What Did We Play Yesterday?

Well I completely forgot to check in on Farm Together's latest seasonal event, leaving me with 2 days to get the goods. It was done in a day, thanks to the generosity of a few megafarmers who have massive seasonal crop fields set up for the purpose of grinding. Bless.

Coming back to this game, I realize I have a bit of a diamond bottleneck. I want to unlock more land, and it looks like leveling the mines might be the best way to get diamonds. I'll have to poke around a bit.

Poked around at various games but focused mainly on Mr. Do! The gameboy version is my favorite but the SNES port is great too. Of all the arcade maze games this one is the most interesting. There's more versatility in gameplay (scramble for cherries for a quicker game, trap and kill monsters to get more points, break all the apples to get to the diamond) and a lot more level variety than Dig Dug, which starts to feel samey very quickly. Anyway, I was trying for the Retroachievements but kept doing stupid things so I only got about 2/3 of them. One day.

I've been noodling around with R-Type Leo, which is isn't considered a "real" R-Type but rather a gaiden game. It does play differently, though the environmental puzzles are there, it feels a little like Thunder Force but with more things that crush you. It's a beautiful game, and the lush planetary levels are a very welcome change of pace to industrial levels IMO.

I played Gyruss on an original cabinet a few weeks ago, and decided to give some of the ports a spin. I really like the NES port. I don't have many pictures to add because I get so into it I keep forgetting to take screenshots. Enjoy this bald evil dude I guess.

I recently went on a Gradius-like shmup kick and decided to focus my efforts on the NES. Over Horizon is a really cool horizontal shooter with a DIY option to customize your ship. I love the graphics on this one and the environmental puzzles are clever and interesting. You can fire forward and backwards, and part of the strategy is knowing (or anticipating) environmental hazards and knowing what side of the screen enemies will emerge. It has infinite continues, which I greatly appreciate as I'm currently stuck on stage 4.

This one never got an NA release maybe that's why it has flown under the radar, I'd never heard of it before. Well worth checking out.

I beat Hades on my 15th run! It feels really good!

Ironically, I'd started this run thinking I'd take a break from the game for a while, and I almost quit early on because I felt like I got a bad start, but I snagged some complimentary boons that ended up being OP and let me focus entirely on dodging while spamming cast. I had no right to finish as strong as I did, but that's the RNG folks.

Normally, I try not to get too butt-hurt about my inability to beat certain games, but I always felt kinda bad I never beat Hades. As I mentioned before, I think I put about 30 hours into it on the Switch and I got to the fourth level, but I'd never gotten to the final boss. And unlike games like Hollow Knight or Silksong, this was a game I felt I should be within my reach. Now, I understand a big part of the problem was I wasn't approaching it in a strategic way. God mode helps in more ways than one, because I knew no matter what happened on any given run, I'd always at least get a little tougher.

I'm nowhere near "completing" the game or the story, but now that I've unlocked heats, which allows me to continue earning titan's blood, diamonds, etc., I think I can chill for a while and just play to watch the story unfold. I'm gonna focus on getting the keepsakes and boosting the friendship of a few favorite characters and go from there. Having an OP build was extremely fun and I'd like to learn how to make that happen more often.

The seasonal Steam sales are now my chance to rebuy games for different platforms. This time I picked up Hades, which I put about 30 hours into on Switch and never finished. This time, I'm being a lot more strategic about my boons, especially stacking status ailments, and I'm making much faster progress. Hangover and festive fog are my jam. To my surprise, the bow is my favorite weapon so far this go around, as I've found ranged builds to be the most fun.

Soooo I decided to keep playing this after all, with mods to tweak the difficulty to something more manageable. I'm continuing to have fun with it, and I'll note that the game did ease up during the start of Act 2. Some of the enemies (pilgrims) are recycled, so that helps.

Well, my Silksong journey is coming to an end, I think. I got stuck on the challenge room at Craw Lake, but I figured out I could actually explore Shellwood (before, I assumed I couldn't pass the water for some reason). I did that, but the difficulty ramped up a notch. I found myself avoiding enemies and dying more. I guessed (correctly) I'd be getting a wall jump ability somewhere in this area, so I held out for that (and it was VERY hard won), but at this stage the difficulty definitely feels more punishing than rewarding. Damage is stacked in such a way, if I make one or two mistakes I'm toast, and it feels... IDK, unwarranted?

I decided to explore some new nooks and crannies in the map with my cling grip ability, but I am starting to find the challenge rooms overwhelming and a bit too frustrating. I think if I could explore for a bit with less gated obstacles it would help, but it is what it is.

I really enjoyed the first eight hours of this game, though! I guess I could play through it with mods, but the mods just emphasize how the boss and challenge room setups run counter to what I find enjoyable about gaming and that's not fun either. I returned to Hollow Knight a few times, so I'm sure I'll eventually come back to this one, but it's kinda weird how within about a day, it was like a few levers were flipped and it simply wasn't that fun anymore.