What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Sonic Colors Ultimate (PS4)

June 18th, 2023

I'm doing my Sunday morning post right now with a very scattered brain. Since getting this started, I've done some online shopping, paid my internet bill, and bandaged a (very minor!) foot injury. It's not unproductive, but it doesn't reflect great focus, either.

Yesterday was an excellent games day, though! Right after posting here, I sat down for a couple hours to clear Sonic Colors Ultimate. On my post comments a few days ago, fellow Neocities webmaster Anonicus had mentioned the game having some glitches. Reading that, I was somewhat disappointed that I hadn't really seen many glitches. The other night, though, when I was fighting the final boss for the Asteroid Coaster world, one of the boss's attacks would fill Sonic's path up with asteroids, all of which were unavoidable and lodged into the ground. I quit while I was trying to deal with that, mildly infuriated and sure that the boss battle was an impossible task.

That, of course, was a glitch, and when I turned it on Saturday morning, the asteroids were up in the air where they belonged, perfectly avoidable. The final stretch of this game was actually really fun, with a very satisfying Eggman boss, and extremely, comically long end credits. The game even gave me a trophy for getting through the credits! All that being said, I don't really intend to go back and 100% this. It was uneven, and I just have other stuff I'd rather play. I liked it way better than I expected I would from my first couple play sessions, though, and that's nice!

Plus, now I've got a game clear on the board for my "clear 10 games goal" I started about a month ago! I preordered Sonic Origins Plus way before setting this goal, and it'll supposedly show up at the end of next week, so I'm wondering if I'll be able to add any Game Gear games to that total.

My other big goal cleared yesterday was getting through the conversation I was stuck in over in Dragon Quest X Offline! Once I finished that, I saved my game and hit some random battles, finally reaching the good stuff. By good stuff, of course, I mean skill trees. I'm looking forward to playing this more today, even if I'll largely just be aimlessly messsing around.

Way later, I also decided that I wanted to pick up another PS4 game to clear and landed on Soul Calibur VI, the normal choice for 2023. I had a file started from before I started this site, but it had been so long since I played that I decided to just start from scratch. Here, I figure that I'll count this as a clear if I beat both the standard and create-a-character story modes, the latter of which I was playing with last night.

I also built another Gunpla yesterday, this time tackling a Uniqlo branded RX-78 that I got free with a couple of T-shirt. I don't think I'd ever built a proper HG Gunpla before, so I had to go over to the craft store and get an X-acto knife to clear some of the pesky plastic nubs that kept it from snapping together properly. While working on this, I definitely gained good EXP.

Today, I hope to be only slightly less useless than I was yesterday, and wish all of you lovely Sundays (or Mondays, depending on your time zone), too.

June 17th, 2023

It's so nice that it's the weekend! I'm not very ambitious today, but I did start a non-games page today, to post some of my poorly built Gunpla and models from other franchises. Right now, I'm trying to build through the stash of cheap kits I've gathered, so yesterday I started things off easy with a cute little Justi'gGuy, as I love the little bears. The eyes and nose are painted on, so I got the colors I wanted, but the rest is just stickers.

In actual games, I played another two levels of Sonic Colors Ultimate last night, leaving me at a boss that was pretty infuriating. After I'm done posting today, I'm probably going to turn on my PS4 to hurl profanity at little Sonic again, as it is obviously the character's fault that I am bad at the game.

I also gave the conversation I'm stuck in over in Dragon Quest X Offline another go. I made progress, but was a little too tired at the end of the workweek for kanji study, so I didn't finish. Hopefully, I'll get this over with today or tomorrow!

June 16th, 2023

This has not been my most variety-filled gaming month, looking at my images folder, but I think I'm in the home stretch for a basic clear of Sonic Colors Ultimate. I played two more levels last night, with one being fun and the other being a strange, tedious, running in circles and knocking things over affair. The quality difference between the two seemed decently representative of the game as a whole.

I also cleaned another 5% of the playground in PowerWash Simulator, which felt like decent progress for as late as I got going.

Only 8 work days remain until I get my little break!

June 15th, 2023

Yesterday was no good, so I'm really tired today. I wish I could stay cheerful better after a bad day! Things are ok externally, though, and I'm down to nine work days until my little break, so I'll be fine.

I actually made a decent amount of progress in Sonic Colors Ultimate last night and am close to the end of the game. A couple of the levels I played were stunningly anticlimatic, including a boss that was way too easy and a platforming level that took less than a minute to get through. It's fine, though. It wasn't unpleasant to play, and it's good to be in the home stretch.

In PowerWash Simulator, I knocked out another 10% on the playground, getting it to 20% clean. It was relaxing.

June 13th, 2023

Last night, I just played two or three levels of Sonic Colors Ultimate. I genuinely do not remember how many I played, but it was fine. This isn't a bad game, but I have no strong feelings about it, so it's hard to get a longer play session going. Still, I think I'm getting relatively close to the end.

Only 11 work days remain until I can take a week long break!

June 12th, 2023

I've only got 12 work days left before I get to take a small break. Doing a countdown like this is maybe a little childish, but it's helpful, too.

My focus was bad yesterday, so I didn't play anything so well. I finished Aquarium World in Sonic Colors Ultimate, though in my first play session, I got frustrated with the boss and swore never to play it again. A few hours later, I was feeling somewhat calmer and took it out pretty quickly from there.

