MGSV: The Phantom Pain (PC) – Done but unfinished. Which describes both the game itself and our playthrough. Will we go back? Only time will tell! (But probably not.)
WarioWare Gold (3DS) – An excellent game that I’d love to invest more time into, but it’s just a little tedious to try to hit a target score on 300+ micro-games, you know?
Marvel’s Spider-Man (PS4) – I spent an entire week off work doing very little other than playing this to completion. Do I feel satisfied with how I spent that time? Yes. Absolutely.
Mega Man 6 (Switch) – Rush turns into a jetpack and boxing gloves. Robot pelicans attack by spitting out robot fish. Submarines masquerade as clouds. MM6 is the hottest mess.
Mega Man 9 (Switch) – Would it kill you to turn the health drop rate up a little? Anyway, I’ve now beaten every Classic Mega Man game in 2018. Good job, me! And Merry Megamas to all!
XC2: Torna – The Golden Country (Switch) – Maybe the best DLC expansion I’ve ever played? It’s a complete mini-prequel, as opposed to simply more quests tacked on to the base game.
MechaNika (Switch) – The sequel to Agatha Knife, which I very much enjoyed. This one’s about an alcoholic seven-year-old who wants to build a mech to destroy everything that isn’t cool. Fun!
Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (3DS) – It was time for a replay, I thought, seeing as this month marked OoT’s 20th birthday. It’s a very short game if you ignore heart pieces and gold skulltulas!
~Now Playing~
Save Me Mr. Tako (Switch) – A rare retraux game that pays homage to the Game Boy. So yeah obviously I bought it. Only made it through a handful of levels before distractions tore me away.
Dark Souls (Switch) – Dark Souls is sure great! But man, I just don’t have the time for it.
Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate (Switch) – Still plugging away at this like once a week or so. G-Rank is a tough cookie, which leaves me at the mercy of online play to make progress.
Super Smash Bros for Wii U (Wii U) – Snuck in a few matches here and there throughout the month. As I post this, there are a mere SEVEN DAYS LEFT until Ultimate.
Star Ocean (SNES) – You have to wonder about a game that, two minutes into your playtime, pits you against a boss who can kill you in ten seconds flat. It’s actually not too bad, though!
Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! (Switch) – I have so many thoughts about this game… But mostly it really makes me wish that I could have an actual pokémon. Pikachu is just so cute!
Minit (Switch) – A Zelda-like where you die and restart every 60 seconds. I don’t know if the experience would have changed appreciably without that particular feature.
TGISGM! Thank goodness it’s scary games Friday month! I’ve been dying all summer because the sun doesn’t go away until like 10PM and I’m too old to stay up much later than that but now it gets dark super early and I can get some SPOOPS GOIN’!
I’m sorry. That was a really weird sentence. Anyway, since it’s that time of year, I’m going to be sort of rating the games I’ve played on how spooky they are. Like I did back in 2016.
~Game Over~
Mega Man 11 (Switch) – Not Spooky – Torch Man’s stage theme is “wandering around the woods at night” which is a little bit spooky, but less so with all the cartoon robots who live there.
Picross S2 (Switch) – Not Spooky – It’s picross. There may be like, a puzzle of a pumpkin in there somewhere, but it wouldn’t even have a face carved into it. No spooks here.
Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate (Switch) – Not Spooky – Despite being all about monsters -some of which are mildly frightening- there’s nothing particularly spooky here.
Bayonetta (Switch) – Spooky-ish – Freaky lookin’ angels and demons all over, but there’s never really anything scary, you know? Except for the impossibly unbalanced difficulty.
Slayaway Camp (Switch) – Spoopy! – This game does a wonderful job of capturing the spirit of 80’s slasher movies, and then hamming it up to 11. Perfect blend of horror and humour.
Hollow (Switch) – Spooky! – You’re stranded on a derelict spaceship; presumably alone, until you realize there are hordes of mutilated boobie-zombies out to kill you dead! Eek!
Kemono Friends Picross (Switch) – Spooky-ish – It’s very subjective, but I find the whole animal-people theme to be a little creepy. Otherwise, this is way too cheerful to be spooky.
