Logic v. 2.5

By: ithamore

On: October 18th, 2006

From the Land of the Rising Sun, comes Logic 2.5 (click on the HTTP… link to download), which is described as a “refreshing, soothing 3D action game.” Since it’s more concerned with exploration and discovery than consequences and survival, refreshing and soothing are good descriptors but not completely defining. It’s also curious, challenging, and occasionally frustrating.

It isn’t as easy to get into as fighting and STG dojin soft, but that’s part of the appeal. And it’s not difficult simply because of the language barrier: Logic’s creator says saving has been enabled because the game is “hard to understand” or “incomprehensible.” But a language barrier still exists: the in-game help directions are much easier to figure out when using a keyboard than a joystick (since the joystick help includes even more Nihongo), and whatever the Japanese text included in the opening demo is supposed to mean continues to mock me.

To actually get into the game, it helps to know you need to pick up a plant and hit Tab to enter it, and a level is selected by jumping on one the maps and entering again with Tab. The three small plants contain the same two levels, which are deceptively simple and seem to have little to do in them. However, there are unlockable cards that grant new abilities or can be used to change settings (from the strength of the wind to the size of the yellow character and the number of creatures), and this is the core of Logic, since saving only preserves card placement. From the start, all 30 cards are available for use with the large plant’s quite altered versions of the levels.

Between the large plant and the introductory demonstration, you can get a good sense for what is possible in the game, but figuring out the game’s intricacies is the fun of it all. Plus, the ability to adjust more than the difficulty, video, audio, and other such generic settings is a nice addition.

As for negatives: Logic isn’t for the impatient or those in love with eye candy (but at least the textures can be changed by editing the image files), it doesn’t work nicely on all systems (it works perfectly on my P4/Nvidia powered desktop, however, even after adjusting the logic.ini, my weaker AMD64/ATI powered laptop still had issues with the transparencies of the dust, clouds, fire, and spirits), and I haven’t yet been able to figured out how to completely unlock the swan.

Posted in Action, Doujin, Freeware, Unique / Bizarre, Windows

Teeth

Er… wow. downloading.
Zed

After playing this game, I’m still very confused on how to get the ball rolling. Dinking around in the large plant levels are way too chaotic, is there any things to actually do in the little plant levels?
Teeth

Yeah will have to spend some time with this before giving it any gold stars I think. I like it in principle but not yet in practice.
http://www.bardinelli.com John B

I can’t tell if my computer is running it well or not. :-)
Derek

Awesome posts, Ithamore. Each one of yours is worth like 50 of mine. :)
http://ithamore.blogspot.com/ ithamore

If you find the large plant levels too chaotic, try changing the placement of the cards to adjust the settings. The one with a yellow smiley (hold Ctrl while a card is in hand to get a good view of it) will change Yellow’s size and the number of the gem creatures in the winter level. I usually set the number for the creatures to less than 5, since the large gem creatures are the ones shaking the ground so much. If I end up with 1 or 2 them still shaking things up, I can easily hunt them down to place them in the inverted water or just to shoot them with the laser vision. I haven’t had as much luck with it and it’s stupid death water.

As for the little plants, there are several cards that can be easily unlocked. So far, the most I’ve unlocked is 7 in one plant. Collecting the five diamonds scattered around the tropical islands is the key to most of them. When you unlock a card, you have to be holding when you exit the level in order to be able to use it. I’ll go more into detail about them at the end of the comment.

If you’re having graphical problems, try setting the light and defaultfog in logic.ini to 0. If you don’t like the MS Paint scribbled textures, the base*.bmp files for them are in restextures. I convert them to 24-bit first, so copying and pasting from a jpg or a better bmp will work without messing up the colors. The resolting files will be nearly 3 times larger, so the game will take a little longer to load.

***Spoiler:

Gather the 5 diamonds that are sparkling in around the level one at a time and place them on the magic circle at the top of the mountain. You’ll net a card, plus the witch will be able to up her fire power up to 5 times. Now you can kill the spirits in chains, kill all the spirits, and blow the top off the box to gain cards. If you die before gaining the card that makes powering up the magic permanent, you have to collect the diamonds all over again. You can also replenish you HP in the hot spring before you get the card.

There’s a brown stone/egg that the witch starts near to. Pushing it into the hot spring unlocks the swan card for the witch’s level.

If you get a pick flower stuck to Yellow (there’s only one among the flower patches), he will be wearing it in the witches level. When the witch gets near him, a little music will play, the area will light up, flowers and butterflies will appear, and Yellow does a little dance. Do this enough times or in enough places, and you’ll get a music card. This is much easier to do if you have the ability to pick him up. He doesn’t seem to what to do the song and dance while you’re in the process of trying to obtain the magic card. It might be that he won’t do it when the diamonds are on the magic circle instead of their default positions. That’s all I can remember for now.
Advenith

Tried it, got confused, might dedicate time to it later. I wish I could understand moonspeak.