What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?
Wild Arms (Playstation Classic)
January 19th, 2023
Tonight, I am making a super late post, over a lovely dinner of salad and frozen chicken strips! Nothing is wrong today, I just couldn't focus this morning and didn't want to rush through something that I enjoy doing to get a post done before work.
Pretty directly after work last night, I huddled down to finish up Cube Escape: Arles which I ended up being able to clear without the walkthrough that my coworker texted me. I do have an index card of scrawled puzzle notes to show for my efforts, but that's how point and click games go. This was the first of the Cube Escape games that really clicked for me. I felt like the game length was good, the puzzles were hard in a satisfyingly solvable way, and the Van Gogh stuff was a neat twist on the series themes and motifs. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.
After that, I wanted to keep playing games rather than do much else, so I went back to Wild Arms, which I just kind of forgot about! I cleared the dungeon I'd been in, the Maze of Death, super quickly, and went back outside for a ship-bound boss battle and some plot points. NPCs are very clearly telling me where to go next, so I guess I'll pay attention to their little text boxes and head north!
From there, I crocheted and watched Youtube for a little bit before heading to bed and doing another puzzle in Calm Colors to knock me out. It is weird to discuss how I feel about this as a game, because there's hardly anything to it, but it genuinely is relaxing.
November 21st, 2022
Today is a fast post before work day! I have a three day week ahead, thanks to Thansgiving, so I hope I can start it off without too much stress and trouble. Since I had Friday off, though, today will be double the desk work, which is a little iffy.
The first of the three games I played yesterday was Activision Anthology for PS2. I'd like to get all of the high score patches in this game, which is a compilation of Activision's 2600 games. I started off yesterday with Kaboom, where I needed 200 points for the patch. I'd never played Kaboom before, so I don't know how the controls are with real hardware, but on PS2, the baskets you use to catch bombs revert to the middle every time you let up on your joystick, making bomb catching exceedingly tricky. After about 45 somewhat pathetic minutes, though, I got my 200 points and'll move on to the next game.
I did the daily challenge in Pokken Tournament DX, then did the first set of the game's league battles to try and up my trainer ranking. Chandelure is my Pokemon of choice because I like the design, so I'll learn to use them effectively out of misguided determination.
Lastly, I played Wild Arms for a while, exploring the port city I reached on Saturday and starting a dungeon delightfully called the Maze of Death. I saved halfway through and'll finish that up on my next play session.
November 20th, 2022
I'm posting after doing a Sunday morning grocery run today, having gone with Aldi over Target this week. I almost have everything I need for Thanksgiving cooking, but Aldi didn't have any gravy! I'll stop by a more normal grocery store early in the week to get that figured out.
Wild Arms ended up being the main thing I played yesterday, with my going in and clearing the next dungeon while I had a pot of soup going. The boss took forever to fight, but was weirdly not difficult at all despite that, so it felt a little tedious. Getting through that and the post-dungeon story stuff felt like a good chunk of gameplay, though.
Later in the night, I cleared the character story I was working on in Kandagawa Jet Girls. Just like with the first team, it took until the final race of the story to hit an interesting track with some mildly challenging elements, which I then absolutely destroyed without really knowing what was going on. From here, I have to go back up and do the main rival team's story, which is fine. Having cleared five races last night makes clearing all of the team stories here feel less daunting than it did at one race a night.
I did the daily challenge in Pokken Tournament DX, too. I don't think I'd ever really used Gardevoir when I was playing this before, but they were a decent character.
With that, my whole Sunday lays ahead. I have a dream that my nose will stop running (not likely) and another dream that I'll be able to eat some fast food (very likely!). I hope you guys all have decent days, too.
November 14th, 2022
I'm doing a quick post before work, after being too apprehensive about work to drag myself out of bed. I played Wild Arms more last night, but rather than moving things forward, just fought random monsters to get the gold I needed to get the next item up for everyone's weapons and armor, having hit a new town. The ARM weapon, the main character Rudy's gun that he uses in lieu of magic, has a pretty steep upgrade cost, but I wanted to improve it a bit before tackling the next dungeon. This wasn't exciting, but in a JRPG, it happens.
