What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

G-Mode Archives+: Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi DX (Switch)

April 28th, 2025

It feels like it's been so long since I last posted! Over the weekend, I went to Minneapolis to see Charli XCX, wander around the Mall of America, and see a movie in Screen X, a movie format I think might be more misbegotten than the Virtual Boy. It was all extremely fun, but I was in a hotel with super limited wi-fi, so despite having plenty of time, I couldn't do updates here. I also tend to binge read manga from ebook bundles when I have a lot of time to chill, downloading them one by one, or just watch Youtube, so I was also cut off from that.

I was able to pop in and out of the hotel wifi with limited bandwidth, so I could use Steam, and my Switch ran totally offline. Because of that, it was convenient to just binge play games between events and ventures out for the weekend. Because of that, I dipped into a relatively wild amount of games. I will not post about all of them here, mostly because it seems tedious and I don't want to. I will post about all the games I finished, though, which is still ridiculous!

I'm going in order of enthusiasm here, so I'll start off with G-Mode Archives+: Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi DX tonight! I got my first ever 1 credit clear in a shmup in this right before taking an Uber out to the concert, and spent my ride over text-gloating about my victory to my very kind and patient offline friends, just to get it out of my system before the event. It's still not really out of my system, though! I thought that it was dumb to try and get good at shmups in my late 30s, and that I was just too old and untalented to succeed in this quest. This is a really abbreviated version of Ketsui, and I was playing it in easy mode, but I feel great about this. It has me encouraged to keep pushing up against more games, eventually at higher difficulties, and overall, this has given me a new outlet to bust stress! Writing about old school 2D shooters like this feels silly, but I am really happy.

The next day, I also got a 1 credit clear in ESP Ra.De. Psi's super easy mode, which was even more satisfying! I'd never even seen some of the levels I was buzzing through, and was so close to losing when I defeated the final boss that it was wild. Even though I'll probably put the strange old phone version of Ketsui aside for a while, I'm not going to count this as an easy mode game clear until I've done the same with all four playable characters. It's too cool to quit!

I played a pleasant, low key puzzle game called CATch the Stars, too. It was extremely low on cat content, but I liked the base puzzle style, and figuring out the rules to how stars move as I went. It was cryptic at first, but intuitive enough to be fun. I liked this, and thanks to a bundle, I have the sequel in my backlog, too. I'll probably play it before too long.

Somewhat less actively, I also cleared Buffet Boss out of a need for low-stress background noise while I got other things sorted. It was pretty repetitive, and once I got staff hired and leveled up in each restaurant, most aspects of the game could play themselves. I don't hate this kind of game, though, and have more space in my heart than I should for these strange "numbers go up" 20 cent stick person games. Plus, it was funny to carry 20 buckets of chicken at once. I like that in a game!

From here, I'm going to get into my cat (and other animal) finding quests of the weekend. The best of these, and maybe one of the best I've played in a long time, was Cats in the Ancient City of Gu Su. It had lovely art, multiple stages, some genuinely tricky to find cats, and a charming theme. Despite my love for cat finding games, I wouldn't generally recommend most of these games. This one, I would.

Where Foxes was decent, and as good as most of the other games in its series. There was cute art and some extra items to find, which goes a long way in these things.

100 Romantic Cats was perfectly fine, as far as hidden cat games go. The art was ok, some of the cats were satisfying to find, and it let me shut my brain off for 15 minutes.

Cat Purrtrol: Find All 100! was not one of the better cat hunts I've been on. From the Steam reviews, it looks like I played a violence free edit of the game, which I'm super okay with. When zoomed in, though, I could slide the image off of the screen and delve into a white void, and the music loop had some awkward gaps between songs. One of the hidden cats took me a while to find due to a respectable sneaky trick, so there is good here! It was just a bit messy, too.

My bottom tier cat finding game of the weekend was 100 Aliens Cats. The art seemed sloppy and the cats weren't well hidden. I wasn't impressed.

I'll be back to more normal posting tomorrow! Thanks for your patience with a bit of a longer post tonight!

April 25th, 2025

Last night, as my post heavily implies, I was a bit tired, so I just played a few minutes of G-Mode Archives+: Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi DX before bed. I started working on individual levels, and last night was despairing at my inability to clear the final stage on a single credit. It was only my fourth play session, though, and it was also 2 in the morning. All things considered, I'm happy with how I did looking back on it.

April 23rd, 2025

I'm a bit stuck in a loop with games right now. Shmups have really been helping me with my anxiety when I actually play them. It's hard to worry about work, or housing, or health when I am trying not to let my little ship/airplane/psychic teenager get hit by one of a hundred brightly colored projectiles on screen, and I need that sometimes. Plus, G-Mode Archives+: Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi DX has really nice music. Counterintuitively, I've been finding it very soothing to try to get good at this game.

Buffet Boss, for what it's worth, just kind of puts me to sleep, but that's fine, too. My bigger concern here than the tedium is that it'll end too fast and I'll have to find another game that knocks me out this fast.

April 22nd, 2025

Last night, I took a wonderous journey through all of what gaming has to offer. In 100 Istanbul Cats, I found 100 cats.

Then, in G-Mode Archives+: Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi DX, I died thrice in some harrowing, but sparkling and aesthetically pleasing aircraft battles.

Finally, in Buffet Boss, I carried a lot of buckets of fried chicken at once, certainly more than I can in real life. Gaming is magic.

April 10th, 2025

Yesterday, I felt stressed, so I turned on G-Mode Archives+: Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi DX because I thought it would be interesting to play a Japanese feature phone port of a bullet game on my Switch. It was choppy, somewhat blurry, had muffled sound, and was extremely fun. I've never played a normal version of Ketsui, but I got very locked into this, collecting the little scoring cubes and dodging hundreds of lovely pink and blue video game bullets. I was using easy mode for the auto-bombs and got to level 3, making me feel like I can definitely see the end of this. Plus, it just stops after one credit, so I'm about to have a very weird first-ever 1 credit clear.

My game clear yesterday, which is less interesting in retrospect, was 100 Robo Cats, a find-the-cats Steam game where cats frolic with mechs. It was good because of the theming, but a little lame because the cats weren't actually hidden. This is such a common issue with these games that it feels a little rude to complain. I know what I'm getting into.

I fought through a couple more levels of Pretty Girls 2048 Strike, too, getting unnaturally fired up at my ability to match numbers. This is such a fun battle system that I'm still taken aback by it being in such a silly anime girl exploitation game. Even after I clear this, it will stay on my Legion Go forever.