Last month, I shared the first three remixes I've finished so far this year and have come to a sudden halt this past month in productivity as I re-evaluate everything I'm doing and will be doing in the following months. I'm trying to do a bit of drawing before I go back to music after this week. I was originally going to start working on recording all my past piano arrangements, but I think I need to put some priority into creating original compositions so I can use them as part of my portfolio and update it for this summer. I might try to do the piano recordings and remix projects in-between all the new work, but I don't want to burn myself out or start too many projects I can't finish, because that has happened in the past. I'm just going to have to experiment and see what works and try to get the most out of my work in the following months to come.
Next month is extremely important in terms of productivity because motivation always plummets around June and doesn't come back until mid to late July. Electronic Entertainment Exposition (E3), Summer Steam Sales (S3), and EVO have always been the biggest events that I'm excited for every year, and sometimes Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ) can be a distraction. E3 is particularly important this year with the release of the Nintendo Switch. I am anticipating an announcement for a Super Smash Bros. port of some sort and new games. Although I have plenty of games to keep me busy, I'm looking forward to Summer Steam Sales to pick up some new co-op games to play with friends.
I don't think I've had a chance to talk about any of the games I've played in the past 4 months. Thankfully, most of the games I've been playing have been really good and I've been so busy with work and playing them that I haven't really had the chance to talk about them. I'm going to briefly go through ones that particularly left an impression on me.
[Just Cause 1 & 2 - PC]
A friend got me Just Cause 3 this past Christmas and so I decided to speed through the first two games of which I've bought long ago. Despite being the same characters and similar concepts between the three games, they feel very different from each other. The main character in JC1 had a suave Spaniard sort of personality, a brash and gung-ho Mexican sort of character in JC 2, and a laid-back Mediterranean kind of persona in JC3. Traveling was annoying in JC1. The amount of game crashes and annoying combat encounters in JC2 along with the requirement of so many side missions to progress eventually led me to skip most of the game and just watched the ending. So far, JC3 has a nice balance in traversing and combat.
[The Evil Within - PC]
I finished up The Evil Within in the beginning of the year and was really impressed by the overall experience. The presentation was trippy and tense, but it never took away from the gameplay and made for an engaging horror-survival experience. I had started a new-game plus, but the amount of unskippable cut-scenes and lack of new content eventually had me give up to move onto new games. I liked it though. One of the better Horror games I've played in a long time.
[DOOM - PC]
DOOM is amazing! It's violently beautiful with a satisfying combination of movement, combat and aesthetics. I'm not much of a Doom fan and I particularly found Doom 3 to be boring. So when I first heard that there was a new DOOM game coming out, I wasn't exactly excited until I saw gameplay for it. It looked fast-paced, brutal, and exciting. It looks like they delivered what I expected and I really enjoyed it. The quick movements, challenging bosses, and explosive combat was all so satisfying and refreshing from all the slower paced, tactical FPS games that are popular now.
[VA-11 HALL-A - PC]
VA-11 HALL-A has become one of my favorite indie games with its engaging story, endearing characters and amazing soundtrack. I had a whole rant ready to talk about how awesome the game was, but one thing led to another and I just never got the chance to do so. It's a unique take on the Visual Novel genre without the mechanics being too obscure (like XBlaze was) and it just immersed me into the futuristic dystonia. I might have missed out on playing the game entirely if it weren't for a friend picking it up for me during Christmas.
[Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight - PC]
The series certainly has come a long way. The first game was frustrating. The 2nd game was a bit difficult to navigate. The 3rd game finally felt somewhat decent, but was short and still felt like a fan-made game. Momodora: RUtM felt like a complete game and was just a beautifully crafting game with simplicity and challenge. I played it twice and had started a third run on Hard mode only to stop because it felt like it was going to take a while to get through and I wanted to start new games. I really liked this one though. It's one of the better Metroidvanias to release on Steam.
