What games are you currently playing?

[PopuriAO29]

Playing Populous but with Flyff Universe

I used Mednafen (including Mednaffe) emulator for some reason, but I play it for PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16.

[The Jonster]

Started playing DDR: Mario Mix on my Wii. Going to polish the game off within a day or two and then I can shelve this one.

[Greengoop]

I’ve never heard of that game in my life, but it seems pretty epic!

[EdgyRabbid]

Started playing DDR: Mario Mix on my Wii. Going to polish the game off within a day or two and then I can shelve this one.

Be prepared to see the most batshit insane story ever If you’ve never played lol.


Anyways I’m gonna purchase Deltarune, but only go to the 3rd chapter because I have a crush on Tenna. The reason I’m not playing the rest of the game is because I FUCKING HAYE SPAMTON and cannot stand him. I will spend 30$ replaying the same section over and over again for this fuck ass tv guy.

[DaveRattlehead]

The last thing I played was a racing event organized by a relatively large GTA community. I couldn't practice at all since I was out for work, but some things stay with you to the grave... I beat the crap out of them

[Rsandee]

The last thing I played was a racing event organized by a relatively large GTA community. I couldn't practice at all since I was out for work, but some things stay with you to the grave... I beat the crap out of them

Hell yeah congrats! Which GTA game did you play? I might play some more GTA IV: BoGT or GTA V at some point, or revisited one of the older games.
The regular version of IV is the only one I completed a 100%.

[DaveRattlehead]

The last thing I played was a racing event organized by a relatively large GTA community. I couldn't practice at all since I was out for work, but some things stay with you to the grave... I beat the crap out of them

Hell yeah congrats! Which GTA game did you play? I might play some more GTA IV: BoGT or GTA V at some point, or revisited one of the older games.
The regular version of IV is the only one I completed a 100%.

It was in the PS5 version of GTA V. To be honest I prefer GTA IV, it's my favourite GTA game and arguably the best one in terms of story.

It was the first time in... 4/5 years? that I participated in something relatively "competitive" in that game and I enjoyed it a lot. The racing was intense, specially with the reversed grid (i.e., you start from the last position if you win the previous race). Had to do some interesting comebacks! I failed miserably in a couple of them though

[Rsandee]

Nice! That's some Verstappen-type stuff right there ^^
Yeah IV's story solidified it as my favorite as well!

[EdgyRabbid]

I’m in the first chapter of hypnospace outlaw rn and I’m obsessed. I really enjoy how fucking chaotic it can be and how there are multiple ways to solve puzzles!

[MrMcMelonLord]

I bought an N64 to replace my console that got stolen. Got Doom 64 for it and will be playing it once I get out of work.

[RayGamer99]

I’m smashing my way through DK Bananza right now, and it’s been awesome! Wrecking just about everything in sight is fine and all, but hunting down the Banandium Gems (or just a few Fossils) has been the best part of it so far.

[PopuriAO29]

Theme Hospital (including CorsixTH)

I later on play Theme Hospital on DOSBox. Although I play it on Demo version. Even though, I Do play CorsixTH as well.

Populous (back in 1989)

populous_019.png (10.03 KiB) Viewed 173 times

I never tried play Conquest mode, but I play a bit in Conquest mode which i went play it on BADACON password. Later on it has include Paint Map feature, only available when you play in Custom Game. The last level for Populous was KILLUSPAL (Battle Number is 999), rather than WEAVUSPERT (for console versions such as Sega Genesis/Mega Drive) for difficult part.

Both two games by Bullfrog Productions, I later on tried play Theme Hospital instead. and yet I found Japanese version though.

As for Populous expansion, there is which is named Populous: The Promised Lands, the PC Engine also included too.

[DaveRattlehead]

Can't wait to play Lies of P tomorrow! Any thoughts on this game?

[dr_st]

Just finished playing an awesome mod for the original Doom, believe it or not!
https://www.moddb.com/mods/dead-sea-scrolls

[Greengoop]

Can't wait to play Lies of P tomorrow! Any thoughts on this game?

I haven’t played it but I really want to check it out personally. My friend has and he says it’s great though.

[EdgyRabbid]

I’m playing good and evil right now. ITS SO FUCKING GOOD OH MY GOD. Peyj is my personal favourite.

Also here’s a photo I took that made me laugh more than he should’ve:

[eerieyuri]

Context
I feel like I haven't had much time to play games since the beginning of summer. I apologize for disappearing for so long without an explanation; I think I severely underestimated how difficult and time-consuming completing five classes over the summer would be. I haven't really had much time to play many games since around the time I stopped signing in to this forum for months, and as a result, I felt some desire to write about every game I had started before the summer, as I haven't played many of them since May/June and would like to get back into those I paused.

