Playing Video Games, Man!
Been getting back into playing games again between work. Here's what I've been playing lately:
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
Just finished this one shortly before I started writing this! I've got a soft spot for the R&C games going back to Size Matters on the PSP and A Crack in Time (which I wanna come back to someday). Rift Apart is good! It builds on what the PS4 remake did and feels solid to play. I can't remember much about the story or characters, but I've never played these games for the story tbh. These games usually thrive for me on their solid game design, and this one delivers on that front.
The graphical fidelity and snappy load times are nice as well, even if it doesn't feel like it's doing much (beyond the glitzy sometimes-working ray-tracing) that my PS4 couldn't do if it had faster bandwidth.
UFO 50
Probably the best $20-ish game I've bought since Sonic Mania. The general sales pitch I see people toss around for this one is "Action 52, but good" and yeah, that's pretty much what this is! You get 50 brand new full games in one box.
I'll admit: most of these games could probably have been their own uploads on a site like itch or Newgrounds, and I would have never played them. Having them as part of this package deal however is incredibly smart. I'm checking out so many cool ideas that I would have never thought to visit otherwise. It's also so much fun to send this game to friends and watch them discover things on their own.
My friend RecD invited me onto one of his streams last week to help host his playthrough of this game, and getting to hear him geek out over so many moments and discoveries made me remember why I like playing video games in the first place.
Also I need to check out Spelunkey someday. Never played it yet.
Tears of the Kingdom
I've been trying to give this one another go recently! It's fine. It's definitely got that Super Mario Galaxy 2 vibe of, "Breath of the Wild, but more", which is... fine. It's fine.
Looking at this game a while later, I think I'm also starting to understand why I didn't gel with it back at launch: it feels like "more" in all of the wrong places to me. Most of this game still feels too similar to BotW, yet is missing some of the design decisions that made BotW much snappier to play. There was no need to craft your weapons and ammo in BotW, or remember which items are in which layers (on top of which biomes) to find the thing you need: you could just find it or buy it in a store.
Building in this game is also a chore. Once I remembered that people had discovered building a quick "hoverbike" lets you cheese the game, I started doing that during my recent playthroughs and... yeah, you can pretty much cheese the game with it.
That all said, more Breath of the Wild is still more Breath of the Wild, and there's fun to be had here. I think time has helped to cool my frustration with this game at launch. It does make me wonder though if BotW was maybe the peak of both this approach to a Zelda game, and for the concept of open-world games in general.
To the Moon: Beach Episode
A very nice conclusion to the To the Moon/Sigmund Corp. story! Much better than Imposter Factory, which honestly had me scratching my head more than anything. This was much more straightforward, clear and concise. Not much I can add here that wouldn't spoil the story... so I'd say to just go check it out if you're caught up on the games!
Also, I love Roxie. Her character and what lies underneath is so much of me from another time, another place. Gotta draw some Roxie someday.
Klondike (iPod Classic)
I got caught up for about fifteen or twenty minutes sitting in my car and playing Klondike on my iPod.
I suck at Klondike. I've attempted about 20 games now and have won about 2. My win rate is at 10%. and yet I keep trying
I wish I had kept my iPod Nano 3rd Gen and all of the games I had bought for it back in the day. I played a lot of Sonic 1, Song Summoner and Peggle. Heck, the click wheel was the best way to play Peggle! I beat the entire game on that iPod during a lovely tropical cruise in 2008. There were many great memories made on that cruise that are far greater than Peggle of course, but it really did feel like Peggle was made for the iPod first.
I would eventually give that iPod as well as my other devices from that time to family in the following years, though looking back I wish I had valued them for longer than I did. I didn't think I would grow to have so much nostalgia for those devices and for that time. I was never thinking that far ahead, for better and for worse.
The iPod Classic that I now own was one I had picked up in around 2016/17 to use as a player in my car at the time, and these days it's recently found life again as a music player for my car, cuz it turns out the iPod still plays well with it.
And for Klondike. can't forget Klondike. I hate Klondike. And I love Klondike.
Next up I'm thinking of giving Pokemon Sun & Moon a revisit. Watching King's video made me want to give that game another look, as I remember both loving my first playthrough and also dreading the idea of coming back to it.
I've also got Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip, Parking Garage Rally and Going Nowhere: The Dream looking at me in my steam library. will maybe have more to write soon!