Games Played in 2016

For the past 2 years I've been documenting every time I play a game and what I thought about it during that session. No reason to stop now.

This will be unedited and likely full of typos and misspellings. The descriptions of my sessions may include story spoilers.

Here's the break down of the time of day:

Time	Term	Time	Term
12am to 3am	Midnight	Noon to 3pm	Afternoon
3am to 6am	Early Morning	3pm to 6pm	Early Evening
6am to 9am	Morning	6pm to 9pm	Evening
9am to Noon	Late Morning	9pm to 12am	Late Evening

Check out 2015's list here.

List items

• 

  Environmental Station Alpha

  Started: 1/1. Early Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  When I first heard about this game I thought it was one of those terrible mash ups between Maso-core platformers and Metroidvanias like Castle In the Darkness or I Want to Be the Guy, but I watched about 15 minutes of a recent LP and realized that I was wrong. It's still really tough though.

  I got up to a Jellyfish boss so far and it seems alright. I'm not sure about it yet. For a PC centric game released in 2015 the controller support is wonky and annoying. It doesn't seem like it was built for gamepads. The default for what is "confirm," "cancel," "jump," and "shoot" is not typical for the genre and that's disappointing. I had to finagle the keybindings a bit to get it in a place where I liked it.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/1. Late Evening. Mixed.

  No, I don't think this game is for me. I got to the robot Sea Serpent boss and no. This is not the kind of thing I'm looking for in a Metroidvania. The way it controls with what it's demanding of you so early on to do to beat that boss is not fun. Maybe if I had more health or if it wasn't so damn fast. I don't think I'll be playing anymore of this game. It's a shame since the art, music, and atmosphere.

  I don't know... maybe I'll restart on Easy.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/1. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Restarted on Easy and it seems the amount of damage received and the amount of health you have are much better balanced. I'm enjoying this game a lot more. I do wish so many of the enemies didn't just sort of run at you when you got close and that the active frames on your shots were active during their entire animation. That'd make combat a lot less of a drag.

  Still I like the art, music, and the story so far. The platforming is pretty good too. Though jumping out of water is awkward.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/2. Midnight. Mixed.

  Got up to the plant boss. It has at least 3 phases and that's too many. Especially when you fall in the water and can't get out because the game has trouble getting out of water when for whatever reason. It wouldn't be so bad if they enemies dropped health or if there was some sort of health pick up in the room. It just seems like poor design ethos to have health only be recoverable at certain spots instead of drops. Especially when avoiding damage is not always possible do to wonkiness on part of the game.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/2. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Switching to easy was definitely the correct choice. I was able to beat that plant boss. Then I just sort of wandered around a bit.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/3. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  My opinion of the enemy AI has not changed. Now I'm the temple and it seems kind of cool. I like that they mixed it up a bit and you have to do something to unlock a door rather than just make your way to set locations. Of course the thing you have to do is go to specific locations and destroy these orbs so it's not so different. Still that's a bit refreshing. They're being more demanding with the hookshot tricks. Which is fine, but I feel that since the blocks are about the same width of the player the tricks tend to be a bit too precise. I don't know how to explain it exactly.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/3. Early Morning. Mixed.

  This game is actually getting a little too maso-core for me. I got to a skull boss and almost beat him twice, but eh.. I don't know. Getting to him was kind of a pain in the ass. I guess I have to use the dash more often than I am. Still I find it gets stuck on things too often. This game would have benefited from some more generous "pixel pushing" sort of collision. Where your character gets pushed around while sliding against boundaries. Especially with the dash.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/9. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  I had a long session and got real far into it. I now have all but one power and have found a bunch of bosses that I can't seem to damage. I have an infinite dash move now and I've mostly just been going through and finding all the little optional stuff and secrets. I do get disappointed when all I find is some reference or something instead of something cool. To get the infinite dash I apparently went backwards through the area you find it. I think I would have normally needed to collect all the diskettes to get it, but instead just sort of tanked my way through the obstacles. There's still a bunch of areas I haven't explored yet though.

  ~~~

  Finished: 1/9. Morning. Enjoyed.

  I finished the normal ending I suppose. It was alright. There's still a bunch of places I could go, but I tried an area where you have to dash through all these 1 hit spikes and eh... I don't know I couldn't get passed one area in that. Apparently I'm missing a diskette as well. I don't know if I'll continue playing, but it's alright. I guess.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/9. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Found some things that likely lead to other things but I fear I do not have the execution to see those things. So I will likely just quit and watch that LP that got me to buy the game.

  ~~~

• 

  The Longest Journey

  Started: 1/3. Afternoon. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  After finishing Book 4 of Chapters, I wanted to play the original. I thought my girl friend might enjoy it, but it seemed she felt it was a bit too slow for her. Perhaps we'll play more though. If not then I should really just play through it on my own.

  ~~~

• 

  Mystik Belle

  Started: 1/9. Late Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  I've been on a metroidvania kick and bought this game around the time I picked up ESA. It's part metroidvania part adventure game. So far it's been pretty good! Great music, great art, enjoyable dialogue, interesting puzzles, and my girlfriend found it charming while helping me out with the puzzles. My only complaint is that health doesn't drop nearly enough and combat is fairly lackluster.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/10. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Beat a Frankenstein monster boss and got a lightning spell and a hammer. Used the Lightning spell to go up the clock tower and found a fight with a "Science Ninja." Couldn't beat him though so instead I went to the draw bridge and started to explore out that way.

  So a couple things I'm not so hot on about this game. One the fact that some enemies can reflect your shots and those shots damage you coupled with how you can't really aim other than horizontally is pretty annoying. Also it seems that leveling is the best way to overcome things in this game so far. Which requires grinding and that's just no good. The movement is slow and it makes combat lackluster. Still I like the adventure style puzzles and everything else about this game. I bet things get better once you gain some more movement options.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/10. Late Evening. Mixed.

  So this game commits one of the most grievous sins of Metroidvanias and 2D platformers in general, double tapping to dash. Especially since it seems not to work half the time. Either I'm not pressing it fast enough or too fast, but regardless it could have been just a single button like one of the shoulder buttons, than there would be no issue what so ever. Axiom Verge had this issue too. Unlike that game where the issue was you'd dash off ledges when just trying to adjust your position, in this game the dash window seems to be really tight and doesn't 100% when you want it. It's really really annoying.

  Also I'm lost as to what to do next. A guide said "Go to Sinclair's Room" but I have not encountered anyone named Sinclair.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/13. Midnight. Mixed.

  Defeated the Werewolf and now I have double jump. Explored everywhere I could go and apparently I'm missing a trowel for the next item. I have no idea where it could be. Though I just looked it up and apparently it's underwater. As far as I'm aware I can't be in water for too long so I'll check that later.

  As for my other thoughts about this game still stand. The double tap to dash is super frustrating. So much so I considered making a thread on the Steam forum, but this game came out almost a year ago and I don't really see the point now.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/16. Late Morning. Mixed.

  I don't think I'll play this game anymore. It's just kind of lackluster. The character moves too slow and combat is really just kind of bad. I don't know...

  ~~~

• 

  Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

  Played: 1/10. Early Morning. PC Emulator. Mixed.

  Last year I started this because a friend of mine was playing it. I got up to the point where you first encounter the other castle. I remember liking it then but stopped because I died without finding a save point. So I went back and found one this session. I don't think I'll continue with this game though since it started to do the thing I really really hate with Castlevanias, when it just has long featureless hallways with tough enemies positioned so you fight one at a time. It's terrible and boring level design and something that plagues all of the "Igavania" styled Castlevanias.

  ~~~

• 

  Punch Club

  Started: 1/13. Early Morning. PC Steam. Neutral.

  I don't know why I had a desire to play this, but I did. It seems alright I suppose. I don't really know what to make it of it yet. I really like the art style though. So far I've built my character to be agile. Not so sure that was a good think however. Well we'll see how it goes.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/13. Morning. Enjoyed?

  There's something enjoyable about this game, but I'm not entirely sure what. I guess it's just a thing to do while I watch stuff. In combat it seems I can do pretty good by just dodging and draining their stamina so I can just sort of stun lock them, but this you don't actually do anything other than set skills I can't say there's really any strategy.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/14. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  I'm starting to understand the flow of this game and am actually kind of enjoying it. The story isn't all the terrible for what it is so far either. There's just enough mystery to keep me going.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/15. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Yeah this game is an alright thing to do while watching videos/listening to podcasts. However, outside of all the terribly done references, the one thing I don't like is the way the girl friend character is barely anything. You basically just have to chat with and buy gifts for her and that's it. It's pretty lame and doesn't really add anything. I wish there was something more there.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/15. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  I was getting really in a good grove where I didn't have to worry about money or stats and I was managing things really well, then the game sort of took away all my options and that's really unfortunate. However I am still managing things fairly well. I think if I just win the championship things will pick up again.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/15. Morning. Enjoyed.

  I got to Russia and I don't really see what I can do to beat the boss guy. It doesn't seem like I can gain much from training.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/15. Late Morning. Enjoyed.

  Now in the end of the game I think. It becomes an interesting management sim to be honest. Though I'm finding the fights way harder and I don't know why. For whatever reason my character loses all their stamina in the first round. I've tried changing up my abilities but it pretty much always happens regardless of what I do. Hrmm..

  ~~~

  Played: 1/16. Afternoon. Neutral.

  I don't know about this game any more. I'm just not liking the end stuff that much. Things take to long and you lose points to quickly.

  ~~~

• 

  Oxenfree

  Started: 1/16. Early Morning. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  Played about 2 hours of this and it seems really cool so far. I like the art style and spooky ghost story stuff it has going for it. The radio dial mechanic is pretty interesting as well. I'm curious if there are any actual branching paths or if your choices actually matter.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/16. Morning. Enjoyed.

  Outside of some little bugs and oddities here and there, I'm really enjoying this game. The story really seems to go places. I just wish I figured out certain things earlier than I did. Like the radio and history signs. Ah well. I might play through this again.

  ~~~

  Finished: 1/16. Late Morning. Enjoyed.

  Yeah in the genre of trippy games set in the PNW this one is pretty good. I liked a lot about it. I didn't find all the collectables but may play through it again eventually.

  ~~~

  Started: 5/28. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Showed my girl friend this game and she really liked what we've played so far.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/28. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

  Finished: 5/31. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  We found all the collectibles and our ending was very different. My girlfriend felt the game could have used more interactivity and wasn't super happy with all the TEENS dialogue.

  ~~~

• 

  Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

  Started: 1/17. Afternoon. PC Steam. Neutral.

  Played enough to get passed the intro I think. Just picked my class. I don't think I'll like this game very much since I remember not liking the demo I played years ago on PS3, but I can help but be interested and the price was right. We'll see how it is. The general controls on keyboard and mouse seem fine though I had to use my gamepad when making my character since it just didn't feel right with the mouse. The menus, in general, are very much gamepad made. That's understandable though. I'll probably get used to it. Though I'll never switch over to gamepad since I can't stand looking around with the right stick.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/17. Early Evening. Neutral.

