What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

My Sims (DS)

July 31th, 2023

For August here, I want to revisit some of the games I tried and abandoned, just to check in and see if I can get on a roll with any of them. This isn't an August post, but when I came up with the idea, it sounded fun enough to try early. Therefore, I did, in fact, start early.

The first game I retried was My Sims on 3DS, which is fine, but maybe slightly too slow paced for all occassions. I did enjoy playing last night, paragliding and doing little dress designs. Some of the characters had things they were going to launch in the next in-game day, too, or at least the flower shop girl did, so the sense of progression wasn't bad, either. I might check in again soon.

I set a hard time limit for myself to play Dungeon Village 2 before bed, too, and was surprisingly ok sticking to it. I got my village up to 3 stars and feel like a 4-star village is extremely within reach. Having more than one map will stretch this further, though.

With this being the last post of July, I finished no games and generally felt pretty rubbish this month. My taking Friday off means that today'll probably be a pretty bad close to the month, too, and since I had food poisoning yesterday afternoon, I didn't make any leftovers to keep things easier for myself. Oh, well. Hopefully, I have a good August ahead.

October 27th, 2022

Work yesterday ended up being a selection of long calls that would have been fairly brutal had I been feeling my best. With my cough still hanging around, I had totally lost my will to be awake and functioning by the time my shift was over. I played My Sims for about five minutes, but even that felt like too much, so that was that for the night.

September 6th, 2022

Today'll be a quick lunch break post. I was feeling kind of uneasy about what to play last night, even though there's no reason to worry much about video games, so I ended up not doing much interesting at all.

For longer than I intended to, I played Sonic Runners Adventure on my phone. The screenshot here is from my first round of play, in the world 2 flying levels, but I ended up picking it back up when I couldn't decide what else to do and doing some of world 3, too. I feel like I'll clear this game within another couple of play sessions, but don't feel super enthusiastic about that at the moment.

After that, I played My Sims more, getting my town up to 3 out of 5 stars by the end of the play sessions. It's getting a little tedious, and I'm starting to just ignore the tourists I pass on the road, but in turn, it's helping me sleep better after playing. This game is truly a double edged sword.

September 5th, 2022

I had a low maintenance game day yesterday, kicking off with my finishing Loud, putting me at 4 out of 10 games cleared for my completely arbitrary goal to hit before buying a new game. I realize that I am mostly clearing short indie games so far, but I haven't been good at beating even short games in the past. My focus has been pretty bad. Even if this is a small, rubbish goal that I'm scumming my way through, I feel good about what I've been able to do here.

As for Loud, it was a fun game. The story was a little too minimalistic, maybe, and I did have some problems with the controls. The guitar-driven soundtrack was a nice change of pace, though, and the outfits unlocked through the game were both cute and more dramatic than simple pallette swaps. Even if I don't do it right away, I'll leave this on my Switch in case I decide to go back for better scores and higher difficulties later.

I played My Sims a little more, too. I think I made some progress, and I got the fisherman to take one out of three of my fish. It seems like recording fish from the wrong body of water might be gated off until my town's star level goes up, but I don't really care enough to be mad about it.

September 4th, 2022

Today is Sunday, the central day of a three-day weekend, and I don't have to do anything today! I didn't really have to do anything yesterday, either, but I built a really big shelf. It was an accomplishment.

Game-wise, I picked up Loud, an indie rhythm game I'd downloaded to my Switch right when it had a new release discount, while I was making dinner. It's pretty cute, using the story of a high school girl dreaming of being a rockstar as she moves up in her local scene to move things forward, but the controls are really bothersome

The key issue I'm having is that, if you hit a button unrelated to what's on screen, rather than just missing your timing, the game counts it as a miss, which is brutal, but fine. On a different system, I'm not sure this would be an issue. It's giving me trouble here, though, for two reasons. First, my download of it/my Switch/the gremlins in my system can't read a held note on the D-pad bottom arrow, which means getting a prompt for that on screen can end a stage if I don't react fast enough. It marks the hold note as "good" at first press, so if I remember that spot is broken for me and back off right away, I'm fine. If I don't remember, though, the "any wrong button is a miss" rule means that after that initial "good," holding the down arrow for a note that has already been registered as clear results in an instant, quick string of misses, racking up the strike meter at the top and resulting in a game over. The D-Pad bottom arrow doesn't give me issues in any other games, so I'm not sure what's up here.

