What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Shock Troopers (PSP, Wii)

September 25th, 2022

Yesterday wasn't bad, but it was busy. At the end of the day, I popped my copy of SNK Arcade Classics, Vol 1 for Wii in to test a cheapie arcade style controller I'd grabbed off my old living room's floor. I have the same disc for both PSP and Wii because I'm a dork. The Wii version loads a lot faster, but the PSP one controls better, I think. They're both fine, though, at least by my standards.

Since Shock Troopers has "stop and aim" 360 shooting, I thought it would be a good test of the controller's joystick. It is not a great joystick, and I still don't love the control scheme, so I intended to play for a few minutes and quit. My apartment building got a little noisy, though, so I ended up just playing through to the end. It's not my favorite Neo Geo game I've ever played, but it's fine. I ran the whole game on the single character mode as Milky, and she had plenty of personality for such a little sprite, and I thought the atmosphere and tension worked really nicely in the level where the enemy had taken over civilian territory. My feelings about it aren't very strong, though, and I probably won't revisit it that often.

On a website related note, I got my October placeholder links set up this morning. I can't believe September is so close to over! It feels like it went by so fast.

September 21st, 2022

Yesterday, I played a lot of games, but for mysterious reasons- really, it wasn't even a high caffeine day for me yesterday!- I could only sleep a couple hours last night. I'm doing a quick lunch break post as a result, in case I'm too knocked out to do anything decent tonight.

First off the bat for me last night was Cyberpunk 2077 again, which I don't think I'm going to keep up with for now. I played the first 4-5 hours and don't even think it's bad, really- it just feels kind of lifeless and devoid of joy to me. That's really hard to quantify concretely, and again, I don't think it's a problem with the game! I'll probably go back to it, too. It is just not what I'm looking for at the moment.

With that in mind, I grabbed one of my other widely panned games off of my shelf, Balan Wonderworld. It was, in fact, what I was looking for at the moment. I will write more about this in coming days, so I don't feel bad blowing it off today.

I also played Shock Troopers, a Neo Geo arcade game, on the SNK Arcade Classics Vol 1 disc I've got for my PSP while I waited for updates to download over on my Switch. I'd like to clear this in the next few days. The aiming controls feel slightly clunky to me, but I really like how much personality the sprites have within the stage, and I feel powerful when I am the peppy girl shooting a tank until it explodes. I'll probably say more about this later, too.