  Made a Pawn and found a quest down a well were I died to lizardmen. I don't like gathering stuff in RPGs. I think it's one of the most tedious unnecessary thing to put in a video game. The menu design is wonky and overly complex too. But I'm liking the combat as a bow user. Hrmmm....

  Oh. Also the sound volume on this game is really low for some reason! I don't know why.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/18. Early Morning. Disliked.

  This is a bad game with terrible check points and clunky design all round. Dying would constantly mean I was put back 20 to 30 minutes and have to walk back and recollect anything I found along the way. I think I'll refund it.

  ~~~

• 

  Valdis Story: Abyssal City

  Played: 1/17. Early Morning. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  Finally got around to recording gameplay of the last update to my LP. I could not beat the 3rd optional boss and just wanted to get the LP done so I just did the best I could. I still really dislike the final boss.

  ~~~

• 

  Shadow Complex

  Started: 1/30. Midnight. PC EGL. Enjoyed.

  For some reason I thought the PC release for this game was a Windows 10 only sort of thing and didn't get it when it was free. Ah well. I never had a 360 and never played this game. The graphics certainly don't stand the test of time, and the story is pretty bad, but its pretty cool so far.

  I'm playing with a gamepad and I had to rebind the controls. First, it's fucking rad that you can do that. That can be pretty hit-or-miss. Though I don't like that you can't set down on the left stick to be crouch. That I'm finding awkward. I also had to move shot to the L2 as I couldn't aim and hit R2 without it messing up my aim. I also moved jump to R2 so I could jump and still aim. Crouch is R1 and grenades/altfire is L1 of course. I tried a whole bunch of combinations and at one point had jump on L1. That has lead to me throwing a lot of grenades when I don't intend to. I also find myself pressing "X" intending to jump. Ah well I'll get used to it eventually. I wish crouch was a toggle. There's an option for running to be a toggle but not crouch. It's a bit strange.

  I stopped this session right around when I got the MP50. I'll certainly be playing more of this.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/30. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Played up to where you get the SCUBA mask. This game is pretty good. I'm glad. I'm getting used to the controls I've set but still finding the combat kind of lackluster. Health doesn't seem to be too common but it's not that big of a deal. I'm finding way too many grenade upgrades. I've already have 16 or so of 30 and I don't feel too far through the game. I think the level design is pretty good. It definitely takes more cues from Metroid than Castlevania which is always a good thing.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/30. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Got up to the 3rd spider boss. So some how I was able to sequence break and get the foam a little earlier than intended. There's this section with conveyor belts and when I first jumped down there they were running really slow so I was able to pick up some foam. It didn't really change much. I just sort of went that area in reverse. The foam gun, itself, is a pretty interesting upgrade. Sort of a mixture between the ice beam of Metroid and block placing power ups from other games. I like it.

  One thing I don't like is the finickiness of the 3D aiming. Sometimes when I want to aim at things in the background it won't and other times when I don't it does. It hasn't killed me yet, but it'd been close.

  Oh! And the map is a bit odd in places. Things don't always seem to correspond to the map grid and it's occasionally a bit confusing.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/30. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  I got missiles and the map is fully revealed. The bosses in this game are kind of uninspired. There are some many repeats with little twists. However the Super Metroid bosses weren't great either.

  The speedbooster upgrade is rad. It's even more rad you can run all long the top of the map pretty much. It's cool. I like that.

  I'm probably very close to the end of the game I'd imagine but I still have a bunch of stuff to collect.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/31. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  I have just about all the main items I think. Just got some sci-fi shotgun thing and met the leader of the bad guys I suppose.

  The Walker boss was interesting, but very fiddly. The Speedbooster upgrade continues to be real fucking cool.

  ~~~

  Played: 1/31. Afternoon. Enjoyed.

  I've been going around and collecting everything that I've missed. All I need is to or 3 of the passcode things to get the final upgrade. I'm pretty sure I know where they all are just not so sure how to get them.

  Something I notice about the late game upgrades is that they kind of just exist so you can get other items. That's a bit unfortunate. Especially the Hookshot. It just sort of makes things easier.

  ~~~

  Finished: 1/31. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Beat the game and collected everything. It was a pretty good game overall. Definitely one of the best non-metroid metroidvanias out there. The story was pretty awful. I remember hearing they got some famous author to write the plot and well... maybe that should have gotten someone else. Beyond it just being generic, the dialogue was terrible. But for a game that originally came out in 2008 or 9 I don't expect much else from it. It definitely is of that era.

  ~~~

• 

  Lyne

  Played: 2/4. Late Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  Decided to play this again. It remains to be fantastic.

  ~~~

  Played: 2/7. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Man some of these get real tricky. I think I'm on H.

  ~~~

  Played: 2/13. Evening. Enjoyed.

  I completed H and am on to I. So far I seems like more of the same from H.

• 

  The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC

  Started: 2/15. Midnight. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  I had forgot this came out. From what I've played it's pretty rad. The only thing I've been disappointed by so far is the lack of new dungeon music and some "ugh Japan" moments involving girls' underwear.

  I really like how they just picked up where the first game ended. Literally the next day. Sure it jump cuts to two months later after a bit of set up, but I'm really glad there's that set up. It shows the main character being vulnerable which is always nice. So far this one continues the first game's willingness to play with genre conventions. It's not perfect and it's still more trope-y than I would like, but at least it's something.

  ~~~

  Played: 2/15. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  The Dungeons seem a bit long. Though once I start feeling like the dungeons have over stayed their welcome it tends to be right before the boss. That said so far both that I've gone through have had a lot of large side paths and there's no mini map at all. The battles seem a lot harder too since I don't have a lot of ways to heal myself so I can't just hang out and fight dudes forever. Which is a good thing I suppose since it means I'm not grinding.

  ~~~

  Played: 2/15. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Finished up the prologue. I looked up the dungeon maps and they're a lot smaller than they seem. I'll probably continue playing this game with a guide just for the maps and side quests.

  The end of the prologue introduces some of the villains and, Oh right! they're all pretty fucking generic. Looks like they're based off Tarot cards so that's a thing I guess.

  ~~~

  Played: 2/19. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Started Chapter 1. I chose Agate to be my partner and I think that made the most sense considering we went to his home town. I'm curious how the game is different if you choose Schera but I know it's only dialogue. I didn't get too far into the chapter. Just did some character managing stuff and am about to leave the town.

  ~~~

  Played: 2/20. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  I played for about 4 hours here and got through most of chapter 1 probably. I've been doing all the side stuff and getting certain items was a pain. Ah well. I should be going to the academy but I've got to kill a bunch of stuff first. There was a nice scene with Agate. It's great that he isn't the generic tough guy and actually has some personality to him.

  There was a secret lighthouse puzzle that was kind of dumb/alright. I don't know. I liked that puzzle. It was simple but kind of neat.

  ~~~

  Played: 2/21. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Went to the academy and it seems I can't leave now that I've started things there. It had me a bit worried at first since I didn't finish all the chapter 1 side quests yet, but looking up them up it seems I can do them afterwords.

  The story is coming together alright. There's was a nice character building scene between Estelle and Kloe.

  ~~~

  Played: 2/28. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Just did some equipment management and dungeon crawling. Very close to the end of chapter 1. I wish I could upgrade Kloe's orbments so I could get some really high level magic on someone who has a decent magic stat. ah well.

  ~~~

  Played: 3/6. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Finished chapter 1. Did a secret side quest that involved some investigation that involved just talking to a handful of npcs and asking them questions. It was kind of cool but I could see it being really frustrating if I didn't have a guide. I didn't play much more since a stream I wanted to watch started.

  ~~~

  Played: 3/6. Evening. Enjoyed.

  I finished up all the remaining Chapter 1 sidequests. None of the others were very interesting unfortunately.

  ~~~

  Played: 3/13. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Played a bit into chapter 2 when the power went out from a massive wind storm.

  ~~~

• 

  Cities: Skylines

  Played: 2/21. Midnight. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  I wanted to make a map similar to the greater Atlantic City NJ area because I spent a lot of summers near there, but once I got to placing highways I wasn't happy with it at all. I hate placing highways in that mode.

  ~~~

  Played: 2/28. Late Morning. Enjoyed.

  I got a bunch of mods that a Youtuber I follow uses and just downloaded an Atlantic City styled map. But I just couldn't get into the early game as I was feeling kind of sick.

  ~~~

  Played: 2/28. Early Evening. Enjoyed

  Restarted that Atlantic City map and got it looking the way I want, but one of the mods I installed seemed to remove all parks and paths tabs. I tired to go back to the main menu but the game crashed. Opps. hrmm...

  ~~~

• 

  Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III

  Played: 3/5. Late Evening. PC Emulator. Neutral.

  On an UPF the turbografx16 was mentioned and this was one of my favorite games for it. I looked it up and there was a NES version in Europe. I fired up the rom and played for about 5 or 10 minutes... The NES version seemed alright, but no where near as good as the version I remember. I may have to dig up a Turbo Grafx emulator...

  ~~~

• 

  Stardew Valley

  Started: 3/12. Early Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed?

  I finally broke down and bought this. It seems ok. I think I'll restart from what little I played though since I want to make a beautiful farm and I didn't do that. I also didn't really understand how fishing works.

  ~~~

  Played: 3/12. Evening. Enjoyed.

  I played a lot more and I'm enjoying it. I figured out the fishing and it's pretty good. I wish crops would give seeds so you don't have to keep buying them, but I suppose that's the part of the process.

  ~~~

• 

  Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight

  Started: 3/4. Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  So far this game seems a lot tougher than the other ones. It's also less directed. I just sort of wanders around and found myself in a location that I don't think I can get out of. Upgrades seem hard to come by outside of shops. I haven't really found any movement or weapon upgrades.

  It also appears to take a lot of inspiration from Souls games for better or worse. Even has consumable items that refresh at save points. I'm not really a fan of the ambiance that it uses in place of music since it doesn't really fit the art style. I do like that you can just hit the saves to save your game. That's pretty cool.

  ~~~

  Played: 3/4. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  I got all the crest pieces and am in the mansion place. One thing I really don't like about this game is that there is instant death at all. It's completely unnecessary and, as I always point out, doesn't really mix well with this sort of game.

  I really like some of the upgrades though. The cat transformation is a nice twist on the morph ball and highjump of other games. The warp power up is ok. I kind of wish you could go to any save point, but the map is small enough where that's not really an issue. The bow upgrades and equipment so far has been kind of lackluster. The charge speed upgrade isn't really noticeable and 2nd tier takes too long to be useful, though the effect is pretty cool.

  The combat and bosses have been mostly pretty cool so far. I've liked some of the puzzles as well. The only boss I really had an issue with design-wise was the refight of the giant lady. I found the flashes in the fight to obscure what was going on too much. Coupled with the instant death spikes made that fight kind of frustrating. At least there was a save point right outside of it.

  I'll definitely finish this game, but it's really inspiring me to write that book about design philosophy in metroidvanias. haha.

  ~~~

  Played: 3/5. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Pretty close to the end of the game it seems. I got a lot of cool equipment now. A new weapon upgrade that just damage is still pretty good though. The flame item is pretty sweet. There's this one bug collectible that I can see but can't get yet so I assume there's a cool multi airdash or something.