My intention was to finish some of these games before starting Rayman 1 since I did not want to have too much on my plate at once, but that ended up taking far longer than expected. I don't think I quite realized how much I lose focus on playing long-term games when faced with a lot of work as Jonster had previously alluded to, as although I did have free time, it was more so an issue of dedicating myself to continuing the games I had started previously. As stated, most of these were started around April/May and are still unfinished; I hope to go back to those I haven't finished yet.

The paragraphs below may be a little repetitive and incoherent, as it took a while to chronicle all of it. The games are listed in chronological order by date started, but I wrote them out-of-order; it's most easy to tell from the fact that the later ones become much longer than those written first.


Kingdom Hearts (1) Final Mix
I had never played any of the Kingdom Hearts games despite having the PS4 collection for a while and decided to start playing them. The gameplay is really fun and I find exploring the worlds in an action-RPG setting really charming; since it's more oriented towards less hardcore RPG players, I feel like I can reasonably progress without needing to grind, though I have been playing in Proud mode. I stopped for a few weeks after finishing Atlantica, then did Halloween Town and Neverland, stopped again for a few weeks before doing the first part of Hollow Bastion (up to the part where you fight Riku), and haven't gone back to it since.

I seem to have a really bad habit of stopping RPGs for a really long time right when I'm in the home stretch, so I might be really close to the end, but I don't know. When I go back, I really want to complete the last Coliseum battle, since I've only done two of the three and I see (presumably, according to the trophy list) that there's a keyhole I can seal if I complete the final Coliseum battle.

I used the Coliseum to level my party up some amount since by the end of Neverland, I was starting to really struggle taking out large hordes of enemies without punishing losses. The difference between Neverland and Hollow Bastion was around three stars of difficulty, if I recall, so I felt like I needed to dedicate some time leveling up before proceeding. After experiencing some of the enemies there, I don't think it is too tough for my level, but I'd really like to explore more of the game before going any further. I have around 25 hours of playtime up to this point.


The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Original)
I was somewhat interested in replaying this since there was a remaster which released around the time and I had a desire to play the game before that as well. My modded installation from the previous time I played was already set up, so it luckily didn't take too long to start (spending hours downloading mods.) I didn't really know how far I would go, but I just wanted to explore the world a bit more since I felt like I rushed to the end rather quickly my first time playing.

People usually joke about wasting time doing side quests while the main quest looms over the background, but in the case of this game, I feel like the main quest constantly pushes you forward with urgency, perhaps to its detriment. I feel like one of the major factors which led to me hardly exploring the world is that I felt like the main quest would constantly hamstring me to complete the next objective immediately and never let me immersively take my time (as in it would break my immersion to be completing inconsequential personal goals in relation to the game's story.) I did kind of fall for the same trap at the beginning of just doing one main quest after another, but after a certain point, I turned my focus to exploring parts of the map which interested me; in particular, one of the quests I had gained from having some content installed was a property at the southmost point of the map which you basically never need to travel to, so I ended up traveling from the northmost point to the southmost point; the game features fast travel, and while I sometimes found myself inclined to use it last time, I especially wanted to not use it this time, and considering some of the environments I encountered on my trek, I'm glad I didn't.

Apparently this game has an issue with level scaling. I played the game blind on my first time, and this time, the only knowledge I really had was that of my first playthrough. I remember on my first playthrough, I was struggling severely to kill anything by the end where I would constantly run from encounters, readily use quick saves/loads, and use any sort of cheese to get to the next area. On that first playthrough, I was concerned I wouldn't be able to actually finish the game since I had passed a point of no return and was stuck fighting the final boss with everything in my current inventory at level 4, but after a lot of trial and error, I managed to do so by injecting them with 50 million (exaggeration) types of poison tipped on an enchanted blade I saved in addition to paralysis on the last few hits so they could not heal themselves before their bar reached zero. This time around, actually being aware of the level scaling, I tried to vary my equipment so I would not be restricted to one method of offense, and on occasions, I would intentionally not sleep to prevent leveling. I actually did notice how different enemy types began to appear once my level increased a certain amount.

There are some interesting locations on the map with neat quests to do, but a lot of them might be considered a little shallow by today's standards (I'm fine with this; I more so appreciate them as curiosities which further flesh out the world.) I think my general criticism with this game's open world is that it feels rather dead outside of the few areas demarcated on the map, with some exceptions, and thus I feel little desire to explore past the paths on the map. That being said, I do really love the dream-like quality of the world in this game; some areas seem particularly surreal and dreamy, aided in no small part by the musical score. I still think a lot of XB360 era games can look nice today, and while a lot of parts in this game are objectively dated, I still think it looks pretty good (I'm definitely biased since my main console was a Wii and everything more technologically advanced has always seemed "nice" to me.) Despite how much certain parts might be dated, the only real issue I have with the game's lack of modernity is the terrible render distance; seeing trees so close cull in/out is so jarring and shatters my illusion when I notice it---unfortunately, very commonly. For some reason, I have very little recollection of this happening the first time I played the game. This issue seems like the kind of thing which could be fixed with a mod, meaning I'm sure there is one to resolve it since these games are known for their modding communities. If a mod addressing it exists, I simply have not found it yet.

