The Gaming Diary: Chapter 3

[Boshamp]

Chip & Dale: Rescue Rangers (XBone) Never beat this one as a kiddo, but tore through it pretty handily now that I have it as part of the Disney Afternoon Collection. Just like Ducktales, it didn't take me long to remember everything I used to about this game. The collection offers a rewind feature for traditional play, but disables it on Boss Rush and Time Attack modes for a greater challenge. I game over-ed on my first time attack attempt, but was successful on my second attempt at just under 20 minutes, placing me 98th on the XBL leaderboard as of now.

[shaggy]

Beat RE7.  Great game!

[Sirgin]

I've been playing BlazBlue: Continuum Shift. Damn, some of the combos are hard to execute!

[Link41]

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (GB) - Decided to finish this one before moving onto another Zelda, so I finally progressed past where I was stuck. I made it to the Face Shrine and collected a super overpowered boomerang in the process.

[MaterialHandlerMike]

Plugging away at the Switch port, of Skyrim. Almost done the Dawnguard DLC.

[shane]

I've been playing randomized A Link to the Past games. Played through 44 so far, mostly a 10 triforce piece game. It's like a scavenger hunt with ALTTP. http://vt.alttp.run/randomizer

[Disposed Hero]

Trails in the Sky the 3rd - While I never really wanted the second game to end at any time during the ~90 hour adventure, I feel like the third game is getting a bit old at the 40-50 hour range.  I'll still finish it and will probably still love it overall, but this definitely won't be my favorite entry in the series.

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions - As much as I hated to do it, I had to put this game down.  I was already struggling with it, then the game stuck me with some dumb fetch-questy stuff that reminded me of collecting triforce pieces in Windwaker or hunting down the twelve keys in Metroid Prime.  While those other games may have been interesting enough for me to endure that sort of monotony, M&L unfortunately is not.

Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology - The novelty of the whole time travel/alternate timeline mechanic is starting to wear off, and now the game is feeling a bit dull.  Here's hoping it will start to get interesting again soon.

Secret of Mana (Remake) - Started this in co-op with two friends.  I know this game has been getting a lot of criticism, and I can understand why as it does have kind of a cheap feel to it, but I'll be damned if three friends who grow up with the original aren't having a ton of fun with the remake.  I think if you like the original, you'll enjoy the remake, but the bare-bones feel of this remake will probably be off-putting to newcomers.

South Park: The Stick of Truth - Played this and steamrolled my way through it in just a few days.  Awesome game, I couldn't put it down!  Absolutely a must-play and I'm glad to have finally gotten to it after all this time.

Rise of the Tomb Raider - I wanted to keep knocking out relatively recent games from my backlog, so I started this.  I'm not very far into it yet, but it's not really grabbing me like I hoped it would.  I think I liked the original (reboot) more, but I still feel like I'm very early into this one, so we'll see if it gets more interesting.

[Disposed Hero]

I've been playing randomized A Link to the Past games. Played through 44 so far, mostly a 10 triforce piece game. It's like a scavenger hunt with ALTTP. http://vt.alttp.run/randomizer

I've been wanting to do a randomized LTTP run ever since I learned about it a few months back.  I know it sort of comes down to luck as far as where all the items get placed, but I think I know the game well enough that I could pull it off.

[shane]

I've been wanting to do a randomized LTTP run ever since I learned about it a few months back.  I know it sort of comes down to luck as far as where all the items get placed, but I think I know the game well enough that I could pull it off.

The thing that makes it possible and not frustrating is that you can save and quit to get you unstuck from anything. There's a Super Metroid randomizer, but you kind of have to know every non-essential room and sometimes even get lucky with which path you take to not avoid having to load a previous save to get unstuck.

[bombatomba]

My gaming is currently out of control.  I was slowly going through Grandia (PSX), while playing Metroid: Samus Returns on the side, and Avernum: Escape from the Pit for a pallet cleanser.  Then I got Just Cause 3 on Steam.  I originally meant to save it for a rainy day, but after a few minutes of play I am addicted.  It gives a freedom of movement that is unparalleled in the genre (or any genre, for that matter) but still makes you work for it (a little like flying with the cape in Super Mario World), which is very refreshing.  I highly recommend this game to fans of open world games, as well as to people who play GTA games just to cause trouble (and want to blow up more stuff).

To make matters worse, I've received a SNES Classic Edition.  I honestly thought I wouldn't like this thing, and even now after hours of play I can only recommend it as an alternative for folks that are unable to build and maintain a RetroPie, but I'm still having a lot of fun.  Maybe it is because I haven't played Super Castlevania IV in years, but it is just so charming, and I get so much enjoyment watching my kids play the original Super Mario Kart (they play a lot of Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U).  I will be hacking this in the near future, as I find it unacceptable that Chrono Trigger and FF2/4 isn't in the original package.

EDIT:  And Act Raiser.  Why no Act Raiser, Nintendo?

[Disposed Hero]

Rise of the Tomb Raider - I wanted to keep knocking out relatively recent games from my backlog, so I started this.  I'm not very far into it yet, but it's not really grabbing me like I hoped it would.  I think I liked the original (reboot) more, but I still feel like I'm very early into this one, so we'll see if it gets more interesting.

Haven't made much progress in anything else lately, but just wanted to add that I have put more time into Rise of the Tomb Raider and I am indeed becoming more invested in it and am enjoying it more than I was at the start.  I still may come away liking the original more, but we'll see how it goes.

[bombatomba]

I've been wanting to do a randomized LTTP run ever since I learned about it a few months back.  I know it sort of comes down to luck as far as where all the items get placed, but I think I know the game well enough that I could pull it off.

The thing that makes it possible and not frustrating is that you can save and quit to get you unstuck from anything. There's a Super Metroid randomizer, but you kind of have to know every non-essential room and sometimes even get lucky with which path you take to not avoid having to load a previous save to get unstuck.

I absolutely love the idea of randomized games, though I am really out of practice.  Maybe I'll watch a playthrough or something (or get better at LttP).

[Link41]

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (GB) - Just finished the game, I can't believe I simply gave up on this back in the day. I had a blast with this, easily a 4/5 score from me.

[Boshamp]

Gears of War 4 (XBOne) - Bought this at release and played it for about 30 hours before putting it down along with pretty much everything else over the last year or so, but picked it back up and started playing it again over the last few weeks. Got another 60 hours or so logged into it and am making some great progress and am feeling very confident competitively, but I am waiting for my brother to agree to play the Campaign and Horde modes with me to not only knock out those achievements, but also to finally experience the story-line of this game.

[Sirgin]

I finished playing BlazBlue: Continuum Shift. Great gameplay, very deep. Landing an Astral Heat to clinch a match is very satisfying.

I played through the arcade mode with several characters, did the "story" mode of 2 characters (boring), tried Legion mode a few times, and spent most of today doing some of the character-specific trophies, which were fun to do without being overly difficult.
I didn't get that far in Challenge mode - things get really difficult around challenge 3 - 4 with most characters. We're talking combos linking 5+ attacks together. I wanted to do some online matches, but unfortunately this version of BlazBlue appears completely dead. I searched for players several times over the past couple of weeks, but didn't find a single one. Oh, well.