  ~~~

  Finished: 3/5. Late Morning. Enjoyed.

  I beat the game and started New Game+. I apparently got the true ending just by upgrading my weapon. I played pretty far into ng+. Nothing other than enemy placement.

  ~~~

  Played: 3/5. Afternoon. Enjoyed.

  Pretty far into NG+. I fought an optional boss named Choir and got some items that I didn't find the first time through.

  ~~~

  Finished: 3/5. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Beat NG+. Didn't see anything new. I did collect all the bugs but found the reward to be underwhelming. Apparently if you beat a boss without taking damage you get a special item. I might run through the game on easy to do that.

  ~~~

• 

  Slain!

  Played: 3/25. Midnight. PC Stream. Mixed.

  The art and music is fantastic, but oh boy I don't understand how they could have gotten the controls so wrong. The keyboard controls are, as I could find out, Q, W, and R to attack and dash, Up to jump, arrow keys to move. There doesn't appear to be a way to pause. The game pad controls are equally wonky. You can't use the d-pad to move at all. Not even the menus. This is a 2-d action platformer. You have to use the right stick. Square is accept and also jump+attack. X jumps but does nothing else. Circle is attack, so that's really awkward. L1 backdashes and that's fine. R2 appears to pause and you can only unpause with it as well. Some of the issue could be with how I use a PS4 controller on PC, but it has worked fine with Unity games before.

  From reading the steam forums, apparently they messed up the release build and that broke a lot of the controls. So I'll wait on playing it again. Hopefully they'll get it all sorted out soon.

  ~~~

• 

  Indie

  This is for games that aren't in the database and are pretty small games.

  ~~~~~

  Gun Princess Zero

  ~~~~~

  Started: 3/27. Evening. PC Standalone. Enjoyed.

  I found this game from a retweet on twitter. It's someone's first completed game and while it's very much rough around the edges, it's pretty cool from the 15 minutes I've played. It's a metroidvania but it appears you can buy most of your upgrades. Everything respawns so I think you can just grind out cash if you'd like. I'll play some more of it though.

  ~~~

  Finished: 3/27. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  This was a cute little game. Not at all perfect and very much the showcase of an inexperienced dev, but it does a lot of stuff right and is pretty fine for what it is. It was a bit too linear and didn't really have any interesting upgrades. I think there's some secret stuff since there was an item slot that I never filled, but I'm probably not going to go back and look for it. I wish it has controller support.

  ~~~

  ~~~~~

  Saving Princess

  ~~~~~

  Started: 4/10. Early Morning. PC Standalone. Mixed.

  I found this game from Metroidvania.com. It has some interesting things going for it, but I don't know if I like it. The main gimmick is that you have limited shots that recharge over time and allow you to multijump. I got an upgrade that shoot a charge shot when my shots are full. The multijump mechanic is a bit wonky though. You don't really get much momentum from it and it doesn't come out instantly. Jumping in general is pretty slow and floaty. You can jump way higher than it initially seems by holding the button longer, but you move a lot slower than I would except so it took me a while to get the feel of it.

  It appears to be a short game. I got to a boss in the ice area that really didn't seem to fit the arena at all. He moved really fast and it was pretty much impossible to dodge any of his attacks. So maybe I should just go some place else instead. The ice mechanics are really slidey. I don't like them at all.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/10. Early Morning. Mixed.

  I think I'm done with this game. It's too rough around the edges. There's a lot of nonsense that hurts you that you can't really avoid. You can't shoot up and it really really limits your attack vectors since you have very limited vertical control over your multi-jumps in area's that lower your jump height. There's a lot of those. Both the plant and snow area have hazards that lower your movement speed and jump height. Yet you're still expected to dodge enemies.

  The plant boss was probably one of the most poorly designed bosses I've ever come across. It randomly travels from one point off screen to another. You can only hit its head but your shots are blocked by the walls. There's water in the center that slows you and spiked vines all around the top of the arena. More often than not you won't be able to hit the boss since it'll be in the ground or ceiling. If you get knocked into water good luck getting out. Most of the fight consisted of me waiting by the door where there was some room to move horizontally and just hoping it would appear in a place I could hit it.

  A lot of the other areas demand for some precise control that the game just doesn't have. It's a shame. There's a lot of cool ideas here. I really like how if you on 0 HP there's a period where if you don't get hit again you'll regain 1 point.

  ~~~

  ~~~~~~

  Legends of The Universe - Starcore

  ~~~~~~

  Started: 7/26. Afternoon. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  This game is real rough around the edges, has tons of questionable/odd design elements, a completely unnecessary story that seems like it was written by a highschooler, and a lot of heart. You can tell that it's from an inexperienced dev who hasn't figured everything out yet, but I'm liking it for what it is. There's lots of odd collision issues, bizarre nonstandard controls, a lack of decent accessibility options, but it's not terrible. It could use polish. Lots of it. I don't understand why your character shoots on the button's release rather than press or why you can air jump if you walk of ledges regardless of if you have the double jump ability. But it's not bad!

  I like how the levels are designed to be somewhat circular rather than overly straightforward like a lot of modern Metroidvanias. The music is alright. Yeah. This game is alright. I'll probably play more of it.

  ~~~

  Played: 7/26. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  This game continues to be at about the quality of the first session. It's fine for what it is. Wish enemies only dropped items that you needed. Missiles can be kinda hard to come by. The controls for the missiles are really wonky. I don't like having to hold R1 then hit(release) R2. It's super wonky and unintuitive.

  ~~~

  Played: 7/26. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Seems like this game is quite long. Fought 2 bosses. One was kind of tricky since it had a hard-to-dodge bullet pattern. The other one was a big tank that was real easy despite that you died if you touched it. I also got a dash ability, but it can't be done in the air.

  ~~~

  Played: 7/26. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Got Super Missiles and defeated most of the bosses that will progress the story, but I can't find the super strength upgrade. Considering the super missiles were just in a spot with little fanfare, I'm assuming super strength is as well. I just haven't ran around everywhere to look for it.

  ~~~

  Played: 7/27. Late Evening. Mixed.

  I searched the whole map of what I can, and I can't find the super strength upgrade at all. Can't get through those blue gates either.

  ~~~

  Played: 7/28. Afternoon. Neutral.

  I posted on the steam forums for where the Super Strength upgrade is and the dev said it was in Water Storage. I looked all over and couldn't find it. Perhaps it's a bug. Unfortunate regardless.

  ~~~

  Played: 7/30. Afternoon. Enjoyed.

  The dev corrected their mistake and the Super Strength in some other zone. I had just miss read a tool tip. Got it and processed a few areas. Got into the Weapons zone and died because I can't be bothered fighting enemies since they have so much health but one of the enemies hits real hard.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/5. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  I liked what I played, but this game is tooooooo long. It just keeps going. I think it's finally wearing out it's charm.

  ~~~

  ~~~~~~

  Unexplored

  ~~~~~~

  Played: 8/23. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Watched a stream of this game and decided to pick it up. Usually it's not my genre, but I like this game. However I did lose my first dungeon by being stuck with no place to go and lost my second by getting stuck in deep water without being able to get out. The 2nd one was definitely my fault as I was looking for secrets.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/23. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Having a really good run where I'm at the 14th or so floor. Running low on healing items though. I have these 3 triangles but I think I missed the door that they open so I should probably get rid of them.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/24. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Played a little while listening to a podcast. Died almost instantly then started a pretty good run. I like the way the game handles it's death. I wish it had multiple weapon slots though.

  ~~~

  ~~~~~

  Dungeon League

  ~~~~~

  Played: 9/3 and 9/4. Early Evening. PC Stand Alone. Enjoyed.

  At PAX West I volunteered to help out a company called Surprise Attack and this was one of the games they were showing. I was showing it on Friday and Saturday. I didn't think I'd like it at first, but it's pretty rad! Real good multiplayer game.

  ~~~

  ~~~~~~

  Little Invasion Tales

  ~~~~~~

  Played: 9/5. Early Evening. PC Stand Alone. Neutral.

  At PAX West I volunteered to help out a company called Surprise Attack and this was one of the games they were thinking of signing on so I was showing this off while the dev had to go back to NYC. This game was probably too early to show, but is interesting. It'll be a good podcast game once it's more stable.

  ~~~

• 

  Hyper Light Drifter

  Started: 3/31. Midnight. PC Steam. Mixed.

  This game is gorgeous. Great art, great sound design. However I'm not so sure about the combat. It feels really sluggish. There's a ton of animation priority on everything. You can't cancel out of your dash with your attack or vice versa. You can't dash through enemies so its super easy to get boxed in. You can't dash through bullets either. The respawning animation takes like 20 seconds. It's rough and feels awful. I'll play more of this, but right now I'm super disappointed.

  ~~~

  Played: 3/31. Early Morning. Mixed.

  I want to like this game. The art is so beautiful but.. Oh god. I don't understand why they thought that the health and combat mechanics were enjoyable. You have little to no invincibility frames, barely any access to healing items when there's actually combat, and there always seems to be a bunch of health pacts when there's no combat. It's really bizarre. I found out that you seem to have a limit of three dashes but no where on the UI does it indicate how many dashes you have left. I can only assume you can upgrade to get more. The lack of animation canceling is a big oversight. It really makes the game feel sluggish. I don't understand the need for you to hold the interact button for so long outside of combat or on the map or for conversations. Someone on the steam forums says there is canceling so maybe it's an issue with using a PS4 controller, but I doubt that.

  ~~~

  Played: 3/31. Early Morning. Negative?

  So apparently you can dash cancel out of the sword attack and shooting, but that's not really helpful since you can't cancel out of the dash. I forgot to mention this earlier but the check point system in regards to the combat is often really awful. You spawned far away, your health and healing items are not refilled to max, and the animation feels like takes forever.

  The short game wants to be a frantic action game that leaves you drained of your resources by the end of this encounter. Where the long game wants to keep you resource gathering limited and trickle out bits in secret areas. There's no synergy between the long and short game. The combat encounters want to be tough twitchy action scenes that you'll get through by the skin of your teeth but they also don't resupply you afterwords or during if you fail and have to try again. It's just incoherent.

  I'm getting pretty close to refunding this game or at least throwing it on the "never play again" pile.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/2. Evening. Enjoyed?

  Got passed the first boss and the game seems to open somewhat. I remember hearing the first boss was really tough, but I beat it in one shot. It's pattern was pretty easy to identify and predict. Cool fight though. I've gotten a couple of new abilities that seem to address the grievances from above. I can now absorb bullets while dashing and I have a dash attack when both attack and dash are hit (though triggering it seems a bit wonky.) Both have some sort of stamina bar for some reason. It's bit annoying that they'd put abilities as solutions to mediocre combat. I've also heard that you're supposed to play this game more patiently, like a Souls game, but honestly I don't see how that's possible with how quick all the enemies move. The shotgun I got from the first boss is pretty rad too.

  I feel like this game is going to be like Axiom Verge was. Highly anticipated, beautiful, but ultimately lackluster due to questionable design choices. Hell there's been a lot of games like that in the last few years. Transistor, Slain! to name a few. Mainly games that I've been following though. Maybe I should temper my expectations. But I feel like too many games have been focusing on aesthetic over solid game play. Hrmm...

