Category: Video Games

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – July 2016

Sometimes I think that I need to grow out of being upset that I don’t get summer vacation any more. I mean, it’s been well over a decade since I finished high school. In the time that I’ve been out of school, kids have started and finished school. But you know what? Nuts to that. I miss having two months to do whatever I damn well pleased.

~ Game Over ~

Final Fantasy VII (PC) – I’m amazed at how much shorter this game is than I remembered. I mean, I suppose it’s in part from not having sought out all the ultimate weapons and other fancy doo-dads, but even with a few hours of grinding and breeding a gold chocobo, the final time clocked in at under 40 hours. Crazy! (The time investment for prepping to fight the Emerald and Ruby Weapons is a whole other story.)

BOXBOXBOY! (3DS) – When I finished BOXBOY!, the only thing in the world that I wanted was more BOXBOY!. And now I have it! And it’s sooooooooooo good! And the ending suggests that there could be up to three more sequels. Hooray!

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Skyward Sword Replay: Week 7

Between Monster Hunter Generations and the new season of BoJack Horseman, I barely touched Skyward Sword last week. Didn’t accomplish a whole lot, which shouldn’t come as a surprise.

My first objective was to round up some treasures from Goddess Cubes. Which, of course, was a short nightmare because it required flying to and fro in the sky. I know I’ve said it before, but flying is super tedious. Absolutely the worst part of the game. The sky isn’t really that big, just enough to create a good sense of scale, but it feels so massive and empty when you have to fly from one end to the other. Gah.

I also discovered that I had secretly gotten a new power: the ability to dowse for certain types of collectibles. I learned this after collecting a few more gratitude crystals and visiting Batreaux for a prize (rupees). Fi popped out afterward and told me I could now dowse for gratitude crystals. Then she popped out again after I upgraded a few weapons and gave me the ability to dowse for upgrade materials. I suppose it’s a good power to have, but most of the time, random materials lying around are just amber relics, which I already have like thirteen million of.

The best one, when I went back on plot, was when Fi let me start dowsing for Goddess Cubes. Which is mostly great, because they’re the big treasures, which can be great things like power-up medals and heart pieces but are sometimes less helpful things like rupees. Maybe extra ammo satchels? I kind of hope not. I just spent a lot buying and upgrading a new quiver because 20 arrows isn’t really enough. It’d be a shame to find one for free now.

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Skyward Sword Replay: Week 6 (for real)

It was a mad rush to burn through the last few dungeons of Skyward Sword last week, as Monster Hunter Generations came out on Friday and, well, Monster Hunter trumps all else for me. Even then, I only had Tuesday and Thursday evening to play, and those were also shortened by the need to prepare food and engage in physical activity. Needless to say, I did not make it to the end.

To begin, here’s one of those stray observations: Fi is super creepy when she “sings.” With those big, dead eyes and a mouth that flaps open and closed like a wooden dummy, she is right up there with the Five Nights at Freddy’s animatronics on the Nightmare Fuel scale. Considering that the design docs in Hyrule Historia suggest that she’s supposed to come off as a shy teenager, they really missed the mark there. Simply animating her mouth better would have solved the problem, but it slides up and down so mechanically, and not at all synced with the music, that it just comes off as unsettling.

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The Steam Backlog Reduction Initiative

It has come to my attention lately that I have a whole buttload of unplayed games on Steam. Like, so many. I’ve been keeping a running tab of all the games I purchase since April of 2015, and here’s a snippet of it just to give you an idea.

gameslog

There is a ton of grey on this list, and so many entries are marked with the B for Bundle. If I were to remove all of the game that I’d purchased in bundles and from Steam sales, it would be significantly shorter. Keep in mind, of course, that nearly all of these came at dirt-cheap prices. But those small dollar amounts do add up, and I’m left wondering how much I’ve spent on games that I’ll likely never even install, much less play.

While free time is at a premium, and I don’t necessarily think that the best use of my time is playing games that I don’t care about, I am bothered by the copious blocks of red on my spreadsheet. It’s a problem that could be easily solved by simply deleting said spreadsheet, but I can’t help it. I love the data.

There is some merit to trying out new games to see what clicks, though. I’ve spent much of my life playing through demo discs (ahh, the good old days) and random demos pulled from the various console shops. There was a point in time where a friend and I would randomly load up SNES ROMs in hopes of finding some hidden gems. Not to mention way, way back in the day when one could rent whole video games for a few days at the measly cost of $5. So there is a bit of a precedent for booting up random games for a few minutes to see what they’re all about.

That’s the mentality I’m going to take here: I want to at least try out a large portion of these games just to see if any of them stick. I don’t necessarily need to beat them. Heck, I don’t even always beat the games that I really like. I just want to comb through the list and find out what kind of games are hiding out in there. And of course, I’m sure that at least a few of them will be worth writing about.

So that’s where we’re at. These projects that I start never usually last very long, so expect this to end probably by the fall or so. But I’m going to try anyway!

I should probably do this as a podcast or video series or some other more current format, but whatever. I’m old-school, so I’m just going to write about anything that tickles my fancy.

A cute little babby!

So Nintendo announced this thing out of nowhere this morning:

nes_classic_mini

It’s a little baby NES! With 30 games installed on it! You know damn well that I’m now lusting over this thing more than anything else in the world. 30 games for $60! Okay, it’s going to be more like $75-80 Canadian, but that’s still a way better deal than Virtual Console! And I only have like 8 of the included games, so it’s basically a completely justified purchase.

It’s got Mega Man 2! And Final Fantasy! And Kirby’s Adventure! and Bubble Bobble!

And it’s so darned cute! That’s the best part!

(Seriously I am unrealistically excited about this little novelty box.)

