Amitte

Progress report: May ‘22 (a.k.a. Drifting Along The Sea of Nothingness…)

Nothing unusual to report on life-wise this month! I’ve noticed the motivations I harbored while my ankle was healing have dissipated, which is unfortunate. I’ve also started wondering about my sexuality, but… stress can contribute to libido fluctuation, and I’ve got finals coming up soon, so I suppose I’ll wait until I’m done with those to confirm how I feel.
On a more minor note, a thing I wrote on a test got shamed in front of the whole class (I wasn’t named, but still) - been a while since that’s happened! Like, at least four years’ worth of a while! It was ridiculous, but I decided not to argue about it, those few points weren’t worth it anyway.
Gaming-wise, Coloring Pixels released the free r/place DLC and it has absolutely dominated my life, so this month’s completions were more of a formality than anything else, aaand seeing as I’ve mentioned finals, June is, more likely than not, going to follow that same path.
But for now, May’s assassinations:

AVICII Invector - I’m pretty much always craving a new rhythm game adventure and this title stood out to me, as it seems to have been bundled in the past. Got to grab it for cheap recently and… I have to say, it was a challenge. Mastering the controls was one thing - who the heck had the amazing idea of making the AXYB notes shaped like guitar picks? (for the love of all that is holy, you had one job) The additional hurdle, however, was imposed by the inputs registering all over the place (or rather that there was an achievement related to them). For real, the achievement for getting at least 75% perfect inputs screams “misunderstanding of the genre 101” to me; especially if, even when most times consistently hitting 97-100% of the notes only yielded 45%-70% perfect ones. I consider myself to be a solid rhythm game player, though nowhere near comfortable on extreme difficulty levels; to me getting a perfect rank with almost as many as or more “great” inputs than “perfect” inputs is absolutely fine, likely even better than missing even one note - and while I’m sure Invector reflects that, it seems that boosting (a charge move that adds to your multiplier for a short period of time) is absolutely necessary for the best rank (though I will also say that on some levels, it still didn’t let me have it), which makes it so that, should you be a completionist, it’s more comfortable to play for perfect inputs and best rank separately. It felt to me like the game itself (past the related achievements) wanted to make me averse to playing on any difficulty but Easy and I happily obliged. As for the music itself… I never really considered myself a fan of AVICII, I’ve only ever listened to his music when it was on the radio; having played Invector, I’m surprised to say that I’ve recognized maybe a third of the songs included in the game. I don’t plan on going back to the game, but I will definitely be listening to the songs on their own sometimes.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc - Ladies. Gentlemen. Other configurations of being. It is complete. I bought the main trilogy sometime in 2020, deadset on completing it in three years… little did I know, I would drop the first game near the end of the year and never pick it back up again… until just recently. Maybe because I was already privy to the big twist (at least partially) or maybe because it’s been memed to hell in the West (not that I specifically go looking around for Danganronpa memes, though), but I was more than fed up by the time I got done with this game. Speaking of the twist… call me stupid, but even though all (?) the signs were pointing to it, the truth was incredibly idiotic, considering all the weird stuff that’s been happening up until that point. Anyway, some characters are certainly highly memorable, other perhaps little more than recreated stereotypes; but somehow, I wished I could have gotten to know them better. The writing could get tedious at times - I don’t need to see the same thing repeated five times in a row, so I’m only hoping it looked/sounded more stylish in Japanese. The soundtrack ranges from anxiety-inducing to some cool bops, but it’s now pretty much embedded into my mind, so it’ll take a while for me to be able to listen to it on its own. I liked the resource management part of School Mode (numbers go brr), but not the hang-out part. It was all so repetitive and empty… unless I’d want to risk not upping my affinity with the character of choice, but that’s obviously not a good time, especially considering that you need to play it at least four times anyway. The Mono Mono machine annoyed me (imagine buying a high-quality game just to play gacha… as the zoomers say, that’s a “certified ‘bruh’ moment”) and the white noise achievements, which I got last were… well, not as grindy in the long run, but still a pain in the ass, cause I like my games easy and that achievement can only be unlocked through playing on medium or hard. Oh well… I don’t think I’ll be touching the sequel in at least five years.

Equivoque - Well… I really don’t know what to say about this one. It’s a VN about a bunny who finds themselves in the middle of a conflict between two magicians, solves it and… that’s the end. One of the reviews claims there are three possible endings, but I felt like two were enough to have tried just about every choice; not to mention it wasn’t long enough to make me care. The artstyle is nice, the music is the bomb… but seeing as it takes only half an hour to see just about everything it’s got to offer, I’m not sure if it should be paid at all. It feels like a project that was conceived as a grand idea, but ended up being a rush job. Wherever the developer is (seeing as they don’t seem to have released anything else), I hope they’re doing great for themselves. (Update: They absolutely seem to be! Check them out here!)

Grand Pskov Story - I… what… what just happened? This was pretty much a recreation of some porn/public therapy thing, judging by the visual style. I have absolutely no idea why this was made or how I got my hands on it, but if I wanted porn… I would just go look for porn. Thank the mighty powers for removing this from the storefront.

Mini Words - I’ve let myself fall in the trap of getting a bunch of games from this dev, so expect them to keep popping up in my reports in the near future. Mini Words is a casual puzzle game, where you’re tasked with uncovering all kinds of words; this one aims to collect a few hundred most common English words. As with most puzzle games I play, I eventually resigned myself to using a cheat sheet, but I can still applaud it for stumping me occasionally (not that it’s broken, just that some words could technically be found in multiple ways). And on a somewhat unrelated note, shoutout to the one guy who reviewed a few of these games, crying about how “we’re not being treated seriously” since these are simple enough to have been released on mobile devices. If there’s demand, there’s supply - get over yourself, dude (lol).

Time Gap - Can’t believe I’m finally done with this mess of a game! Listen, if you like your Facebook-era rechargable energy-type casual games, more power to ya. (Clearly I don’t mind them, otherwise I wouldn’t be playing.) However, this one really demands your time - perhaps if I were playing more consistently since I first started it, I would have been done sooner, but oh well. I can’t remember anything from my early days with this game, so I’ll focus on the nonsense that stuck with me, I suppose - there’s one HOG scene, where an object is hidden inside some kind of cupboard, behind closed doors and I suppose the devs just expect the players to somehow figure that out? Ridiculous. Even worse, presumably after a recent update, some of the items don’t show up properly, only their shadows are visible. Some achievements also seem to periodically be broken - assuming you’d be having trouble unlocking an achievement you should have gotten already, I recommend leaving the game be until a future update (as despite the messiness, it is being updated). Most importantly, gems - the great, paid currency. You only get three of them every time you level up, so make sure to save them for the godforsaken pancake achievement - what irony it is that completing it rewards you with gems as well… All in all, I can not recommend this game. However, if you must play it (ya masochist), good luck to you. I’d be quicker to recommend Wanderland or Lost Lands, however.

See you next month! :)

almost 2 years ago 0 comments