~Now Playing~
Onechanbara Z2: Chaos (PS4) – Spoopy at Best – It’s about zombies and cursed blood and copious gore, but really it’s just too dumb/goofy/cheesecakey to actually be spooky.
Dark Souls (Switch) – Spooky! – Yeah, this one’s a shoo-in for spooks. Have you ever seen the Gaping Dragon? Or any monster from the Painted World of Ariamis? Buuuh. Nightmares!
MGSV: The Phantom Pain (PC) – Not Spooky – There’s that one part with the parasite warehouse that is genuinely creepy and gross, but we passed that chapter months ago.
The age of Mega Man X dominating my gaming time has ended. At least for now. Now, instead of being stuck on a series of action platformers, I’m ears-deep in massive RPGs. Super. At least I was guaranteed to finish all those Mega Mans.
~ Game Over ~
Mega Man X7 (Switch) – If you thought I was down on X5… it looks like a sparkling gem next to this turd. Not even really worth playing just to say you’ve played ‘em all.
Mega Man X8 (Switch) – It’s not amazing, but it stands head and shoulders above X7. Playing it brought back some fun memories of when I first bought a PS2. Ah, such simpler times…
The Messenger (Switch) – After my first playthrough, I think this might fall in line with the way I feel about Mega Man X: it’s as close to perfect as a video game can possibly be.
Final Fantasy XV (PS4) – I finally did it! And exactly a year after my last play session! I gave the disc back to my brother, but I kind of want to get the Royal Edition and keep playing…
The Legend of Zelda (NES) – It’s on my Switch now, so… yeah, of course I played it.
The Silver Case (PS4) – A Japan-only PS1 adventure game by Suda 51, remastered and localized. It’s pretty interesting, and I can absolutely see the genesis of Killer7 in it.
~ Now Playing ~
Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate (Switch) – I just hit high rank and already there is so much more content than on the 3DS version. Purchase justified!
Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age (PS4) – Few things feel as purely good as playing a Dragon Quest game. And this one is so got-danged pretty!
WarioWare Gold (3DS) – Whaaaaat a 3DS game in 2018? How even? I was going to skip this, but then my parents got it for me as a birthday gift. Which is awesome because <3 WarioWare.
MGSV: The Phantom Pain (PC) – Hey it’s this again. How many more two-line blurbs am I going to have to write about this friggin’ game? (Probably only one more.)
Picross S2 (Switch) – I could be done, but this time I’m actually playing all the Mega puzzles, too. They can be quite the challenge, which is good because regular picross is too easy.
Dr. Mario (NES) – Now my Switch can play Dr. Mario, so I’m pretty happy!
Frederic: Resurrection of Music (Switch) – I’ve been long intrigued by this, then it went on sale for 65 cents. Verdict: Its heart is in the right place, but I don’t want a touchscreen piano game.
You know, I think I’m really starting to get the hang of this “just stop playing games that you aren’t having fun with” thing. It’s an amazing time-saver! At least, unless the game in question is a Mega Man X game…
~ Game Over ~
Mega Man X4 (Switch) – While I do think it holds up fairly well on a high level, it really makes me long for the gorgeous pixel graphics of the SNES games. What can I say? I’m old.
Super Dungeon Bros (PS4) – At first I thought “This is kinda like Gauntlet! Sweet!” But it’s not the kind of game that’s properly balanced for single-player, so I gave up and deleted it.
Mega Man X Legacy Collection (Switch) – X Challenge is indeed a challenge, as I needed to keep the difficulty firmly on Easy to make my way to the end. (Spoiler: It’s crazy broken.)
Mega Man X4 (Switch) – The previous one was an X playthrough, this one was a Zero run.
Mega Man X3 (Switch) – Another run to gather up some stray “hunter medals” (achievements). Also this time I got the gold armor and Z-Saber, so Kaiser Sigma wasn’t impossibly hard.
Mega Man X5 (Switch) – Despite having pretty good memories of if, I kind of can’t stand Mega Man X5. Imagine that!
