I spent almost 12 solid hours on Saturday the 27th of August playing Splatoon 3’s free demo with two of my friends. I’m talking maybe 30-ish minutes of breaks in there, though there was a bit more downtime considering the average queue time for a match was about 45 seconds and I kept getting booted out of matches right around the top of the hour. Any match that started within 2 minutes of a new hour, before or after, would end prematurely with me getting kicked out due to a communication error. It was too dependable to be an internet issue on my end (not to mention my voice call didn’t drop once), so it was clearly some kind of odd communication bug. Aside from that and the way that Team Scissors got absolutely massacred by the unbalanced Tricolor Battles, it was an amazing and fun experience.
Continue readingVideo
Whiling Away My Hours With Reflections on Death and Stories
While I’ve been waiting on patches that will hopefully fix Cult of the Lamb, I’ve turned to other games to occupy my time. I’ve begun to dip my toe into Wildermyth on the PC and my impression from two hours of gameplay is that the writing is some of the best I’ve seen in a video game. Perfect balance between longer sentences, clipped fragments, and the natural warping of language that occurs when people who know each other talk in a relaxed or tense manner. Beautiful turns of phrase that reach past the awkward, stylistic structure of some of the prose to land a beautiful image in your mind that compliments the storybook style cutscenes and events. Just an absolute treat to experience.
Continue readingOn Break From Cult of the Lamb
So, I spent a lot of time playing Cult of the Lamb. I even wrote about it last week. Unforuntaely, I got about halfway through the game (by my estimation, anyway. It might be longer than I think it is or shorter than I hope it to be) and a series of bugs rendered my save file almost unusable. Tack on constant performance issues, rituals failing to execute after selecting them, stuff disappearing from the game when I save and reload or between game launches, and various combat-related bugs that are responsible for all but one of my deaths, and it becomes clear that this was ready for cross-platform release. Also making it super clear is that many of these problems still exist on the PC version of the game, but with nowhere near the level of severity or consistency. I don’t know if I’ve ever played a game that felt as low-priority when it comes to console adaptions.
Continue readingI Tried Counting Sheep To Fall Asleep The Last Few Nights, But There’s Only One In Cult Of The Lamb
One of the reasons I’m taking it easy this week is because I’ve been short on sleep every single night since I got home from visiting a friend. Nothing’s wrong, I’ve just gotten completely absorbed into playing Cult of the Lamb every night. Sure, I’d probably be cutting myself off long before 1 or 2 in the morning if I had the chance to start playing before 1030 and wasn’t a little desperate to do anything enjoyable and relaxing with my evening. I’ve had errands, laundry, and Dungeons and Dragons games every night since I got home from visiting a friend, and while Dungeons and Dragons is enjoyable, it isn’t relaxing. It takes real effort and focus to run a game and while I don’t regret my decision to run a session this week, I do wish I was better rested going into the week. I would feel a lot less like rubbish if I was. And who knows, maybe I would have actually followed-through on my decision to “just play a bit” of this addictive combo rogue-lite and management sim instead of losing track of time until I started nodding off at 1 or 2 in the morning.
Continue readingFire Emblems Warriors: Three Hopes Is More Than The Sum Of Its Parts
I’ve been playing a lot of Fire Emblems Warriors: Three Hopes lately. It has been a lot of fun, since it combines one of my favorite entries in the Fire Emblem series with a style of game I’m fairly new to (at least in terms of the lifespan of the game type) but definitely enjoy. I was introduced to the Warriors style of game by the IP crossovers they have been doing lately (again, an incredibly subjective term), namely the previous Fire Emblem game and the two Legend of Zelda entries, but I’ve never really finished any of them. I think I’ve gotten through the plot on one of them (the original Hyrule Warriors game), but I also didn’t play that one alone. My roommate and I took turns playing through it and I doubt I’d have made it through to the end without a friend along for the ride. I genuinely enjoy the games since a relatively mindless beat’em’up style game appeals to me when I’m tired or not terribly interested in being challenged, but I’ll admit the previous games didn’t really catch my attention in a way that made me choose them over any other game.
