Spooky – Page 5

Vampire Survivors: A miserable little pile of unlocks

I randomly tuned in to a Twitch stream last week, because the notification on my phone said the streamer in question was playing “the new Castlevania game”. I didn’t know there was a new Castlevania game!!

There isn’t. It was… somewhat misleading. The game being played was, in fact, a $3 indie game called Vampire Survivors. To be fair, this game does rip a lot of ideas (and maybe even sprites) directly from the Castlevania series, but it doesn’t really play like them at all.

And me, I turned around and immediately bought the game and sank most of that evening into it. Then I kept playing it pretty much every day after that. But more on that later!

Mysteries, not solved

I’ve never watched Unsolved Mysteries in my life, but it’s a show that I’ve heard a lot about. Matt from Dinosaur Dracula is a big fan of the show, and as such, I’ve absorbed plenty of information about the show from his websites and the Purple Stuff Podcast. Because of that, I’ve long since been interested in actually watching the show, just to see what it’s like.

Imagine my luck, then, to learn that (what seems to be) every single episode is available to watch on YouTube! For free! Time to learn about all sorts of crimes from the 80’s!

TE’s Top 10 Video Games of 2021

You know what this is. Rules are as such:

I had to play a game for the first time in 2021 for it to be a nominee.

That is all. The games are listed in the order that I played them. Let us commence!

A glitched trap

Metroid Dread was probably my most anticipated game of 2021, and it absolutely delivered. It was exciting and fun from start to finish, and very immaculately polished. A truly excellent video game.

To contrast, Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach would have been my second-most anticipated game of the year, and it was… well, it was botched. While I did have a great time playing it, and I think there’s a good game in there, it is so broken and bugged that I wouldn’t fault you for calling it unplayable.

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: December 2021

~ Game Over ~

Ys Seven (PC) – I wrote about how I was struggling a bit near the halfway point, but the difficulty of Nightmare mode kind of cleared up after that. At least until the final bosses, which required a heck of a lot of grinding to beat. Still a very good game, just not one you should play on the hardest difficulty setting.

The Room (PC) – Having no relation to the infamous movie of the same name, this is a game about solving a series of puzzle boxes. It was a lot of fun, though the puzzles were maybe a little bit on the easy side. Took less than two hours to complete all five chapters, and I look forward to playing the sequels.

24 Days of Desire (23): Resident Evil VR

It seems like there was a very long time where VR was just something I’d never be able to have for myself. It needs a huge room, an expensive headset, an even more expensive computer… There were just so many barriers to entry that I just ignored VR as a thing that existed.

Then Facebook started bombarding me with Oculus Quest 2 ads, and at some point I decided to see what it was all about. Now here we are a year later, and I’m enjoying a… fairly limited library of VR games. There just aren’t all that many games available for Quest 2. But that actually doesn’t matter, because it has the best game of them all: Resident Evil 4.

24 Days of Desire (22): Fazbear Frights

I was all gung-ho to write this post about how I wanted a physical collection of the Fazbear Frights book series, and how I was sad that in this age of digital everything it would likely never happen.

And then I was proved wrong. It’s happening in February of 2022.

24 Days of Desire (8): FNAF Core Collection

Remember that big indie game fad from like six years ago? Five Nights at Freddy’s? Well, it’s still alive and kicking, and while the newest game in the series isn’t due to release for another two weeks, all of the previous titles have now made their way out of the PC market and onto consoles.

24 Days of Desire (1): Television

If you’ve been following this website for a while, you probably know that sometimes I will do an advent calendar-like daily feature from December 1st to 20-somethingth. It started as the 23 Days of Materialism, in which I highlighted something that I thought was cool each day. It was both a way to show off things I liked and also sort of a stealthy way to give people gift ideas for the holidays. In later years, I would try to spice up the formula with different themes.

This year, I’ve decided to turn the feature on its ear, and so I introduce to you the 24 Days of Desire. This time around I’ll be listing a bunch of things that I would like to have, as opposed to things I already own. It’s… not really that much of a difference, but I feel like it’ll allow me a little more space for creativity. That, and it guarantees I don’t have to go out and buy a bunch of things to write about. Woop woop!

Now that the stage is set, I’d like to start off with something fairly easy:

Television.

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: November 2021

~ Game Over ~

Castlevania: Bloodlines (Genesis) – Much faster than the ‘Vanias on Nintendo consoles, but still feels slow because so many enemies are tanky. It brings back the “whip gets powered down when you get hit” mechanic, which suuuuucks. There are a lot of cool graphical things happening in this one, and I like that it has two fairly different playable characters (of course I played through with both).

Resident Evil 4 VR (Oculus) – Played to record for YouTube. (Twice!)

Alisa (PC) – You can see my full impressions in this YouTube playlist. TLDW? It’s a 90’s survival horror throwback that really nails the presentation and stumbles just a little with the gameplay. Also it’s a Kickstarter project that is not quite finished.