  ~~~

  Played: 4/2. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  I'm going through the woods area and it seems so much better paced than the frog area. There's actually health pacts fairly commonly. The combat is much better with upgrades. It's pretty unfortunate that the first area (east) wasn't designed around the lack of upgrades.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/3. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  This game is much better now. I got to the Eastern boss and apparently they're the hardest boss in the game so I decided to go north. I ended this session at a church-like place. Overall the north and west areas are much better paced than the east. I also unlocked the dash cancel ability and it's pretty cool. A little tricky to get the rhythm right, but once you do it's a lot of fun. I tried for the 800 unlock thing, but could only get 208. Maybe next time.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/3. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Completed the mountain area. Now I've been exploring the other areas before fighting the West boss. I found all the pillar things in the forest and a bunch of keys. I'm at the south area from the forest checkpoint and there's a dash challenge over those gem spikes. It's pretty frustrating. Sometimes the dash cancel just doesn't want to trigger, but I'll keep at it. I'm curious what's at the end.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/5. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Beat the West boss. He wasn't too difficult once I figured out his shot pattern and could reflect bullets. I found the soccer mini-game and it seems super terrible. I don't think I'll be messing around with it at all. The south area is pretty interesting. I fought a sort of mini boss and saw some cool eyes in a jar. I don't really have much to comment about the plot since the way it delivers it is so unobtrusive it's pretty much just about mood. I assume it's some sort of floating city building weapons to take over the surface, aka basically the plot to Cave Story, but it's pretty irrelevant.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/6. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Beat the boss of the south area by accident. Just sort of wander into the fight. haha. I think I can now access the end game but there's a lot of stuff I want to explore. I found doing the dashing challenges are much easier with the keyboard and mouse as you have much better aim, but it's still tricky.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/7. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Found all but two pillars. I need one in the East and one in the South. I've tried the dash challenge again but could only get 622 using the keyboard. Honestly 800 is way too much. It should have been 300 or 500. I have 11 keys at the moment. Some of the stuff is really well hidden though I'm guess a lot of it is just right off the edge of the screen or hidden against the well.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/7. Morning. Enjoyed.

  Got the last two pillars I needed. I did both pillar doors and now have all the guns. The last two seem pretty underwhelming. One is some sort of shotgun that doesn't seem to be as good as the other shotgun, and the other is a more powerful railgun. There's still a lot of keys and junk I haven't collected so I may go do that stuff but I might also just jump to the final area.

  ~~~

  Finished: 4/9. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Found a 12th key and poked around the arena, but decided to just take on the last area. I was a little disappointed that the end area was just a boss battle, but it was a pretty cool boss fight. I don't know if there's some secret boss fight if you get all the keys or finish the arena. Overall the game really grew on me by the end despite it's rough start.

  ~~~

• 

  Orcs Must Die! Unchained

  Played: 4/10. Late Morning. PC Steam. Neutral.

  They've changed so much! This is the first time I booted up the Steam version and wow is it different. But considering the last time I played was over a year ago that's not a surprise. I didn't really do much. Just played the initial tutorial and looked around the items and junk. I'll probably play it a bit later.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/11. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Messed around with the solo survival. It's pretty good. They added a lot of stuff like crafting materials and junk that I don't fully understand yet, but the general game plays similar enough that I was able to jump right in. I haven't played the Siege mode yet, because I'm not too excited about playing with random folks. I do like the new traps I've messed around with and the new "Unchained" mechanic seems kind of cool. Sort of like X-factor from MVC3.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/11. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Just played a few of more of the solo survival. I got to one where there's 3 gates and that got pretty hectic, but I was able to beat it without too much issue. It's starting to get it's hooks back into me.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/12. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Jumped into the Siege Co-Op. Played a few games as the Master (my main) and Zoey. Zoey is a lot of fun! The matches I got in were all fine. I had a few dc's but very little shitty players.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/12. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Played a few rounds and had some fun with some newbies. Still learning that swamp map. There's a lot of short cuts I just didn't realize.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/14. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Still just playing Siege Co-op. I had some really tense games since I'm now up against "4 star AIs". I had a drop for one game and it was really close. They actually got in our rift room. I also played a game as an attacker and it was actually pretty fun. I still think I like defense a bit better since it's more tense more often.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/15. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Played a bunch of Survival. There's some really cool unique maps for it. Excited to play more of it.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/15. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Played more Survival. Unfortunately only got the one map. I was hoping to have the shark map again. Ah well. I can definitely see where how awesome it could be if you have 5 people on voice chat who really know their stuff. With randos it's ok, but I did have this one guy who was just constantly dc'd. Didn't cause too much trouble though.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/16. Late Morning. Enjoyed.

  Played more Co-op Siege. Pretty much just as the Master. I figured out some interesting strategies with him and realized I should have always definitely been putting down his buff crystals.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/16. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Lost my first Co-Op Siege to a DC'd player and 4 star AI.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/17. Late Morning. Enjoyed.

  Played more survival and siege co-op. Had mostly good games, but had one real bad one that we still managed to win. Folks were paying attention to the map and just laying spikes down.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/17. Afternoon. Enjoyed.

  Did a lot of of survival and some siege co-op. Some folks I knew from the alpha wanted me to join them for some regular Siege, but their so high level that matching was taking 10+ minutes so I decided to go back to what I was doing. I'm level 25 now and I could upgrade some traps. Probably should have upgraded different traps, but ah well.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/17. Late Evening. Enjoyed

  More survival mostly. Lost the last one due to the team not paying attention to the map and letting a huge wave through. I think my favorite survive map is The Wall.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/20. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Played just survival. Every game was really good. I'm finding account level goes up really really fast even if you stick to only one or two heroes. I've mainly been playing The Master and Zoey. Though I'm really excited for the new version of Tundra. He looks like a lot of fun. BEAR HERO.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/23. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Had a few survival games as Tundra. He seems like a lot of fun.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/24. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Played more survival as Tundra and really liked it. However I really don't like the Shark map. Especially when it's laggy. I was teleported off edges a lot due to lag. I find it pretty hard to navigate too.

  Tundra is a lot of fun though. His abilities are almost all damage dealing crowd control which is pretty rad. You have to be careful with his wall especially since I figured out how to "juggle" in this game. Which is basically just having minions walk back on themselves. You can only really do it in Survival and I'm not so sure it'd work or be efficient to do proper TD juggling where you're opening and closing path ways, but still. Having enemies loop back is real helpful for Tundra.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/24. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Had a few Siege Co-op runs which was fun. I tried jumping into a regular Siege game and it went as expected. The other defender stuck to one lane and didn't help set up anything at all in the other lane which I had to do and couldn't. There was one person who wasn't playing their role and just running around. So our lost was inevitable.

  ~~~

  Played: 4/26. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Played the new map. It's odd. I don't like how it limits where you can place barricades and other floor traps. Otherwise it was pretty interesting. Probably want to bring a lot of fire traps.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/15. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  They completely revamped this game again a couple weeks back. It's so much different now. Still has some jank to work out. Found The Master pretty much impossible to play well solo. I do like the new maps and world design. Real pretty stuff!

  Also it seems like there's a completely different strategy to this game compared with other OMD games. you kind of want to build long strings of traps instead of a solid kill box. But maybe that's just at the low levels. Curious how other characters play now. Only tried The Master and Max.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/18. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Played with random people this time. It was real good! This game is great with randoms on the low levels. Not so sure how it'll be later on. I'm also not so sure about the new leveling system and how they gate off content/stuff. I've only gotten 1 part to upgrade traps and I can't even use it yet. Booo.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/18. Evening. Enjoyed.

  This game is great now! I've had a lot of fun playing it. Not too sure about the card pack system and definitely do not like how guardians are still handled, but it's real good.

  Regarding guardians. Specific spots favor specific guardians but it's very likely you will not have a guardian that will fit that type and if you don't then it will die super quickly. This is pretty silly. I'd rather guardians just have different abilities or just look different.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/18. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Getting into some of the next level stages and they're cool. Dobbin is a lot of fun and will probably be total nerfed. He can gain so much coin sooo quickly. At my last game I earned 4 times the amount of coin and spent more than my other two people had earned. This meant I had double the battle rank too!

  ~~~

  Played: 12/19. Evening. Enjoyed.

  I've had mostly good games. Pretty much played all of them as Dobbin since he is absurd and probably over powered.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/25. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Played a few games. Mostly as Zoey. She's fun. I also tried the weekly challenge and holy shit was that tough.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/26. Afternoon. Enjoyed.

  had two really bad games. Partly with bad teams but I also messed up a bit.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/28. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Had one ok game with an annoying person who just spammed shitty traps. Then had a real good game with some Russians who knew the map that I never played on.

  ~~~

• 

  8-Bit Armies

  Started: 5/1. Late Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  This game seems like a pretty just pure C&C styled RTS. Nothing particularly fancy about it. I wish the tutorial was a bit more advanced though. Only played a few missions but I liked what I played.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/2. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Went through a couple more missions. It's pretty alright. So far the missions haven't been too enthralling, but they're not terrible.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/2. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  I wish the gold star objectives were a bit more interesting than "win this within a time limit," but other than that I'm enjoying the general mission structure.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/4. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  I like this game, but I'm not sure how much more I'll play it. Though maybe I'm just not in the right mindset for games right now.

  ~~~

• 

  The Banner Saga

  Played: 5/4. Early Morning. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  It turns out that my save was deleted for this game so I can't import it for 2. So I decided to replay this one. I had a save from when I was showing it to my girlfriend. She didn't seem to into it, but I'm definitely really enjoying it still. I started to use a guide to help. It's not great, but it'll do, I suppose.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/7. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  I messed up and let Yrsa burn the forest down. My battle strategy revolved around her a bit, but ah well. Now I'm dealing with really really annoying sling guys on that tight arena with mostly large guys. hrmm.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/8. Evening. Enjoyed.

  My Varl Party was doing pretty damn well. Good levels, not really dying at all in battles. My human party on the other hand, has barely any supplies and has already starved for one day. I can't find a good guide out there that shows all the choices or events that can pop up. Ah well.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/8. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Got up to the point where the lady in black is talking to the giant snake. I never have enough renown to upgrade my characters. I must have been doing something wrong and just never got enough renown.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/8. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  I choose to defend the bridge for three days hoping that I could get enough renown to buy supplies and this one piece of equipment, but at the end of day 3 when I had the renown they automatically kicked me out of the town and I couldn't buy anything. Ah well.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/9. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Got to the end city. Things are going ok. Almost got the achievement to get there in 120 days. Made it in a 128. I didn't let any of the characters that I've come across so far die except for the ones that are unavoidable. My poor clansmen, however, could be much better. yeesh.

  ~~~

  Finished: 5/9. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Beat the game. Man that last battle really is not great. I decided to just drop the game to easy since I just wanted to get to the 2nd game already. Still, I really enjoyed it. It didn't quite have the emotional impact as it did when I first played in 2013, but I was also slamming my way through it as quick as possible.

