Game EXP: Poochy & Yoshi's Wooly World (3DS)

Poochy & Yoshi's Wooly World

Systems: Nintendo 3DS*

Release Date: January 19, 2017

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Good-Feel
Time Spent: 25 Hours, 10 Minutes

Oh my god.  I absolutely loved the visual aesthetic and how the Yoshi series has taken on a children's arts and crafts approach through a lot of the entries in this franchise, but holy shit this game felt like a chore to get through.

The actual mechanics I was perfectly fine with and I did like a lot of what was in the game as far as content goes, but the level design, I think is just something that I'm going to have to come to terms with, in that I am not a fan.  I already talked a lot about this in my First Impressions of the game back in July of last year, and most of what I said still holds true now that I've finished the game.  And by "finished" I mean that I defeated Bowser Jr. and Kamek in level 6-8 King Bowser's Castle, not that I finished all of the optional side quests like the Poochy Gold Rush stages, the optional Smiley Flower stages (by collecting all of the Smiley Flowers from every level in each world), or collecting all of the Wonder Wool in each stage.  Oh, or collecting all of the optional sticker sheets to, I think, customize the colors and patterns on your customizable Yoshi.

As I previously mentioned back in July, my biggest problem with this game was that the levels felt too long.  Sometimes spending just under 20 minutes on an initial run, only to finish with two Smiley Flowers missing, two Wonder Wool missing, five Pencil Patches missing, and having 5/20 hearts.  Sure it could only take you just under five minutes if you already know where everything is.  I know about the "See Hidden Items" badge and I will get to badges later, but even with that badge equipped, it only shows items hidden on screen, not items hidden in non-visible locations, so it's helpful, but not a 'show everything, everywhere" function.  So the thought of replaying each level multiple times while focusing on one or two of the four different collectibles in each stage was not at all enticing.  Yes, some stages were legitimately fun to play through and I did replay a couple of stages, but more often than not, once I finished a stage, that was the last time I played it.  By the time I reached the end of a stage, I was ready to be done and didn't want to play anymore; which is probably why I picked up the game on 37 different occasions to play through 49 individual levels (not including Poochy Gold Rush stages and including only the first Smiley Flower stage).

I have a handful of other gripes such as the frequency and location of checkpoints or what felt like the over-sensitivity on the 3DS joystick with its predilection to have Yoshi do a ground pound at the joystick's slightest downward turn, usually while I was hovering over a pit.  But I'm sure that a lot of that could have been corrected if I played more frequently than for 20 minutes a time every couple of days for every couple of weeks.  Git gud Yoshi!

I also loved the optional badges that you could use to augment/modify how you played the level.  Badges were earned as you went through the game and used gems (in-game currency) to buy for use in a single stage.  There were times when the game would announce that all badges would be free.  When they first became available, I didn't want to use them on my first run-through of a stage, instead wanting to play through without any sort of help because of pride or something.  By about halfway through Level 2-6 ("Lava Scarves and Red-Hot Blarggs"), I decided that I was going to use whatever badges I felt would be most beneficial.  For this stage in particular, I obviously chose the "Immunity to fire and lava!" because if I was going to play through a level full of flowing lava scarves one time, it was going to be with an immunity to anything knitted in red and orange woolly yarn.  Once it became available, I usually used the "See hidden items!" badge, again because I didn't want to have to replay stages over and over again looking for Patches/Wool/Flowers.  I don't recall ever using most of the other patches like "Grab items with Yoshi's tongue" or any of the "All you can eat" watermelons, and I never used the badge to completely bypass a level, because what was the point?

One other thing that impressed me about the game was the music.  There was a lot of music in this game that was only used in one stage, such as "A Little Light Snowfall" which is a heck of a piece to have been used as a one-off; granted in two games though.  But the quality of the music throughout the game was full of cheerful and appropriately themed songs for their respective stages.  Don't be surprised if we end up featuring more music from this game in the future.

Even though I didn't play a lot of them to their fullest extent, the mini-games.  I think I just like how many there were, the different types there were (including the stop-motion shorts), and that they were completely optional.  It really felt that Good-Feel developed a game that a parent could give their kid to play for months and not just be done within an afternoon.  Even the Scrapbook Theater which includes 31 Yoshi Theater videos and an observational quiz that can only be unlocked once every 24 hours, an animated bestiary, and a list of all of the songs you've heard in the game; of the 65 available songs, I apparently am missing nine songs from somewhere.  I love that there's a Mellow Mode, which adds wings to Yoshi and that essentially keeps him hovering at the same height as long as you hold down the jump button.  It also adds the use of Poochy's pups that double as throwable yarn balls, point-out collectibles (both visible and hidden), and will attack enemies for you. It's an optional accessibility option for less experienced players and while I never used it, I love that it's an option.

That being said, I did take it as the game being very condescending when it would ask if I wanted to play in Mellow Mode after I died three times in a stage.

On the harder side of things, I did collect all of the Smiley Flowers in the first world to find out what the stage was that required you to find all of the Smiley Flowers in an entire world.  What I was greeted with was a punishing and difficult stage without any checkpoints that just dared the joystick to make the slightest hint of a downward motion.  I did finish the stage, but decided that I didn't want to have to deal with any additional stages in a similar vein, no matter how potentially accomplished I might have felt afterward.

