What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

About An Elf (Switch)

January 15th, 2024

I'm somewhat inexplicably under the less-than-excellent weather, so I don't think anything in this post will really get the attention it deserves. Yesterday afternoon, I finished off About An Elf and enjoyed the last chunk of it. The storytelling framing of it was interesting, and I liked how strange it was, too. Some of the battle prompts felt a bit too "guess what we're thinking" to me, but the gummy bears, which stood in for extra lives, were plentiful enough that it didn't matter.

Anyway, I think this was more of a visual novel than an RPG, but it's written down in my "oh no, I have way too many RPGs" notebook, so I'm crossing it off and counting it on that front. I think the game itself would approve of this.

As far as fitness games go, I switched things up a little and played Fitness Boxing 2 yesterday, since I'd played it in the past and knew it would do different stretches. The game was so rude about my skipping out on it for 2 years, though, asking me if I'd been sick and promising to go easy on me. At any rate, I'm on a quest to get all of the achievements in this game's menu, and am sure I can do it.

January 14th, 2024

The weather has not really improved in my location, so I played games a lot yesterday. My biggest game yesterday was Super Mario World, which I played bundled up in fleece blankets on my living room floor after hooking up my Super Famicom Classic. I started playing it to keep my hands busy while chatting with a friend, since I've played the first bit of the game a thousand times. Shockingly, though, I am better at video games than I was at age 6, so I got to the third world's castle, which I've never cleared before, and then went back to the first world to scum 50 lives. I'd forgotten how fun this game was.

Since it's super cold outside, I had to give up on Super Mario World before I was tired enough to sleep, since my nose was cold and it was irritating. From there, I kept going with About An Elf, and feel like I might be getting close to the end. That's fine, since I don't know that this game could sustain itself for a ton longer. I keep losing battles because I click on the yellow attack when the pre-battle hint shows me light, when the yellow one is for electric magic, but that is truly my own fault. Playing games after midnight has a certain risk level.

Despite my temptation not to wear myself out, I also buckled down and played Fitness Circuit again. It was still very difficult, but I feel like I can improve. Plus, I went to the outfit change menu and realized I could pick which legally distinct from Evangelion outfit I wanted on my trainer. I went with the not-at-all Kaworu set yesterday, because blue is nice and the pink not-at-all-Mari one had some weird design stuff going on in the boob area, but my amusement level that the game lets me do something with such a high dork-fluff-level right off the bat is very high.

I'm off to make a frozen pizza for the excuse to turn my oven on, and for anyone else caught in nasty weather, stay warm, or cool, depending on your location, and safe!

January 13th, 2024

I feel somewhat spacey today, so this probably won't be a great post. Yesterday, I was worried about some health stuff, especially the wait to get a specialist appointment, so I wanted to see if Switch fitness games might make me feel like I was doing something to counter that. I picked up Fitness Circuit from the eShop and promptly got destroyed. It was a lot of fun, and it had some goofy charm I'll get into later, but it was way more intense than I expected! That is completely ok for now, so I'll keep trying.

Well after that, I played quite a lot more of Death Stranding, too. It was my first big chunk of gameplay, and I got so nervous trying to navigate things when I got surrounded by BTs, or the game's monsters. I made poor Sam, the player character, scuttle around crouch-walking while holding his breath way longer than was necessary. It was fun, though- I'm hoping to make good headway in this over my glorious three day weekend.

Right before bed, I played a few more screens of About An Elf. I'm a little tempted to play a good chunk of this over the next few days, too.

The weather is really crummy, so I'll probably do more games this weekend than I normally would.

January 9th, 2024

Today's post is late because I overslept and didn't want to rush with anything when I did get up. The snowstorm in my area meant I didn't have to go into the office today, so I had a fairly relaxing day and am enjoying some slow cooked lentil and potato curry for dinner. It's nice, and there's no office day tomorrow, either, so I shall continue to enjoy cozy clothes and nice food.

Last night's gaming was pretty laid back, too. I turned on my XBox to pick a Game Pass game to beat for the month and got all sparkly eyed at the sight of Peggle. I already played it years ago, off of a CD-Rom, but it's really fun and satisfying, so I'm playing it again! I only meant to play a couple levels last night but buzzed through ten before getting up off of the floor occurred to me. I've been itching to turn it back on all day.

Before bed, I played a little more of About An Elf to unwind, too. I'm fighting many ghosts in a kitchen now, which is very spooky, and some of the silly poems the game popped up on the screen made me laugh out loud. It was fun!

Tonight, I'm honestly more interested in crocheting a tiny dinosaur than gaming, but I'll see how things go.

January 7th, 2024

Yesterday, I cleared my first game of the year, which felt like an okay accomplishment! Planetarian was my first game down, though I questioned counting it. It's a visual novel with no choices, so truly, I was using my game time to scum more reading time. Though it feels non-committal to say so, it was fine. It maybe felt kind of manipulative, but the story moved along at a good enough clip that I never considered quitting. Besides that, in some of the action-y bits, I thought the use of storytelling mechanics only a game can do, like the joycon rumble, really did add to it. Even though I'm a little indifferent here, I'm itching to play a game that's essentially just a book again soon.

After that, I was trying to figure out if I'm just not feeling Ninja JaJaMaru: The Ninja Skill Book, or RPGs in general, so I turned on About An Elf, a game that I'd picked up cheap after seeing it on Youtube. It turned out to be more of a visual novel playing with RPG structures than an RPG, which was completely fine, and it prominently featured a cat, which was even better. I'm hoping to play more of this today.

Today might not be a big games day. I overslept, which was great, and I need to make a cake later, which is neutral. I'll play something, though, and be back tomorrow.