Batman: The Telltale Series (PS4) – While I really liked it, I couldn’t help but feel like I would have enjoyed it more as a straight-up animated mini-series instead of a “game.”
Mega Man X5 (Switch) – I played it again to go through Zero’s story. Why? Masochism.
Mega Man X6 (Switch) – This is generally considered to be an absolute trash fire of a game, but after this playthrough, I’ve come think it’s actually quite a bit better than tedious ol’ X5.
Legend of Kay Anniversary (PS4) – I got this in a bundle last year, and it seemed like it would be a nice, breezy adventure. It is those things! But it is also hella boring, so I deleted it.
Mega Man X5 (Switch) – I needed to see all three endings to earn a hunter medal…
Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate is out! Officially released on Tuesday, I was hoping to stay up slightly too late to play it on Monday, since it was supposed to go live on the eShop at 11PM. But it didn’t quite work out that way for some reason, and actually went live at 2AM. I like to think it was Capcom/Nintendo helping make sure I went to bed on time.
The point is: there’s a Monster Hunter on Switch now. Life is perfect.
I’m not entirely sure what else to write about this. I never expected Capcom to actually localize this game (because why bother when Monster Hunter World is already raking in mad skrilla?). To that end, I hadn’t ever really dug deep into what kind of new things they’ve updated it with. There’s the cover monster, whom I know only as “Jet Dragon.” I have actually (and unsuccessfully) hunted him before, via the demo of the Japanese version that came out like a year ago. I also know vaguely of the new final boss who I think is a giant mantis that pilots a mecha made of scrap. Not unlike the old final boss who is a squid that wears power armor made of skellingtons.
Monster Hunter has gotten weird.
Watching the intro movie, it seems that my old nemesis Barioth has returned as well. My short playtime thus far has not revealed any other additions to the monster roster.
Oh, it’s important to note that this is an enhanced port of Monster Hunter Generations. You know, that 3DS game that I’ve already poured like 200 hours into? If it were a vanilla port, I’d probably skip it. This Ultimate version, however, adds (presumably) a bunch of new (and returning) monsters and also G-Rank hunts. Maybe other things, too? In theory, that means it has roughly 50% more content (quests) than the base game, and that new content will be ultra-mega-hard. Which is great!
The huge twist with this release is that you can import your progress from the 3DS game to give yourself a head-start and jump right into the new content (assuming you’re that far). I was absolutely torn on this feature. On one hand, it would be nice to bring over all the hard work I poured into MHG. On the other hand, I kinda want to go through it all again, because it’s fun! This is one of those Tough Life Decisions that adults warn you about when you’re growing up.
In the end, since I first launched the game while on the bus to work, I had no access to my 3DS and started a new character. I can always import good ol’ Jenna at some other point in time, should I feel the need. For the time being, I will move forward with Velvet, who I named after the protagonist of Tales of Berseria because I was drawing a blank on more interesting names. I would like to mention that I find naming characters in this kind of game intensely stressful. It would be so much easier if I’d just play as a male character…
And so that’s that. I don’t think I’ll have much else to say about MHGU. It’s Monster Hunter. I love it. I will play it obsessively until December 7. Some old song and dance.
Yesterday, I witnessed evidence that we indeed live in the brightest timeline. But we’ll have to build up to that.
Among other things, yesterday was the day that Nintendo aired a big, beautiful Nintendo Direct focused solely on Super Smash Bros Ultimate. Despite the fact that I’m already 100% on-board for the new Smash, I was a little bit concerned about what could be revealed in this presentation. You know, given some of the more questionable design decisions in Super Smash Bros for Wii U. But it all turned out great! Everyone is here and everything is great!
I won’t ponder everything that they showed off, but I am going to discuss some of the things that I found the most interesting and/or hype-generating.
Castlevania – So the Direct starts off by revealing that Simon Belmont is now a fighter. Okay, cool. That’s literally all I needed. A++ presentation. Thank you and good night.