As you have likely gathered by now, I have mixed feelings about Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World.  Had the stages been half as long as they were, I would probably enjoy this game a lot more and I would definitely be more driven to try and find more of the collectibles on subsequent attempts.  As it stands, with very few exceptions, I find that I'm a one-and-done when it comes to these levels.  I may revisit this title if the 3DS is still functioning when The Squire is old enough to play, so maybe in three years?  Until then, it'll join the rest of my physical 3DS games collection.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
May I Inquire Discreetly

MIDI Week Singles: "A Little Light Snowfall" - Yoshi's Woolly World / Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World (Wii U/3DS)

 

"A Little Light Snowfall" from Yoshi's Wooly World on the Wii U Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World on the 3DS (2015/2017)
Composer: Tomoya Tomita, Misaki Asada, Kazumi Totaka
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Good-Feel

If ever there was a stage theme that encapsulated a winter stage, a Hallmark movie, and consuming knitted enemies and shooting out balls of yarn at puffy cotton ball clouds to form additional stepping stones.  Maybe this track is a little too on the nose as I could easily imagine it as the title music to some romantic-comedy Christmas-themed movie on Netflix about a royal Christmas wedding or a wonderful retelling of "The Prince and the Pauper" all set behind the backdrop of Christmas.

All of that aside, this is a great track for stage 5-5 in Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World on the 3DS, and maybe my view of this song is clouded by the fact that I really enjoyed stage 5-5 as it was fun with just the right amount of challenge to not feel like it was a game for babies.  All of the wintry elements are here too, from the jingle bells, the xylophone, the flutes, the strings, and for whatever reason, even the French horns seem to have a wintry feel.

Great song from the game and for this time of year.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Anywhere the Wind is Blowing

First Impressions: Poochy & Yoshi's Wooly World (3DS)

Poochy & Yoshi's Wooly World

Systems: Nintendo 3DS*

Release Date: January 19, 2017

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Good-Feel

I have another much longer and much more complicated article, which is rather amusing considering the target audience for this game in 2017 would not be looking for a think piece about the history of the Yoshi's Island series and the differences and sameness between the games leading up to this 3DS bonus featured port of the 2015 Wii U game of nearly the same name.

In short, Poochy & Yoshi's Wooly World is a 2.5D platformer similar to previous entries in the Yoshi's Island series where levels are designed more like the Ghost House in Super Mario World than older platforming stages in Super Mario Bros.  My biggest gripe with the Yoshi's Island series continues with this game, in that the stages can be too long, especially on your first playthrough and if you are trying to collect all of the collectibles.  For reference, I replayed Level 1-1, which took me 6m 37s, while playing Level 3-5 for the first time took me 18m 57s (although I did get stuck retrying a section trying to figure out how to get one particular collectible).  On average, I am usually done after playing two levels and want to move on to something else.  And on top of that, there is the completionist element (thankfully you are not given a letter grade like in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island) to collect everything in each stage (and have full health at the end of the stage because of course that is a thing too) which often means replaying a stage multiple times.  It is a fine line between saying, "Hell with it, I'm done with this stage" and "I want to collect all the Smiley Flowers so that I can unlock a super difficult bonus level at the end of this world."

Feeling this way makes me a little sad because the biggest draw for this game is the visual aesthetic.  Yes, the graphics are quite a big downgrade from those on the Wii U, but the trade-off is that the 3D effect when cranked up to 100% is what the 3DS is all about.  Characters in the foreground are appropriately blurry while Yoshi in the playable-ground (whatever the word for that is) is crisp and then you have additional background elements quite a ways off which are also blurry (but a different kind of blurry if they are small enough).  It is one of those types of comparisons that, on its own, the game looks fine as you can still tell, for the most part, what each of the characters is and what the backgrounds are made out of, but side-by-side, the 3DS version does look a bit like a blurry mess.

Basically, I love the look of the game and the purchasable badges that modify your playthrough for that level using in-game currency (although I never use them on my first run) and I love that there is a "Mellow" mode to be more accessible for younger or less experienced players (or those having a hard time).  Had the levels been 50% shorter, I would likely find myself playing the game for longer than 20-30 minute stretches and I probably would have finished the game months ago instead of playing the game 1-2 times per week for the last five months.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Don't Know What I'm After

Game EXP: Art of Balance TOUCH! (3DS)

Art of Balance TOUCH!
Systems: PlayStation 4, Wii U, Wii, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo 3DS*
Release Date: February 15, 2010
Publisher: Shin’en Multimedia
Developer: Shin’en Multimedia
Time Spent: 10 Hours 7 Minutes

I have mixed feelings about Art of Balance TOUCH!

On the one hand, I love the concept and idea of trying to balance different objects on top of each other.  On the other hand, I do not like a lot about this game, or at least I do not like specific aspects to how it plays on the 3DS.  Art of Balance TOUCH! is a balancing game where you are given a set number of blocks to place above a bowl of water and if any of the blocks splash into the water, you have to restart.  As the game progresses, there are added modifiers that make the concept more difficult, like pieces that break if too many other pieces are stacked on them, platforms that move (which is not ideal when you are trying to balance objects on them), increasingly difficult shapes to stack like triangles, and blocks that you can see the shape of, but cannot use until you have used the blocks preceding them..

