Shantae (GBC). Don’t get too excited, Shantae fans: while the package is great (music, graphics, certain aspects of the game design), I think the core gameplay is bad. That is to say, as a platformer, I think it fails. But clearly the characters and idea were strong enough that they were able to improve upon the other aspects later.

Still playing Disney Dreamlight Valley and working on the Monsters Inc unlocks.

It’s relaxing and fun.

I’ve mostly been playing Arkham Knight. It’s a bit strange to play because they’ve changed some basic buttons that have had their function since the first game, but I’ve been accidentally calling the car instead of activating Detective Vision less and less. Speaking of the car, not as bad as people made it seem. During timed racing segments, yes, it has broken physics more than once, but especially combat segments work beautifully. I especially love how the game tries to drive you crazy, hiding Joker faces everywhere in the environment that disappear when you do a double-take, without ever specifically pointing it out. The game does suffer from some severe achievement-bloat though. When a side-mission has multiple steps to it, you’ll get an achievement for every individual step!

Haven’t made any progress in Sparks of Hope this week, but I hope to finish off world 3 today.

I’d also like to find the time to get back into Monster Hunter Rise. I still haven’t fought Amatsu and Primordial Malzeno and it bothers me to leave the game unfinished. I doubt I’ll do much with the Anomaly Investigations anymore, I just want to file the game away as finished at this point.

I think I shall boot Breath of the Wild back up, and see if I can’t finish soon-ish. I got about half-way through during the Christmas/New Year’s holiday break, but then got distracted by a restart of the Minecraft server I play on. :-P

Finished Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights!

Early impressions in my previous post.

Overall a really good game, but it subscribes to the Hollow Knight “style” of Metroidvanias - dying is a constant part of the game, with some of the bosses and exploration sections in the latter half being frustratingly difficult.

I finished the game with 100% of the items, which besides a small number of tricky platforming sections was surprisingly easy to get. I also got all three endings.

Playing Another Code: Recollection!

I think it’s been almost 20 years since I played the DS version of the first game (Trace Memory), so I barely remembered anything about it. Which I guess is a good thing, because this remake does NOT have an option to start from the sequel.

The first game is a short (~5h) but fun point-and-click adventure. Puzzles aren’t as novel nowadays as they were back in the DS, but still solid, and the remake has a nice visual facelift, though there’s some inconsistency in quality with some environmental textures looking distractingly low-res. The story revolves around a girl named Ashley and the ghost of a boy nicknamed “D” who team up to explore a mansion in an isolated island trying to solve mysteries relating to Ashley’s family and find out the circunstances around “D”'s death.

I’m now playing the second game and so far it’s a bit underwhelming. :/ One of the main issues is that the game lacks focus - the first game immediately gives you a good reason to go into the mansion and explore, while the second one has you doing seemly random stuff for a few chapters before you start seeing what the plot will be about. Another issue is that the areas are bigger but empty, so there’s a lot more running around going from one place to another.

I finished Chapter 5 of the second game, which I think is around the midpoint? Expect to finish this one either today or tomorrow but we’ll see.

I’ve been playing Huntdown and I’m on the last level now (I think). It’s a really fun 16-bit inspired shooter with 80’s vibes and a great soundtrack. The bosses are challenging but in a way that once you figure out the pattern, they’re easy to beat.

I’m also going to play some Mario Wonder this weekend, I’ve been really enjoying it, but I feel like I haven’t been able to dedicate enough time to it 😬