Pokémon makes me Go places

I’ve had it for only a matter of hours, and Pokémon Go, the new mobile AR game from Niantic, has already persuaded me to explore a little and check out places I never would have gone otherwise. Since the game encourages you to check out local landmarks (historic sites, parks, murals, statues, etc), I’ve already seen a few things around my workplace that I haven’t noticed in the four years I’ve been here. It’s even cooler when the associated landmarks have little blurbs about them, to add learning to the fun and exercise.

Good on you, Pokémon Go. Good on you.

I’m still not gonna buy that massively overpriced bracelet, though. I want it, but even I cannot justify the cost.

Skyward Sword Replay: Week 5

Well, I was wrong. At least one dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has multiple floors. Indeed, the Ancient Cistern has both a 1F and a B1. Also, like the first two dungeons, it is a teeny-tiny little thing. Seriously, it’s like five rooms. Two of those rooms are massive, but that’s besides the point.

It’s also worth noting that the Ancient Cistern is aesthetically my absolute favourite dungeon in the entire series. It’s bright and vibrant, full of gold, blue, and green. It has a very pleasant Buddhist temple aesthetic that jives so perfectly well with the game’s painterly visual style. It’s just really nice.

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Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – June 2016

My free time from mid-April to mid-June was reduced very drastically by both school and my renewed efforts to get into slightly better physical shape, and now, now I am free from the clutches of higher learning (for a while) so that I can go back to wasting that portion of my spare time on mind-dulling television games.

😀 😀 😀

~ Game Over ~

Hyrule Warriors Legends (3DS) – Played through the story mode again for… collection purposes. Yeah, I’ll probably be playing this one forever.

The Legend of Zelda (NES) – All that Hyrule Warriorsing often makes me want to play real Zelda, and sometimes I do. Like this time, when I played the first one!

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Kirby: Planet Robobot (3DS) – It’s almost exactly like Triple Deluxe, but the Robobot Armor is a much more fun gimmick than Hypernova. Also, the sub-games are somehow even better. You can expect that I’ll be writing a big ol’ thing about them soon. As another note, the final boss is friggin’ AMAZING. Fanservicey as all heck, and I loved it.

Kirby: Planet Robobot (3DS) – I also played through the entire Meta Knightmare Returns mode, which is playing through the game again as Meta Knight, but it’s all lined up as one super-long level, and all the bosses are powered up and there is a super-sweet trio of legacy bosses at the end.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game (360) – I got really frustrated with Ornstein and Smough in my Dark Souls replay, so I flipped over to something a little more friendly. In fact, this game is very easy to burn through when you have a maxed-out character. Still fun, and the music is phenomenal.

Cibele (PC) – A narrative game about a girl who meets a guy online, falls in love, and then meets up with him to bone. Guess how it ends.

Her Story (PC) – A narrative game where you’re sorting through hundreds of little interview clips to piece together the story of a murder. Only I didn’t realize that the game wasn’t functioning properly for me, so I only got audio clips when there were supposed to be accompanying videos! The game still worked, and I loved it. Recommended to everyone.

Mighty No. 9 (WiiU) – What was supposed to be the glorious (off-brand) return of Mega Man instead turned out to be half-baked and disappointing to most. I don’t hate it, but it’s generally underwhelming and the final boss is just so difficult.

~ Now Playing ~

Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii) – Speaking of wanting to replay Zeldas… I hadn’t revisited Skyward Sword since I beat it the first time, and man, I am really digging it. I’ve been writing about it weekly, so… you know. Read those entries.

Monster Hunter Explore (iOS) – Most of my playtime was during the bus rides home from school. Now that I’m out of school until ????, I probably won’t play it until then.

Fallout 4 (PS4) – Started up a new game on my shiny new Playstation 4. I suppose that above all else, this spells the end for my stalled game of New Vegas. Also, no other game makes me wish there were more hours in the day. So that I could squander them on pointless video games, you see.

Pokémon Pearl Version (DS) – This was a very spur-of-the-moment replay decision. I really can’t even remember why I decided to go back to it. What I do know is that even after I’d confirmed that all the important Pokémon had been safely transferred away, it still killed me to overwrite my old save. This is why I very rarely replay Pokémon games.

Final Fantasy VII (PC) – One thing I always forget about FF7 is that enemy attack animations can be really long, and as a result, really drag out the battles. I would like a separate timer just to see how much of the game time has been spent watching monsters do elaborate attacks. Or a switch to just turn them off like Pokémon has.

Zelda: Twilight Princess HD (WiiU) – Yep. Still poking around in this one. I beat it, but I wanted to go back to find all the stamps and poes (which I still haven’t accomplished). I’ve played the game like five times before, and never explored the world nearly as thoroughly as I have this time around.

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Dark Souls (360) – I get about an hour in each Saturday afternoon, and have managed to make my way back to Anor Londo. Yaaaay. As stated above, NG+ Ornstein and Smough are an absolute nightmare. I did manage to get past them, though, so it should be easy street from here on out, right?

Skyward Sword Replay: Week 4

Week 3 was a little quiet, but week 4 was pretty huge, since I was on vacation and had plenty of time to play. On the other hand, I spent most of it playing Fallout 4 instead. Still! Much progress was made.

To pick up where my last session left off (and they quite often seem to end as I’m entering a dungeon), I had just stepped into the third dungeon, the Lanayru Mining Facility. While it’s another tight, single-floor affair (I’m beginning to think that none of Skyward Sword’s dungeons have multiple floors), it felt about twice as long as the previous two and was much more enjoyable to solve. Felt a lot more puzzley, like a Zelda dungeon should be. I actually got lost at one point, and it took me a while to figure out that the key to progress was a lesson that I had previously learned while exploring the desert.

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