What are you playing?

[kamikazekeeg]

With going more casual with Pokopia now, I decided to start delving into some Switch 1 replaying as I decided to play Breath of the Wild to enjoy how it is on Switch 2 and it's so nice. I had dabbled a tiny bit with emulator and BOTW a few years back, didn't play much, but it's nice to have better visuals and framerate.  I think it's a pretty steady 60 frames, with some dips, but I'm really glad I waited till now to replay the game.

And since I want to play the new Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, but not planning to buy it right this moment, I decided I'd for now see if Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity got any small boosts despite not having a Switch 2 version.  It does get a boost, Age of Calamity ran pretty rough before, but Switch 2 locks it to a very consistent 30 frames.  Not perfect, but an overall better experience than in the past and I might just play this for awhile too as I think I'm making this a big Zelda year.  Replay Breath of the Wild, replay/play more of Age of Calamity (I can't remember if I beat the story before or not and never did any of the DLC), maybe get around to Tears of the Kingdom or Age of Imprisonment, and then be ready for the Ocarina of Time remake that might be in November.  I've been really craving some Zelda for a while now and I haven't played anything since Tears of the Kingdom, which was 3 years ago.

[ssj4yamgeta]

For about the past three weeks, I've been playing the hell out of Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero's new expansion, Ultra Limit-Breaking Neo. I almost never buy DLC anymore, but I made an exception here. For $35 it adds new story routes, 33 new playable characters, and a new roguelike game mode where you can level up your characters and create different builds with them. It's a lot of fun, you can do some hilarious stuff like turn a low-tier character into something capable of wiping the floor with the strongest characters in the game. One character I was very happy to see in the new batch is the GT version of Vegeta, which is the best visual redesign he ever got. After the two new modes added earlier this year via free updates, and this new DLC, the game is a solid 9/10. The one big flaw it still has is the lack of a quick pick-up-and-play mode, like an Arcade Mode where you select a character and automatically go through 6-8 fights and get an ending scene. Every single mode in the game right now requires you to go through at least 3 menu screens to get to the action. The new roguelike mode in particular has an obnoxious number of menus you have to go through (around 5 or 6), some of which just feel redundant. I have no idea why the mode shows you your non-interactive stats summary a second time before it actually lets you play, when it just showed it to you two screens earlier. There badly needs to be a mode where you just select a character and jump in without having to fiddle with settings and various confirmations.

[kamikazekeeg]

Wasn't sure if I wanted to get Donkey Kong Bananza or Star Fox next after Pokopia as I figured I'd wait for the Age of Imprisonment since I was already replaying some Zelda games and went with Donkey Kong Bananza as I figured I'd get a lot more time out of it and so far it's pretty fun.  While I've played a number of DK games over the years, mostly just the SNES games, DK64, and I think Tropical Freeze, I wouldn't say I'm the biggest fan, I was always more of a Mario guy if I had to choose.  This functionally takes the idea of Super Mario Odyssey and goes "What if you could just punch literally everything?" I know there have been games with the ability to just carve into the world, but are more about resource hunting and spelunking, where this feels more like what I remember of the Red Faction games, where you could like carve up different routes and tackle things in different ways.  Since you can do sonar claps to find stuff through the ground, sometimes I'll just dig through the ground and pop up next to a banana to find out that I could've gone another direction or how it factors into the ability to get certain things.

It does the thing I didn't love with Super Mario Odyssey, where there's a bajillion of the main things to collect (Gem Bananas) rather than having a smaller, easier to find selection of them.  Some are more clear, are a part of the questing, given direction, objectives, part of challenges, but others are just buried in the ground, so you spend like 70% of the game, especially once maxing out Sonar (I did it as early as I could), spamming R1 to see fossils and banana's through things.  Having to find...500 banana's or however many there will be by the end of the game is not nearly as satisfying at it being like...200 or so that are strewn about in a more enjoyable way.  Though I guess that would somewhat undercut the digging mechanic, which can be very satisfying.  It's never not enjoyable burrowing into the earth or causing lots of stuff to explode.

Overall, it's great to see a real good 3D platformer these days as the last one I really enjoyed was Astro Bot.  My only real big negative is that all the bosses have sucked and are super easy.  They look fun, but take zero effort to fight.  I hope that changes.