  ~~~

• 

  Stellaris

  Started: 5/9. Early Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  Took about 45 minutes just making my race. I've barely scratched the surface of the tutorials I think. But It seems cool so far! I wish there were more options for scroll speed and stuff like that, but ah well.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/9. Evening. Enjoyed.

  This game is definitely a time sink. I'm still not entirely sure what I'm doing or how to play correctly, but I'm liking it. It's pretty overwhelming at times.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/9. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  One of the AI's attacked me and it played out like a war in Civ. Though it did actually bring a large fleet into my systems. Won the war despite being a peaceful race. Another race is getting in on my territory but I have a non-aggression pact with them. As soon as it ends I'll probably attack them and take that one colony.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/10. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Played a really long session. Got into wars and all that fun stuff. I'm in a bit of a stand still at the moment. Trying to figure things out, but eh...

  ~~~

  Played: 5/10. Evening and Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Decided to restart and am now playing a fox race. I did so much. I had a war than vasselized them and now they're part of my empire. There's this empire to the north east of me that took over a good chunk of my buddies, so I'll probably be dealing with them next.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/11. Morning. Enjoyed.

  Took on another small empire and took them over. Things are going pretty great!

  ~~~

  Played: 5/11. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Showed my empire to my girl friend. She thought it was nifty, but wanted more ways of expression.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/11 to 5/12. Late Evening to Midnight. Enjoyed.

  I was really going along well. Super well. I have the largest empire in the galaxy. BUT now the ancient race of turtles want fuck it all up. They have multiple fleets. My combined forces are only about 16k and some of their fleets are 24k. So fuck. haha. I fought off an invader before, but we'll see how this goes.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/12. Evening to Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  I was able to appease the space turtles and my empire grew a lot. I'm now the largest empire. Though those turtles are a constant problem. I found out that building colonies really helps you grow your boarders but that pissed them off and they made me purge my many of them. I will have to rebuild. It was going so well too.

  Also so transdimensional monsters showed up in the north of the galaxy. Fortunately that's in my biggest rivals area so I'm not too concerned. I mostly want to build up my fleet so I can take out those damned turtles. I think I might go heavy into research and just keep multiple fleets of battleships upgrading.

  Oh! I also have the option to switch to a Democratic Utopia. I may do that after I deal with the turtles. It's probably time to be the much less evil guys. As of now my fox people like other races but view them as second class citizens. It's probably time to change that.

  I really wish there was a time line of all the events. They need to add that.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/14. Midnight to Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Took over those damned turtles. Executed my plan to convert to A Democratic Utopia. Took out the Portal of the invaders. Now I don't know what to do. I could just take over the other systems but I think what I'll do is just clean of the rest of the Unbidden.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/17. Morning. Enjoyed.

  I decided to start a new game but got a real bad starting spot and will probably start another game some time.

  ~~~

• 

  The Banner Saga 2

  Started: 5/15. Late Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  Finally got around to starting this game after I went through the first one again. There doesn't seem to be any major changes, but the little ones they added seem nice. Though! The game seems to run really poorly in the character menu for some reason.

  Plot wise, it seems pretty good so far. I've already made some really awful choices though. haha.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/16. Midnight to Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Got up to Chapter 11. I decided to go for the more battle heavy route for the end of Chapter 10 and had little trouble. In fact I'm finding the combat a lot easier in this game. One thing I don't like about this game are the training challenges. Their goals are too based on RNG happening. Though using the techniques they're trying to teach you are all very situational so I guess it's good to learn how to recognize those situations.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/17. Morning. Enjoyed.

  I'm really liking the new party members I've gotten. Their starting to introduce some new and interesting abilities. I would love to see a mode where you just fight endless encounters and have full range of party members to mix and match.

  The story is starting to become interesting too. There was one plot point that I didn't see coming relieved. It wasn't what was in the cart. That was pretty obvious from the start.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/17. Late Evening to 5/18 Midnight. Enjoyed.

  I really like where this game is going at the moment. I only stopped to go to bed. I think that's pretty much all I can say.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/18. Morning. Enjoyed.

  Figuring out how to use Cull the Weak better, but somethings I think I have it and it doesn't work right. I got to a battle where I can clear the back for the caravan and the stonesingers have actually been a problem.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/19. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Back with Allette now. They're taking all of my useful party members and that's proving challenging so that's pretty cool. I really get how to use Bol's various abilities and he's so strong that I suspect he'll not survive this game. The Sundr fight was really tough but pretty cool.

  ~~~

  Played: 5/25. Morning. Enjoyed.

  Finished up Chapter 14. Things, of course, went badly. Now I'm in Chapter 15 and well this "fight" is just silly.

  ~~~

  Finished: 5/26. Afternoon. Enjoyed.

  I did not realize that fight was the final battle. Haha. welp, that was a short session. It wasn't as absurd as I thought it was initial. Pretty easy actually. Cool ending. I like the game overall. Playing the two back-to-back certainly made them feel like one coherent experience. So much is left unfinished though. I rally hope they're able to make a 3rd game. I feel my thoughts on this one won't be realized until I see how things play out. I do wish there was a non-story mode though. Something that you could just take characters and fight various battles.

  ~~~

• 

  Overwatch

  Played: 6/5. Evening. PC B-Net. Neutral.

  Decided to break down and buy this. Was able to play through the tutorial, but then my internet decided to start crapping out and I kept getting disconnected from the damned menu. I was just trying to rebind my controls but it'd disconnect me before I could save. So that was nice.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/5. Evening. Neutral.

  Messed around with every character in the training mode. A lot of them feels kind of slow and the game certainly doesn't feel like TF2 at all. There certainly are similarities, but the "game feel" is very different.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/5. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  This game is fun. I've mainly been playing support and defense. I like the engineer-like guy and the DJ guy. I understand the cursory comparisons to TF2, but it really lacks that game's wackiness. The small teams and lack of dedicated servers means it'll probably never see that sort of wackiness. Gosh this game would be so much fun with 16x16 no respawn timer. I found people don't talk either. Like, at all. very rarely were their the in-build messages.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/6. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Played a lot more. Really like Lucio, Dwarf Engie, and D. Va. Haven't really tried too many of the other characters. My last game was BS. The opposing team just went with 4 Dwarf Engies and there was nothing we could really do. My other games were all pretty good though.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/6. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Had a series of real bad games! Then won my last one.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/6. Evening. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/6. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/7. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  I've mainly been playing D-Va and I think I'm getting pretty good as her. I wish she had more offensive options. I had a good game as the teleporter mini turret lady. You have to hide them just out of the players view to be effective with them.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/7. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Played a little bit of the new weekly battle thing. Found out I kind of like playing Soldier 76.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/7. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/8. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Had a series of just really bad and awful games. I think I should try to find a group to regularly play with.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/9. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Actually had some pretty good games!

  ~~~

  Played: 6/9. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/10. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Did pretty well with D.Va.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/10. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Played while listening to the Beastcast.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/12. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/12. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Played while listening to the final episode of Season 2 of Friends At the Table. Considering I mostly play D.Va I guess it was apt. I think I'm getting real good as D.Va too.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/13. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Played while listening to a new podcast I heard about. I had a few good games as D.Va and Tor.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/14. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/15. Morning. Enjoyed.

  Had a string of bad games with bad players.

  ~~~

  Played: 7/14. Midnight. Neutral.

  Had a string of bad games with bad players. Thought the new patch had dropped, but I guess not.

  ~~~

  Played: 7/19. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  I enjoyed the new patch when I could get into games. Seems like I was in the match making longer than the game's last. Really frustrating. I was in matching for 2 minutes only to get put in a game that ended as I was joining. Then enough people left so it kicked me out to the title screen. So that's fun.

  ~~~

  Played: 7/20. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Continued my run of bad games with long match making. D.Va also doesn't really feel much stronger too me. I do like the shield change. Wish it would trigger instantly but ah well.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/13. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Played with some folks from the GB facebook group. Had a lot of fun! Had some actual good games.

  ~~~

  Played: 9/25. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Played with some folks from the GB facebook group. Had a lot of fun! Had some good games.

  ~~~

  Played: 9/27. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Played while listening to a podcast. Had some real good games. Played a lot of junkrat and D.Va. Really finding my grove with the both of them. I like playing D.Va as a sneak and try to get behind people. Seems to work most of the time.

  ~~~

  Played: 9/28. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  I had a lot of real bad games now. :D

  ~~~

  Played: 10/1. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Had a lot of surprisingly good games while listening to podcasts.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/1. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Had a lot of good games while listening to podcasts.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/1. Morning. Enjoyed.

  Had a lot of surprisingly good games while listening to podcasts. Experimented with some other characters.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/2. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/11. Late Morning. Enjoyed.

  Had a mostly bad games unfortunately. The halloween update just launched and the new brawl isn't that great. Wish I could play characters I knew how to play.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/11. Afternoon. Enjoyed.

  Played some games with some folks from the GB FB group while listening to the podcast. They were generally higher quality than my other games.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/11. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/11. Evening. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/15. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Had some good game mostly while listening to podcasts.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/16. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Wanted to check something but ended up playing some games instead.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/16. Afternoon. Enjoyed.

  Played more while listening to podcasts. Tried Reaper a little bit. Did ok. Doing a lot better with Junkrat though. Him and D.Va are my best characters. Want to learn other characters but nothing is really sticking.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/16. Evening. Enjoyed.

  More games while listening to a podcast. Had this weird bug on the castle map. This giant spike-like thing would appear. You could walk through it but it would block your view. Didn't seem to happen to other people though.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/16. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  More games while listening to a podcast. Had really really good games.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/16. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  More games while listening to a podcast. Had really really good games.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/17. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  More games while listening to a podcast. Had a lot of connection issues and bad games. D:

  ~~~

  Played: 10/18. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Just some games while listening to the bombcast.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/21. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  More games while listening to a podcast.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/23. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Only bad games. :( Though I did have some good mine kills as Junkrat.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/11. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Only played a handful of games while trying to text my GF. It was ok.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/15. Afternoon. Enjoyed.

  New update adds Sombra and Arcade mode stuff. Played a bunch of the random hero matches and had fun.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/15. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Had a few games while listening to a podcast.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/15. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Had a few games while listening to a podcast.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/15. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Had a few games while listening to a podcast. Was able to try some Sombra but couldn't really get the hang of her.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/16. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Had a few games while listening to a podcast.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/17. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Had a few games while listening to a podcast. Had my first serious game as Mercy and did alright. I think I may try playing more as her.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/17. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Tried to expand out from what I typically play but any games that I did were with real shitty teams. I had to report 3 people one game.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/17. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Had some real good games as Junkrat and Dva. Even a few good ones as Mercy. I kind of like playing as her but it's completely different from the other characters.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/19. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  I had some ok games but there were a lot of shitty people on.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/21. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Just had really awful games. All of them were sweeps. Booo...

  ~~~

  Played: 11/21. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Had some actual good game. Unfortunately no one stuck around after them.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/22. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Had real good games. I think I only played as Junkrat and D.Va.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/25. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Had real good games. I think I only played as Junkrat.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/26. Morning. Enjoyed.

