What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Double Switch: 25th Anniversary Edition (Switch)

August 21st, 2022

Today's post will be a little long, since a mix of good free time and dicey focus meant I played a lot of different things yesterday.

As the most important game of this post, I'm going to go slightly out of order and start with Lydia, a game I pulled from my Switch digital library figuring it would be a quick and easy clear. I got it through one of those weird "if you own this game, you can get 5 free!" promotions that Qubic Games used to do, which I think is against the Switch eShop rules now. I was right in that it was a quick game, at about 40 minutes. It was also an extremely heavy game about familial abuse and the cycle of alcoholism. Considering the other free stuff I'd gotten from Qubic Games, I was slightly blindsided. It was interesting, well made, and dovetailed surprisingly nicely with my reading for last week, though. I will never play this again, but I'm glad I played it once.

The reason why I was playing Lydia in the first place, though, was that I hit a point in Double Switch: 25th Anniversary Edition where I sat, silently stared at the game over screen, and decided that I did not need it in my life. By the time it had me figuring out where an opposing character has set other traps, which you must go disarm within a split second, it had become so frustrating that I could barely stand it. As far as things go, though, I like all the different display options this port gives you. I'd been using the "modern" layout before, but switching to the PC layout made it easier to play, with a better readout on what's going on with your armed traps, and it just looked cooler, too. If I pick this up again, I'll probably stick with this layout.

Later in the night, I went back to my PS3 and did a couple more arcade mode playthroughs on Sonic the Fighters. Sonic was a little too easy to play through as, though that is in part because I was being a cheap jerk to the AI, but Bark the "Polerbear" was slightly miserable to play as. I don't tend to like the slow but powerful characters in fighting games, though, so using Bark last night was kind of a "let's get this over with" move.

After that, I booted up Fighting Vipers and got absolutely destroyed, because it's a bad idea to pick up a game I haven't played for years and select a character I've never used after 1am.

I then closed out the night playing a level and a couple of boss fights in Sonic Adventure, where I'm still catching up to my progress in the PC version of the game. I feel like I'm making decent progress with it!

With that, I'm off to a lovely and peaceful Sunday! I don't know what I'll do today, but I'm sure it'll be a decent time.

August 20th, 2022

It's finally done! I got every game I've written about so far on its own page, which feels like a decent accomplishment. Certainly, it'll make things easier going forward, especially in regards to Pikmin Bloom. I've still got quite a few things I want to do to better organize past posts and the game index, though, so I'll keep considering those.

It was my first day back at work after vacation yesterday, but it actually wasn't too bad. A couple of coworkers said things that boiled down to "oh, hi, we missed your very particular form of terrible, chatty BS," and I felt honored indeed.

With the full list of games for the Sega Genesis Mini 2 announced, though, I got off work all excited about FMV games, which is more normal than it should be. Thinking about what I had on hand and hadn't played yet, I landed on Double Switch: 25th Anniversary Edition, which I picked up a while back at a massive discount in the Switch eShop. Redownloading it took ages, but when I finally got it going, I felt like it was both better than I expected and howlingly frustrating. Between my "I can't believe I got a game over for that!" swearing and "I can't believe I'm just gonna sit here and let Corey Haim berate me" self loathing, I pulled up a walkthrough, lost several more times, and made it to the first save point.

I am, with some trepidation, going to give the second chunk of a game a shot today. I tried the second part last night, lost because an entire indie band got hacked up by a scimitar, and, with a mix of frustration that this could happen and sheer delight that it was filmed and included, decided that it was worth moving forward.

I did another playthrough of Sonic the Fighters, too, hoping to clear it as every character. Last night, after my previous failure, I tried with Espio again and won, thanks to the merits of being a cheap, miserable rat (or chameleon, as it were). It was a delight to spin around and absolutely destroy Metal Sonic.