Edit: As of about 10 hours later, the D-pad note holding glitch I was running into is no longer occurring. I'm adding this note because I don't want a bug that might have been a total fluke to put people off of this game!

Second, with the buttons on the Switch being so tiny, the missed note scoring means that you can lose a combo just by your thumbs being too big. This one was only an issue for me once or twice, again on the D-pad, but I have relatively small hands and am using Joycons bigger than the standard. It was irritating when it happened to me, but I think it has the potential to be a bigger problem for other players.

At any rate, I don't dislike this overall. I like the music, it's fun to see how an indie music game approaches both the genre and storytelling, and it is hard for me to be totally disappointed with a cheap game where I'm unlocking new outfits. I think I probably got about halfway through while making a pot of soup last night, so one of my goals for today is to finish it before bed.

Later on in the night, after watching a bad movie and doing some crafts, I played some more Sonic Adventure on my PS3. I was working on Amy's levels tonight, and her mouth movements are egregiously mismatched to what she actually says in the English dub! She seemed to have more glitches than the other characters, too. Her skirt turned totally inside out while she was petting a Chao; it was a really odd visual! Still, this game is pretty and fun, and I like it. The glitchiness was way more amusing than bothersome.

Lastly, I played My Sims a little before bed again. I caught some fish, but I can't figure out how to get them to become selectable items to hand them off to the fisherman who wants them for his "fish book." Since this is obviously a game made for kids, it feels like a small personal failing.

With all that said, though, I'm off to enjoy a nothing day! Truly, 'tis glorious.

September 3rd, 2022

Yesterday, I got off work without hassle ahead of a three-day weekend, putting me in a good mood to start playing games late and then stay up much longer than I should have.

First up, I wanted to play with the character creator in PriPara: All Idol Perfect Stage, a port of the PriPara arcade game and loading time simulator that, despite its inability to efficiently render a pair of pants, is a mainstay in my gaming library. I made my new idol unit, dressed them up, and then played some of the songs I like in it before popping the game back in the Ace Attorney Trilogy box. (I moved back to the US three years ago, I should really get on ordering some replacement Switch game cases.) It wasn't a long play session, nor did this fulfill any game completion goals, but who cares? It's shiny.

I kept going with music games after that, turning Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight back on. I got three social events unlocked last night, which I felt pretty good about, and had enough fun that I lost track of time playing. As I near the end of this game, I'm glad I have two more games in the series waiting in the wings for me.

Since I hit a point where I beat a song, looked at the time, and thought, "wow, it's later than I thought, I should go to bed," I naturally picked up my DS for a few minutes of My Sims. I am starting to sincerely doubt that there is a lot to this game, but I'm also not sure I care. Despite my disappointment that I likely will not be able to make a bacon couch like I could on the Wii, it is pleasant.

September 2nd, 2022

Today is another quick lunch break post. I played My Sims for a while before bedtime and felt like I was making progress without actually doing much. The raquetball minigame, which I got right as I turned the game on, feels like the controls are somewhat busted, but the lei making minigame worked fine. Mostly, though, my feeling is just that this a supremely cute and laid back game. There's no big goals aside from "make the town good," and while that's simple, it's fine for something I'm playing while I'm sleepy, too. Personally, I want to get a lot of houseplants for my sim, too, and make her fiction mirror my reality.

September 1st, 2022

This is a quick post during lunch break, due to intense sleepiness for the time of day. Last night, I did another playthrough in TV Animation X: Unmei no Sentaku, clearing the game as Fuma. Plot and available character-wise, I understand why each playthrough only has you up against five opponents, but it makes each playthrough seem so short! I'm going to try to unlock everything in the gallery, though, which'll help this game's longevity a bit.

I also picked up My Sims as a new before bed game. I know I'll write more about this later, so I don't mind being brief for now. It's cute and pleasant.