I'd been looking forward to actually getting into playing Dragon Quest X Offline, but spoke to who I was supposed to and got locked in another cutscene. I read through a lot of it, but since I didn't feel very well, I got overwhelmed and quit for the day. Maybe I'll try to tackle it again tonight, if today ends up being doable.

I did play a bit of Disney Tsum Tsum again, too, but without getting any great scores or accomplishing anything. It's a good weekend game in that regard.

June 10th, 2023

I'm glad it's Saturday, but I'm so itchy this morning! I took some non-drowsy allergy medicine which I'm hoping kicks in soon, but it is having a big effect on my ability to sit still and focus. Oh, well! I'm not getting graded or QA'd on the coherence of my Neocities posts.

As I've been doing lately, I sat down for two levels of Sonic Colors Ultimate again last night. I got mildly infuriated by the controls while trying to do some platforming and extremely infuriated by a midboss I was a little too tired to beat smartly, depending instead on persistence and luck. Aquarium World is very pretty, though, and I love the background jellyfish.

After shutting Sonic off for my own sanity, I played PowerWash Simulator for a few minutes, but got really nasty motion sickness and went to bed pretty fast from there. This game hadn't made me sick before, so I think it was just tiredness. The garden is still not completely clean.

What I end up doing today will depend largely on the effectiveness of over the counter allergy meds against pollen induced itching, but I'll play something!

June 9th, 2023

Today, I'm continuing with the story of my massively meandering playthrough of Sonic Colors Ultimate. I played some of the stripped down platforming levels in Game World last night, but then found out that I would have to find every red ring in the game to unlock all of the Game World levels. Dismissive as it sounds, I don't really like this game enough to tackle a 100% playthrough right now, so I'm probably going to leave this section aside and continue going for a basic game clear.

June 8th, 2023

Speed post today, as I'm still having trouble willingly crawling out of bed. I played two more levels of Sonic Colors Ultimate last night. Aquarium World is pretty, but they both felt abbreviated, and not super interesting. This'll be an easy finish, but I don't know how memorable it'll be.

June 5th, 2023

I'm not feeling well today, so I was in bed too long and now am up, technically dressed, and trying to get myself to drink some tea while I post here.

I went through a little more text in Dragon Quest X, but forgot to get a screenshot because I was feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. I'm in another run of text boxes, so it wouldn't have been very exciting, anyway.

On my PS4, I ended up playing a few more stages of Sonic Colors Ultimate, where I'm getting more in the groove of it. The controls maybe feel a bit off to me in spots. Sonic is so small on the massive screen at points that it's hard to double jump to another platform, since the game reads me as close enough to be autotargeting and attacking enemies instead. Mostly, I had fun, though. I hit some interesting platforming and a good boss fight, so I'm a bit less down on this than I was before.

I played some more of Eastern Exorcist a bit later, too, but forgot how to parry from yesterday and wasn't doing as well as I might have liked.

Today, I'll probably do my best to find something easy to play so I don't just sleep. Just sleeping does have a certain appeal, but I want to keep some sort of structure so I can get back into things well and not fall behind tomorrow.

May 30th, 2023

I got really determined to clear the first part of Dragon Quest X Offline yesterday, so I sat down for a bit over two hours to play/study. By the end of it, I had achieved my goal, but felt so overwhelmed that not only was I burned out on studying Japanese for the day, I had also perhaps forgotten a good chunk of English. Of course that wasn't true, but it was a unique feeling.

I also played maybe six or so more levels in Sonic Colors Ultimate, which is aesthetically neat, but still striking me as a bit blah.

May 29th, 2023

Today is my one-year on Neocities post, but it doesn't feel very special. I'm more surprised I haven't failed or given up at this than anything. I played a lot of games yesterday, though, so at least it won't be a tiny post.

My biggest goal for the day was to continue plugging away at Dragon Quest X Offline. I did okay at it, playing for about 90 minutes and making it through a decent chunk of character text. I feel like I understand what's going on and am making good progress, even though I'm at ten-plus hours for the prologue alone. That is okay, though! Playing a game in Japanese is difficult, and it's okay if I am not going very quickly at it.

I started a couple of new games while I was just messing around with stuff, too, the first of which was Sonic Colors Ultimate. I don't really have many thought on this so far. It's basically fun to play and there are a few too many cutscenes, but it doesn't seem all that interesting so far. That's probably kind of a harsh thing to say, since I did enjoy what I got through and'll definitely keep playing. It felt a bit "just kind of there," though, which is fine.

I tried Lawn Mowing Simulator on Game Pass, too, which I think'll fit well as a game that helps me go to sleep. I do kind of hate that I can't change the color of the business logo, or at least that I couldn't figure out how to do it. It's nice and mindless, though, and'll help take away the sting of not being able to play Calm Colors when I get stuck on a text wall in Dragon Quest and have to leave my Switch in standby.

Last, and perhaps also least, I've been doing daily logins on Disney Tsum Tsum to get the free gacha tickets and nabbed the month's special tsum, Luke Skywalker with a tiny lil' R2D2, with yesterday's. I played a few rounds to try the character out and, since it has double skills and takes up two tsums on the playfield, it levels up at double speed and cranks up the number of coins you can score per game. It is fantastically game breaking, and I'm looking forward to destroying some score records when I'm more in the mood to play again.

That's it for today, but here's to another year on Neocities! It's really fun to have a website here, and such a nice, helpful community! I'm of course looking forward to working on this site, but also to seeing all of the beautiful sites that more ambitious coders are making, too. Let's have another good year!