I forgot how nice the music sounds in this game despite playing it for around 20 hours the first time. As mentioned before, it does a great job of establishing a world both fantastical and chimerical in a way which I guess still feels grounded in reality (I'm not sure how grounded in reality this universe is supposed to be since this is the only game in the series I've really played for longer than a few hours.) It's the kind of music which is so atmospheric and luscious where I would feel compelled to listen to it outside the game even if I haven't been able to experience it in the context of the game yet.

I would probably elaborate more on my in-game experience, but I can't recall specific events well enough to recount them in detail like some of the other games here.


Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon (3DS Version)
I really love the concept of the Luigi's Mansion series, so I've naturally always been interested in the games. I used to watch so many videos of the GameCube version before playing through it myself in an emulator that I feel like I know most of the rooms in that game like the back of my hand.

Because of this, one of the first games I bought when I first had a Switch was Luigi's Mansion 3, and though I really enjoyed what I played, my console developed stick drift shortly after starting where the game became unplayable and I had to send it to Nintendo for "repair" (where I believe they just swap it out entirely with a new system since it emails me that I've registered a new system to my account each time I set up the returned Switch.) I have a Switch Lite, so even though in the case of joy-con drift, I could continue playing the game, I was physically incapable of playing the game while the entire system was gone, meaning I couldn't progress in the game for two weeks. When I finally received the system again, the sticks developed drift within a single session, and I had to send the system to Nintendo again. By the time I actually had an opportunity to play Luigi's Mansion 3, it had been a month since I initially started, so I lost all motivation to play it.

More recently, I added a 3DS to my system collection, meaning I finally had access to a lot of 3DS games I had always wanted to play, one of which was Luigi's Mansion 2. Since someone else who I live with owns a 3DS, they already had a collection of 3DS games I could play, one of which was Luigi's Mansion 2. I really wanted to continue playing the Luigi's Mansion series still, and this seemed like a great opportunity.

At this point, my 3DS was already modded. For some systems, I hesitate with modding them, but in the case of the 3DS, the moment I learned it was region-locked unless you explicitly modded it, I felt like I had no choice but to go through with the procedure and therefore did it quickly after it fell into my possession. One benefit of a modded 3DS is that you can rip the contents of a ROM to turn it into a CIA which can be installed to a 3DS SD card and played like a digitally-purchased game, even after the closure of the 3DS eShop. (I know there are other methods of obtaining digital 3DS games after the eShop closure, but I did not use them.)

From what I played of Luigi's Mansion 2, it was more fun than I had anticipated. People seem to be really negative about this installment in particular due to its mission structure and (I suppose) overall linearity, but I feel like it still keeps a lot of the appeal in doing so, even if I don't think it's an ideal setup for this type of game. Messing around with the 3D was somewhat neat considering the original plans for 3D in the GameCube game, and I'd definitely say LM2 was one of the games where I was closest to perceiving any significant difference between non-3D and 3D (where I would keep the slider on for intervals longer than a minute), though I struggle so much to perceive almost all 3D with the 3DS where I can't say it transformed the experience very much.

I closed the game for another time, and then when I came back the next day, my SD card was having trouble being read. With a normal cartridge 3DS game (which I don't want to use since it would require taking the save on that cartridge), this would not be an issue, but when the digital 3DS games are installed to the SD card, this meant that almost all the icons on the menu had disappeared. At first, I thought the SD card had corrupted and I had lost all of my save data, however, the files remain intact when viewed on a computer and would eventually read as they had before. The problem I was faced with now is that my SD card was not being read consistently by the system.

On a future attempt of playing the game, the SD would stop reading in the middle of the game, causing the entire game and system to crash and reboot. As you might imagine, for a game where you partake in 30+ minute missions without the opportunity to save until the very end, this could be very problematic. Faced with these issues, I felt like I wasn't able to continue the game until I was able to find a better SD card for use in my 3DS, and I dropped the game, though hopefully I can go back to it soon since my SD card seems to be reading better nowadays, only having the issue when being inserted.


Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (Anniversary Collection)
Like with some of these other gaming series I've mentioned, I've always been interested in trying out the Castlevania series, especially Symphony of the Night and Rondo of Blood (which I own as well, but don't want to play until I've finished the anniversary collection), so I thought I would tackle Castlevania II next. I finished the first Castlevania many months ago through extreme use of save states (I don't believe the collection features rewind), which I probably would have been more opposed to in the past, but nowadays, I'm more interested in experiencing the game than challenging myself, especially with unforgiving NES games.