Then they go on to show off this sweet new Dracula’s Castle stage, and that Richter Belmont is also going to be a playable fighter, as an Echo of Simon. Okay! Super! Really, you had me at Simon. Then they show off all the cool monsters that will appear in Dracula’s Castle, and that Dracula himself will show up and do the traditional Dracula boss fight from all those Castlevania games that he’s in. Guys really you have done a wonderful job.THEN they show how there are going to be over 30 music tracks from the Castlevania series in the game. Also there’s going to be a Death’s Scythe items that instantly kills fighters with high enough damage, and Alucard is an assist trophy character.
I’m dying now. Dying of happiness. Castlevania is one of my favourite video game franchises and it just invaded Super Smash Bros in a major way. Thank you, Mr. Sakurai, for giving me this. Simon is going to be my new main. Sorry Ike, but there’s a new beefcake in town.
But! The cherry on top here is that when they showed off all the monsters that can appear in Dracula’s Castle, there was a shadow that was noted only as ?????.
You know what that is? It’s friggin’ Dracula-Kun! Yes, the main character of the Castlevania parody series Boku Dracula-Kun -also known as Kid Dracula or Baby Alucard- is in Super Smash Bros. I could never have even dreamed of something so wonderful happening. There are only two other things in the world that could make me this happy, and one has absolutely nothing to do with video games. So yes, I’m pretty damn stoked on this new Smash game.
Shovel Knight – Shovel Knight is in Smash too! Oh, happy day! …but he’s just an assist trophy? Oh… Well that’s a little disappointing. But Shovel Knight is still in Smash! He’s now officially reached the Legendary tier of video game characters. Did you know that Shovel Knight is my favourite anything of everything?
Chrom and Dark Samus – Two popular characters that I don’t really have much of affinity for, being introduced as Echo fighters. Chrom seems to be a faster version of Ike, which is… I’ve always been fond of Ike the way he is. He’s so immensely powerful that I don’t mind the lack of speed. And Dark Samus… whatever. She’s cool, but I’ve sadly grown out of Samus. She was my main in Smash 64 and Melee, but those days are behind us.
Stages – New Donk City Hall is the other new stage that they showed off in this Direct, and it looks pretty sweet. What really needs to be mention is that there are 103 stages in Smash Ultimate. One hundred and three. That… that may be too many. I already had a tough time picking a stage from Melee’s 29 options. Probably I’ll just pick Dream Land from Smash 3DS all the time because that’s the best stage ever. Oh! But there’s a stage morph option now that makes the game flip between two stages, which is neat. I would love if it could just morph into anything at any time, but I can see how that might be unfeasible.
Final Smash Meter – This is a feature that needed to be there from the point where Final Smashes were first introduced (Brawl). Instead of breaking a Smash Ball, a meter builds during the fight, and when it fills, you get a Final Smash! It’s less powerful than the Smash Ball version, but that’s okay! This is how every other fighting game with equivalent super moves works, so it’s weird that Smash Bros hadn’t incorporated it until now.
I would like to take a little sidebar here to reiterate how brilliant the Fake Smash Ball is. I love it.
Monster Hunter – Smash 4 had a couple Monster Hunter costumes for the Mii Fighters as DLC, but Smash Ultimate is ramping it up a bit with… Rathalos? Just Rathalos? Apparently he appears as a boss, and also an assist trophy, but they didn’t really elaborate on anything else. The stage on which he is a boss is clearly based on the Ancestral Steppe map from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, but they didn’t call it out at all. And does that mean that there will be a Hunter as a playable fighter? Really, the Rathalos clip just left me with more questions than anything. Regardless, I am jazzed that Monster Hunter is now officially a part of Smash.
Other stuff – The menu seems to be… slightly better than Smash Wii U’s awful mess? It still looks like a big mess, but at least it’s laid out a little better. I can still see myself getting lost trying to find anything that isn’t the main Smash mode, so that’s not great. I’m curious about the mystery mode that they censored out for this video, but not so much that I feel the need to speculate. And: It looks like they fixed Classic Mode! It’s just like it used to be in Smash 64 and Melee, but tailored to each character! It remains to be seen if it’ll be fun again or not, but it’s looking good so far! Hopefully that dreadful Master Fortress has been trashed.
