mechanics of SCUBA diving itself.) So I figured I'd engage with that level of technical interaction, as it's been educational, and challenging. This game has a built in library with videos describing various pieces of gear. That's what the first screenshot I posted was of.
|
|
|
Post by Sarge on Jul 3, 2019 14:16:35 GMT -5
I reckon that makes it as much of a trainer than anything. I bet it would be useful for a real-life diving prep.
|
|
|
Post by Ex on Jul 3, 2019 22:58:37 GMT -5
And after four hours invested... I'm done with this piece of trash: Diver: Deep Water Adventures
+Good basic concept for a game.
+Excellent graphics. +High technical depth. +Interesting story. +Intriguing mission designs.
-Unpolished and buggy as hell. -Badly translated Russian to English everywhere. -Complete disregard for the player's free time. -It shouldn't be so hard to find your own damn boat when resurfacing.
-SHARKS SHARKS SHARKS!
I really, really wanted to like Diver: Deep Water Adventures... but I'm done. This game itself is a great idea, but it's painfully half-baked. The most ruinous aspect is the absurd Terminator sharks. The sharks RUIN this game! The first two missions have the player spend 10-15 minutes doing relatively interesting stuff. Then at the last second when you're almost done, suddenly sharks appear out of nowhere and eat you. In theory you can escape them, but nah, you can't. They will hunt you down silently, and tear you to shreds. Every. Damn. Time. You just can't escape the sharks. And when they bite you, the screen becomes a red blurry mess, making reorienting yourself to escape your pursuers impossible. It's unbelievably infuriating! The developers did this TWICE on both of the initial missions. Supposedly, you can buy spear guns later on, to defend yourself, but not until you beat the initial missions.
For a game that prides itself so much on realism, having unrealistically aggressive sharks attack the player so often is ridiculous. And even more so at the tail end of the missions. Missions which have no checkpoints, and don't allow you to save while playing them. Did I mention that this game's own cheatcodes are buggy? Yeah! There's supposed to be a "god" mode, but invoking it works completely arbitrarily. One time the god mode lasted for 75% of the mission, then it just suddenly quit working. Because of terrible programming. Ugh.
I really, really wanted to like this game, but I'm done. Moving on. 4/10
|
|
|
Post by Xeogred on Jul 3, 2019 23:34:45 GMT -5
Have you gone scuba diving in person?
|
|
|
Post by Ex on Jul 4, 2019 0:48:13 GMT -5
Have you gone scuba diving in person? I have not SCUBA dived in person. The closest I've been so far was snorkeling off the Florida keys. I have an issue with equalizing pressure in my ears, once I get down to about 12 feet of water my tympanic membranes start killing me. Kind of a problem for actual SCUBA diving unfortunately. Unless I stay in shallow waters I guess. - The next game I started playing for this personal event is 2008's So Blonde. This PC exclusive was not an easy find in 2019, I ended up buying the digital download version off Amazon of all places. So Blonde is a point 'n click adventure that was only mildly popular in Europe very briefly eleven years ago. It stars a ditzy young blonde girl named Sunny, who gets stranded on a deserted tropical island. You have to help her find a way to escape. That's the basic premise, but there's a lot more to the plot than that. Some screenshots: I've only put an hour into it so far, but I've enjoyed that little bit. Although right off the bat, this becomes an inventory hoard fest. I can tell there's going to be quite a lot of item-based puzzles. I solved a few puzzles myself so far, but already got stuck and used a walkthrough once. That's because I didn't realize you could use your little pet badger-fox thing "Max" as a puzzle item himself. I thought he was just there as comic relief...
I've read that So Blonde takes 10-20 hours to beat, depending on how much you use a walkthrough. It's likely I'll be playing this piecemeal throughout the month. There are shorter action-based games I plan to play for this theme off and on. So I might end up finishing some of those before finishing this.