First off, the camera.  I get that the camera will sometimes do dynamic zoom-ins/outs based on what you are doing, but when that zoom-in happens while you are trying to precariously place a block on top of another block (which is balanced on four other blocks, one of which is round), it can be a little aggravating.  It is a steady slow zoom-in, but it is often at the expense of not being able to see the top of the screen, which is where you want your block to go because again, you are trying to balance it on top of five other blocks.  This means that you are moving the block you are trying to place while trying to make special accommodations for the camera, which feels like is not something you should need to think about in a game focused on balancing things on top of other things.

The second issue is the wild imbalance in how the levels are laid out or at least the progression in each world.  Because this is a puzzle game, it makes sense that there are going to be puzzles that are more difficult than others, but for me, there are some puzzles that are frustratingly difficult. There is a stage (World C, Level 9.2) that took me 19 minutes after 36 attempts tucked away amongst other stages that I have beaten in a minute and fewer than five attempts, to me, seems out of balance.  And then there are stages (World E, Level 5.2) that are so difficult to start, that I typically have to restart after just the second of six pieces; this is also one of those stages that are timed, so there is that added stress of getting the correct piece rotated to the correct angle and place gingerly on pedestal that moves based on the weight placed on it (think of it like a balancing scale) and quickly picking up the next of the five remaining pieces.  All within the 15 seconds that start about .5 seconds after you pick up your first piece.  So maybe it is just a me issue and not that the game is being too difficult?  Yeah, I don't think so, because in (at least) the PS4 version, you have one fewer pieces and still have (I believe) the same amount of time.  Yeah, I am just a little bit salty about this stage.

Lastly, not so much a game issue as it is a "me not being able to find a solution" issue is just that.  I have looked for walkthroughs for some of the more difficult stages (World D, Level 7.5), and it seems that the PS4 and Wii/U versions of the game do not have the same levels in the same order as the 3DS version, let alone the same puzzle layout with the same pieces (see above issue with World E 5.2).  This makes trying to find out how/why I cannot solve a particular puzze or why it seems exceedingly difficult and a bit of a hunt-and-peck based on the thumbnail.  I do not mind having to retry levels as there is that high of finding a solution after several attempts, but once you have to retry the same level for the 10th time, it can feel a bit futile not knowing if you are on the right path or failing because you are not placing the correct piece in the correct order in the correct place.

I do not know if I will 100% Art of Balance TOUCH! if only because some stages that I have not completed just frustrate me to no end, but I also do not want to hammer away at a game that I am no longer enjoying (see The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks) and right now, this game is still enjoyable when it is enjoyable.  Because again, I love the act of being able to balance objects on each other.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
So Take A Try

*P.S.  I included the other Art of Balance games even though they technically do not have the "TOUCH!" in the title.  I will usually not include earlier or different versions of the same within a Game EXP article, but I wanted to include the others here to partly illustrate that the game is still in circulation on modern systems.

More Thoughts About Media Preservation

 

Last Friday we talked a bit about video game preservation in regards to the 3DS and Wii U eShop's closing (to new purchases), and where that leaves people who came late to the consoles/games that are no longer actively distributed.  This is obviously not a video game only problem as the same could be said for any form of media from written music, previously performed music, movies, TV shows (including streaming), licensed toys (specifically Super Mario LEGO sets), and even content for apps that are no longer in existence.  What inspired me to write this snippet of an article was a recent search for a book after having watched Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

Without going too much into spoilers (the movie is only 63 days old), the Red Wizards of Thay feature in the movie and both Conklederp and The Kid asked me about this group and region as they both have played D&D (pen and paper, and video games) and were not familiar with them.  While I have never played a game (either p&p or vg) that heavily featured them, I have read about them being referenced in books and modules.  I knew that they were an arcanecratic (as their historical system of government revolved around magic and typically those who were the most powerful magic users were its leaders, and they had a lot to do with liches) government, that they were typically depicted as being evil and that the wizards, more often than not, wore red robes.  In a quest, I wrote that our group played, I did have the initial antagonist (or at least who the PCs perceived to be the antagonist until the BBEG, who was entirely unconnected, was revealed in the closing act) formally be a Red Wizard of Thay until a magical mishap occurred, but that was all character backstory for myself that was never revealed to the PCs.

While thinking about Thay, I realized that I had never actually read a book or played a game that took place in Thay or heavily featured a Red Wizard of Thay.  So I looked up The Forgotten Realms Fandom page to find out which books/modules featured the Red Wizards.  That was how I found out about "Red Magic," written by Jean Rabe in 1991, being the earliest chronological book to feature the Red Wizards.  So I looked up the book on my Library's webpage, both in physical and digital format, and it was not available.  So my next step was to check Amazon's Kindle store, and again, the book was not available in Kindle format, but I could buy a used copy varying between $6.07 - $37.78.  Even Google Books tells me that there is no known eBook version of this particular book, which does not make as much sense to me because books 1, 2, and 4 (as well as others) in The Harpers Series are available, but not the specific one I am looking for.  Just my luck, I know.

