Games and Stuff From 2019

I have always enjoyed posting on my blog, but life over the past two years has really put a squeeze on my writing hobby.  My output in 2019 was particularly poor with the only bright spot being that I managed to keep my Halloween writing tradition going with three posts with which I’m reasonably pleased.  Changes in both my personal and professional life have incurred new taxes on my free time that mean I have less of it to devote to gaming and in turn both less inspiration and time to write.

While I can’t deny that I’m somewhat mournful of this new challenge to my hobbies, the changes I’ve faced in life over the past couple of years have ultimately been for the better, and I’m thankful for that.  Going forward, I hope I can find a way to use my free time more efficiently and reinvigorate this blog as a hobby. With all of that out of the way, I have put together this long rambling post, where I talk in an abbreviated fashion about all the games and gaming stuff that became personal highlights of 2019.

Sega Genesis Mini

I picked up one of these around its launch a few months ago, and it’s been a ton of fun.  A major function of games for me right now is to serve as a means of blowing off steam, and Genesis games are great at that purpose.  During its heyday, Sega was really all about bringing the arcade experience into the home, and as a result, Genesis games often have a “pick up and play” quality that makes it easy to jump in for some action that can be as little as 5 minutes or as long as an hour.  I own a few of the other classic consoles, and this is by far the one I’ve invested the most time in for that reason. I also plucked down the money for the wireless controller from 8bitdo, and it has been an excellent controller so far, well worth the money. (I have another 8bitdo controller that I use with my tablet, and it is also excellent.  They make great stuff from my experience.) Hopefully, I will be able to write more about this machine in the future.

Super Mario Maker 

This game also follows the theme of using gaming to blow off steam.  I really enjoyed Super Mario Maker on the Wii U, and the sequel simply carries that game over to the Switch while adding some excellent new bells and whistles.  While I’ve really enjoyed making levels on the Wii U, I haven’t really gotten around yet to making my own levels on Switch. I feel that the lack of an in-built stylus in the Switch makes level designing less approachable than on Wii U.  I’ve really just been downloading levels to play when I have some spare time here and there. I haven’t picked up the game up for a little while now, but the arrival of playable Link complete with his own special abilities makes me want to go back.

Resident Evil 2

I’ve already written about this game for Halloween, but I just wanted to reiterate that it was probably the highlight of 2019 for me.

Assorted 3DS Games

Most people have probably completely moved to Switch, but I’m still clinging to my 3DS.  I’m having a really hard time letting go. I think it’s mostly because the 3DS is more portable than the Switch, being smaller and having a more robust clamshell design that folds up to protect the important bits, which makes it easy for me to take along to play at lunch breaks or when I’m traveling.  There’s also just a huge library of great games on the system that I haven’t managed to get around to yet, which means there’s always something new for me to play. Right now, the machine really just sort of lives in my backpack.

My go-to game for the past month or so has been Super Mario 3D Land, which is a game that I’ve beaten before, but makes for good replay due to the amount and creative variety of content.  It’s honestly a bit mind boggling to me to play this game and see how well Nintendo translated the scope of a 3D Mario game to a handheld device. Throw in the fact that this game is sort of a spiritual successor to Super Mario Bros. 3 (my favorite Mario game), and I’ve come to realize that I’ve really underappreciated it for a long time.  For this playthrough, I challenged myself to collect all of the star coins in each level, something that I tried but never accomplished the first time I beat it. In typical Nintendo fashion, the reward for doing such an above-and-beyond feat is incredibly basic, a simple star tagged to the save file, but I’m fine with that. Now that I’ve got that out of the way, I’ve waded into the 3DS version of the first Luigi’s Mansion.

Rage 2

I bought Rage 2 completely on a whim around the time when it came out.  All of the reviews at the time mentioned how mediocre the game was, and I have to concur.  It does mindless action very well, but enemy variety, world building, and level and mission design are just let downs and leave the experience feeling like it could have been so, so much more.  Nonetheless, I played the game all the way to completion of the story and cleaned up some of the larger optional side missions. I did enjoy what I played, and occasionally go back to do some of the open world missions that I haven’t completed when I just want to zone out to a game, because again it does mindless action very well, but it is not a game that I would put very high on my recommended list.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

This has been my go-to game lately.  Star Wars is something I’m not quite as passionate about as I was when I was a high schooler, but games like Jedi Outcast and Knights of the Old Republic remain among my favorites that I revisit every handful of years.  So far, Fallen Order is shaping up to meet the high standards of those particular titles. I’ve heard this game described as Souls-lite as it has a combat system that is very similar to Dark Souls melee combat, although not nearly as tight or graceful, in addition to other borrowed elements like a bonfire-style save and recovery system and worlds that just sort of weave in and out of themselves in a similar manner to the lands around the Firelink Shrine.