  Played some more Mercy and enjoying her. Had mostly decent games.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/26. Late Morning. Enjoyed.

  Played while listening to a podcast. Had a good game as D.Va where I got over 20 eliminations and had one game where I got two real good riptires that took out 3 people each.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/26. Afternoon. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/26. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Played a few games as Roadhog and did an alright job.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/27. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Continued to play as Roadhog. Had a lot of fun. Still getting the hang of the hook range.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/27. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/27. Morning. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/27. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  The game was really laggy for some reason. Still had a few good games.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/3. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Played mostly as Junkrat. Got a really rad kill on a Pharah with my mine. Had a really great game as Mercy. I like playing as her. and a couple of alright games as Roadhog.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/13. Evening.

  Played like shit and was in a bad mode.

  ~~~

• 

  Celestian Tales: Old North

  Started: 6/8. Midnight. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  I saw this game on Steam at some point and added to my wishlist. It was on sale so I picked it up. It's an indie-made jRPG. So far it seems pretty good. I like that all the battle resources (like health and stamina) are encounter bound and reset after each encounter. It's interesting that the game lets you choose who the POV character is. I chose the gal with glasses since she sounded the most interesting. So far she seems like a good protagonist.

  Some things I'm not so keen on is the background art. I see what they're going for but I don't think it works so well. The character and menu art is pretty decent.

  This game does something that I really really hate, or rather it doesn't do something it should. The menus don't wrap. It's so annoying! Especially since it's such an easy thing to program.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/8. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  This game is pretty good. The dialogue can be rough in places, but I'm enjoying the combat design. Not sure about the economy. I think I'm meant to sell the crafting items I get since they tend to sell for a lot. The story seems interesting so far too.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/8. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  For the obvious low budget this game does alright storywise. It's battle system really shines though I think I should have put it on a harder difficulty. I'm finding it very easy. I'm also finding Isaac to be pretty useless and I don't ever put him in. I think if I was not playing as Camille that would change though I do see their potential synergy.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/9. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  I feel like I may already be getting to the end of the game based off some of the achievements, but I find that unlikely considering there's so many places I haven't gone. Anyway the story is interesting and unlike other jRPG stories at the moment.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/9. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  I think my previous assumption was wrong, though HowLongToBeat says the game is about 8 hours long and I'm around 6 or so hours in so... maybe. It just feels like things haven't really got going yet? I don't know. There's a lot of cool ideas that aren't really being fleshed out.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/13. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Went through the frozen hill place to the front lines. It was the first time the "dungeon" felt like an RPG dungeon in terms of length, though it was still pretty short. I really have the battle flow figured out and there's no challenge there regardless of the two parties that I use. I still don't use Isaac at all.

  ~~~

  Finished: 6/13. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  This game was pretty cool! The plot, while rough, had some really good twists especially at the end. I love that the fight before the final boss you are actually controlling the character who would be the final boss. There was a lot of political intrigue and it all left me wanting to know more about the world. I'm certainly curious what the other playable characters are like, but I'll probably look it up rather than play through the whole game again.

  ~~~

  Started: 7/16. Morning. Enjoyed.

  Started the DLC. Playing it on Hard and am in Chapter 2. Hard seems like it's a lot better. The battles are much tougher and I actually have to use items. Story seems interesting so far.

  ~~~

  Played: 7/16. Late Morning. Enjoyed.

  Got the 3rd character. I don't know how long this DLC is. Maybe it's real short. It's not really what I thought it would be, but it's alright. I found myself running from a lot of battles though.

  ~~~

  Played: 7/19. Morning. Enjoyed.

  Set the game back to Normal. The party they give you is just not very synergistic. The battles take a long time and there's a lot of them. The story continues to be interesting, I suppose.

  ~~~

  Played: 7/20. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Not too happy with the most recent dungeon I went through. But maybe it's just my mind set at the moment. Just in a sour mode. Still liking the story.

  ~~~

• 

  Final Fantasy V

  Started: 6/11. Evening. PC Emulator. Enjoyed.

  Started my FIESTA run. Got to the wind crystal jobs but Gigabot hasn't given me my first job yet so I can't go any farther.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/11. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Got Knight and Blue Mage as my first jobs. Two Handed has been pretty good in random encounters. Blue Mage will eventually be good, but right now it's pretty useless. I tried taking on Shiva but couldn't really do much against her with no real healing.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/12. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Just grinded outside of Karnak for some money and to get my blue mages job levels up a bit. Now everyone can learn blue magic before I jump into the fire temple. I don't really like how blue magic is learned in this game. A person with "learning" has to be hit with the spell, and you can't really control that. But at least once one person learns it anyone can use it.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/12. Morning. Enjoyed.

  Got up to where I get the airship. My 3rd job was Thief. Hopefully it'll be fine! Find Passages is nice I suppose. I've been turboing through pretty much everything in this game. haha.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/12. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Got to the flying temple. Finding this party a bit tricky and I wish I had a way to cast confuse so I could learn White Wind. Ah well.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/12. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Now in the 2nd world. Got Black Mage as my last job. All 4 wind jobs. It's a bit boring, but at least Blue Mage is starting to shine and I can just break rods all day. Probably should have grinded for more rods, but I should have enough.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/14. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Not much to say. Played a bit while checking the press conferences I missed.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/17. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Got through the world 2 mountain while listening to the Beastcast.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/21. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Got up to the ship boss fight and wasn't really paying too much attention. Actually lost the fight! I didn't break any rods or anything so I could probably do better.

  ~~~

• 

  Kirby: Planet Robobot

  Started: 6/14. Evening. 3DS. Enjoyed.

  First 3DS game I've played in over a year and a half. I was feeling like I could use some Kirby in my life and decided to pick this up. It seems really fun so far! My one complaint is that the face button controls are really odd. Jump is on the Right Face Button (A) and Attack on the Bottom one (B) with Left one being use item (Y). I keep wanting Jump to be B, Attack on Y, and use item on A. Ah well I'll get used to it.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/14. Evening. Enjoyed.

  There's Mirror Kirby in this! That was my favorite from Super Star and it hasn't appeared since as far as I'm aware. It's really good too! I also really like ESP Kirby and Poison Kirby. The mech stuff is pretty cool too!

  ~~~

  Played: 6/15. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Unlocked the 2nd World boss but haven't faced it yet. Did the Ex level instead. There's a lot of really cool level concepts in this game. I like the little puzzles they have and how they use repeated mechanics. Also it's very charming.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/17. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  This game is real good! I'm up to world 4. I'm starting to get some levels that have well hidden cubes and tougher bosses. I absolutely love the level design too.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/18. Morning. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/19. Morning. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/19. Morning. Enjoyed.

  I discovered that the stickers you collect actually have a use! You can put them on your mech. It's a cute little idea I suppose, but shame you can't individualize each mech.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/25. Morning. Enjoyed.

  Got tho world 5 and this game is getting pretty tricky here and there.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/25. Late Morning. Enjoyed.

  Got to World 6. Almost died on the boss of World 5 but I was able to beat the 2nd form with a sliver of health for most of it.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/25. Afternoon. Enjoyed.

  One of the things I don't like too much about some of the level design is that it will prevent you from going back and make you replay the whole level over again to get something you've missed. It's a bit annoying in the later levels. Though you do get so many lives that you could just die to restart at a checkpoint.

  World 6, and all the worlds, have had some pretty cool little level gimmicks though.

  ~~~

  Played: 6/27. Morning. Enjoyed.

  Did up to EX8 of World 6. Nearing the end I would imagine. I know there's a ton of extra stuff too that I'll probably check out.

  ~~~

  Finished: 6/27. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  The end to this game is nuts. It's like a Platinum game. haha. It was a lot of fun! I'm not too happy the some of my favorite powers just didn't really work on some of the bosses, but ah well. I should probably check out the other modes too.

  ~~~

• 

  Please, Don’t Touch Anything

  Started: 6/25. Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  Played this with my girlfriend. We discovered 7 endings. Was not expecting the body horror.

  ~~~

• 

  Lost Constellation

  Started/Finished. 7/1. Late Evening. PC Standalone. Enjoyed.

  Played through this with my girlfriend. She liked it but felt the story could have had more involvement. I probably should have talked more to the NPCs. ah well. Also for some reason the items in the snowman maker were always spinning. I don't remember them doing that. It made it way more tricky to make something. Ah well.

  ~~~

• 

  Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster

  Played: 7/3. Late Evening. PS3. Enjoyed.

  I've had a strange desire to play FFX again since watching a bit of a FFX-2 LP. I was waiting to see if this game would show up on the Steam Sale, but it didn't which is probably for the best since I have it on PS3. So I continued my save from 2014. I was in the Thunder Plains then.

  I have some thoughts on this game. The sphere grid seems to have a lot of holes/empty slots but they don't really give you many spheres to fill those. The encounter rate seems pretty high and the battles can be pretty long if you want all your folks to get XP. Still the battles are fun!

  ~~~

• 

  Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE

  Played: 7/30. Evening. WiiU. Enjoyed.

  Went to a party and the host showed me this game. It really surprised me how much of it is just Persona. Pretty cool. Didn't do much though.

  ~~~

• 

  Nidhogg

  Played: 7/30. Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  Played a few rounds at a party. The one controller wasn't great and it made it very hard to play that way. Still had a lot of fun though.

• 

  Mount Your Friends

  Played: 7/30. Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  Played it very briefly at a party. Only I was able to last long enough after a single guy. haha

  ~~~

• 

  Tetris: The Grand Master

  Played: 7/30. Evening. PC Emulator. Enjoyed.

  Played this at a party with a wonky 360 controller. It wasn't perfect, but it was a lot of fun.

  ~~~

• 

  Metroid II: Return of Samus

  Another Metroid 2 Remake

  Started: 8/7. Early Morning. PC Stand Alone. Enjoyed.

  I had heard of this but wasn't really following the development. I played the original a couple of times and I think I beat it, but don't hold any real nostalgia for it. But still metroidvanias are one of my favorite genres so I had to check this out. It's real good!

  I love all the options that they give you. Changing between how diagonal aiming works, morphball/spiderball options. Its real cool! Developers should take note because that type of stuff is super important and rad!

  It is frustrating that it doesn't have d-pad control options. The analog controls are not precise enough for fine movement and aren't great for menu controls. I often find myself missing shots or not aiming straight up because of the analog stick. I do like that there's a lock aim button, but I really would want a lock movement button. Something that prevented you from moving while you aimed.

  There's other minor issues I have with it, but overall its not just a really well done fan remake but a really well made game.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/7. Morning. Enjoyed.

  I've acclimated to the controls but it's still pretty wonky. This game is pretty massive. Seems way bigger than the original.

  I really don't like how small the hit boxes on the Metroids are. It can be real annoying to swing them around so you can damage them. However apparently all the ones I've encountered so far die in two super missiles if I hit them. IF.

  You get the space jump super early in this game which is surprising. It's also kind of hard to control. Space Jump was never quite like a typical multi-jump but this one feels a little off. There's been a few upgrades, mostly missiles, that I haven't been able to figure out how to get yet. But it does look like I'll be going back to earlier areas.