Now, if I am going to buy a used book, I would rather visit one of the likely hundreds of bookstores in the PDX metro area and I have one specific bookstore in mind, but a lot of these bookstores do not have searchable inventories, so the hunt for a physical copy of "Red Magic" will take time and in the end, however much I want to pay for the book depending on its condition.  Or I could buy the one copy from Powell's which is located in Cedar Hills for $4.95 (not including s/h).

Again, this brings up the conversation of preservation.  I am not a person who is looking to buy a copy of "Red Magic" to build out my collection of 2nd Edition AD&D novels, but just a person who wants to read the story in this book.  I have been able to request that my local library "order" books, but this one is not one that I can do that with, likely because there is not an eBook version of "Red Magic."  One of the conclusions reached by this lack of media preservation (especially media that has not yet entered the public domain, which varies depending on the country you are in, usually 50-75 years after the death of the author) is left to third party entities such as the Video Game History Foundation and the Internet Archive.  Although both of these resources are limited by the formats allowed to the media, where the VGHF might have a harder time preserving digital-only releases when digital storefronts are no longer in service, and digital libraries if no digital copies exist apart from scanned images of the book to a PDF file.  In both cases, there could be the risk of unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted material, which again brings us back to the public domain.

This is where my thought process on this topic ended as I did not go out to make a larger statement about media preservation or strive to solve the conundrum of what to do when a form/type of media becomes no longer available and the question of what happens to that media in the future.  All I have are more questions, some of which I brought up in Monday's article.  Just more things to think about as I decide if I want to add all 18 books from The Harpers Series to my reading list, and how many of those books already cross-pollinate with series that I am already reading, all before I rerererereplay Baldur's Gate (again).

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Monthly Update: April, 2023

 

Well hooooooly shit.

If you believe that the universe does things in response to anything that an individual does, you might think that contracting COVID after writing an entire article about COVID which included a section on how I had not contracted COVID is some form of universal karma.  Well, after 1,107 days, I tested positive for COVID-19.  This was after traveling on a plane for the first time since Sunday, March 8th, 2020, when Conklederp and I attended a celebration of life for my Great Aunt down in Southern California.  The ceremony was at a country club where there were 50+ people in attendance and only Conklederp wearing a mask (I had forgotten mine in the Air BnB).  We then flew back home through three airports (departing airport, layover airport, arriving airport) and we both wore masks the whole time.  So at some point, I contracted COVID because on Wednesday I started feeling ill and ran a fever of 100.5, but tested negative in the evening.  On Thursday while at work, I started feeling ill again and left work an hour early after a self-imposed "once I get this next thing done I will head home."  Once home, I immediately tested again and this time it came up positive and was running another fever of around 100.

Conklederp immediately took The Squire to her parent's house so that I could quarantine without potentially infecting anyone else despite the fact that we all live in the same house, but it is what we thought was necessary.  My general symptoms included frequent fever jumps between 100 and 103.7, muscle soreness, infrequent coughs with a mouthful of phlegm and tiredness.  This pretty much lasted until Monday or Tuesday Well, Saturday morning, both Conklederp and The Squire tested positive, but they stayed put because Conklederp's parents have a big-ass TV that helped to keep The Squire preoccupied with his fever, and I felt that that worked out best because not everyone has the same symptoms when it comes to COVID.  Mine apparently fed off of my migraines and it felt like someone trying to stick their finger in my left eye socket to put pressure on my brain from Thursday evening through Sunday Afternoon.  

Along with the unpleasant mouthal side effects from Paxlovid that lasted until the day after my last evening dose.  My go-to was a combination of orange juice (which my Dad swore by to cut the horrid taste) which only momentarily worked, and standard Altoids, which worked really well while I had one in my mouth.  They were even effective when the tackiness in my mouth would wake me up in the middle of the night while my brain was trying to convince me that something had in fact died in my mouth, and I could take two Altoids and just let them melt in my mouth while I tried to fall back asleep. The psychological effect that this Paxlovid Mouth had on me was surprisingly overwhelming in that I considered on more than one occasion stopping the medication entirely because of how gross my mouth felt and tasted. It was just something that I could actively escape to make the effects of COVID just a little bit less.  But, I stuck with it because I didn't want to shed more of the virus otherwise and I knew I wasn't going to be able to deep clean our house before Conklederp and The Squire returned home.

So COVID does in fact suck (not that I ever questioned otherwise) and I would have hated to experience it in full force without the vaccine or boosters.  I definitely do not plan on changing my approach to masking when out in public after this experience.  In stores, mask.  In group settings, mask.  Socially distancing around people I do not know or if I know that they are not vaccinated, and mask.  Playing at the park with The Squire, probably won't wear a mask, but I will wash and/or sanitize my hands upon returning home.

And in the middle of our household COVID outbreak, the eShops for the 3DS and Wii U closed down to new purchases.  I bought a handful of games (10 on the 3DS and three on the Wii U) and still experienced some serious FOMO on the morning of the 28th.  But I think that was bound to happen unless I plunked down $250+ dollars which I did not feel comfortable doing.  Plus I do not need a second copy of Yoshi's Wooly World on the Wii U when I already have the game on the 3DS, albeit a graphically downgraded game, but I knew that when I bought the game.