Initially, I was going to play the game blind with no outside information. I did stumble around the world for around 30 minutes, exploring the areas immediately accessible off the outskirts of the first village. Through talking with the NPCs, I vaguely understood that I needed to find some tower as well as some object to reveal the path in this tower. It's been so long where I don't remember exactly how it went, but I found the tower first, seeing an impassible death pit, turned around and eventually found the key object, then eventually figured out after more stumbling about that I could use the key object to reveal platforms over that pit and progress further into the tower. By doing so, I received the first piece of Dracula, but from here on out, I had absolutely no clue what I was required to do.

While I'm mentioning how I would run around without knowing what the game wanted of me next, I appreciate how ambitious some of the elements in this game were (or at least felt), like day/night cycle where stronger monsters come out at night, villages with items of varying usefulness and with hints which can, at the very beginning, reasonably guide you while not telling you exactly what to do, and how the villages at night transition into danger zone. (I distinctly remember entering a village for the first time but not realizing it since it was night, so I thought I had entered some kind of old ruins.) The music is also great: for a game with so few tracks, the developers really did a great job at making them sound catchy where I wouldn't mind having to listen to them repeatedly for long periods of time.

At this point, I felt like I had no choice but to use a guide, and I basically relied on that guide from here on out, since everything after the first tower seems ridiculously obtuse. For one, I'm sure it was a good way to incentivize replays when games from this era were so costly that you would buy very few, but I don't like how by exploring naturally at the beginning without fully understanding what the game wants you to do, you have basically locked yourself out of getting the good ending since the entire game is running on a semi-hidden time limit---it's not hidden in the sense that the day/night cycle makes it clear how much time you have left if you know about it, but it is hidden in that the game never tells you about it. More egregiously, the NPC hints aren't necessarily unhelpful, but most of the helpful NPCs are now buried under floors in village houses which you need to manually destroy Metroid-style to uncover most of the useful information. Even when you get their hints, the tasks they expect you to perform based off them are obtuse to a point of near indecipherability without A LOT of messing around with your items in random spots and many times you won't know what the spot is. The worst offender of these are the optional hint books which are basically intended to guide you from place to place assuming you aren't using a guide that tells you where to go, since their spots can be completely arbitrary and defy any reasonable expectation of where a player might search for collectibles.

The player needs to accumulate a lot of items in order to achieve their goals, where many of these items must be purchased from NPCs in shops using currency dropped by enemies, but unfortunately, while the game features infinite continues, you lose all of your currency on every game over. By playing with save states, I could avoid most instances of not being able to afford the next required item in the sequence, however, this seems like it would be really annoying considering how expensive some of the items start to get later in the game, especially since you are operating on a schedule where the village vendors close at night and you have a finite number of day/night cycles to achieve the good ending. As my progress currently has gone, not only am I on track for the non-good ending, but I might have already passed the number of cycles, but I still would like to see it through to the end. I might try again after finishing the first time, since it should be significantly easier to finish under that time threshold knowing exactly what I need to do and therefore being more efficient, but I'm not sure if I want to replay the entire game for that sole purpose.

Sonic Adventure DX (Completion from February)
In terms of achievement-tracked progress, my first experience with this game was in 2020, but I ended up starting a new save file since I wanted to replay the game (and transferring my old save file would have been a lot of trouble.) A lot of people seem to think the game hasn't aged well, but I like Sonic Adventure a lot. Its PC experience can be great despite being based on a terrible port job in the vanilla release using the Dreamcast Conversion modpack; you can add other mods, but I feel like the conversion mod alone offers a definitive experience which maintains basically everything one could want from the original game, not just because it strives to be like the original Dreamcast version more than its future releases, but also since most of its changes can be toggled in the settings so one could enable/disable any feature they'd like.

Last year, I finished all of the stories within a few days since they're pretty straightforward---even Big the Cat, who has a drastically different playstyle, can be finished within an hour. The main obstacles for me in this completion were the Chao races (mostly), the sky chase minigames, and motivating myself to achieve A rank on all of the stages (which is more time-consuming than it is difficult.) In February, I managed to use a glitch I knew of referred to as the animal glitch where you keep placing and picking up an animal in front of a Chao so that it gains animal's stat boost without being consumed, therefore letting you use it infinitely to quickly reach level 99 in any stat (besides energy.) The Chao I did this on already had an energy stat of level 10 which is already suitable for all of the races, so within two hours, I was able to go from having very low stats to all level 99 performance stats and finishing all of the races for all of the emblems.

