What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?
Soul Calibur 6 (PS4)
July 23rd, 2023
Yesterday was nice, but I hit the JP Nintendo eShop sale and picked up a couple more sale games. River City Girls and a Detective Conan skateboarding game were last night's victims. As such, I now have to raise my cleared games goal before I can buy another physical game to 14. I don't have the "oh no, I am such a failure" feeling I usually would in cases like this, since I picked up four games I wanted at good discounts without adding to my physical game shelf. Still, I've gotta clear those fourteen games before winter's double punch of Mario RPG and Dragon Quest Monsters!
My gaming last night was pretty normal. I played a decent amount of Soul Calibur 6, plodding along with sidequests in Libra of Souls. The gameplay feels so good that it never gets tedious, though, and levelling up and gathering new weapons is fun, too.
I played a very tiny bit more of Jarataire RPG, too, spending more time changing tile colors for better visibility than actually playing. This is actually a nice feature. Every monster defaults to its "type" color for the tile background, so focusing on a type advantage makes the tiles difficult to tell apart at the speed I want. Once I did swap out some of those background colors, though, things went a lot faster. It has to be done one party setup at a time, on RGB sliders, but this was a dollar game, so I'm not complaining too hard.
July 15th, 2023
It's the weekend now, but I still have some antsy vibes overhang from the previous week. That is okay, though. This will be a relaxing, laid back weekend.
Last night, I ended up spending way more time finishing up the King of Fighters: A New Beginning manga than playing games, sitting in my office chair, drinking a fancy little sparkling strawberry juice, and shotgunning the last three volumes. It was fun, and better than I expected, with some fun character stuff and nifty art, too! It was actually worth the effort I went to in finding decently cheap physical copies of the whole thing.
I did play some games, though, giving all three of the files I'm juggling in Soul Calibur 6's Libra of Soul mode a battle.
I played the Game Gear version of Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine off of the Sonic Origins Plus disc for a few minutes, too. It felt harder than the Genesis version, but I could have just been tired.
Since I couldn't sleep, I also finished up an easy little model kit, a VF-31E Siegfried from Macross Delta. I'd screwed one of these up badly when I first bought them, due to trouble with the stickers, so I've had three of them stashed for years, somewhat afraid to build them. I'm happy with this, so I'll move forward with the other two now.
July 12th, 2023
I am still not feeling amazing today, but that is ok. Last night, I turned on King of Fighters XV for a few minutes since I'd been reading the KOF XIV tie in manga, The King of Fighters: A New Beginning, and wanted to see Shun'ei's mismatched pant leg lengths in action. It's a very video game-y flourish, I respect it.
After a brief few minutes of that, I made a very minor dent in the Soul Chronicle mode in Soul Calibur 6, playing a few of Kilik's chapters. It was fine, but not super engaging. I got really sleepy and just went to bed from there.
July 8th, 2023
Yesterday I had kind of a meltdown, so it wasn't a good day. Before bed, though, I had pepped up enough to play Soul Calibur 6 for a few minutes, which was a good way to decompress.
I'm hoping to have a fun day today, and if nothing else, I'll play a bit of Pikmin Bloom. I hope decent weekends are ahead for all of you out there, too.
July 2nd, 2023
My biggest gaming thing yesterday was officially giving up on Sonic Blast I got stuck on a one-way pipes and currents "puzzle" in the first water level, watched a Youtube video about how to get through it, tried to replicate it, and then decided I didn't really need any of that in my life. Fellow Neocities user Pastel Shoal commented that Sonic Chaos and Triple Trouble are better, so I will probably give one of those a shot in a few days. If I don't, though, they're not going anywhere.
Later on, I did play quite a lot of Soul Calibur 6, but quit when, upon feeling that it was just super difficult to face the same direction as my opponent, I looked at the clock and realized it was after 2:00 am. Even with the caveat that I'm splitting my Libra of Soul playthrough over a few different characters, I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface of the mode. It's neat.
It was a decent mobile game, too. I wasn't really going to post about Pikmin Bloom today, but was very satisfied to have gotten all of the space suit Pikmin for the Pikmin 4 launch event. They're very charming!
I also decided to at least half heartedly play the 9th Anniversary event in Disney Tsum Tsum. I got enough coins for a gacha pull and unlocked Star Mickey, one of the special characters for the month, right away. He's kind of worthless, though, so I don't know how worthwhile he'll be even for added event points. Right now, there's a raffle event, where you clear challenges to get tickets for a drawing, running. In a few days, the real event will start, though, and I'll see if I want to deal with Star Mickey or not then.
July 1st, 2023
Since this is the start of a new month, I wanted to start off by clearing another Sonic game, with this month's victim being Sonic Blast, a Game Gear game that honestly doesn't seem great so far. The pre-rendered graphics are an interesting look, but I was having a bad time getting Knuckles to cling to walls or fly, which made things a little frustrating. Last night, though, I cleared three zones in a flash, so I must be about halfway done. I'll keep going with this just because I don't want to give up now.
Once I got tired of that, I switched over to Soul Calibur 6 for a few minutes, doing a couple quick battles in Libra of Soul mode. There's not a ton to say about it, but I did have fun.