  This game presents the lore and story much better than any official metroid game that I've played. Nothing revolutionary but it does a real good job of instilling mystery and presenting a story without it taking up the game.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/7. Late Morning. Mixed.

  I just got power bombs and now am not sure where to go.

  I may have to wait for a patch. The space jump is really frustrating. You press the button but she doesn't always jump. It constantly gets stuck when going between vertical screens causing you to fall back to the screen you were just on. It's super wonky. It doesn't help that they expect you to be a master of it for bosses.

  The boss I can go fight now moves super fast and since enemies can only be damaged while on screen or nearly on screen you have to go to them. This would be fine if they game gave you the tools to stay on screen, but it's constantly throwing bosses that knock you around horizontally or drop you vertically. The boss I'm on now is in this tall vertical room and there are this ledges on the side that will fall away if you stand on them, but he likes to stay up top. His damageable regions spin and you can't always hit him even if you're standing on the platforms. He moves real fast and fills the screen with bullets. The game demands a precision in the controls that it doesn't have. Maybe if I could use the d-pad instead of the analog stick and if the space jump was more reliable. The annoying thing is that he doesn't stay on screen long enough for me to figure out how I'm supposed to damage him.

  This game is also odd about what weapons it gives out. I only have the charge shot and spazer. There are enemies that can only be hit in certain spots so you'd think they'd be introducing the wave beam. But there can't be too much more of the game so they might just give you all the beams one after another.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/7. Late Morning. Enjoyed.

  So apparently I'm not supposed to fight that boss yet despite being able to. Perhaps its optional. This game continues to give normally late game upgrades pretty early. I just got the screw attack. It's cool, but the space jump issue makes it risky.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/7. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Got up to the Gravity suit. I like that there's a slight fast travel system. That's pretty cool.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/7. Evening. Mixed.

  Beat that one guy I was having trouble with after going through other areas. Got the Plasma beam for my efforts. Seems pretty underwhelming though. I like how the Ice beam doesn't freeze enemies in place since you get it after you get Space Jump so there is not need for it to work like that. The shattering effect is pretty cool.Eventually found the Wave beam. Last. I could have gotten it a lot sooner but it's pretty obscure. It would have only made dealing with some enemies slightly less annoying though. There's also a lot of little one off puzzle challenges in the side rooms that only grant you minor upgrades like missiles. Considering how many missiles you get and how rarely you use them, I don't much see the point.

  Now, I've gotten all the major upgrades listed on the status screen and that's cool.

  However! I got to the first Omega Metroid encounter and it's pretty rough. Moves quickly, has a screen filling attack that you can only dodge by moving backwards, deals heavy damage if you get close (but you can't fight it from too far away for reasons mentioned above). It's more frustrating than difficult. It has the same issues the other metroids do. The hit box is not large enough.

  The most annoying thing about the fight though is that there is no save point near by so you have to spent about 5~10 minutes getting back to him. I understand why since you get stuck in that area just before the fight and would not be able to get out if you weren't prepared. Still there are things that could have been done to solve that. There's a fast travel, one-way blocks, etc etc. It could have been done. It actually makes me want to quit play. Though I probably won't.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/7. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Alright. I was able to beat him and the other four. They're annoying but ok, if you're patient.

  I got to the queen but didn't have enough stuff to beat her. Also I played real sloppy. Got her to the 2nd form but I was already hurting pretty badly. I wonder if I'm missing any energy tanks.

  There's a lot of stuff in the last area that just seems unnecessary. There's this big snaking path with waterfalls that's pretty, but doesn't really add anything. There's no log or anything. It seems like padding so that the rooms line up more than anything else.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/7. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Just did some item hunting. Right now I have 240 missiles, 18 super, 18 power bombs. I don't know what the max is, but I'd imagine it's 250, 20, and 20.

  Also I forgot to mention I figured out the particularities of the space jump a bit. It doesn't like it when you hold a direction. Up cancels it. Still wonky and it doesn't behave like you'd expect.

  Also x2 shinesparking chains are nifty when you can use them but it seems like they're only used to get that one super missile container.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/9. Late Morning. Enjoyed.

  Tried to fight the final boss again. She's real tough. I'm not sure what to do. I can get to second form.

  Oh and, I figured out what the issue I was having with the controller not recognizing the d-pad. Apparently it had to do with me just plugging in a PS4 controller without running DS4 at all. With DS4 running the controls a much better.

  ~~~

  Finished: 8/9. Afternoon. Enjoyed.

  I watched a video for the Queen fight and figured out what I had to do from that. Once I got her pattern down I was able to beat her. But just barely. I had literally 99 HP left. I like the ending bit a lot. You just walk out with the little metroid friend. It's peaceful and kind of sweet. Though Honestly I don't think Samus really feels anything about gives a shit. I mean, she was hired to kill off a critically endangered species. OK sure they're an engineered bio-weapon, but they're otherwise just being peaceful on some unnamed planet.

  Also the "The last Metroid is in captivity" bit really got to me. haha.

  ~~~

  Started: 8/9. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  I decided to play through it again now that I'm more familiar with it and I wanted to see how it is with d-pad controls. It's much better! I'm still finding the metroid fights to be a bit annoying since they're so random and hard to manipulate. I bet speedrun races of this game will be fun to watch.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/12. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  I played more of this while listening to the Beastcast. I'm enjoying it so much more now that I've played through it once. I got the point where I just beat the boss for the Plasma Beam and found it so much easier than I did the first play through. It plays so good with the d-pad.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/12. Morning. Enjoyed.

  Got up to the first Omega Metroid fight. I think I've found everything up to that except for one E-tank and a few power bombs. I certainly found some stuff I didn't before. I died on the fight again. I really don't like that first fight at all.

  ~~~

  Finished: 8/14. Morning. Enjoyed.

  Beat the game again. Still only got 95% of items. I got all 20 super missiles but only 235 missiles. Not sure what I missed. Ah well.

  ~~~

• 

  Reigns

  Played: 8/12. Late Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  Played this for about an hour with my girlfriend. We enjoyed it quite a bit. She would like to go on record as having the two highest scores. At the moment.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/18. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  I just played a little bit of it. It was way more fun when I played it with my girl friend.

  ~~~

• 

  Game Dev Tycoon

  Played: 8/15. Late Morning. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  I watched one of the Youtube folks I follow play a bit of this and I had to jump back in. It's so much fun. I don't know why, but I really enjoy this game. Unfortunately my company kind of just died because I kept making similar games. Ah well. Time to restart.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/15. Late Morning. Enjoyed.

  Restarted and things were not going so well. haha. Ah well.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/15. Afternoon. Enjoyed.

  Had a very clutch moment where I had to make a good game that sold real well or the game would be over. I did and then went on to have some pretty good games overall.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/16. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Just played a little while listening to podcasts.

  ~~~

  Played: 8/16. Afternoon. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

• 

  Hexoscope

  Played: 8/12. Midnight. PC Steam. Mixed.

  Hexoscope has some nice simple mechanics that certainly has some depth, but it's reliance on randomly generated boards often makes the individual puzzles feel dull and lifeless. I found that if I got stuck I could just reset the level until a board came up that was easy to solve. I would also be given boards that were unsolvable from the start. The random generation also really impacts the difficulty curve as you might get a real tough layout for one level then get a real easy one for the following one. It would have been a better game if the puzzles were premade entirely with the random generated boards being their own mode.

  I really liked everything else about the game though. It had some real nice presentation and audio design.

  ~~~

• 

  Orcs Must Die! 2

  Played: 9/23. Midnight. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  Thinking about doing an LP of this game finally. Wanted to refresh my self with it a bit. I was reminded just this game is balanced. Woah boy. Not sure if I want to play through the whole game before doing the LP though. We'll see. I may do test recordings and just leave them just in case.

  ~~~

  Played: 9/28. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Continued research. The Stone Staff is real good, but I think I may have to play at least every level twice for the LP. Which I guess gives me more content, but makes it that much more effort.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/2. Morning. Enjoyed.

  Played more. Up to the Servant Entrance. Trying to remember how to play and experiment. This game is so much more enjoyable when you have enough skulls to level everything up. Ah well.

  ~~~

• 

  Four Sided Fantasy

  Started/Finished. 10/10. Early Evening. PC Steam. Mixed.

  I backed this game on KS and finally got around to playing it. It's ok. It has a lot of really interesting ideas, but I feel like it doesn't realize them. It feels like a prototype or proof of concept. I really liked the ending and that effect. I didn't play much of NG+ and probably won't play any more of this game. It's ok.

  ~~~

• 

  Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

  Started: 10/15. Early Evening. 3DS. Enjoyed.

  I don't know why, maybe because of Vinnyvania, but I had a hankering to play this again. I have mixed feelings about the Castlevania series. However this one hasn't shown the major issues I have with the series just yet. Though I don't like the unnecessary level up mechanics and equipment.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/15. Evening. Enjoyed.

  This game's level design does suffer from Castlevania Syndrome. That's when a large portion of the level design is just mostly empty hallways with repeated enemies. Really boring and uninspired design that just slows down the pace. That's what I don't like about Castlevania games. However this game has a lot of various abilities that make that a little bit more interesting. I don't know. It's ok, but just ok.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/16. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Got to the Sand Zone and died because I couldn't find a save point. There's also way too much plot in this game. I do like the exploration in this game though.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/24. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Played while waiting for a video to export.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/25. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Played while waiting for a video to export.

  ~~~

• 

  Sid Meier's Civilization VI

  Played: 10/23. Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  First run ended real bad real fast. Restarted and it's going better.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/23. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Yeap. Played this for like 4 hours straight. This start has been a lot better as I've been pretty much uninterrupted and could actually learn the game. The religious combat is interesting. Not too sure about the policy stuff yet.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/24. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Just played while listening to podcasts. Don't think I'll have much to report about this game, but I am really enjoying it like I knew I would.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/24. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Played more. Got to what is basically the end of game. I'm going to win by culture for sure. I'll try my next game at a higher difficulty.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/24. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Finished my first game with a Culture Victory. There's some cool stuff in this version.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/25. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Started a new game. Got America. Destroyed the nearby civ and am progressing real quickly. Things are going well.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/25. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  Decided to go to war with Spain. It's going ok. War is still not nearly as interesting as being passive though.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/26. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Getting maybe a little bored with it for some reason. Not really sure what to do other than just keep building stuff.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/30. Morning. Enjoyed.

  Started new game while listening to the Beastcast. Playing as Saladin and am making so much money per turn.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/30. Late Morning. Enjoyed.

  Podcast is over but I kept playing. Under turn 200 and am making +132 gold per turn. It's pretty rad.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/12. Afternoon. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/13. Afternoon. Enjoyed.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/13. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Started my war with France for no real reason other than I was a bit bored. Took one of their cities and pretty much destroyed their army with my ships. Going to have trouble taking their capitol though. I might swing by and take their only other city instead.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/15. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Took over almost all of France except for one city I didn't know they had, and completely took out Spain since they surprise attacked me. It puts me in a real good position to just take out 3 of the other civs, but a lot of my military just got separated do to my levy with Carthage ending.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/18. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Had a really long session that ended in the game crashing. haha. Ah well.