[kamikazekeeg]

Played the demo for Stupid Never Dies, a rogue-lite action game where you play a zombie who can absorb other monsters powers and get bonus robot body mod abilities to fight his way through the different world layers to evetually eat the boss monster and hopefully save a frozen human girl.  I found it generally fun, the story/characters are very Suda51 coded, over-the-top, silly, colorful.  The action is just alright, I don't know, I felt like I was whiffing a bunch with the attacks, like I was missing a lock on ability, perhaps I overlooked it, I don't know, it just didn't feel as snappy as these sorta action games tend to be.  Maybe it feels better once you get more experienced in it.

Overall it's fun, I don't think I'll buy it right away, but good to consider on a sale potentially, especially since it's coming out in a timeframe that I got other stuff to check out in that end of the year time frame.

[burningdoom]

Finished the Risen remaster. It's literally the same exact game as the original. I didn't see any changes at all. I don't understand why this was made. The original is already in HD even.

[kamikazekeeg]

Was going to try and maybe 100% Sonic Racing: Crossworlds as I've been playing it ever day over the past week and I thought it might be possible as I mostly just have some Rival Park stuff to finish, Time Trials, and Super Sonic Speed Grand Prix, but I looked up farming tickets for unlocks and there's no good farm I guess, it would take forever to unock everything with the sheer amount of tickets you need.  10k for just the aura's, maybe 5k for the horns, probably something similar for the decals, and then I don't know how many are needed for the friendship unlocks, but when there's 23 racers, even if it's just 500 to 1000 tickets each for full unlocks, that's...10 to 20k at least lol It's not fun and from what I saw online, at its best, it's maybe like 100 to 200 tickets per race, which is weeks of grinding.  That's not fun at all, that's way too tedious for cosmetic stuff.

I did find out that Time Trial completions for each grand prix unlocks more music.  Wish I had known that sooner compared to the latter end of my time with it, but I will be finishing all the main racing stuff and just ignoring completion.

*EDIT*
Also started checking out the demo for Final Fantasy: Resonance.  It's apparently an updated remake of part of the Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius mobile game, though I don't feel like you can tell at all when playing, at least in this early bit of the first chapter you get access to.  It's your standard turn based RPG, but it stands out so much with all the real good art. The 2D pixel art is great, there's nice illustrations for the main characters when there's dialogue, there's nice 3D visuals for the main world, and there's real well done 3D visuals for at least the main intro cutscene that has a solid pixel filter over it.  Handles it in a way that doesn't feel aggressive as I feel like some games use pixel filters too harshly and just make everything look either muddy or blurry.

I haven't played much turn based stuff in a while, but this is nice, I might finish the demo since it's the full 1st chapter and then consider picking up the game at some point.  The gimmick is that you get "Visions" that are like the memories of warriors, and that's how they add in all the characters that were in Brave Exvius as a mobile game, being partner characters with unique abilities that you use in battle.  A fun way to have all sorts of Final Fantasy characters show up in a way that isn't obtrusive to an original story.

[nikosite]

• Resident Evil 4 - First time playing
• Animal Crossing: Wild World - Revisit
• BioShock - First time playing
• Metroid Prime - First time playing

FOOTNOTES

1. Resident Evil 4 kicks so much ass and so does it mine.
My god is this game hard. Still, I'm having a lot of fun with it.

2. I've learned how to make money in Wild World.
Now there's a chance I can become a millionaire without using cheats.

3. My friend recommended me to play BioShock since it's identical to System Shock 2.
And System Shock 2 is one of my all-time favourites.

4. Metroid is my most beloved series, but I never played further titles than the remake Zero Mission.
This time, I'm going to. And even other spinoffs like Metroid: Other M. Yes, I will play that too.

NIKOSITE
I apologize if the reply seems superficial, I just love this ancient post system.

[kamikazekeeg]

I think I messed up my AIO on my PC abit when reinstalling it after getting my CPU back from a warranty replacement, so once I get the new one put in, and hopefully the PC working right, I'm gonna be getting into Wardogs.  I'm seeing such good stuff on it, it's basically ARMA mixed with Battlefield, which is kind of a perfect combination for me.  I didn't realize how much building factors into the game which is super cool and being able to just build bases anywhere is pretty awesome.  The vibe also reminds me abit of that great PS3 game, MAG.  The player count isn't as big, but the three team dynamic sorta feels similar.  I was always bummed that nothing more ever happened with that game since the dev studio got shuttered and no one really dipped back into that well outside of something like Planetside 2, but that game was more MMO than large scale shooter.