That the Chao races are so time-consuming has always been the biggest obstacle in me finishing this game I think, so I very quickly after completed a lot of the other tasks: I achieved all of the minigame emblems by using a technique in sky chase where I would manually lower my game resolution to be smaller, which I believe may have been unnecessary because of my mod configuration, but at least in the base game: the Steam port is so terrible that the aiming reticle is not configured to properly cover the screen properly making it nigh-impossible to achieve the score threshold in the vanilla game. I collected all of the adventure field emblems, a task which was never difficult but which I had never tried since it wouldn't mean much until I collected the other emblems. I completed all of the A ranks for every character besides Sonic, as Sonic has the most stages and it would at least mean I wouldn't have to play the other gameplay styles anymore. After this, I took a break for a while since I did not immediately go back to the game.

Sometime around the beginning of June, not having much of an idea which game I wanted to play, I decided to go back to SADX to collect the rest of the A ranks. The only trouble I had in doing them were related to some of the later stages having quirks in their actual design and not really related to the missions. After this, I played the mission mode which I likewise had never played before since it didn't seem worthwhile unless I was truly going for everything. There were some annoying missions, but honestly, I'm just glossing over all of this since it was simply an endurance test at this point to replay the same stages over and over completing what amounted to menial tasks. Even after unlocking Metal Sonic, having an achievement to earn rank A on all missions was basically just asking me to replay rank A for every Sonic stage again. This final process was very straightforward but also draining in retrospect. I'm thankful that I really was in the mood to play the game at the time since it fit the summer heat very well; looking back, I don't know how I would be able to maintain interest in playing when being tasked to play the same few stages repeatedly with very minor stipulations which are not very challenging.

I overall enjoyed my time playing this, but I do not think I would ever try completing it again unless incidentally. The only rewards obtained along the way are Metal Sonic, a reskin of Sonic in every way, and the Game Gear collection, which is admittedly neat, but since the game files contains all of the Game Gear games, you could always obtain them using a community tool to play them in an external emulator... also they're Game Gear games, and while they can be a nice novelty, I don't think many people are that interested in Game Gear games where they would go out of their way to play them, no less slog through dozens of repetitious missions with little substance for the privilege of accessing them.


Puyo Puyo Fever 2 (English Translation)
I had been playing through the mainline Puyo Puyo games in chronological order and was looking forward to playing this one, but I was waiting for a good time to do so in order to fully enjoy it. Starting in December of last year, I played Puyo Puyo (1) and Puyo Puyo Tsu through the Nintendo Switch arcade releases with a desire to try all of the games, especially the later console games: Fever, Fever 2, and 7. I wanted to fully experience each game since each of them has their own unique story mode scenario(s) and, over time, introduce a lot of features from game-to-game which are evolutionary to a degree which makes going back to the older versions more difficult. This desire stemmed from having a lot of fun playing the Puyo Puyo Tetris games, enjoying versus puzzle games very much.

Since the only games which have been released outside of Japan are 1, 2, and Fever (5) before Puyo Puyo Tetris (PPT), I ended up having to turn to fan translations. My initial intention was to use the PSN to buy the PlayStation games, but I ended up accidentally stumbling upon the full PC release of Puyo Puyo Sun's translation when trying to find the translation since it was bundled with the translation itself---technically, since the original developer, Compile, had most of their assets bought by Sega due to bankruptcy and are no longer the copyright holders of Puyo Puyo, including PP Sun, the PC version could be considered abandonware, which I suppose is the justification used for it to be distributed so freely. I ended up playing this version, and shortly after, found that the only available translation patch of ~n (4) was through a Dreamcast. Since I do not own a Dreamcast and have little desire to buy a Dreamcast as well as a copy of the game for the sole purpose of playing this one game, I had the translation running in Flycast. Since this is completely unrelated to my experience playing the game I was initially talking about, I'll just conclude this by saying there was a lot of discovery and messing around with different versions of games on different platforms and modding translation patches needed to play each game in English since Sega has yet to <internationally release>/localize any of the older games prior to PPT. I used the PS2 version of the game since it is the only one with a translation currently available, but there is also a new PSP translation being worked on right now which will hopefully be complete, as the PS2 translation is only a beta which translates the story and not much else.

I think Fever 2 is my favorite mainline Puyo Puyo game so far, having not played any of the games following yet. It does a really good job of expanding on what I saw as the shortcomings of the original Fever while maintaining it style; in a way, I feel like it almost directly supercedes it, where if I had the choice of playing Fever 2 or Fever 1, I would likely choose Fever 2---not to imply Fever 1 is bad, as I think it's still quite good, even if a little limited. I really love the art stylization of the Fever subseries which Fever 2 mostly carries over from Fever 1 while tweaking it to perhaps appear more "clean" (the exaggerated distortion of character proportions one could argue was part of the style of the first Fever, so some might dislike the changes made to it); in a way, the art style of Fever 2 is like a transition between the style of Fever and the modern-day style seen in games like 20th Anniversary (which was reused in the Puyo Puyo Tetris subseries.)