Steam's Spring Sale also started last week and concluded to varying degrees earlier this week.  I decided to pick up Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (along with the art book, soundtrack, and developer commentary for another $1) because it was 90% off, and while I do have the free copy on the Epic Game Store, I had read enough horror stories with this game on Steam alone and the sign in requirement either through EA's separate login app-thing or through EA's Origin client, so rather than try and get my Epic copy to work, I plunked down fewer than $5.00 and got a "Playable" on Steam Deck copy.  SkateBIRD was also 76% off and I thought that that might be a fun counterpoint to being a surviving Jedi trying to make his way in the galaxy.  There will eventually be articles up for those, but I do have a bunch of other articles I need to actually get to writing for LIVE A LIVE, Bayonetta 3, Witch and Hero III, and a couple of First Impression Articles Lords of the Fallen, Poochy & Yoshi's Wooly World, Triangle Strategy, and Metroid: Samus Returns.

Another fun activity during my seven days of positive COVID tests was that I binge-watched the first season of The Last of Us over on HBO.  I had thought that I would write an article about it, and I still might, but I can sum up the whole season as Waterworld meets The Walking Dead: A Telltale Game Series.  Not that I did not enjoy the series, I did, but I think I was expecting something more revolutionary, groundbreaking, or just something more than it was.  I do still want to play the game, although what I have been hearing about the PC port is less than enticing, plus as I am resistant to paying full price for video games these days (there are exceptions though, cough Tears of the Kingdom cough) so I think I will wait for the inevitable discount like I am doing with the Dead Space remake and The Callisto Protocol; not to mention the size of my Steam/GOG/Epic queue.

Lastly, we also concluded our look at the 51 games in Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1, our six-plus month-long that we started back in October.  Friday's article was a conglomeration of all of the games in the collection in a neat and tidy list.  I have a few things to say about that whole endeavor, mostly about how much I enjoyed the whole experience, but I will leave my final thoughts for Friday.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
We're On The Healing Path

MIDI Week Singles: Nintendo 3DS eShop Music - June 2015 - (3DS)

 

Nintendo 3DS eShop Music - June 2015
Composer: I Don't Know
Developer: Nintendo

I have the Internet (and YouTube primarily) for finding out that the music in Nintendo's eShop changed over time.  I knew that there was music as I heard it every time I perused the eShop looking for games or checking the prices on games on my Wishlist.  And you would think that having accessed the 3DS eShop 289 times since June 11, 2012, and spent 35 hours and 34 minutes looking through games I would have noticed some semblance of music, but apparently, that escaped me entirely.  

However!  This is pretty chill music in general that fits in with the general vibe that Nintendo has been curating since the days of the Wii.  And if this is the last song that has appeared on the 3DS eShop since 2015 (I am actually not 100% sure if this is the case, but since various online/YouTube sources have this listed as the eShop music from 2015, we are going to go with that until further notice) and the music that the store is likely to go out on, there could be worse ways to go.  There could just be silence, like with the eShop for the Switch, and that would be a little sad for the 3DS, being the first commercially affordable 3D gaming platform and 3D camera, which is very Nintendo in all of the best ways.

So farewell to you eShop of the Nintendo 3DS (specifically being able to purchase games as of March 27th).  You have been a great little system that I will continue to play, so long as the system itself remains physically playable.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
If You Love Me, Then Let Go Of Me

Year in Review: 2022

 

Since part of the point of a Year in Review is to look back at the games that were not only played in 2022, but the games that were released in 2022, let us jump into list mode because I can promise you, this is going to be a short list.  

BRING ON THE LISTS!!

And to be clear, this first list is just a list of the games that were released in 2022 that I actually played.

• Dobo's Heroes - Switch (January 17)
• Diablo Immortal - Android (June 2)
• Fall Guys - Switch (June 21)
• Please, Touch the Artwork - Switch (September 3)
• Bayonetta 3 - Switch (October 28)
• This Way Madness Lies - Steam (November 11)

And then there were games released in 2022 that I purchased/received but have not yet played:

• Triangle Strategy - Switch (March 4)
• Evil Dead: The Game - Epic Game Store (May 13) [received this game free]
• Live A Live - Switch (July 22)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection (August 30)

And then there are the games that were released in 2022 that I have not purchased or played:

• Horizon Forbidden West - Steam (February 18)
• Elden Ring - Steam (February 24)
• Tunic - Steam/Switch (March 16)
• Citizen Sleeper - Steam (May 5)
• The Quarry - Steam (June 9)
• Neon White - Switch/Steam (June 16)
• Tiny Tina's Wonderlands - Steam (June 23)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge - Switch/Steam (July 16)
• Stray - Steam (July 19)
• Cult of the Lamb - Steam/Switch (August 11)
• Rollerdrome - Steam (August 16)
• Immortality - Steam (August 30)
• Metal: Hellsinger - Steam (September 15)
• God of War Ragnarok - PS4/5 (November 9)
• Pentiment - Steam (November 14)
• The Callisto Protocol - Steam (December 1)

If that does not tell you why we are 1) Not doing a Game of the Year section or 2) Proclaiming the Best Game of 2022, then I do not have anything else for you.

