What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Vengeful Heart (Switch)

June 30th, 2023

tt's been exactly 12 hours since I last started posting, and it's the end of the month, too! For June, I wanted to clear two or three games, and ended up clearing two- Sonic Colors Ultimate and Vengeful Heart, the second of which I'll talk about a bit more later in this post. For July, I'm hoping to clear out at least two more, too.

My first order of business for today's post, though, is to share a couple of photos I snapped at Shedd Aquarium! I really wanted to go while I was in Chicago, since the last time I went I was in grade school, and I remembered it being really beautiful. It was crowded and hot, and I got really tired carrying my luggage backpack with me the whole time, but my memory wasn't wrong. The sheer number of different fish there is amazing, and on top of that, I got to see the cute penguins and a little sea lion show. I fear I shall never recover from my post-trip tiredness, but going to the aquarium was a super worthwhile choice.

During my travel time, with a little bit of polishing things off after last night's post, I finished up Vengeful Heart, too. My Switch says I played it for a little over five hours, which seems about right, and I got both available endings. There's only one choice in the whole game- it really does lean towards the novel part of "visual novel," so it was really easy to get both endings. There was one thing about the aftermath of each choice that bothered me quite a bit, which I won't discuss due to major spoilers. The art in this was extremely cool, though, especially the backgrounds, and I think overall it was pretty good. I'm glad I took the time to clear this.

I also played Pikmin Bloom a lot, since it's a really fun travel game, and got a "woah, no way, you gotta be kidding me, I didn't notice!" style message from it that I walked a lot yesterday. I hope to not walk nearly 13,000 steps today.

June 29th, 2023

My post today is pretty down to the wire, since there's only 32 minutes left to post within the day as I start this. This is the first post that'll cover a trip to Chicago I just got back from, though, since I managed to get tickets to see Twice at the United Center a few months back! When I was living in Japan, they first hit there, so it's been exciting to see them get bigger alongside other K-pop here, too, since coming back to the US. It was weird enough being able to throw their new mini-albums in the cart during grocery runs at Target, but seeing them in an American arena was very surreal! The show was really fun, though, with an almost variety show setup that gave them enough breaks to keep going for two and a half hours, and I had an extremely good time.

The below photos are not so much the best ones I got, so much as the ones I thought would look best with my color scheme here.

As far as games went, I didn't play so much. On the plane, I picked Vengeful Heart back up for a few minutes of public transit visual novel goodness, but I was inexplicably nervous about being on the plane, so I really just played for ten or so minutes. I'll have a lot more to say about this tomorrow.

While hanging out and waiting for the concert, I also played Dragon Quest X Offline for an hour or so on a family member's extremely large TV. I got pretty lost, but am still having fun, so I'll go back to my starting point and figure out how to turn my quest map marker on in my next play session.

Tomorrow's post will have more travel stuff in it, with a couple of photos from today's tourism. For now, I am going to sleep extremely well.

April 24th, 2023

This morning, I feel really worried about nothing in particular for work, so I'm moving slower than I'd like to be. Hopefully, it'll be a good day, but if it's not, it's not.

Last night, I felt kind of overwhelmed, too, but in the interest of actually getting games finished, I picked up Vengeful Heart for another chapter. I have no problems with where I am in this visual novel, but during last night's chunk of reading, I found myself getting unnecessairly anxious on Josephine, the main character's behalf, to the point that I almost turned it off to not see her "bad choices" play out. I kept it on, though, and it was a page turner, or, maybe more appropriately to the story's form, text-box-advancer. I'm hoping to finish this in the next couple of days, but am also not the most eager to see it end.

April 14th, 2023

I meant to read quite a lot more of Vengeful Heart again last night, but was tired enough that I somehow convinced myself my air conditioner was broken. It absolutely is not. After I took some more cold medicine, though, I got through another chapter. I can't decide if, with the named and illustrated supporting cast, I like the in-character clarity or dislike the lack of subtlety the game takes in contrasting different methods of resistance. It's a pretty engaging story regardless, but that stuck out to me last night.

I also played some Disney Tsum Tsum, but only three or four rounds throughout the day.

It's almost the weekend! With any luck, in nine hours, I'll be free and clear of work for two whole days!

April 13th, 2023

I'm coming down with something of a cold, so last night, I took some generic Nyquil and played Vengeful Heart until I flat out fell asleep. It's been 100% passive gameplay so far- not even any branching paths- and I think I made quite a dent in it last night. The story is interesting, though, with a lot of privately owned utility and for-profit healthcare problems going on, and I am in a spot where just reading is the perfect gameplay mechanic for me. I'm trying to use my corresponding generic Dayquil to get through the work day and, hopefully, I'l be able to play a bit more tonight.

April 12th, 2023

Last night, I worked late and went to bed early, which wasn't the best for exciting and in-depth gaming. I did download Tron Identity, because I'd been looking forward to that for a while, but I ended up starting another visual novel, Vengeful Heart, instead. I picked that one up for $1.99 in an eShop sale on Switch, thinking it looked cool. Even though I've only just started it, so far, it is cool. The pixel art is really neat, and if I didn't have to work today, I'd sit down and binge play a big chunk of it. Alas! I do have to be mildly responsible, so I'll pick it back up tonight.