Monthend Video Game Wrap-up: November 2013

The good news is that winter is here and I no longer have to feel bad about spending all my time inside playing video games. The bad news is that… well, there isn’t any bad news at the moment. It’s December that’s got all that holiday business to it; November is fairly smooth sailing as far as having free time goes.

That said, real life tried its best to get in the way, but November was still a fairly productive month for gaming. This month, I continued my recent trend of finding games that I could finish in an afternoon, and I think I’ll be keeping that up for a while. It’s fun to dive into epic games that take the better part of a year to finish, but sometimes the thing that really hits the spot is a game that I can start and finish in one sitting.

I don’t have any new categories for this feature this month, so that’s good. I figured that my tendency to obsessively categorize things would have me introducing a new one each month. But that doesn’t seem to be the case… yet.

~ Now Playing ~

Adventure Time: Explore The Dungeon Because I DON’T KNOW! (Wii U) – It was a small pain in the butt to actually secure a copy, but it was worth it. Between the abundance of Adventure Time charm and having another game that The Wife will play with me, I’m pretty happy with this game. It’s also a lot of fun too, being a dungeon crawler that hearkens back to old-school fare like Gauntlet. Games like this aren’t really made any more, which is too bad because I quite enjoy them. We’re currently 50 floors down.

Pokémon Y (3DS) – Still chipping away at this one, but have decreased its priority in favour of new things. I’ve fallen in love with Roserade all over again, and have taken a very serious liking to Mega Scizor. I’ve completed the Central Kalos pokédex, and have all the entries for Coastal and Mountain dexes. Current National dex capture count is 550ish.

Paint it Back (iOS) – I really hate playing picross on my iPhone, but Paint it Back gets a pass because it’s a great picross game. The colourful graphics and funny puzzle solutions are almost as appealing as the achievements. Achievements! In picross! I’m a little more than halfway through it.

Brain Age Express: Sudoku (DSi) – I got stuck on the expert-level puzzles a while back and put it down. Picked it back up again recently and had been making pretty solid progress: about one puzzle a day until Zelda happened. 84% complete.

Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1) – Still chipping away at this, bit by bit. I’ve almost got Cloud now?

Cookie Clicker (Browser) – It’s not so much a game as a webpage that has you watch a number go up, and then trade in that number for things that make the number go up faster. It’s oddly compelling and has some funny writing, for what it’s worth. Apparently they’re developing a new part of the game that’s an actual game. Dungeon crawler of some sort, I think.

Mutant Mudds Deluxe (Wii U) – Sure, I bought it again. You wanna fight about it? Technically I’ve beaten the game, but that’s only as far as original content goes. I still have to beat all the (not so great) Granny and (seemingly pretty good) Ghost levels before I can say the double-dip was truly worth it.

Wii Fit U (Wii U) – I don’t know if I should bother sticking this in here, but I’m doing it anyway. Maybe it’ll help me to keep at it for more than a month.

~ Game Over ~

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS) – My opinion on this one hasn’t changed at all since I made that blog post about it last week. Still digging it, and still thinking that it might just be the best Zelda. Not my personal favourite, because nobody will ever take my Link’s Awakening nostalgia away from me, but I still think it’s just dandy. It was pretty refreshing to have a new Zelda game that I was able to finish in a week. It will undoubtedly make for nice, breezy replays.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (360) – I was pretty hard on this one last month, and while I still don’t think that it’s a very good game, I have warmed up to it a little. I didn’t feel annoyed and bored while playing the endless Survival mode; I actually found that I was having a reasonable amount of fun with it. So I guess that’s something. Technically, I even played through it twice, because you have to finish all the stages on Time Attack mode for the last few cheevos. I guess the best thing you can say about the game is that it’s a easy and fairly quick 1000/1000.

ShaqDown (iOS) – I thought “Hey, look! Another game starring Shaquille O’Neal! What could possibly go wrong?” Yeah, it’s a terrible runner game with three levels and way more achievements and microtransactions than necessary. At least every costume that you can unlock changes the game a little. That’s neat. I guess. At least it was free.

The Stanely Parable (PC) – I’m glad that I wasn’t the one who bought this game, but I’m also glad that I spent enough time with it to see most of the content. It’s a very wacky game that loves to subvert your expectations, and they did a marvelous job at that. I can’t help but feel like it could have been a little wackier, but some research shows that the few things I missed are the wierdest. That’s what YouTube is for though.

~ Reruns ~

Mega Man 7 (SNES) – Nobody likes Mega Man 7 but me. Even then, I don’t like it very much. I love the big, colourful sprites, but am not a fan of the sluggish gameplay. Also, it gets to be a very difficult game near the end. Slash Man is a huge butthead, and Bass… Well, it must have taken me at least 20 tries to pass each fight against him. Of course, I wasn’t using E Tanks, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is that it’s not a great Mega Man game. Still way better than Mega Man 8 though.

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles (Wii) – Having played through it again, I can confirm that this is still my number one favourite light gun game. Not only is it a fun little game, but you get to experience the essence of three RE games (0, 1, and a very abridged 3) without having to go through all those fetch quests and nonsensical puzzles. The only thing I genuinely dislike about it is that the hitbox for a zombie headshot is tiny, and for someone like me who doesn’t have great aim, that’s a huge problem. Also, you can easily play through the whole thing in a day if you don’t dawdle and/or get distracted by Cookie Clicker.

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