Monday, September 4, 2017

Monthly Update: September 2017


Apologies for not putting this up on Friday as I apparently had forgotten that it was already September.  September has been known to do that in the past, so hey, consistency.  

I was looking at the games that I had been playing in August and ho-boy there were more than I thought.  I shouldn't say finished either because I only managed to finish one out of 12, and 8.33% is not great.  The primary ones on the 3DS were (and are still) Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, but I put that one on hold temporarily while I practiced Mario Kart 7 in preparation for the Nintendo World Championship qualifiers in Tuckwila in a week.  I am still kind of on the fence about attending as I have been unable to perform the wall jumping glitch in GBA Bowser Castle 1 which apparently everyone who was in the top 5 had been able to do and the last word I read was that the San Jose judges were aware of the exploit but were still allowing it to happen.  Maybe that's just my cue to not drive the 334 miles round trip for the chance at a Nintendo pin and to play demos of Metroid: Samus Returns, and Super Mario Odyssey.  But on the Mario front, I did start tooling around with Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS again, which has reaffirmed my annoyance at people who insist on creating the most pain in-the-ass-possible levels.

The Switch has a more limited library in that Mario Kart 8: Deluxe has seen the most game time, with the 150cc circuit (is that redundant?) giving me a lot of grief.  My facebook news feed has been subject to the occasional pictorial rant about coming in first place in three out of four races, with the fourth often landing me in 3rd place or worse.  As in every single cup this has happened, which as lead me to believe that the game doesn't want me to win, if only by extreme luck.  But this is something that I will attempt to cover in a Game EXP article later in the month.  And now that I think about it, Conklederp and I should get back into playing Snipperclips: Cut It Out, Together as we have only accessed the second out of I don't know how many worlds.

On the Steam front, I did finish the main storyline in Layers of Fear (which the Humble Spooky Bundle) reminded me that it was already patiently waiting in my inventory, and I am about an hour or two into the Inheritance DLC and while I think I am nearly finished, I know that there is much more to explore as I have gotten only one of I don't know how many endings.  I may have to play something lighter between playthroughs though because holy hell that's an effectively scary game.  More to come in a Game EXP later in the month.  I also started up Apotheon so that I could play a Metroidvania style game while waiting for Metroid: Samus Returns which comes out next week (9/15).  While the art style is one of the main draws for me, I have had to stop playing on two separate occasions where I died after not having saved for about 45 minutes and did not want to go back and do the exact same thing all over again just because I was briefly unaware of how low my health was.  Speaking of quitting, I have decided that I may be done with Jack Lumber after about two hours on the PC that this game is not really optimized for keyboard/mouse and really requires a touch screen.  I may write an article about this as it was a fun game, but I had to stop after reaching a frustrating wall.

In Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, I have finally made my way to the great city of Baldur's Gate and am now poncing around trying to see how I can activate the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion without having to look it up.  Continuing with the isometric theme, but now moving directly overhead, I finally started Darkwood after playing a bit of the alpha and demo following their successful Indigogo campaign from June 2013.  What immediately makes me nervous about this game, is similar to playing Fallout 2, in that I am afraid of making a mistake that will either make the game harder or close off a storyline.  But that's video games for you.

Lastly, I found a free game on steam called SNOW that is currently in Early Access that I was hoping would scratch that itch caused by the lack of a 1080° game and the level design for Mount Wario in MK8:D.  Possibly because it is in Early Access, but SNOW feels like it could be a lot more fun actually snowboarding down a mountain with a bit more practice on my part, and if the character didn't pop out of their bindings and flop down the mountain at the first (or second) bump against a tree.  I may write more about this in the coming weeks.

TV for Conklederp and I has been limited to Game of Thrones, which wrapped Season 7 a few weeks ago, and The Leftovers, which we started watching probably about the time GoT ended and we just finished Episode 2 from Season 3.  And since Vikings doesn't start up again until November 29th, maybe it's time that we get into Westworld?

Lastly, I just wanted to say that, partly due to the summer months but also due to my own in-activeness, neither of our Dungeons & Dragons groups have gotten together in a while.  This is definitely something that I would like to fix, hopefully before the end of the month.  I take some responsibility for our Oregon group as the current quest did not play out as excitingly as I had anticipated, but that's my role as the DM to keep the PCs engaged and entertained, so I may have to diverge a little bit from the printed story.

So that was August, and we are fully lodged in September.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
All Of Our Fears Will Be Gone 'Til Tomorrow

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