I appreciate how Fever 1 brought back multiple arcade courses (in the form of easy, normal, and hard courses, but really only normal and hard since easy is basically a three-stage tutorial) and how they are simplified enough to not feel as if they drag, making them replayable. The Fever ruleset is an honestly brilliant twist on the original game that changes so much with a few changes, chiefly among which is that your attacks can be countered with single chains and used against you, making paying attention to what your opponent is doing at all times and setting off chains at proper times more vital than ever before. I'm glad free battle continues to remain after being introduced in ~n, as my primary way of playing is to boot the game up to play quick rounds against the CPU, so I find myself not going back to games before ~n as much since I usually do not have it in me to play the entire arcade mode if I want to do versus against the computer.

The world Fever introduces, Primp, is interesting and has a colorful cast of characters, but it feels like the game hardly explores any of it and you are only able to witness very limited interactions between these characters. What doesn't help with this is that the menus are primarily static and do not feel like they let you experience the world the game presents you with. Creating versus matchups is the closest I feel like I am able to influence or take part in the world, yet it almost feels like I'm simply playing versus in an abstract void with hardly any other activities to do once I do not want to play versus through either free battle or arcade. It's kind of difficult to describe this feeling, but imagine if in Smash Bros., the only thing you could do was play battles: it's fun for some time, but the experience feels like it's missing something and has no long-term incentive for playing longer past unlocking a few quickly-earned objectives. Two arcade courses means there are only two scenarios (which involve completing the same main objective as different characters, even if the way route they go about it is different) and does not offer enough variety to be especially replayable. The game feels like it lacks long-term incentives or objectives to keep you coming back, not just because there is no save feature beyond tracking high scores, but also since there is not even basic feedback for playing a lot such as a playtime tracker or point system. The lack of feeling part of the world is problematic, as I find that Puyo Puyo works best with both the puzzle gameplay and the world and characters working in tandem to create the whole experience: almost like peanut butter and jelly.

I didn't have these exact specific thoughts after playing Fever 1---I enjoyed it quite a bit---but I would be lying to say I didn't feel like it was content-light: a great base that hadn't been built upon. When I say Fever 2 fixed most of my issues with Fever 1, I really do mean it. One of Fever 2's biggest focuses is placing a bigger emphasis on the town of Primp, where every menu is contextualized in the game world as a building: the settings is the Town Hall, the arcade is the School, the versus mode is a Park, etc. Each of these areas features a light interaction between the character who normally resides at the area and another character usually (if no one else is there, you can interact with the character yourself), and the presence of characters is determined by who you have recently played against (and presumably beaten) in the story/arcade mode. I found that I would constantly see new characters in different spots with new interactions between either me and the character or two characters in the area after each story course. On the topic of story courses, there are now three playable characters, and each character has three unique story courses (though once again, it's really two since the first is a tutorial and this tutorial is basically repeated across all three characters, totaling six scenarios.)

One feature I noticed immediately is that the game has multiple save files with both a name and a time tracker; I probably do sound somewhat insane acting like a time counter is an innovative feature, but with a game like this that you are meant to come back to a lot and which would benefit greatly from incentives to play battles in any way to practice or simply for fun, such incentives can go a long way. Similarly, each battle rewards you with points, multiplied by factors such as difficulty, which can then be used to buy items from a shop. This shop primarily sells consumables, but I found that the game showers you with a lot of consumables if you interact with characters around the map over the course of the game. As you interact with characters and receive their items, those items seem to also start appearing in the shop, so that may be how you are intended to unlock them. These consumables can be used to give you a boost in arcade battles against the computer: one of the story courses or in the sky tower, which is a mode intended to mimic the "tower" setup of Puyo Puyo Tsu (whose pun of "2" as "Tsu" directly translates to "Tower".) Personally, even though some of the consumables have really useful effects, I haven't found myself using them that much---I just find myself more stricken by how neat it is to have these mechanics available. At the point I am, I have around 6000 credits, and now that I am taking on the tower, I have the ability to buy continue coins which seem like they could be legitimately very useful as I struggle with reaching the higher floors, so I might end up spending a lot of them.

Over the course of playing the game, I also found myself unlocking a lot of different types of content viewable in the Town Hall and Precise Museum, ranging from basic extras you'd expect in most other games---sound tests, replays, viewing the consumable items you've accumulated in a permanent chronicle---and more interesting pieces which help in expanding the world of Primp and the characters who live in it greatly---art pieces completely unique to the gallery, letters from different characters for achieving certain accomplishments/milestones, and small minigames. A lot of these bonuses could be considered minor individually, but together, they go a long way in giving me incentive to explore different parts of the game, play in ways I would never have considered, and overall feel like the game world is providing feedback as I continue to engage with it by playing battles. At this point, I've clocked around seven hours of playtime, and I seem to have unlocked only around half of the letters and am missing many of the consumables in my chronicle, even after having finished every course in the story, giving me ample reason to continue replaying the story courses and to try going for higher scores in the process.

