Monthly Update: February 2022

When I look back at January 2022, I see a combination of two things.

The first, is that I am currently playing a lot of video games and we're going to break it down list-wise because I said so. Following each game, I am going to give a rating out of ten with my guess as to whether or not I think I will finish the game before the end of the month.  

On the Nintendo Switch I am playing the following:

• Dobo's Heroes: This is for 420MacMan's #IndieSelect and I had planned for this article to have gone out sometime the week of January 23rd - 29th, but I got stuck on the 44th of 45 levels and had hoped that I would have been able to beat the game before putting the article out.  But that ended up not happening so I put the article out this last Monday. [6/10]
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD:  I also have an article rearing to go about Skyward Sword and then I ended up writing a contextual post about Legend of Zelda games that I felt would go well before the Skyward Sword article.  Those ended up getting pushed back to next week, so stay tuned for those.   [1/10]
• Blasphemous: I picked this up at the end of last year because I love Metroidvanias, I love the atmosphere and pixel art style of the game, and I apparently love games that base a lot of their mythology on the catholic church as well as the fervency of religions in general. According to the game I am about 25% of the way through and occasionally being hit with walls of difficulty, but it is nothing that a bit of tenacity and a lot (a fucking lot) of patience cannot cure.   [3/10]
• Human Resource Machine: I loved Little Inferno from the story, the dark sense of humor, to the music and at least my head cannon has these two games in the same universe.  Plus I love the idea of using a video game to teach the fundamentals of coding language and laying it out in a way that is understandable.  Maybe.  Because I am stuck on level 14[?] of [60?] and am trying to solve a countdown problem. [Without a Walkthrough: 0/10 ; With a Walkthrough: 8/10]
• Fortnite:  Yeah, still playing Fortnite.  Usually between 30-45 minutes every morning, because there is no greater feeling than ganking some random kid (or Bot) at 6:47 AM while lying under blankets in bed.  Plus there was the Spiderman skin this season so I threw 950 of my previously earned V-Bucks back at Epic Games. [Finish as far as I want to go with the Battle Pass in February: 10/10]
• Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition:  This colossus of a game went on sale last week for $9.99 (at least the digital version did) and while I still do have the physical CDs that came out 20 years ago, I do not have my character anymore and I did not buy any of the DLC modules. [0/10]

On the Wii U:

• Fire Emblem (Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade): I am on Chapter 16x, so I'm doing a side quest between Chapters 16 & 17, which means I might have only four more quests before I finish Eliwood's story in the game.  Then it is on to the final character and their 10+ chapters.  I am quite enjoying the game and finding the political intrigue for the continent of Lycia a lot more in-depth than I was expecting.  I think I was expecting something on par with Shadows of Valentia's single-sided good versus evil storyline, but this is different, and I like it.  I did decide to restart 16x twice, once after Hector was killed and the second was after I had not been paying attention and [paladin] was ganged up on and killed; he also only had 9 HP at the start of the enemy's turn, so there was that too.  [7/10]
• Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara:  I was excited when I found out that I could play this Wii game on just the Wii U's gamepad and have only jumped in a couple of times.  It's just a good, and surprisingly developed hack and slash arcade game that Dr. Potts and I used to play at our local bowling alley a lot.  [3/10]

On the 3DS/DS:

• Dragon Quest IX: Sentinel of the Starry Skies:  This one ended up being more off and on than I had hoped for when I first started playing it back in December, but in the last week I have been playing it a lot more, especially after arriving in Starnway and being able to create my own customized party.  Now I just have to imbue the characters with personality while I grind for levels and gold to buy better gear before moving on to the next area.  I feel a little sad having skipped over Dragon Quest VII and VIII as each game on the DS/3DS averaged $39.99 and that is a premium for a 12-13-year-old game that I am not about to plunk down.  I do miss playing traditional JRPGs.  [1/10]

On the Oculus/Meta Quest 2:

• Beat Saber:  I was surprised to find a campaign mode in the game, but I like it because the difficulty is occasionally gradual and other times a giant dyno to something that kicks my ass every time.  I like that it introduces different modes and modifications you can make to the song and the way you play that makes the plethora of options in Solo mode a bit less intimidating. [Completing the Campaign: 0/10]
• Please, Don't Touch Anything: Conklederp and I love escape rooms so this seemed like a great buy when it went on sale a few weeks back.  I like that there are multiple endings depending on what you do and I currently have three I do not know how many endings and am also stuck with what I can and need to do to not collapse the earth or nuke it.   [2/10]
• Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes: We started this game a few weeks back when Himo and Folly came over for dinner.  The format feels very intuitive for VR although, on one occasion, Conklederp accidentally dropped the bomb while trying to rotate it in her hands and it took about 30 precious seconds to pick it back up again.  And we/she ended up blowing herself up.  I really love this game, now we just have to survive.  [0/10]
• Virtual Virtual Reality: Is kind of like a mix between Portal and Accounting+ in that it is a tongue in cheek game that has you in the role of a human who is (forced?) employed by an AI within a virtual space to perform tasks for other AI within a virtual space.  That is all I want to say as I think I have gone too far to write a First Impressions article and may just end up writing a Game EXP before the end of the month. [10/10]
• Zombieland: Headshot Fever:  Check out my article for most of my thoughts on the game.  Since I finished that article though, I have managed to unlock all of the guns, so now I will sometimes jump into the game to play a couple of levels with the purpose of either gaining more TP to level up the guns, or to try and complete another goal to get another gun skin or bonus TP.
• Ragnarock:  A kind of Beat Saber-y meets Guitar Hero meets power-Viking-folk-metal.
• I have also been playing (experiencing?) several short films and documentaries, which is something that I had not thought about when I bought (whenSantabroughttheOculusforXmas) but I love that there are a lot of games/apps that are not specifically games such as Ann Frank House VR, Traveling While Black, and Gloomy Eyes.

I am not really playing anything on PC right now, but I did buy some more RAM (16GB) in exchange after returning that atrocious headset from BOBOVR.  I had hoped that I might be able to run some low-end VR games off of the laptop using the Oculus, but the graphics card is not buffy enough, but I can run games that I previously had not been able to run before like Layers of Fear 2, The Evil Within Demo, and Alien: Isolation.  Sadly when I tried running Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order I maxed out at 15 fps and consistently ran at around 10fps, which really was unplayable.  I also updated The Elder Scrolls Online, just in case I wanted to jump back into that world, and used some of my in-game Crowns that have been sitting around unused for the last eight years.

Honestly, I do not even remember what the second thing that I was going to bring up was about.  So maybe memory is the second?  Is memory the key?

So that is how February is shaping up to be.  I guess.  Hopefully, everyone is staying safe out there.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
At Least You Fill Them When I Play