Actually started playing Metroid Dread after seeing the Ravenous trailer and I don't think I'm the only one either with how it apparently went up the eshop sales chart and got a nice sale.  I wasn't ever huge on Prime 4, especially after it's reception, and I had meant to check out Dread at some point as I replayed most of the previous games, at least like Super Metroid, and the GBA games I believe.  I think Fusion was the one I liked the most.  Dread is pretty good, I love the instant switches between cutscenes and action, I understand the idea of "Dread" with needing outrun the robots in sections as it can be very tense and it's definitely not easy as the timing window for counters can be quite narrow.  I'm only a couple hours in, but so far I'm liking it and if the full games pans out, I'll be there right away for Ravenous.

[ssj4yamgeta]

Played a few demos recently:

Final Fantasy Resonance:
This is probably the best Final Fantasy game since XII way back on the PS2. I was worried that it would rely on nostalgia for other titles in order to function, but thankfully it stands on its own even without factoring in the visions. It brings back everything fans of the classics have been asking for for years, including controllable airships, turn-based battles, the victory fanfare when you win, and the world map. The character designs are good, and the music carries the emotion of the scenes like it did with the older titles. The pixel art is amazing, and the way they seamlessly blend 2D and 3D assets is impressive. The only complaint I have so far is the occasionally somewhat cheesy dialogue, but that's been a staple of the series since the XIII trilogy. Even though I always try to buy used copies of S-E games (after how they butchered the remake of FFVII), this game honestly has me considering buying it new. It's a massive step back in the right direction, and I think they should be rewarded for it.

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World:
I ignored this subseries for the longest time because I had no idea what it was. Turns out it's a Pokemon-esque monster taming game series, only with more polish and better creature designs. I love what I've played so far, Bianca and Nera are adorable and the way the terrain is heavily curved like you're on a tiny planet is very unique. Even in the beginning area, I've found several monsters I like. Can't wait to try out the monster fusion to make more powerful monsters. I'll definitely be picking this up later this year.

Onimusha 2026:
The difficulty in this game is wildly inconsistent. In normal fights, it's like baby's first soulslike. You can wade into a group of 10 or 12 normal mobs and mow them all down without needing to heal. Then when you get to a boss, the game suddenly demands you perfect parry 90% of its attacks just to survive. Boss fights absolutely rely on the game's parry mechanics, because the dodge button is a joke (you literally step 2 feet back or to the side when you dodge, which means you still get hit by almost everything) and the bosses rarely ever give you any time to heal. You either master perfect parries or you die. Not much else to say about the game except that it looks very realistic, which will no doubt appeal to the movie game crowd. The realistic visuals actually work against it in my opinion, because for some reason every single character is voiced by a british person, and it's downright jarring to hear near-photorealistic japanese people speaking with british accents. At one point I just went back to the main menu and switched the audio to Japanese because it was that grating. Probably not picking this one up unless I can find it very cheap.

[lightfighter501]

Just finished Onimusha a few days ago. The boss fights were fun but that's really the only thing I liked about the game. I played 1 and 2 back in the day and I was really excited about this. I think this was the weakest game I played and liked this year.

Right before that I played Dawnwalker. That's probably going to be my favorite game of the year. It's a really impressive game. The combat is fun and unique. Even if it borrows some from KCD. I never got tired of it. The narrative choices are insane. There's a lot you can do and change how things go. I really love how they didn't implement a karma/good/bad system. I was a little worried about the time mechanic but it never really felt constraining. After a bit I was using time up like crazy and still had a bunch left over to beat the game. I'm usually a big story person but I really didn't care about this game's story at all. And I'm a big character and writing person but I didn't care about any of the characters. And none of the writing was memorable.. To be fair, real life was REALLY busy for me this year... so I may have been too distracted to really enjoy it.

Before that I played Demon's Souls Remake for the first time. That was really fun. Not as hard as I thought it would be.

And I played RE9, Outer Worlds 2, Pragmata, and Saros.

I love Saros.

I wish RE9 wasn't a mash up of two different games.

Now I'm playing Control Resonant. I love Alan Wake and the Remedy Universe so I'm trying to give this one my full attention to see where the story goes...