Though I really appreciate having more character interactions across the world, I do still wish there were more. While I found myself constantly seeing new interactions throughout my playthrough of all the different unique courses, it seems like the dialogues have began to stagnate now that I've finished them, leading me to see the same few interactions in each of the areas.

My gushing over the extra content this game offers is one of the main reasons I'm really excited for the PSP translation: as I alluded to, the PS2 translation I played is incomplete and only ever translated the story, the dialogue, and some other minor parts: around enough to make navigating the menu feasible. The overwhelmingly majority of bonus content is still in Japanese, meaning I am not able to fully enjoy it at the moment. Furthermore, I do simply think this game suits the form factor of the PSP very well, and I believe that every Puyo Puyo game on the PSP is a console-perfect port of the PS2/Wii version... except for Puyo Puyo 20th Anniversary, as that was only released on handhelds, meaning the PSP is basically the closest to a home console version. I'm looking forward to coming back to this game, but I will probably do so on the PSP, as not only do I prefer its form-factor for this kind of game, but I also do not enjoy playing games long-term through emulators---I mainly view them as a means to experience games in a more accessible way, but not as the preferred way to keep coming back them.

I probably wouldn't say this under normal circumstances---if I did not have some (presumed) anonymity here, I assume some would want to figuratively crucify me for "implying" the other games are "inferior"---but I might consider this to be my favorite game I played this summer. Some of the other ones were extremely fresh and extraordinary to me---Kingdom Hearts---and some I might have more fond memories looking back at in the future since they suited the atmosphere of summer much better---Sonic Adventure (and its music)---but there was something indescribably special about this game which made it a very fun experience, perhaps related to its addressal of Fever 1's faults, though I'm not really sure.


Team Sonic Racing
I ended up starting this game because I like the other Sonic racing games a lot and I wanted to play Sonic Adventure 2 but I thought it was too soon since I had just completed Adventure and I did not want to be burnt out before I could finish it. Earlier in the year, I completed the PC version of Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, which does not feature traditional external achievements but does feature a checklist which functions near-identically. I specify the PC version because unlike consoles, this version is offline only and thankfully has no online-related checklist tasks. I also fully completed Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed in the past; I think both of them are pretty good racing games, and with the new game coming later this year, I thought it made sense to visit this entry now.

I don't think I like this game very much relative to SEGA All-Stars Racing and All-Stars Racing Transformed. It's too reliant on the team mechanic where the solo racing becomes substantially less fun than the prior entries and when you do use the team racing, you either have to deal with computer players in your team, or if you have human players to fill those roles, you are playing against computer player teams which are not capable of coordinating as well as human players. Even worse, because the game has a key focus on team racing, the entire story mode is both team racing AND singleplayer, meaning you need to complete every single objective by yourself while dealing with computer players. Despite these conditions, you still have mission objectives in the campaign which require none of your teammates to be eliminated in an elimination race, which is almost as horrible as it sounds. I thought these would be very bad, but a workaround I found was to complete the primary objectives in Hard so I would receive credit for finishing in Hard, and then I could lower the difficulty to the easiest possible to collect the key related to not having any teammates eliminated; having to replay every mission twice is a little time consuming but the time and frustration in doing so is nowhere close to the amount one would face if they tried to do both at once.

As I previously alluded to, the solo racing is inferior to the prior games as well because much of comeback system (items, speed, computer difficulty) remains designed around team racing, meaning: you come to a complete halt when an item hits you (meant to be overcome by a teammate's slipstream), dragging you back into the pack and ensuring you'll be pelted by more items. Considering the hardware difference between the platforms for this newer game and the previous games, I feel insane for saying this, but I swear that the previous games, at least Racing Transformed, had better visuals and cleaner-looking models. In an objective sense, I'm probably wrong, but there's definitely something about the UI and models that just looks... off in a way I did not think the other games suffered. The first game definitely looks like a XB360/PS3 game, but its art style, sound design, and much else of its presentation is so reminiscent of arcade games that it just works well in spite of that.


Sonic Adventure 2
Following Sonic Adventure, I had a desire to play Sonic Adventure 2, which I had actually never played before. For some reason, I seemed fixated on fully completing Sonic Adventure before playing this one, which I suppose makes sense for a sequence of games where the sequel is superior in every way and basically replaces the previous entry, but that definitely was never the case for this game. I was still on a Sonic high, so I was in favor of playing Sonic Adventure 2 despite finding the last parts of completing Sonic Adventure to be a total drag, but I also did not want to start too closely to my experience with the previous game and I therefore wanted to wait a few weeks at least.