I think if I were to break down how I played games this year, it would probably look something like 35% Switch, 20% Steam Deck, 15% PC Games (Steam, GOG), 12% DS/3DS, 12% Oculus Quest 2/Meta Quest 2, 3% Wii U, 2% Android (App and browser games), and 1% PSP.  The Steam Deck has really invigorated me back into PC/Steam games and I have to keep telling myself that just because I have a Steam Deck does not mean that I need to buy more games off of Steam because my existing backlog is already quite large.  But there is Elden Ring and all of the games that were released last year that I want to play, but also a handful of games, that I am aware of, that are going to be released this year too, here's looking at you Dead Space.  And all of this is before I figure out how to upload games that I already have on GOG, and the Epic Game Store, not to mention other system emulators that the Steam Deck seems primed for.  I know it is possible as there are dozens of articles of varying difficulties discussing how to do it all.

I think the most unexpected game that I played this year was probably American Truck Simulator, which I have talked about in person but I do not think I have mentioned it a lot here, outside of brief mentions in Monthly Update articles.  It is just driving this honking-big truck and trying to navigate it to another city some hundred miles away.  It would be like if you tried to play GTA and observe all of the rules of the road.  Even after driving over 1,000 real-world miles in a car, I still am able to find a kind of zen driving a hog along Highway 84 along the Columbia River.  I only wish that there were more states available as DLC so that I could talk about how Highway 77 between Charolette and Columbia is the absolute worst.  I know I could get other DLC states (Oklahoma and Texas I think were the two new DLC states released in 2022), but knowing the locations is part of the draw, otherwise, it would be like I was driving in any other fictional location.  I should really just write a First Impressions article already; maybe the 23rd?

This year I also read a lot of Dungeons & Dragons books, starting back with The Legend of Drizzt series, and have branched out into the original Faerun novels Moonshae trilogy, the Starlight and Shadows trilogy, and The Sage of Shadowdale (aka Elminster).  Granted I haven't read everything in either of those series yet (currently on Book VIII in the Drizzt series, Book III in Moonshae, Book II in Starlight, and Book IV in Elminster).  And then on top of that, there are the 1-5E modules that have built upon the lore in the early novels that I have somewhat resigned to myself that I may never actually play.  I have also thought about finding ways to acquire the 2nd Edition and 3rd Edition campaign settings for even more information because in Elminster in Hell, which takes place in 1372 DR, 15 years (and 214 novels and short stories) between that and where I last left off with Drizzt in Starless Night in 1358 DR.  No, I am not going to be reading all of those books because that is a lot of books and I am pretty sure that I do not nearly enough time.

Sadly, we did not do much in the way of board games this year.  I did pick up the Ravenloft board game back in March and have played that a handful of times (lost every game, but it was still a lot of fun), but it is still a lot of time management with what time I do have to sit and play anything.  My days being as full as they are, especially weekdays, that unless I can lay in bed and play it, there is less of a chance that I will play said thing, which is probably why close to 85% of the video games I play are all handheld systems.

In health-related news, both Conklederp and I contracted some kind of non-COVID-related cold back in July; we both tested negative for multiple consecutive days, so we've managed to dodge that bullet yet again.  I also had cold-like symptoms brought on by undiagnosed asthma for a couple of months afterward until I decided to see a Dr. and now I have a couple of inhalers, but now at least I don't have a wheeziness when taking deep breaths or shortness of breaths from doing simple things like bouldering.  But this was also the year of Mpox and a resurgence of RSV cases in young babies (typically less than a year old). Again, thankfully The Squire is not in the range of ages for us to be overly concerned, still concerned mind you, just fortunate that it is likely that we would not need to rush to the ER.

I know that I could probably be more vocal about other social injustices such as the US Supreme Court's rolling back of women's healthcare rights and the continued attacks on People of Color by some angry manchild with an assault rifle.  Or having to worry about a foreign country claiming that my country doesn't actually exist and needs to be saved from a make-believe threat with bombardments from missiles, bombs, and frustrated soldiers' libidos.  And again, I come from a position of privilege where these are not things that I am assaulted with on a daily basis.  I wake up, I help take care of The Squire, I go to work, and I come home, there is more to it than just that, but you get the idea.

Let us end this Year in Review though on a similar note on how we came in, with two bits of generated data from both Nintendo and Steam about my tastes in video game genres:

This pretty much makes sense as I did play a lot of Final Fantasy X, Fortnite (only in the first quarter of this year), Skyward Sword, Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning, and Bayonetta 3.

Steam's analysis surprised me a bit.  I did spend a lot of time playing Dark Souls II in the end of this year (although some of that was offline so that apparently was not factored into any of this data), but I also spent 83.5 hours playing Borderlands 2 and 19.9 hours playing F.E.A.R., although I guess Borderlands counts as Loot here?  I know that This Way Madness Lies was the primary JRPG I played, although I did start up Cthulhu Saves the World back in January 2022 and played <1% of my total time playing through Steam, but I am surprised that Steam gives that my largest point on the spider graph.

To say nothing about my breakdown for games that I played on the 3DS and the Meta Quest 2.  I am actually pretty surprised that Meta did not come out with a personalized Year in Gaming analysis like Nintendo or Steam (as I am sure that Microsoft and Sony did the same with their respective consoles).  Maybe next year for Meta (if the company has not imploded by then?)

