{"id":4799,"date":"2014-10-01T08:00:35","date_gmt":"2014-10-01T13:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=4799"},"modified":"2014-11-04T21:02:16","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T02:02:16","slug":"monthend-video-game-wrap-up-september-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=4799","title":{"rendered":"Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: September 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hey, it&#8217;s the best month of the year! And a month where I decided that it was time to focus on a select few games instead of trying to play everything under the sun. These Monthend posts really shouldn&#8217;t go over 1,000 words.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, final vacation week of the year, and I&#8230; spent most of if watching TV and sleeping in instead of playing games or doing something productive. Oh well!<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.torrentialequilibrium.net\/images\/monthend\/sep14b.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"675\" height=\"210\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Oh, and I guess this marks the first year anniversary of this Monthend feature. I figured I would&#8217;ve flaked on it long ago.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">~ Now Playing ~<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Super Smash Bros for 3DS Demo<\/strong> (3DS) &#8211; Okay, so it&#8217;s weird to be counting a demo here, but how many demos have you played for over 6 hours? Yeah. Besides, I got the special version without a usage limit (the regular version can only be launched 30 times), so I need to tout that as much as I can.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.torrentialequilibrium.net\/images\/monthend\/sep14n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"340\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Gauntlet<\/strong> (PC) &#8211; The only PC game that I&#8217;ve ever pre-ordered. I played Legends and Dark Legacy so much back in the day that I was thrilled to hear that a new game was on the way. The final product is really good; pure Gauntlet. The only problem is that the mouse\/keyboard control scheme feels weird and it doesn&#8217;t support either of my usual PC controllers. I&#8217;ve cleared the first world so far.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hyrule Warriors<\/strong> (WiiU) &#8211; I have never played a Warriors game before, so while this game is dressing up a\u00a0stale series in fanservice to many, it&#8217;s a completely new experience for me. And it&#8217;s soooo much fun. It shouldn&#8217;t be, but it is. I&#8217;ve finished Legend Mode, but that&#8217;s really just scratching the surface of this game&#8217;s content.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fire Emblem: Awakening<\/strong> (3DS) &#8211; I have a very hard time playing any tactical RPG that isn&#8217;t Final Fantasy Tactics, so I&#8217;ve never been too interested in Fire Emblem. Picked this one up because it was on sale, and I&#8217;m\u00a0loving it. Possibly because I&#8217;m playing on\u00a0normal difficulty and casual mode, so I don&#8217;t have to deal with Fire Emblem&#8217;s traditionally crushing difficulty and perma-death. It&#8217;s breezy and fun, but I still have to consider my moves carefully. Hooray! I&#8217;m on Chapter\u00a018 or so.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Last of Us<\/strong> (PS3) &#8211; I&#8217;m one of the few\u00a0who didn&#8217;t\u00a0love this game. I don&#8217;t often agree with Chris Kohler these days, but he&#8217;s absolutely right when he suggested that it would be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/2013\/06\/the-last-of-us-review\/\">better without guns<\/a>. I like the game in general, but I absolutely <em>hate<\/em> it when it forces you into combat. Because the combat is terrible. It might have the most satisfying stealth gameplay I&#8217;ve ever experienced, but it usually forgoes the stealth in favour of gunplay. Boo.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">~ Game Over ~<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Donkey Kong 64<\/strong> (N64) &#8211; I loved DK64 for many years, but\u00a0playing it again was sort of an eye-opener, as at the outset, I felt like I was having quite a bit of fun with<span style=\"color: #333333;\"> it.\u00a0Then things took a horrible turn. Read <a title=\"Year of N64 \u2013 September \u2013 Donkey Kong 64\" href=\"http:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=4832\">this<\/a> for more details.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Hammerwatch<\/strong> (PC) &#8211; I got confused and thought that Gauntlet game came out on the 3rd, but actually it was the 23rd. Luckily, Hammerwatch came along in a Humble Bundle and slaked my thirst for a dungeon-crawling hack-em-up. Essentially it&#8217;s you (and up to three friends)\u00a0in a massive series of mazes against millions of squishy monsters. Plenty of secrets to discover and winks at classic PC games made this one really stand out. I look forward to playing it again -and more thoroughly- to get the good ending.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.torrentialequilibrium.net\/images\/monthend\/sep14g.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"340\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Tappingo 2<\/strong> (3DS) &#8211; Hey it&#8217;s the sequel to that puzzle game that wasn&#8217;t super but was somehow very engrossing anyway. So I played this. Solved some puzzles. It was pretty much the exact same as the first one, and that&#8217;s probably the only trait it shares with picross.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Metal Gear<\/strong> (MSX) &#8211; So here&#8217;s an odd one. I&#8217;ve never played an MSX game before. Turns out that Metal Gear is <em>pretty great<\/em>. Aside from a lot of totally unintuitive tricks and traps, anyway. But the overall feel I got from the game was good, so I hopped into\u00a0Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake\u00a0immediately after finishing it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake<\/strong> (MSX) &#8211; It&#8217;s <em>even better<\/em> than the first! Who would have thought! Literally the only things I didn&#8217;t like about it are the enormous amount of backtracking and the stupid, stupid swamp. If you&#8217;ve played the game, you know what I&#8217;m talking about.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Saints Row the Third<\/strong> (PC) &#8211; Despite almost burning out by ignoring the story and just goofing of and playing with all the random distractions, I powered through to the end. With 100% even, because I loved it.\u00a0Really wish that I was capable to keeping an aircraft intact for more than about a minute, though. Flying is really fun, but I am <em>not<\/em> good at it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Demon King Box<\/strong> (3DS) &#8211;\u00a0Finished it off, and was a bit shocked when I did, because the ending just comes out of nowhere. Possibly because the translation is awful and none of the dialogue makes a lick of sense. There are a bunch of tough post-game stages to play, but I don&#8217;t know if I like the game <em>that<\/em> much.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Life Force<\/strong> (NES) &#8211; Bought this VC game on a whim, because I thought I heard that it&#8217;s a little easier than most other space shooters. That&#8217;s not exactly true. I couldn&#8217;t even pass the first stage after playing for fifteen minutes. So I save-stated my way to the end. Good enough.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Super Smash Bros Brawl<\/strong> (Wii) &#8211; I spent a ton\u00a0of time with Brawl in anticipation of Smash on 3DS. Partly to get myself psyched up, and partly to try to complete all of the challenges I left unfinished. I didn&#8217;t clear out everything, but I&#8217;m pretty close. I&#8217;ve just accepted the fact that I&#8217;ll never beat Boss Battles on the Very Hard or Insane difficulties.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">~ Re-runs ~<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Picross e2<\/strong> (3DS) &#8211; Oh look, Ryan was playing Picross. What a surprise.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.torrentialequilibrium.net\/images\/monthend\/sep14r.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hey, it&#8217;s the best month of the year! And a month where I decided that it was time to focus on a select few games instead of trying to play everything under the sun. These Monthend posts really shouldn&#8217;t go over 1,000 words. Anyway, final vacation week of the year, and I&#8230; spent most of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=4799\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: September 2014<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,20,6,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthend","category-retro-gaming","category-video-games","category-zelda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4799"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4920,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4799\/revisions\/4920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}