Continue readingIs It Worth Unearthing the Good Game Beneath the Bad Battles in Paper Mario: The Origami King?
I was recently struck by the urge to replay Paper Mario and, instead of going through the hassle of digging out my old systems or signing up for the more expensive Nintendo Online account so I could play it on my Switch, I’ve spent my time finally playing through Paper Mario: The Origami King. I bought it shortly after it came out two years ago, based on some reviews I read, started playing it right before I moved into my current apartment, and then never played it again after moving. I’d gotten distracted by getting my wisdom teeth removed and the PS4 I purchased with the moving and dental work budget I had leftover when those were all finished. Ghost of Tsushima was incredibly compelling and I had some other PS4 games I still hadn’t played. I barely even used my Switch for months.
Continue readingWhy I Return To Frustrating Video Games
Since last week, I’ve been reflecting on why I continue to play video games that frustrate me. I was pretty tired when I wrote last week’s post, so it did not initially occur to me that one of the main elements of video games is to present challenges to overcome and while failing to overcome a challenge can be frustrating, video games are usually set up to give you additional opportunities to attempt challenges you’ve failed. As someone who plays video games with a desire for a challenge, a certain amount of frustration goes hand-in-hand with attempting a challenge that actually feels like a challenge. Still, when I think about the moments of frustration in a game that cause me to set it aside, most of the time it has nothing to do with the challenge the game presents and everything to do with my experience as someone attempting to enjoy themselves. Last week’s post included examples of games I’m playing and frustrations that caused me to put the game aside, so I’m going to expand on those for simplicity’s sake.
Continue readingVideo Games: The Only Entertainment I’ll Let Frustrate Me Repeatedly
I’ve been getting back into a few games I started earlier this spring and thenfell off of either when new games came out or I hit intense periods of stress that drove me from new experiences to old comforts. I’ve never finished Pokémon Legends: Arceus or Horizon: Forbidden West, for example. I hit a point with both games, stopped playing, and never quite got around to playing either game again despite having enjoyed my time with them. The same is true of the new Pokémon Snap game. I got a ways into that, a new game came out, and I set it aside because it wasn’t a game that I could fall asleep to. That and getting up to change games in my Switch a whole bunch has never been fun when I’m trying to calm down for the evening.
Continue readingLet’s Game It Out is Video Game Hilarity To Die For
One of my favorite passtimes when I’m feeling down is to browse through videos on the YouTube channel “Let’s Game It Out.” A zookeeper friend introduced me to this creator (who goes by Josh in his videos) when one of his videos about an unethical zoo showed up in some of her zookeeper circles a few months before the pandemic kicked off in the US. It started a pleasant night of YouTube video watching, almost entirely focused on this guy’s videos, and had us all laughing so hard we were crying. It was a lot of fun for a single evening that eventually tapered out when we realized we were out of zoo-related videos to watch, and it wound up being one of the last times we gathered as a group for a long while. With everything that happened in the start of 2020 and then that happened as the pandemic revved up, I completely forgot about the videos until last summer.
Continue readingThe Appeal Of “Virtual Chore” Video Games
I’ve been playing a lot of Stardew Valley again. Starting a new file with my friend reminded me of how enjoyable it is to listen to podcasts and just grind through the early years of a Stardew Valley file. I’ve made it halfway into Year 2, earned almost two million as I’ve efficiently pursued a multi-faceted approach to completion of the original/core content. I’ve moved on to peripheral content, much of which I never got to the first time I played the game, and I’m trying to keep pushing myself forward without burning out or losing interest. It is a difficult line to walk, as I try to make sure I’m getting all of my bases covered during these early years so I can swap to efficient, repeat-yield crops later on that require less attention from me.
Continue reading