I was also very happy to kick off my multi-month series by looking at all 51 games packaged in Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1, released on the Nintendo DS back in 2010; not to be confused with Atari 50: The Anniversary Collection.  This was a fun albeit at times stressful series to put together, although I am not against doing something similar for the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection and would love to do it for Intellivision Lives! collection on the DS, but that game might be more difficult to track down, and significantly more expensive than I am willing to pay.

Looking ahead at 2023, I think I already know that a lot of my Steam Deck time will be taken up by Alan Wake and the standalone American Nightmare, followed by jumping back into Dark Souls III (after taking a Dark Souls break), then getting into Elden Ring.  But then Dead Space comes out in a few weeks and I am eagerly waiting to see how well that runs on the Steam Deck; oh, and The Callisto Protocol which has had a rocky first month that I am sure will be ironed out in time for Steam's Summer Sale.  And I am also thinking about buying/starting The Last of Us Pt 1 which will see a release outside of the PlayStation in March (likely to coincide with the HBO series), but I think I might only consider it if it is guaranteed that Pt. 2 will also be released.  On the Switch, I plan on finishing Bayonetta 3, then either getting back into Kingdoms of Amalur or taking a little break for action-oriented games and starting Live A Live, or Bravely Default II.  But then there are the 3DS and Wii U eShop closures happening in March and I am still waiting to see if any of the games I have on my respective wishlist go on sale so I do not end up spending upwards of $500.00 by paying full price for digital games that have been out for 10+ years.

It really just boils down to needing more time to play video games, but also more time to spend with Conklederp and The Squire.  I think it is really that work just gets in the way.  There is a solution: less work and more time to spend doing everything else without having to worry about finances.

Maybe I should buy a Lotto ticket. . .

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
To the Best Time of Your Life

Monthly Update: October, 2022

 

I think the biggest thing last month was that I finally acquired the Steam Deck I had reserved back in March.  I will likely have an entire article up about my experience with it beyond Steam, but all I have used it for so far is playing Steam games like Dark Souls 2, Vampire Survivors, The Binding of Isaac, and thomas was alone.  I just feel like I need to explore the depths of this system in regards to playing games that are labeled as unplayable and untested as well as the number of emulators that are available to play games outside of Steam.  But I am having a blast playing PC games that have been sitting in my Steam queue for the last 10 years while lying in my bed.

This then brings up another issue, time management.  Outside of lunch breaks (like the one I find myself in right now) and weekends, the time I have to play video games is primarily right after I wake up and right before I go to bed.  Before the Steam Deck (hereto abbreviated as BSD), I would play the Switch in the mornings, PC games before going to bed, then read while in bed, or the Switch if I forgot my Kindle downstairs or forgot to charge it during the day.  Now that I can play the Steam Deck in bed, I think I will need to figure out a personal schedule for when I play each system.  Although, like any Christmas Present Syndrome, I have been in fact playing Dark Souls 2 on the Steam Deck a lot this last month.  On the Switch, I did finish Final Fantasy X and the article went up back on September 23rd.  I then jumped into another long-winded RPG, this one a Western RPG, Kingdoms of Amalur-ReReckoning which I talked about on the 12th. 

On the 3DS, we have a bit of a project for you, or at least for those of you who are interested.  Over the last couple of months, I have been playing all of the games in the 2010 Nintendo DS release of Atari Greatest Hits Vol. 1, which is a collection of 51 Atari arcade and Atari 2600 games.  The goal was to play through all of the games and decide if they were games that I enjoyed and would likely play again in the future.  This project ended up coming out to 21 articles, with three of the articles being an introduction, a summary, and final thoughts, with the remaining 18 articles covering each of the games in the collection, broken down by system and genre.  I will be releasing an article every Friday starting October 7th, although there will be weeks skipped for when there needs to be a Monthly Update article.  Anyway, there will be a full introductory article where I lay out this entire plan and all of the games included, but I at least wanted to announce it here first before launching into this multi-week, multi-month-long project.

But now that I am finished with the Atari project on the 3DS, (yes, I know it's a DS game), I have gone back to Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies.  I was a little anxious because it had been a few months since I last played it and I was hoping that I was not going to be lost like I have been when I tried to go back to Dragon Quest VI after a multi-month-long absence.  Thankfully, because of the format that thus far has moved the story forward in a linear manner, I was able to clear the next two story dungeons and pick up where I had left off.

I have not played the Oculus, sorry, Meta Quest (since the app has officially changed its name) much mainly because I had been playing Final Fantasy X in the evenings after The Squire goes to bed.  I had jumped back into Layers of Fear, which is what prompted that article back in late August.  But Conklederp and I also have a lot of streaming shows we are watching right now, to say nothing about the shows we want to watch but have not started yet.  For the most part, we are keeping up with House of the Dragon, She-Hulk, The Rings of Power, and Andor.  And then the Willow series starts at the end of next month, and then The Bad Batch Season 2 at the beginning of January.  We still have not been out to see any movies in the theatre in over two years and our released movie-watching time has mostly been taken up by either streaming shows and other hobbies that can be done between 9:30 pm and 11pm.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/ Jaconian
Terror is the Only Light 

Monthly Update: September, 2021

 

Get the vaccine if you haven't yet and you are able to.