I only have two major complaints about the game.  First, the game is heavily focused on lightsaber combat with force powers as a supplement (there are no blasters that the main character can use as far as I know).  For the most part it works fairly well, but the character can feel clumsy at times. This is particularly true since so many other elements of the game scream Dark Souls, but the melee combat just isn’t as tight as what an experienced Dark Souls player might  expect. The second issue I have is the enemy variety isn’t that great. It’s mostly humanoids (usually stormtroopers) that carry various flavors of blasters or energy weapons and a handful of very basic Star Wars monsters. There’s nothing that really captures the imagination to the extent that the menagerie of grotesqueries that appears in the Dark Souls series does.

Those complaints out of the way, I still think the game is really cool.  The planets the player visits are fun to explore, and they look incredible.  If the game can keep up the momentum it has had so far, it may actually dethrone Jedi Outcast as my favorite Star Wars game.

Grindstone

This is a game I downloaded to my phone, and it’s been a good way to entertain myself when I only have access to my phone.  In general, gaming on phones has usually felt like a wasteland to me because of the soul-destroying monetization schemes that are hard to escape.  If you had told me a long time ago in a world before smartphones that people in the future would carry around computers in their pockets that were more powerful and had a faster internet connection than the computer I grew up with, my video game addled brain would have immediately started imagining all the amazing gaming possibilities that such devices would open up.  And then if you had told me that all the games on these things would suck, I think my brain would break and my faith in the future of humankind would have completely shattered.

Grindstone is, fortunately, one of the too few mobile games that is actually worthwhile.  A product of Capybara Games, who also made Critter Crunch and Sword and Sworcery, their house style is definitely on display here.  The game is sort of like a match 3 game (e.g., Bejewelled) but with no actual matching. Instead, each level is a grid of differently colored monsters, and the player takes control of a Viking warrior that occupies one of these grid spaces.  Enemies are defeated by running a line from the Viking character through consecutively adjacent monsters of the same color. The catch is that if the Viking lands on a space adjacent to an enemy that is readying an attack, the player will take damage.  Enemies that are defeated are replaced by new enemies that fall from the top of the screen. Levels are usually completed when the player defeats a certain number of enemies.  

While all of this may sound complex due to the haphazard way I’m describing it, it’s actually fairly simple once seen in action.  The game has a huge number of levels that keeps this fairly simple formula interesting by introducing new elements such as special monster types, environmental upgrades, and unlockable abilities.

This is the kind of game that I’ve personally found is best for me to play in short, disciplined bursts.  The game can be addictive in a way that reminds me of the rabbit holes that I’ve gone down in over the Picross series.  Every time I complete a level, I have this impulse to start the next one, telling myself I’ll only play “just one more”.  If I’m not careful, way too much time evaporates, and I’ve long stopped having fun and, at that point I’m really just chasing after a dopamine kick.  It’s like gorging on a bag of potato chips. That first chip is super salty and delicious, which makes you want to eat one more. Then you eat the second and third chip which are a little less tasty due to your brain becoming numb to the repetition of flavor.  But you keep eating because you’re chasing after the satisfaction that the original chip gave you. Eventually, you’ve found that you’ve eaten way too much, should have stopped a long time ago, and that momentary pleasure has given way to self-loathing originating somewhere deep inside the body.  Just like the potato chip, it’s best not to let oneself binge on these kinds of addictive games. Play a level or two here and there and then just let it go.

Wrapping Up

Last but not least, not too long ago I managed to complete my long personal quest to complete all of the games in the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.  The third game in the series has always been my favorite, and after having a tough time with Crash 1 and 2, I was pleased to find that Crash 3 is still mostly agreeable to me.  I plan to write more very soon on both the surprises and disappointments that the Crash 3 remake delivered, as well as why it took me an incredible amount of time to actually finish.