[Fire Emblem Heroes - iOS]
Although my interest in this game has begun to wane, I have been religiously playing it everyday since its launch. I had imagined the game to become a rather shallow and incomplete experience of the main games; however, I was pleasantly surprised by how engaging the experience was as it delivers bite-sized campaigns that are short and fun, but still requires some strategy. If anything, playing the game makes me want to play one of the main games, of which I own a few of but haven't actually played through yet.
[Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 - 3DS]
This was a lot of fun. I don't really like the ending because it left me feeling a bit empty and sad like the first one did, but the overall experience was fast-paced and enjoyable.
[Deathsmiles - PC]
I finally picked up Deathsmiles along with all the soundtracks for less than $10. The game sure has aged well and is still a lot of fun. Treasure really did know how to create exciting shoot-em-ups.
[Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkhuni - PS Vita]
I finally got through the game and I'm just disappointed with it. Although it had better graphics and environment than Senran Kagura, it just pales in comparison. Combat felt a bit shallow, music was only okay, story was okay, characters were incredibly annoying, and the whole game felt so slow. I can only hope for another Senran Kagura game right now because Valkyrie Drive has really disappointed all expectations for it, of which I kept pretty low already.
[Blaster Master Zero - 3DS]
A remake of the original! I don't like the new music as much as the original, but the edited story and revamped gameplay was awesome. If there was something I had to critique the game for was that there wasn't a difficulty setting. The game felt too easy, especially since the original was so unforgiving. Still, I enjoyed the game a lot.
[Sword Art Online Memory Defrag - iOS]
This is probably one of the best Hack-n-Slash games I've played on a touch-screen mobile device because of its unique tap, hold, and swipe mechanics over traditional controls on display made it a much more bearable experience. Much like Fire Emblem Heroes, my interest in the game has started to wane since I finished the main campaign. I was really happy I got a cheerleader Yui though!
[Rivals of Aether - PC]
It finally got out of Early Access and I played a decent amount of it. Online play is sadly unplayable 90% of the time as most of the matches reach 100-200+ ping. It's a fun Super Smash-like game with a high skill cap and it'd be nice if I had a friend I could play it with.
[To The Moon - PC]
I finally played it. The gameplay was boring and it was sometimes kind of slow, even for such a short game. But I liked the story and the music was pretty good. I'm looking forward to the sequels that explains more about the characters.
[Hyper Light Drifter - PC]
I'm actually glad the game wasn't as hard as I thought it'd be. It might be because I was playing Nioh at the time and that game is much more difficult, but playing Hyper Light Drifter was a nice challenge that never became too frustrating (except that one time I got super lost and didn't know what to do next).
[Homefront: The Revolution - PC]
I had bought the game on a whim at a low price because I was craving for a First-Person Shooter. Many times throughout the game, it felt like it was trying to be like other games such as Dying Light or STALKER. It never quite feels like it does anything special or better than what it's trying to mimic from other games, but I still found it entertaining and ended up enjoying the game a lot more than the first one (which was short and mediocre). This was decently long enough and was pretty fun at times.
[Nioh - PS4]
59 hours later, I finally got through this brutal Action-RPG. Nioh was a lot of fun with its faster-paced combat and challenging enemies. I'm actually afraid that it might have ruined my experience for other games like it, and I still have Dark Souls 2 & 3 and Bloodborne to get through. There's actually more I can still get out of the game such as playing with a new class or getting through New Game+, but I have so many games queued up right now that I can't imagine playing it anymore. Lots of raging and yelling was required to get through it.
[Trigger Happy Havoc Danganronpa - PS Vita]
What a crazy game. You're stuck in a school with 14 other students with no way out and have the condition of being able to leave if one of the students can get away with murder. The first four chapters were a bit too predictable, but I liked getting to know each of the characters. Then the story goes a bit crazy and unpredictable, and those last few chapters in the game left such a good impression that it was the defining moments of what makes the game so memorable. I'll be playing the 2nd game soon.
That was still quite a list and there were specific games I really wanted to get into details with, but I just don't have the time right now. It's nice to be able to even write just a little right now to reflect on how much I've already experienced these past four months. I'm really hoping to get some real work done this next month and hopefully I can get some more games completed in-between.
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