Well, life is moving along. I seem to have finally beaten the pneumonia although I still have some episodes of coughing sometimes. Anyways I have been back to work this month. The boys traveled to England to start their semester abroad. Ellie went with them for about a week. I didn't really do much with the time to myself. Mostly just journaled.
Gaming-wise February hasn't really been that great. I have spent a lot of time journaling I guess. I finished up Hexcells as I reported. I also dug up John Walker's review out of curiosity. It was on Rock Paper Shotgun. Anyways, through that I learned that the creator of that game made some other similar ones. So that is something to look forward to at some point in the future. I also tried a game called Naboki that Walker had recommended on Buried Treasure. This one is ok but seemed too easy. It is a bit more of an observation puzzle than really figuring things out. I played it for a couple of days but it wasn't really scratching the puzzle itch. I believe it is a short game though so I will probably try to finish it just to notch another game up as completed.
The two main games I have played this month have been Newton's Cradle Puzzle Game and Chrono Trigger. The Newton game is a simple puzzle game. Newton's cradle refers to those office desk top toys with the balls that swing and knock against each other according to Newton's laws. This is another Buried Treasure recommendation. So far I like it but don't really love it. The soundtrack stands out as some jazzy guitar work. The puzzles are kind of mixed. What I mean is that there was a very smooth progression with Hexcells from easy to difficult. These Cradle puzzles seem kind of random in that sometimes they seem too easy and sometimes they are real stumpers. The puzzles are well designed. I particularly mean that they are economical in the sense that there don't seem to be any wasted elements. I believe I have solved 20 out of 32. I did glean a hint for puzzle 5 from Walker's review as he was also stumped by this one. Walker is clever and doesn't label it is a such. He just kind of drops some info that seems unrelated but if you are stuck with that puzzle it will leap out as a hint. Anyways, this was another very cheap (less than 1 USD) puzzle game to enjoy with morning coffee.
Chrono Trigger is a classic JRPG (Japanese Role Playing Game). Basically I got a bit curious about this genre because of that conversation that I reported at G8. So I searched online to learn what some classics of the genre are and this one got many votes. It is a pretty old game. It was released for the NES in the early 90s. I believe the PC port I am playing was released in 2018. So the graphics are very old school. It reminds me of the original Final Fantasy game for NES that my brother and I played and beat. I would say I am enjoying it but again, not really loving it. The whole vibe is pretty bubble gummy kids stuff. I guess in some ways I like that because I do get sick of the incessant darkness of some games. But on the other hand it kind of means that this game seems slightly insipid. I have been proceeding pretty quickly through it and plan to finish it. The run time seems to be around 26 hours. Anyways, it is kind of interesting to compare it with Persona 5 Royal that I played a few hours of last month. They are both considered classic JRPGs but they are very different. It is interesting to see if I can come up with any parallels that help to mark out the genre other than that they are both rpgs and they were both designed by Japanese teams. So far not much has occurred to me in that vein.
Overall I would say that I enjoyed my January challenge a lot. So I have kind of been trying to come up with some other kind of project that I could do but so far nothing really that great has popped up. For now I guess the project is just to work through my backlog. I have made a decision to focus on just two games at a time. One is my morning coffee puzzle game. The other will be a game that I am wanting to work through from start to finish. So far that has been going ok although I do feel some resistance. I feel a bit mixed about having a casual game in the mix. I guess I am mostly referring to Forza 4 (the driving game). Basically I have played a fair bit of this in mostly shorter sessions. It is fun to just drive around on the roads and occasionally do a race. I am pretty terrible and have finished last in all the races even after turning the difficulty down (at the game's suggestion). I am a bit torn between wanting to keep this as a super casual game just to pop into when the urge strikes or on the other hand wanting to practice and to try to actually win some races. So far I have mostly dropped this in February to focus on the other two games.
Other than that I have been sticking to the no spending money on games so far although I didn't really make it an official challenge or set a date that I had to make it to or anything like that. It was pretty easy in January as I guess felt sated by buying a bunch of games in December during the winter sale. Lately though I have been feeling more tempted again.
That's about it for February so far. Sorry the blog has been pretty quiet. I just haven't felt like I had much I really wanted to say.
No comments:
Post a Comment