I also halfheartedly cleared a set of daily challenges in Mahjong Story 2, as I wasn't quite ready to go to bed after shutting Wild Arms off. It was fine.
November 13th, 2022
I beat Sonic the Hedgehog last night! On the website end of things, this prompted me to go in and do some work on my Cleared Games page, which I'd been wanting to fiddle with for a while. I moved my cleared game goals off onto their own page just for tidiness sake, which wasn't a big deal. It felt good to get it taken care of, though.
As far as the game itself goes, I enjoyed Sonic the Hedgehog, and am glad after years and years of stopping at Marble Zone, I finally have it finished. Towards the end, there was at least one stretch of a level with flames shooting out of the floor, an electrified ceiling, and a chainsaw blade so ridiculous my response was to laugh my butt off while hurling the f-bomb at my television, but it's always a decent sign if I can be amused by my own failure. After that, the final Robotnik fight was a lot easier than I expected. Since you have to head into that with no rings, though, I guess it's merciful that it wasn't more difficult.
At any rate, I don't intend to go back and clear it with all the Chaos Emeralds in hand, but I still feel satisfied.
I did go in and put a couple of hours into Wild Arms, too! I was pretty sleepy by that point and got mildly frustrated to be up against a classic "go through the dungeon, fight the boss, and then walk back through the entire dungeon" situation, but it's a JRPG and these things happen.
I'm not 100% sure what I'll play today, but it's nice to sit on a Sunday, knowing I have a four day work week ahead tomorrow and a three day work week after that. I'm sure I'll still flip out and panic some, but this is a nice position to be in.
November 10th, 2022
This is a quick lunch break post on a Thursday of a week that simply just does not quit going. I am extremely enjoying playing Wild Arms, though, and gave it another chunk of time last night. The dungeon I did split the three party members off onto their own little puzzle areas, which I thought was a neat idea, both for gameplay and character development. I know where the dungeon I'll hit tonight is already, and am looking forward to playing after clocking out of work and washing a monstrous stack of dishes.
After that, I played survival mode in Dead or Alive: Dimensions for a few minutes, because I wanted to kick some faces. It was spot on like Dead or Alive: Hardcore, so I had warm and fuzzy PS2 memories. It might have been a little too easy, but I was half asleep, so I didn't care.
November 9th, 2022
Yesterday was not chill, and work was stressful. I did a lot of wall staring last night. Today seems ripe for drama, too, so I grabbed some origami star folding paper and put it by my desk in advance.
Games were okay last night, though. I spent most of my game time, again, on Wild Arms, going through a mountain pass that served as a small, transitional, semi-dungeon. There was a little cutscene where one of my party members got the idea for a new attack, which I could then use in battle, and that was an interesting seeming mechanic. I also feel like I missed something on the mountain pass, because in the previous town, NPCs kept saying the bandits up there had stolen a magic map, which sure would be helpful on any journey, hint-hint. The path seemed so straightforward that the bandits could very well be somewhere else, though, so I'll see how things unfold.
I didn't want to go another save point worth of play once I reached the town, so from there, I played some simple puzzle games. I got out my Genesis Mini 2 and played one of the previously unreleased games on it, Star Mobile. It's not awful, but the thought occurred to me more than once that it was probably previously unreleased because it's not that good, either. In it, you put stars of varying weights on scales, trying to keep them balanced while also clearing colors off the scales- a mechanic that also alters the weights you've set up. I think I can get good at it and'll almost definitely try again, but it's a bit clunky.
After that, I grabbed my phone and played Mahjong Story 2, one of the Galaxy Store quick play games. Aside from my existential despair that I missed the emotional journey of the first game in the series, leaving me unable to understand the heart of why the game's title screen girl is compelled to match tiles, I'm fine with this. It's overly monetized and'll probably be never ending, but I really like mahjong solitare games and this is free. I'll play it until I either get sick of it begging me for cash, or get bored with the gameplay, and move onto something else.
November 8th, 2022
It's been a busier morning than normal so far! I got up early and went and voted, and am supposed to be in for an office day at work a bit early, too. Yesterday was a lot calmer than I thought it would be, though, and overall, I think today will be fairly chill, too.