King K. Rool – I’m all for adding more villains to Smash (because you can only have heroes beat each other up for so long), but I personally don’t give a single flip about K. Rool. Here’s a third Donkey Kong series character that I’ll never play as. Where the heck is Dixie already? K. Rool’s reveal trailer was absolutely the best thing, however.
Lastly, for your viewing pleasure, an embedded video of the presentation I just typed over one thousand words about:
This is it: the big collection of video game commercials that I’d been aching for since March. Okay, yeah, with that qualification, it’s obvious that I was 90% in it just for the Smash. But hey, there were other neat things, too! Let’s take a look at the sentence or two that I had to say about them!
Daemon X Machina – OOH ANIME MECHS. I LIKE. It’s like the best parts of Xenoblade X but made by Platinum and Suda51. (Except not. It’s actually Marvelous making it.)
Xenoblade 2 DLC – Speaking of Xenoblade… Hey it’s that promised story expansion DLC for the game that I’ve still only seen like 50% of. It’s a prequel with a new titan, I guess? I don’t know, the narration was Japanese and my phone was sitting on a stand that obscured the subtitles. Obviously I’m going in on it, because Xenoblade 2 is freakin’ sweet and yeah I’ll take any more of it that they’re willing to give me.
Pokémon Let’s Go – No new information here. Just Reggie pimping the lame Pokéball Plus accessory. But it does give you a free Mew, so…
Super Mario Party – I don’t have friends, so I don’t care. And even if I did, I’m sure they’d just dump all over it instead of playing with me. Dig the logo, though.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses – It’s Fire Emblem on Switch, which is so cool, which I’m down with. But I have played exactly one Fire Emblem game ever, and I have my doubts that I’ll be adding this one to the list any time soon.
Fortnite – Nope. Don’t care. I do like how not-gritty it is, though. And cool that it’s out NOW.
Overcooked 2 – I’ve heard many times that Overcooked is great, but again, with the lack of friends and all.
Killer Queen Black – Like, seriously. No friends. Okay, one friend. But that’s still not really enough to care about multiplayer party games.
Hollow Knight – Ah! A single-player game! There we go! But I’ve played it already, so… oh, what? It’s available today? And only $17? Hey, I mean, it’s not like I paid money to play it the first time…
Octopath Traveler – New demo with carry-over data… but I really don’t have time to fit that in at the moment. I don’t even know that I’ll be able to make time for the full game come July.
Sizzle reel – Mostly things shown at other presentations, or that are already out, or are getting DLC soon. Nothing that made me shriek with joy. Dark Souls still doesn’t have a release date, and Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate made an appearance. Hi, 5 seconds of Mega Man 11!
Super Smash Bros Ultimate – There was a lot to process here, so rather than trying to clean it up, here’s my stream-of-consciousness notes, hastily typed as I was watching: Oh Sakurai, you joker. Link has new moves! Zelda is Link Between Worlds style!! (<3) Ice Climbers are back! Pokémon trainer! Lucas! Ryu! Ganondorf looks better than ever! Cloud! SNAKE IS BACK! Pichu! Toon Link AND Young Link! Wolf! MEGAMAN! Every fighter ever is back! This is amazing news! BIG BLUUUUE! Daisy?? (Aw, dangit.) Inkling seems awesome, and I love the Squid Sisters assist trophy. But where’s Off The Hook? Bomberman assist trophy? Nice! Ooh and a deadly Fake Smash Ball! GOOD LORD RIDLEY MURDERED MARIO AND MEGA MAN.
Verdict: Super Smash Bros Ultimate is out on December 7 and that’s all that matters. Everything else was gravy at best, or I just didn’t care. Smash is all I wanted from this presentation. It’s all I wanted from this E3. And by God, they delivered!
