I don't know why, but it seems every game I play recently just doesn't seem to spark interest or excitement. Everything I seem to play either frustrates me, disappoints me or does both. I began the month playing Ghosts 'n Goblins on NES, a game that I've never beat. I completed Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts last year, but I never got around to playing the original. I was talking about old games with my friends and was reminded of the Angry Videogame Nerd and ended up watching a lot of his videos again as I didn't watch most of them.
I decided to give the game a try myself. The game feels a lot more difficult in terms of how it's designed. It's not surprise that it left me frustrated. I've been having an itch to play a beat-em-up again and saw Double Dragon Neon. I've heard all the warnings and did my research, but I still caved in when the game was but a mere $2. The game had great atmosphere and presentation with its 80's themed environment, music, and cheesy dialogues; however, the game was frustrating. The wanted to keep the game close to its origins with clunky combat and tough enemies. There were so many things about the game that annoyed me: long invincible frames on enemies, weird hit-boxes, being overwhelmed by projectiles, enemies with high HP and super armor, high damage output from the enemies, and the worst one was having to grind to be able to get strong enough to defeat the last boss. I eventually had to cheat to finish the last boss just like I had to cheat on the last boss on BloodRayne last month (that was pretty bad, too). Out There Somewhere is a really short indie game with an interesting teleporting mechanic. I finished that in about an hour and didn't think much of it. It was kind of fun, but it was also forgettable. The most memorable thing about the game, besides its main gameplay mechanic, was the reference to Wing Zero's "They set us up the bomb" dialogue in the beginning of the game. Shoot Many Robots was a game I bought back in 2011, I believe. I finally got around to playing through Normal mode and stopped there. I can say that it was a fun game, but I didn't feel compelled to continue playing it on Hard and Very Hard. Disgaea Infinite was a funny little visual novel game based in the world of Disgaea. There wasn't much to it, but it did remind me that I really want to play Disgaea. I really shouldn't have bought Mutant Mudds Deluxe, but I guess I was too curious as to why it was so highly praised. It's just so "meh" for an Action-Platformer. I got bored once I completed the light world and didn't even want to bother with the dark world. Freedom Planet was a pretty good indie game. It plays a lot like Sonic the Hedgehog with a mix of other platformer elements like Shantae. The game had beautiful graphics, pretty good music, and personality, but I kind of felt burnt out after playing one run of the game that I didn't really feel like playing it a second time as the other character. With getting through Ghosts 'n Goblins, I looked up the series and realized I never played through the Vita one. At first, it seemed a lot more forgiving with multiple lives, and even a sort of health bar. Then I quickly realized the game is just as difficult with being knocked into pitfalls to be a frequent threat throughout the game. I eventually got to the end, but was told I needed all 22 gold rings to be worth to enter and fight the last boss. I didn't want to go item fetching through the whole game again. It was sort of fun to see so many new weapons, armors, items, and concepts, but it just left me frustrated once again. STALKER: Clear Sky was kind of fun, but I enjoyed the first game a lot more for some reason considering the game is very similar to the original. The ending was disappointing and dumb, but I should have expected seeing how it's a prequel to the original. No Time to Explain came with the Humble Bundle I bought mainly to get Phantom Breaker Battlegrounds on PC for $1. I've already finished Phantom Breaker: BG twice on PS Vita, but I felt compelled to get it for PC for a larger screen experience at the price of $1. No Time to Explain was a short and somewhat entertaining game. But again, I was frustrated with the boss battles because they were purposely made to last long and felt tedious. After finishing STALKER: Clear Sky, I was looking for the next FPS to play. I could have installed any of the dozen of FPS games I've bought on steam, but I decided to buy Deadfall Adventures instead for $4 when it was 90% off on the weekly deals. The game isn't bad, but I can't say I really like it. The combat competent, at the very least. What really killed the experience was the puzzles in the game. I purposely turned puzzles on Easy difficulty and combat on Normal difficulty. I had fun with the combat, but the puzzles were tedious, boring, and some of them were cryptic. Ultimately, I was disappointed with my experience with the game. I'm starting a new string of games on Steam, so hopefully it'll change things around because I'm not in the mood for frustrating and disappointing. Getting through Lords of the Fallen is starting to become difficult because it's fun, but it's hard. That, in turn, sometimes makes it frustrating.
The one game I have hope for is Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson, of which I pre-ordered back in July and finally got this past Saturday. When I started it up, I was a little worried. The camera handling can be pretty whacky at times and you can't really control it. Aside from that, the number of changes the game has gone from its previous two titles have really added a layer of dynamics and fresh perspective on the game. I have to play differently from how I did from Burst or Shinovi Versus, which is totally okay. The game is also a lot tougher this time around where I've failed a few missions on the beginning already. But it doesn't upset me or make me mad. In fact, it gets me excited to face such a challenge in the game. I'm always so thankful that I got into the series in the first place because each game has been so entertaining and I've been able to enjoy them with the exception of Bon Appétit, that wasn't a very good game. Combat has so much more going on now that I can't approach battle as directly as I did before. It'd probably be easy if I actually played the side-missions and grinded, but I realized that I've enjoyed the series a lot more whenever it was more difficult. I just want to get over my slump of disappointment and frustration in games and be able to have fun with one.
On an ending note, I ran into a new animé. It's really cute:
