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And here we go again! No way I'm not doing this. Starting earlier this year.

Somehow I've actually played a bunch of new stuff this year, though - but summer, traditionally, means even more gaming. So let's keep doing that.

I had some sort of vague plan that Breath of the Wild was going to be my main summer game. But I want the Switch version, since I know I want a Switch anyway. And I really don't have the money for that. I won't have the money for that until I get a job. So.

Instead of that, for now, let's dive back into the backlog!

Format's going to be the same as previous years, 'cause why change a winning formula? Each day, I will pick one game. I will play that game a bunch. I will post about the game before I start playing and add my thoughts on it at the end of the day.

New games will be played Monday-Friday, and the weekend is for going back to resume playing stuff I didn't beat, or play some other things.

It'll be split up this year, for a number of reasons. Next week I'm probably going to my parent's place, plus SGDQ starts on Sunday. Then there's ESA (where I'll be running two games) and a convention. So I'm going to do one week now, and then probably one week in August.

So let's roll.

Games
2017-06-26 - Darksiders II
2017-06-27 - Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight
2017-06-28 - Castlevania: Curse of Darkness
2017-06-29 - The Swapper (completed 2017-06-29)
2017-06-30 - Dark Souls

Monday 2017-06-26 - Darksiders II




Format: Xbox 360 (also available on PS3, PS4, Wii U, X1 and PC)
What it is: Sequel to (though storywise it takes place at the same time as) the first Darksiders, which I played last year. The series revolves around the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and in the first game you played War, this time around you take control of his brother Death (and in the upcoming Darksiders 3, you play as their sister Fury so logically Strife will be the player character in the fourth game, if there ever is a fourth game). The first game was a Zelda-like, this one is supposedly more like a MMORPG without being multiplayer and online.
Release date: 2012-08-14
Owned since: October 2014
Status: Unplayed, got it for free through Games with Gold.
Available: On disc and digitally. DRM-free on GOG.
Verdict: Getting Diablo III flashbacks, and not necessarily in the good way. The weapon upgrading system from the first game is gone and replaced by a loot system that's pretty much right out of Diablo and the like. Lots of drops, most of it bad! Gameplay is otherwise fairly similar to the first game, there's dungeons like in Zelda, but there's no dungeon items this time around. So that's a pretty big difference and one of the consequences is that it feels a lot more samey than the first one. Still, it's pretty fun to play, combat is fun, and Death is a lot more nimble than his younger brother. I'll keep playing this and at some point I'll probably go nuts and buy the DLC, too. Maybe.

Tuesday 2017-06-27 - Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight




Format: PC (also available on X1 and PS4)
What it is: Actually the fourth game in the Momodora series. A Metroidvania, and that's about all I know.
Release date: 2016-03-04
Owned since: 2017-02-26
Status: Bought on sale on GOG, never played. Did play the first three Momodora games between buying this and now, though. They were of varying quality and 2 was the best one, imo.
Available: Only digitally. DRM-free on GOG, also on Humble Store but only Steam version there.
Verdict: Well, some mixed feelings. So I'm playing on Hard, but it was still a bit too bullshit in parts - practically everything is a two-hit kill is not a one-hit kill, and in the first area, several enemies could cause poison - and poison damage actually kills you in this game rather than just leaving you at like 1 HP. Good thing it turns out the bow is actually really fucking overpowered - infinitely spammable and fast, too. Defeated a boss solely by crouching and spamming bow without moving once in the whole fight. Metroidvania, and pretty open, I've had several options of where to go at times and areas can seemingly be done in various order, so that's nice. Didn't get as much played as yesterday, but I knew I wouldn't, since I would be away for a while. I'll finish this too, eventually. Minus for the control setup, though - there's native controller support, and there is a control config, but the config is only for keyboard controls, so I had to go with keyboard controls and Joy2Key to actually get the controller setup I wanted. So there you go.

Wednesday 2017-06-28 - Castlevania: Curse of Darkness




Format: PS2 (also on Xbox)
What it is: The second 3D Castlevania game in its generation, after Lament of Innocence. Storywise, it's a sequel to Dracula's Curse. A 3D Metroidvania, and like a bunch of the 2D ones, the player character isn't a whip user, so you find a variety of different weapons.
Release date: 2005-11-01 (and later for various regions and formats)
Owned since: No fucken idea, my copy is a burned one and I don't know when I downloaded it.
Status: Played it for 2 hours many years ago, I remember dying after not having saved for a while and then not returning to it. Gonna start over anyway.
Available: On disc. Check the used market. Or be a pirate.
Verdict: Made it further than last time, at any rate! Though I played less than I had hoped since I needed to go do some big grocery shopping today. So it goes. Anyway, it's a perfectly valid Castlevania game but definitely has some issues. There's a bit more loading screens than comfortable, and the camera is... not great. Also, while I can appreciate stealing things off of enemies, every time you do that, it stops the action and pops up a message saying what you stole for like 3-4 seconds, which got old very fast. I'm definitely going to try to actually beat this, but there's some other games that'll have higher priority for now.

Thursday 2017-06-29 - The Swapper




Format: Wii U (but is on a whole bunch of formats)
What it is: I don't really know! Puzzle-platform-something. You can clone yourself or something?
Release date: 2013-05-13 originally, later for other formats. 2014-11-06 for Wii U.
Owned since: 2016-07-16, probably.
Status: Bought on a sale, never played.
Available: Digitally.
Verdict: Well, I beat it! It wasn't that long. Beat it in one full battery charge of the Wii U controller, but it did give me the battery light at the end. So... pretty okay game, but everything about it just screams "indie game". Not necessarily a bad thing, but hey. A little Metroidvania-ish, but given that you only have one thing and never get anything more, just different obstacles introduced in the puzzles, I hesitate to call it that, though there is some free exploration. Kinda dark game, both in the visual and the philosophical sense. Two puzzles I had to look up, admittedly. Dumbest thing about it was at the end - you were given a choice of two endings, and once you had seen one... you could not go back to a previous checkpoint to get the other, since hitting Continue just played the credits again. So they wanted you to replay the whole game for a different short ending. Screw that, I just looked at the other ending on Youtube instead. So there's that. Was worth the like $1 I paid for it, but if you're going to play it, I would probably recommend checking out the PC version first, keyboard + mouse controls are probably preferable to the sticks.

Friday 2017-06-30 - Dark Souls




Format: Xbox 360, also available on PS3 and PC
What it is: Like I need to tell you. It's Dark Souls, the Dark Souls of Dark Souls. Supposedly one of the more hardcore games in recent years.
Release date: 2011-09-22 initially.
Owned since: 2013-12-02
Status: The usual - bought on a sale, never played.
Available: On disc and digitally.
Verdict: Playing the exact same section over and over for an hour or so without making any progress whatsoever is not what I find fun when I play video games. People said this was a hard game, I didn't think they meant I Wanna Be The Guy levels of bullshit. I ended up beating the first boss after the tutorial section (Taurus Demon) and then there was no save point afterwards, and while the boss stayed dead after reloading, the section after was just retarded and would randomly kill me for no reason. Enemies reviving after saving and healing made it feel like I wasn't making any progress at all, and more than anything, trying to make progress in this game just feels like a chore. It's not fun. Someone on IRC said I should look up a guide, but if I have to look up a guide to make any meaningful progress in a game I don't even find fun to play, why the fuck am I even playing it? I get it, you can't play Dark Souls like other games. But that doesn't mean I have to like it, and I don't like it for much the same reasons I don't like IWBTG and its ilk - it's just bullshit trial and error punishment gaming where one small mistake means you're dead and have to replay the same section, over and over and fucking over. I have several other games to play that I've started that I actually do find fun, so I'm pretty sure I'm 100% done with this game. I should've just kept playing Darksiders II instead.