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Off at con. Haven't played much of anything, but did get around to beating Donkey Kong '94, so that's another one down.

I BACK

Tuesday 2015-07-07 - Yoshi's Woolly World




Format: Wii U
What it is: A new Yoshi game that is also a followup to Kirby's Epic Yarn. All the characters and environment are built from yarn, wool, fabric and things like that. Instead of eggs you now have balls of yarn.
Release date: 2015-06-26 in Europe. 2015-07-16 in Japan. 2016-10-16 in US
Owned since: 2015-07-06 (though it had probably been sitting in my mailbox since 2015-06-29)
Status: Unplayed
Available: On disc and eShop on Wii U, unless you're American
Verdict: So cuuuuuuute! This is pretty fantastic, great platformer. There's many control options, and I eventually found Classic Controller Pro, B Style and Hasty throwing to be the best setup. Wiimote with tilt throwing could potentially have been a good option IF ball throwing was set to B rather than A. As it is, it was bad, and once again, it's fucking 2015, all games should have a control config where you can freely set buttons. Especially when there's literally three buttons that do things. The challenge presented by the actual platforming and enemy placement isn't really that big, where it lies is finding all five wools and flowers in every stage (there's also finding 20 stamp gems and finishing the stage with full health, but those matter less - finding all flowers in a world unlocks a special stage, and finding all five wools in a stage unlocks a new Yoshi pattern). And those can be pretty tricky, even if it's slighly too many of the "jump around in random locations to locate hidden ? clouds". Probably not going to be playing much else until I've beaten it. And just imagine how lame it would be to live in some backwater fuckoff country and not get to play it until, like, October!

I'm still kind of mad that Europe gets Wooly World so damn early. We don't even get it until October I think. At least I can steal your Yarn Yoshi stock for myself. (I ordered a blue one for myself).

give europe one game earlier than the rest of the world for a change and look how smug they get about it

Friday 2015-07-10 - Valiant.wad




Format: PC
What it is: A 32-map megawad for Doom II, split into five episodes. "Additionally, Valiant includes a number of new monsters and weapons implemented through an extensive MBF format DeHackEd patch." Will be played with ZDoom. And of course on the only difficulty, Ultra-Violence.
Release date: 2015-02-07
Owned since: 2015-07-08 (downloaded on that day, at least)
Status: Tried it briefly, got killed by a Mancubus on the first map before I had bothered saving.
Available: Download from Doomworld
Verdict: jfc this wad does not fuck around. Designer claims all maps were designed with pistol start in mind and my response to that is "not on Ultra-Violence, they aren't". I beat the first episode and am a few maps into the second. Dude definitely loves his mancubi, I don't think there's been a single map without them yet. As far as new weapons and enemies go, so far it's really only the pistol and chaingun for weapons - the pistol has an increased fire rate and I think it might even fire as fast as the regular chaingun did, and the chaingun is now the super chaingun, which fires a lot faster. There's some new enemies, too - the imps have been made into "super imps" but I think it's mainly cosmetic, there's the flying brain things though that are meant to be the Arachnotron brains without the mech bodies, and some demonic-looking Baron of Hell thing that throws fire. Map really needs to stop with throwing multiple Arch-viles and/or Revenants at you in enclosed spaces. Latest map I beat was pretty much entirely based on areas where there'd be two Arch-viles at different angles. But I'll probably play this to completion.

Tuesday 2015-07-14 - Mother 3




Format: Game Boy Advance
What it is: A sequel to Earthbound, that does not have a whole lot to do with it storywise. But it definitely feels like a sequel. Combat system is even improved. Has a variety of interesting stuff. A sad game, but no crying until the end, damnit!
Release date: 2006-04-20 (in Japan, the English translation was released on 2008-09-08)
Owned since: 2015-05-14 (okay, so I technically owned the repro cart a number of days prior, but I wrapped it and gave it to myself as a birthday present, so as far as I'm concerned I've owned it since my birthday)
Status: Prologue and the first two chapters played. Going to spend five hours riding trains today, so it seemed like a good opportunity.
Available: Repro carts in various places, I got mine from Etsy. The translation patch on their website.
Verdict: Since I had played a few hours before, I knew it was a great gamelready. And it became more so, and also a bit more depressing, oh my god. Even more depressing, however, was that my cart has a bug. That might make it so that I'm stuck, 8½ hours in. I actually knew of it from early on - using any skill to decrease enemy offense would freeze the game. I learned to not use that because it's not important. A later character had a move that could do random things, including doing that. I just didn't use it. Turns out, though?  The bug seems to trigger on any sort of enemy offense modification. Including an enemy buffing its own offense. And I've run into a boss that does. So I don't know. One of my options, since I have unlimited full HP/PP restores for free available plus a bunch of enemies that I can respawn by exiting the room and coming back, is to grind up my levels to the point where I can kill the boss fast enough so he won't do that. That feels wrong somehow, though. Still, I'll probably rather do that than replay the game to that point... though to be fair I DID replay practically all of Earthbound on VC. The prior playing had been a number of years before, though. EDIT: Grinded a little, getting everyone to level 20, and then had a lucky fight where the boss didn't buff. I can continue for now.