Get the vaccine even if you've already been diagnosed with COVID-19.

Wear a mask in public.

When going about your life, don't be a dick.  Unless that person being a dickwad is a white supremacist or any iteration thereof.  Then ask them to leave.  If they do not leave, destroy them.

I have gotten (back) into handheld gaming over the last month, and that was mainly because I decided to stop playing The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks which I finally got fed up with enough to (at least for the time being) call it quits.  And this was after playing the game for 34h 07m so it was not after only 15 minutes into the prologue and decided that I thought toon Link wasn't masculine enough to warrant my time.  I have an article in the works although I have found it a bit difficult to write, which seems to be a theme recently for some of the longer games I have played and actually finished.  I have two different articles started for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity after spending 92 hours on that game (not including the DLC that I have not yet purchased and likely won't) and it all depends on how I want to approach that article and really how many articles I want to write.  I also started one for Call of Cthulhu which should not take me too long if I just sit down for a couple of hours and plug away at it, then go back and do a final run-through to touch up all of the errors.

But yes, handheld gaming.  So after I pulled Spirit Tracks, I decided to play another game that I beat (see below) and now I am playing Professor Layton and the Unwound Future because I had nearly forgotten I had that game and I loved the two previous games, even if at times they made me feel like an idiot who could not figure out the proper change to give while working at a shoe store.  I am now two hours into that game and I do not think I will be doing a First Impressions article, and may just wait until I finish and do the Game EXP article.  I also whipped out the PSP and started God of War: Ghost of Sparta because those are some damn fun games and another one that I had purchased way before Conklederp and I got married (nearly seven years back) and I still never played it; mainly because I was hoping to finish God of War: Chains of Olympus but could never get passed the main boss on Normal difficulty.  Then while scouring the bookshelf where I keep the PSP discs, I found our DS Lites, charged them up and I could be ready to start in on Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones because my Game Boy Advance is apparently not wanting to power up.  I also briefly looked into modding my DS Lite to function as a Game Boy Macro because the top screen is 50% detached from the body of the system, being the primary reason I bucked for the 3DS, but that may be a bit too complicated for my Professor Layton-struggling mind, so I may put that off indefinitely.

But going back to games that I have stopped playing, let us revisit Saturday Morning RPG, and another game that I started last month that I have only briefly talked about on teh Twitter, Missing Features 2D.  I went back to Saturday Morning RPG a few weeks ago and found that I was actually having fun, but once a fight started, pulled the game from the Switch dock so that I could play in handheld mode so that I could use the touch screen for the sticker scratching mechanic.  I am pretty sad that this integrated mechanic that is integral to being successful at the game requires you to either scratch/rub the screen which is not as effective as jiggling the joystick back-and-forth as forcefully as you can with is not good for the life of the joystick (everyone who played 1080° Snowboarding is currently agreeing with me) and accept that you probably will not scratch all five stickers, or jiggle the joystick as mentioned above.  And with Missing Features 2D, I love the concept which is similar to Evoland's unlocking/discovering features common to RPGs, but here you are playing a 2D side scrolling platformer and like the title says, you unlock features as you progress through the stages.  I have reached the point in Stage 10 where it took me over an hour to beat a single stage.  While there are checkpoints throughout each stage, average between two to three, the game only saves after you beat a level, and I am not in the mood to dedicate my Switch to only having this game up while I try to beat a single stage.  Call me spoiled.

And if you have not caught up with our last series of articles, you will have missed that Conklederp and I binged through three games in the Escape First series (ES1, ES2, ES3) of video game escape rooms.  Over the course of nine days, we played one escape room a night until we blew through three games.  We then picked up Curious Cases, a story-driven set of three escape rooms following a singular story, but I think we needed a bit of a break because but we did start the game on Wednesday night and I know I will have some stuff to say in the Game EXP article, especially about the "save" functionality of a three part story.  I also finished Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir on the 3DS (article coming on that one sometime soon).  I also (finally) finished Mario's Super Picross on the SNES Online app on the Switch.  All 300 puzzles were completed although I did use some help on a handful of puzzles because I was either too impatient to mark only a single square on a 20x20 board, or I messed up at some point 32 minutes in and could not figure out where my mistake was.  What surprised me the most, was that for the Mario puzzles, I had completely forgotten about the rewind feature on the SNES Online app and there were a number of times I mistake my way into failing a puzzle.

Lastly, I have finally gotten library access on my Kindle and am blowing through Star Wars novels like there is no tomorrow.  I decided I would start with the ones that were being published leading up to The Force Awakens so I might have a couple Book Review articles coming up.  There might be an article per book for a couple and then I might lump others into one because I do not know if I will have time to read and write individual articles for five+ novels and a bunch of short story collections.  I will say though that I have been pretty surprised by the quality of some of the stories and will leave it at that (for now).

Oh, and I got a new job that I started yesterday.  So yay!   This might end up meaning that I only end up posting on Monday or Friday, and on Wednesdays.  But yay income!

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Behold My Art