  ~~~

• 

  Doom

  Started: 10/27. Early Morning. PC Steam. Neutral.

  I wasn't sure if this would run on my computer and it runs ok. Not ideal. I may have to lower the settings even more. I only played through the first stage and it's ok. Didn't really wow me very much. Not a fan of either the pistol or shotgun.

  ~~~

• 

  Black Closet

  Played: 10/31. Late Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  Played this with my girl friend. I thought it was really interesting and cool, she felt it wasn't quite there.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/1. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Got pretty far and I think I'm starting to understand this game. Still lost, but it's tricky. Will play more of it for sure.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/1. Late Morning. Enjoyed/Neutral.

  Found myself skipping through a lot of the dialogue. I was doing better though. Still sometimes I'm at a lose for how to progress in a case.

  ~~~

• 

  This Is the Police

  Started: 10/31. Late Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  Played this with my girl friend. I thought it was really interesting, she found it too slow paced and didn't like the writing.

  ~~~

  Played: 10/31. Late Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  I think I understand the systems a bit better now. Though I totally messed up a lot of stuff. My girl friend was right about how the mob would contact you regardless.

  ~~~

• 

  Owlboy

  Started: 11/2. Midnight. PC Steam. Mixed.

  Generally I'm liking this game. I basically just played up to what they had in there demo. It's ok. But it doesn't have remappable controls and the default gamepad controls kind of stress my right hand while shooting. If I could make shoot/throw L1 then this would be fine. I did that with other 2d games like this that had aiming and it felt a lot better. At least the aiming is pretty generous.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/2. Early Morning. Mixed.

  I tried the keyboard controls and oh boy! They're even worse! It's absurd how awful it is to try to navigate the menu with them. Further on in the game and I don't really think I like it very much. The puzzles are kind of uninspired and combat is not great. They expect you to dodge but the dodge button is Circle and your thumb is on the right stick aiming. So... you can't exactly quickly dodge as fast as you need to all the time.

  There's some platforming sections where you can't fly and those feel kind of unusual. You're jump is super floaty (which is to be expected) but it's slow and hard to get used to. Especially since you expect to fly. There was a stealth section where you COULD still fly but if you did it was basically game over. However if you press jump twice you'll start flying and that's very easy to accidentally do. It's awkward.

  For a game that took like 10 years to make it sure lacks polish. It's this year's Axiom Verge. Beautiful but unpolished.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/4. Morning. Mixed.

  This game continues to be charming but unpolished. More awkward stealth sections (though not as bad as the first). The controls are imprecise but precision is demanded. Enemies move too fast for the combat. Lackluster bosses.

  There's a coin collectable that doesn't seem to unlock interesting stuff other than health upgrades. Looks like later you'll get some attack and armor upgrades as well. I'm 3 hours in and there hasn't really been much progression in terms of new abilities.

  The game seems very very linear as well. Though there seems to be a big build up to a more open Zelda-like dungeon progression, but it hasn't gotten there yet. I guess it's nice that you're generally moving up rather than moving to the right or down though...

  ~~~

  Played: 11/5. Afternoon. Mixed.

  Just went through a bad darkness-themed dungeon and had a pretty lackluster boss. The game just demands a level of exactness that it doesn't allow. Honestly considering putting it down for good.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/6. Early Morning. Negative.

  Oh Boy is the lava area awful. Lava is an instant death trap, if you get damaged you'll fall into the lava and die instantly even if you're in hit recovery. Then there is a mini boss that spawns a bunch of monkeys over lava which will grab you and drag you into it. You can spin to get them off but there's no real indication of that at all.

  Then there's another lackluster instant death chase scene that ends with a lava snake boss. The boss has so much screen shake you can barely tell what's happening which would be worse but the boss is deceptively simple to a laughable point. You just, like so many other combat encounters, fly up to the ceiling and hide in the corner while shooting while occasionally flying in to hit it with a flamethrower shot.

  Afterwords there was one of the worst sections I've seen in a modern game. You're riding this giant lava snake and can control it up or down to dodge rocks. It should be awesome! But the camera is constantly rotating making the section more confusing than challenging.

  The amount of times I've said "this is a bad game" during this session has been more than a few. I still plan to see it through but oh boy...

  ~~~

  Played: 11/6. Early Morning. Negative.

  There's some nice parts of this game sometimes. The quiet bits are all right. But then it has weird one-hit kill mini games, and terrible stealth sections. I like it less and less the more I play it.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/7. Morning. Mixed.

  I like this game when I'm just traveling around. I think it does some nice stuff with the story here and there. It's writing (dialogue/flavor) is serviceable.

  However it continues to be pretty lackluster otherwise. The stealth sections aren't great, the boss battles all seem to involve finding that one thing to make them inconsequential, the environmental design is very blocky and rectangular.

  I have collected over 2000 coins and have bought all the upgrades except for the star cape. Which I assume you can only get by finding all or most of the coins. I probably won't do that.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/7. Early Evening. Neutral.

  I just kind of wandered around looking for where I had to go and secrets. Didn't find anything too exciting so I just continued with the story and ended.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/8. Late Morning. Negative.

  This probably last area is terrible. It has awkward awful platforming over instant death pits. There's blocks that float up and down but sink when you land on them. You can't fly much, and if you'll try you'll lose all vertical momentum. However since you usually fly by tapping up or jump twice, it's very likely that you'll start flying when you don't intend too. This makes what should be a pretty straight forward section just plain awful since you never know when the controls will be your friend or not. I'm going to give it one more shot, but I cannot recommend this game.

  ~~

  Finished: 11/8. Late Morning. Mixed.

  This is a bad game. I don't like it. The Final boss was at least interesting. I'm not sure if there are multiple endings, but I collected all the owl coins and visiting the one locked area. That didn't seem to change anything. The ending was a boring and painfully paced non-ending about some time loop BS. Who cares! This game would have probably been really fondly looked back at if it had come out a year or so after it was being developed, but as of now, I can't help but think the developers time would have been better spent making a bunch of games rather than one completely lackluster one.

  ~~~

• 

  Broken Age

  Started: 11/11. Late Evening. PC Steam. Enjoy.

  Started this with my girlfriend. She had similar criticism as a lot of others did around this game's launch. But enjoyed it.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/12. Evening. Enjoy.

  We finished up Vella's story and are on to Shay's. Didn't play too far in yet.

  ~~~

  Played: 11/29. Evening. Enjoy.

  We finished up episode 1 and when into Shay's story of episode two. We're now both blind.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/3. Early Evening. Enjoy.

  Making our way through Shay's 2nd act.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/9. Late Evening. Enjoy.

  We got stuck in Shay's chapter and went over to Vella's. I wasn't too psyched with some of the puzzles, but Jenn seemed to like them.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/17. Early Evening. Enjoy.

  We're getting through Vella's Act 2, but every time we think we have something there's another step we have to figure out.

  ~~~

• 

  Firewatch

  Started: 12/25. Late Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  Wanted to clear up some games on my 2016 too play list decided to start with this. Really enjoying it so far. The set up for the story hit me a little hard. It's one of the situations that I really fear happening in my life. I'm real glad that was not spoiled for me. The gameplay is fine. I like the psuedo-metroidvania elements of finding the rope and camera, etc. It's cute sort of mechanical progression that the "walking sim" genre actually really benefits from.

  ~~~

  Finished: 12/26. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Yeah, this is a good video game. I liked a lot about it. I like that it's story hints at typical video game BS story then doesn't go that route. It's great that there is no government conspiracy or paranormal nonsense. Just an unfortunate tale that's driven by the characters. Super refreshing!

  There's so much I could say, but I don't think I can form my thoughts at the moment. But I really enjoyed the way the story wraps up and liked the ending.

  ~~~

• 

  Exile's End

  Played: 12/26. Early Evening. PC Steam. Negative.

  This game is very pretty but tries to be difficult in a way that is a hassle rather than a challenge. Instant Death spikes, health with very few healing items and tons of things that do cheap damage, tricky attack vectors that make dealing with enemies annoying. Real shame.

  ~~~

• 

  Chronicles of Teddy: Harmony of Exidus

  Started: 12/27. Midnight. PC Steam. Enjoyed.

  Picked this up on the steam sale and it seems pretty good so far. Very puzzle heavy in a way that makes me a bit cautious. I hope it doesn't turn out like La Mulana. Some of the puzzles involve pitch which is never a thing you actually want to do as a designer since it's ableist. Not everyone can hear or has good pitch sense. But It has super nice art and plays fairly well. No instant death traps! It does what games should do and hurts you instead.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/27. Early Morning. Enjoyed.

  This game is real good. I'm at the point where it seems like I should be getting double jump or some other sort of movement ability since the platforming is getting very tricky. I also fought a boss that was an alright fight.

  One thing this game does that I don't like is double tapping to run. It's never not awkward and triggers all the time when I don't want it to. Just like every other game that has that.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/27. Afternoon. Enjoyed.

  Figured out the platforming a bit better. Seems you can do the Mario-styled crouch jump. Now on the 2nd palace.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/27. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Beat the 2nd boss. They were pretty cool. Had to use the music mechanic to deal actual damage to them which I wish was telegraphed a bit better. I'm liking the deliberate Zelda 2-like animation. Still finding the double tap to dash annoying at times.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/27. Early Evening. Enjoyed.

  Spent this session finding secrets I could get. Was able to buy up the white cloths. Not sure what they do or what the ring does, but I assume they reduce damage and increase damage respectfully.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/27. Evening. Enjoyed.

  Got to the 3rd Palace and I'm not so sure I like the way the wall jumping feels in this game. You can't seem to double jump afterwords and that's weird. You also don't get much height from it. It's wonky. Perhaps I'll get used to it!

  This Ice Palace is probably the weakest so far. It has you running back and forth unlocking doors for little reason. I think it could have been gated better.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/27. Late Evening. Enjoyed.

  Beat the 3rd Palace and did some exploration and clean up. I've now been putting my marbles into the last item in the shop. It's 3000. I don't know what it does, but I'm not sure what any of them do besides the sword and health. I feel like there's probably a lot of stuff to do after you finish the fourth area. But that's where I'm heading now. "Monsters Valley" sounds good.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/28. Midnight. Enjoyed.

  Dipped a bit into the fourth zone before deciding to go explore the other zones for goodies. Found enough marbles to buy the thing worth 3000. No clue what it does. Some sort of spider coin.

  ~~~

  Played: 12/29. Midnight. Mixed.

  Man... this game was so good. I don't know about this zone. The enemies aren't great. There's slimes that shot annoying little fires and have super long invincibility periods. Then there's missile shooting guys that can stun lock you and never seem to stop shooting until your dead. Makes this area more of a hassle than a challenge. Not great design. Some of the other enemy placement/design in optional areas is questionable as well. Really shame because this game was otherwise really well done. The double tap to dash has lead to so much accidental damage or platforming screw ups.

  Also I looked up what the items do and it pretty boring stuff. Just basic damage/armor stuff. Not sure if the armor really do that much since enemies can stunlock you or hit you multiple times.

  I fear I may be done with this game. Booo...

  ~~~