To finish off this post, I also hit my 30,000 steps for the week in Pikmin Bloom last night! I don't think I've ever cleared this goal on a Friday before, but I also don't usually take walking heavy trips in the middle of the week, so it seems fair enough that I did clear it.
I'm off to make a couple of salads for a family thing today, but am a little draggy. Hopefully I feel peppier a bit later on today!
June 25th, 2023
Yesterday, I let the burden of my catchup work weigh me down, even though it's honestly not very bad. I didn't finish it, nor did I let myself have much fun doing crafts or playing games, either. The day wasn't a loss- I made some delicious pork chops in mushroom soup with roasted garlic for dinner, and watched a very entertaining old Sherlock Holmes movie- but I'm kind of frustrated with myself and am hoping to do better today.
Sonic Drift was definitely my main procrastination tool yesterday, and I'm satisfied to be getting a little better at it with every run. On Friday night, I was swearing because I didn't understand how to stay on the track, and while I'm still doing that to some small extent, I'm coming in second in the green Chaos GP pretty regularly now. I definitely want to do at least one more run today.
I played a lot of Pikmin Bloom between rainy spots yesterday, too, trying to make headway in the chess piece Pikmin event. I hit a roadblock that I ran into during the last event, too, though- the requirement to plant a certain amount of hydrangeas. Hydrangea flowers are in super short supply in the game right now, and I don't have awesome access to big flowers on foot, so getting the petals to succeed at this feels very pay-to-win.
Since I do Google Opinion Rewards to fund my mobile game nonsense, I could spend a couple dollars on this game, and have done so before! In the past, though, I've just done it for stuff I thought seemed cute or fun, like Pikmin storage or Mii outfits here and there. With the hydrangeas, I feel like the game is trying to force me to spend, so I'm digging my heels in and refusing despite having the available funds. Instead, I'm grinding out flower planting to *earn* coins and killing mushrooms right and left in the hopes that I'll get a few petals as a reward. Of course it's not reasonable, but I think it fits the "get walking and do your best" spirit of the game better than tossing money at the problem would.
I messed with Soul Calibur 6 a bit more while I was on a voice chat, too. Mostly, I was messing with the character creation and feeling distressed at the number of dreadfully uncomfortable looking boob armors in the game, but I did a bit of fighting, too. My approach to this game is extremely inefficient in a fun way.
There's still a little bit of work to do today, but I am going to do my best to get it done and not let that bother me. Today will be a good day.
June 24th, 2023
Even though I am on a current "clear 10 games before you buy any more" run, I preordered Sonic Origins Plus before setting that goal, and my copy of it arrived yesterday. Because of that, instead of doing my pre-break catchup work immediately, I played some Game Gear games, like a responsible adult. My first victim was Sonic Labyrinth, which I didn't really give a fair chance. Trying to figure out why I was either hitting or not hitting the first boss was too much effort for the level of brainpower I had going last night.
I was equally dingbatty trying Sonic Drift where the controls frustrated me until I reached the third race and it dawned upon me that my little hedgehog was shooting off the track at every turn because, as the title subtlely implies, I needed to be drifting around the corners. Once I figured that out, I still sucked at this game, but in a way where I think I can improve. I'm hoping to play this a bit more today.
Lastly, I hit a few sidequests in Libra of Soul mode in Soul Calibur 6. I picked this up just to mess with briefly before the new Sonic game showed up, but I'm actually really enjoying it. If I weren't on a game buying freeze, I don't think I would have gotten back into it, so I maybe need to prevent myself from shopping more often.
Even though I do have a bit of work left to do, I'm counting myself as on break now, and am hoping to relax and enjoy some games as part of that. I'd like to clear at least one, and have a candidate that might suffice just during transportation wait times next week. Other than that, though, I'm not going to stress myself out over any hobby stuff. It's not what time off is for.
June 23rd, 2023
My tiredness was insurmountable by the time I got to games last night, so I did one fight in the Soul Chronicles mode of Soul Calibur 6. It was fun to play as Seung Mi-Na, since she was my main back when I played the series more, but I just went to bed after that first battle. My break starts tomorrow, minus any catchup I might have to play, so I'll enjoy things more then.
June 20th, 2023
Last night, I only ended up having a small-ish amount of time to play games, so I did a few more battles in Soul Calibur 6. I'm treating the Libra of Soul mode, where I get to mess with character creation, more like a toy than a linear game so far, but I don't think that matters. I got this game on an extremely deep Playstation Store sale a couple years ago, so it doesn't matter at all how I get my money's worth out of it. I might try the Soul Chronicle mode in the next couple days, though, where you play through the story for the in-game characters.
I'm down to six work days remaining until my vacation! I have a small pit to dig myself out of, backlogged work-wise, but that should be okay.
June 19th, 2023
I had trouble getting up and going this morning, so this'll be a super quick post. I enjoyed a bit of exploring and battling in Dragon Quest X Offline.
I also, very practically, made another create a character in Soul Calibur 6. Tracksuits were all the rage in the 16th century.
Seven work days are left until my vacation.
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.
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