Anyway here's the game's goofy trailer:
More trivia:
So Blonde was only released in Europe for PC back in 2008. But then it got a 2010 pseudo-sequel/remake entitled So Blonde: Back to the Island that was NOT released on PC. Instead Back to the Island was released on Wii and DS, again only in Europe. (I own the DS version of it.) Later on in 2012, a So Blonde spinoff entitled Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle released. Said game appeared on PS3, Wii, and DS - but only in Europe and Australia. However Captain Morgane's PC release was worldwide. In the USA it's currently available via Steam. (I own the European PS3 version.)
|
|
|
Post by Sarge on Jul 4, 2019 1:23:37 GMT -5
Huh, never knew about this one, but I did know about Captain Morgane, as I have it in my Steam library and played it briefly. Will be interested to see what you think of this one.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2019 5:16:16 GMT -5
Diver: Deep Water Adventures looked like STALKER: Scuba Diving, too bad. Also that Mature rating. I suppose you get eaten by sharks and you lose limbs and there's a lot of blood everywhere or something. Either that or you can flirt with the ladies on the beach.
I like how So Blonde looks, I'm just surprised that the protagonist doesn't, like, totally talk like this all the time and all her sentences sound so much like a question, but there's, like, no question mark at the end.
|
|
|
Post by Ex on Jul 4, 2019 9:41:51 GMT -5
Diver: Deep Water Adventures looked like STALKER: Scuba Diving, too bad. Also that Mature rating. I suppose you get eaten by sharks and you lose limbs and there's a lot of blood everywhere or something. Either that or you can flirt with the ladies on the beach. The guy you play as has a hot girlfriend, but you don't get to flirt with her. She calls and texts you to give you mission info. There is a lot of blood in the game, when you get eaten by sharks. Also eventually you can fight against rival SCUBA divers (long story) who you can shoot with spearguns and underwater machine guns. (I have no idea how underwater machine guns are supposed to work, considering how bullets stop moving after ~three feet of water.) I've seen in videos where when you shoot people they bleed too. So I'm guessing the blood and violence is where the M rating comes from. Chances are if you have the patience to deal with the silent assassin sharks, one might enjoy the rest of this game. Especially if played in "arcade" mode, so you don't have to deal with buoyancy control and compression. That said, there's still a lot of irksome unpolished aspects. A good example is the digital camera system. Sometimes you're supposed to take pictures of stuff with your underwater camera. Well the game can be extremely finicky about detecting if you're focused on the target object/area or not. So when you take a picture, if it's not "in focus", that's a wasted shot. No big deal right? Wrong. Your initial camera can only hold ten photos. Once its memory fills up, you can't take any more. No problem you can just delete the ones you don't want, right? Wrong. You have to abort the whole damned mission, return to the boat, then delete the photos. Then you can start the mission over again. The sharks and the camera memory issue, are just examples of many small cuts that kill the fun when you add it all up together. It's like the developers did not at all, even once consider this game's gameplay from the point of view of their player. It's a damn shame because the graphics, immersion, and mission designs are all really good. The core concept of Diver - Deep Water Adventures is very solid. Biart just needed a better director as far as the "fun" factor was concerned. Or maybe a little less vodka in the studio. She does sometimes talk like that. But I believe Sunny will end up being more than just the one dimensional valley girl she initially appears to be. I'm pretty sure that's going to be the core premise; she evolves from a shallow bimbo into a caring and more mature woman, thanks to pirates and tropical island troubles.
|
|
|
Post by Ex on Jul 6, 2019 0:10:13 GMT -5
Just a quick note to say I switched over to the DS version of So Blonde.
So Blonde: Back to the Island (DS/Wii) is basically the same game as the original, it is not a sequel or spin-off. It's a darker "what if?" scenario. Basically Sunny washes up on the unfriendly side of the island in this version, instead of the friendly side. But the plot of the DS/Wii remake follows the same basic original story in broad strokes, and reuses a lot of assets. There's a bunch of reasons I'm going DS instead of PC; refined puzzles, faster loading, new content, and the darker tone. Surprisingly the graphics on DS are better than I'd thought they'd be:
The stylus interface works well, arguably better than the mouse interface did. And yes I know the screenshots show French, but this is a M5 Euro release, and English is one of the language options.
|
|