Knowing that I had to get up early last night, though, I went to bed early, too, cutting my gaming time short. The task I wussed out on in Wild Arms on Sunday night turned out to be extremely easy with a better mindset and more sleep. It turned out that there were two types of save points, though- one that looks like a parrot, and one that looks like a pentagram- and I spent my first 4.5 hours of playtime sidestepping the pentagrams thinking they were dungeon traps! Oh, well! At least I figured it out before the opening credits rolled.
November 7th, 2022
Friday was really bad at work, so I'm really dreading clocking in and giving it another 8 and a half hours of my life today. It can't go as badly today, in theory, but the aftermath of some of the bad calls and system outages will hit today, which isn't going to be pleasant. Tomorrow's an office day, though, so at least I get the grace of struggling from home today.
I was super wiped out last night, especially after successfully pulling off a meal prep day, which'll be good overall. I did get in a few minutes on Wild Arms, though, and certainly did move the story forward. There's a "stealth mission" sort of thing I hit where I have to sneak past some guards and escape a castle, and even though it seems doable, it was right after a save point, so I tried a couple of times, decided I wasn't going to mess with that and another dungeon, and went to bed.
November 6th, 2022
I've already been to Target today, and it was a very intense experience. I am kind of zonked out from last night's time change, it was super crowded, and I had a very clear grocery list to follow. I forgot one thing, and had to go across the street to Natural Grocers to get tofu, as Target was out. Everything is set for a cooking day, though, which should help make next week better.
In regards to games, I played Wild Arms for a couple of hours last night, and it was pretty enjoyable. Playing it on a mini console means I don't have an instruction book on hand, which made some of the (very basic) puzzles harder to solve than they needed to be, just by merit of my not being sure how to switch characters on the fly. I got it figured out, though, and made it through Rudy's intro dungeon and the first dungeon where all three of your characters have met up. My early confusion gave me a nice level boost, too, since the encounter rate is decently high in this game, which is never a bad place to be at the start of an RPG.
I did my daily check in on Kandagawa Jet Girls, too, and got involved in it enough to clear all three missions on the race I was doing. I got mildly hung up on a "don't hit the wall" mission, which it took me a few tries and was satisfying to clear. I didn't get into it enough to do more than one race, though.
November 5th, 2022
Work yesterday was wild in a bad way, so I was glad to have games set up and good to go after my brain got fried like a piece of chicken.
I did a quick check-in with Kandagawa Jet Girls, knocking out another race and adjusting some of the jet skis. I'm sure playing this one race at a time is exactly how the game creators intended it to be enjoyed, stretched out over a period of weeks with nothing more than incremental story progression each day.
I also got back to Wild Arms, and played through the treasure hunter, Jack's intro dungeon. I didn't go much further than that because I don't know to what extent I can trust the save points in this game yet, and I'm definitely apprehensive about using the Playstation Classic's save states. I'll figure out the rhythm of that soon enough, though. It looks like there's a character switching mechanic that'll play a decent role in the game, and since characters can be switched out at save points, it makes me wonder if they might be slightly more generous here than in other PS1 RPGs.
November 4th, 2022
Last night, I was still kind of out of sorts, so I did more blank staring and trying to figure out what to do next than actually doing anything. As such, I did not check in on the Kandagawa Jet Girls, but I did manage to get a JRPG going.
I used to play a lot of JRPGs, and still really enjoy them. When I played the first Dragon Quest early in the summer, it was a lot of fun, even if it was super short! I get so worried about spending time on the wrong game, or starting something I'm unable to finish, or just worries I can't figure out what they are, though, that it's hard for me to turn one on. I want to get back into the groove of playing them so I can tackle some newer ones- my game shelf has piles of them- but it's difficult to get that ball rolling.
After some deliberation last night, though, I decided to tackle Wild Arms, which I have on my Playstation Classic. It's not the game I'd been considering last night, but that is okay. I played the first hour or so of it just before starting this blog, so last night, I just spent a few minutes remembering where I was and what I needed to do. It was fun, though. I like turn based battles and levelling up, and I like talking to people that say strange things in little towns. Tonight, I will try to play a little more.
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