I listened to Square-Enix’s E3 press conference at work today. To say that listening to this video showcase instead of watching it took away some of the magic is an understatement; I registered so little hype from just listening to these trailers. To be fair, most of these games I probably wouldn’t have cared about too much anyway.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider – I still haven’t played either of the previous games, so I have very little stock in this. It seems an awful lot like the kind of thing I’d like, but there’s currently a 100% chance that I will never actually find the time to play it.
Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood – Nope. Still don’t give a single flip about online Final Fantasies. The new Monster Hunter crossover content seems neat, but not enough to make me care at all.
The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit – So this is a free not-prologue to Life is Strange 2? Okay, cool. If it’s free, why the heck wouldn’t I try it? I liked Life is Strange quite a lot.
Dragon Quest XI – Yeah, I already know I want to play this. And the trailer did nothing for me because… it’s Dragon Quest. JRPG story trailers are all dumb cliché lines and I doubt the gameplay would be especially exciting to show off. Strange that they only showed off the PS4 version, but I guess the Switch version is just that far off.
Babylon’s Fall – I have no idea what this is outside of the fact that it’s developed by Platinum Games. So I’m definitely interested, but I’ll have to wait and see more before I invest myself emotionally or financially. (Apparently they showed no gameplay. Always a great sign.)
NiER: Automata – It’s on Xbox One now. Good for them. I love this game.
Octopath Traveler – The only Switch game in this presentation, but the only one I need to see. I am so hype for this, and it’s only a month away!
Just Cause 4 – I’m not going to start caring at the fourth game. Tornadoes are neat, though.
The Quiet Man – A mute guy who punches dark-alley punks. I’m going to need a lot of very good reasons why I should even begin to care about this. At least it’s not another sequel?
Kingdom Hearts III – Yep, mm-hmm. On board, obviously. I love the Sora & friends designs for the Monsters Inc world, and I genuinely cannot wait to goof around in the Toy Story and Wreck-It Ralph worlds. I don’t know if I’ll actually buy it, though. I’ll likely just borrow it from my brother like I did with all the other Kingdom Hearts games.
And that was that! Overall: underwhelming? Yeah. 3.5/10. The three games I’m strongly interested in, I was already sold on months or years ago, and Captain Spirit is mostly getting my attention because it’s free. I really hope the Sony presentation tonight is more exciting! Nintendo’s show (which airs tomorrow) automatically gets a pass because it’s going to have Super Smash Bros, but I have no idea if whatever else they show will be enough to stand out next to Smash. I just want a Metroid Prime 4 trailer.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES) – Done and dusted. Always a great time, and even that danged Ice Palace wasn’t nearly as bad as I remember it.
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (N64) – I can’t think of anything meaningful to say about this game in two lines. How about you go read this much bigger thing I wrote about it?
Kirby: Star Allies (Switch) – I might not have played this if not for a change to the My Nintendo program right before release that allowed a nice big discount on the purchase.
Knack (PS4) – I tried to be positive about it for a long time, but by Chapter Nine I was fully willing to admit that I hate it. Yet I powered through to the end anyway. What is wrong with me?
Monster Hunter World (PS4) – I’ll level with you, I didn’t actually beat this last month. I write up these entries beforehand based on assumptions and when the game turned out to be much longer than I anticipated, couldn’t be bothered to correct it. But it is beat for real now. Promise.
Super Mario RPG (SNES) – Initially, I thought that this was a game one could burn though in a couple quick sessions. That is not the case. It’s actually respectably long! And still a lot of fun!
Uncanny Valley (PS4) – A neat indie horror adventure, which I played to the least satisfying ending and then couldn’t make more time for because of my obsession with Monster Hunter.
RiME (PS4) – I was having a great time up until chapter 2. Then I was having an adequate time up until chapter 5. Then I just sat there and quietly wept for 20 minutes. (More words.)
Thimbleweed Park (Switch) – I thought it would be a brisk run, but it took me 15ish hours to solve this bad boy, and that’s having used the hint system very liberally. …I may just be really dumb.
Lords Mobile (iOS) – I downloaded and played a bit to get free hashcoins in Greasy Money, but the offer expired long before I reached the requirement T_T What a waste of a Sunday morning.