One day, I did want to start it, but I thought about how I had so many games I had not finished which I needed to go back to; despite my hesitation, I decided to just play it regardless and not care so much about the other games I have on my backburner since it really was the game I wanted to play at that moment in time. I definitely can say now that doing so was the best choice, as I enjoyed a lot about the game and felt like I could play the game for my own sake instead of trying to fulfill some arbitrary quota; I feel like I otherwise would have just continued to have "gameplay paralysis" and not make progress in anything in addition to not trying anything new.

I haven't gone back to spend time replaying and exploring the stages yet, so all of my playtime was confined to my experience with the game's three stories. I completed the Hero story in one four hour session on the first day, completed the Dark story in one three-and-a-half hour session on the next day, and then completed the Last story in a final session on the third day. I was surprised by how many of the story beats I was already familiar with and how many of the stages I already knew of simply from exposing myself to this game a lot over the years despite never actually playing it, but it was also really nice to see play out continuously instead of piece-by-piece. I really liked how the story missions flowed from one scenario to the next; I never found it jarring changing between gameplay styles from one stage to the next or when the style was the same from one stage to the next.

Unsurprisingly, the music was also very good, feeling like a natural continuation of Sonic Adventure's soundtrack. I definitely couldn't say which I prefer since I have only sparingly heard Adventure 2's music thus far and did not remember all of it off-hand from only spending a few days playing so far. My main criticism with the music is a lack of variety---while the idea of each character having their own musical motif is great on paper, it doesn't hold up as well when four of the six characters have rock music and it all starts to blend together from playing back-to-back. Disregarding personal opinion on which has more tracks I like, Adventure probably has the better soundtrack by virtue of having more variety since both have their share of very good tracks where individual track quality would not determine it alone.

In terms of the story, some of the darker elements were a little jarring considering the tone of the previous game, but for the most part, it did a good job of raising the stakes as the difficulty of the stages escalated alongside it. The way in which some voice lines were delivered took some of the tension away from the presentation: for example, when Tails tells Dr. Eggman that he will never forgive him for killing Sonic, the way Tails says this line sounds off-putting and silly in a way which makes it difficult to take the scene seriously. Conversely, the higher stakes made the last story much more engaging than that from Sonic Adventure (Super Sonic story): the struggles between Sonic and Shadow and later them against the Biolizard felt like they had meaningful consequences for the rest of the game's world. I thought that having each stage be directly meaningful to progress the plot was a big improvement. That the characters are always working together or toward the same goal indirectly makes the different playstyles feel justified instead of being shoehorned in, and since they were narrowed down to three from the six of the original game, they do feel as if they've been tuned to fit the speed most people would want out of these games... well, except for treasure hunting, which is arguably the opposite. I don't know how I feel about the treasure hunting; I did see how the community had created mods to restore the functionality of the Adventure radar where all three pieces can appear at once, but I did not use it since I felt like that would completely break the intended design. I'm sure the limitations of this radar will bother me if/when I decide to go for the A ranks, but until then, I thought the stages were fine enough to work with the single-piece radar (for the most part.)

[Master]

If I may make a suggestion, rather than bolding the game titles, could you perhaps use them as
headings?

There are some games in the list that I'd genuinely be interested to read your thoughts on but it's a bit hard to read through everything as there's no clear gap between what you've said for different games.

[eerieyuri]

If I may make a suggestion, rather than bolding the game titles, could you perhaps use them as
headings?

There are some games in the list that I'd genuinely be interested to read your thoughts on but it's a bit hard to read through everything as there's no clear gap between what you've said for different games.

Okay, thank you for the suggestion. I just changed it to be more readable. I agree that it was difficult to tell where each section started and ended before.

[Master]

Ah much obliged, so I noticed you went through the Sonic Adventure duology, I also went through those during COVID for the first, after, much like yourself, seeing it around and also being exposed to the OSTs. Though it sounds like you went a lot further than I did, as I only did casual runs of both titles, as I didn't really have the patience to grind out full completion...and when I say didn't have the patience, I mean I skipped Big's story cause I just couldn't get past the fishing mechanics.

Sonic Adventure 2 definitely felt like a well needed streamlining and refinement following the first game, though I don't know if I was too keen on the walker segments, they made sense for Eggman but I kinda wish Tails still had his own style. As for the tone, yeah I think SA2 probably is only beaten by Shadow the Hedgehog in try-hardness, but given the time period it came out, I think it tracks. Definitely a bit cringe, but contextually speaking, kinda makes sense and I think it definitely still has its own lasting legacy as a consequence. Completely agreed about the treasure hunting though, I get wanting to give players a challenge, but I think it felt very much like padding near the end.

Chao Garden I dabbled with but I think it's a whole different game in of itself what with the digital pet mechanics.