PixlBit

Lots of games smashed through this week. I imagine when I finish these under 10 hour games on my list, the amount of games I play each week will reduce to just a few. I kind of can't wait, because it'll make writing these blogs easier. Anyhow, here goes another blast of video games. 

I had a day this week where I felt almost sick. I think I was slightly. I couldn't go to the gym or anything much, so I sat in Starbucks and played Sumioni Demon Arts on Vita. This game looks lovely. It's in the Japanese ink painting style called Sumioni [cor. sumi-e]. Okami uses this style as well. The game is a 2D side-scrolling action game. You use your ink to create platforms and execute special attacks by swiping the screen with your finger. Most of the time you use the buttons though. The back screen on the Vita is used to refil your ink. It works really well. I dug it for a few levels and then I had to do some long jumps and tried to jump and dash in the air. It worked most of the time, but not often enough. I kept dying on this one level where you're being chased by a giant and have to jump over spiky wheels. If I could've got that dash move to work consistently, I'd have gotten farther. Oh well, I moved on. 

I had my PSP with me as well and started in on Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded. I figured out you can set the screen vertically for these old arcade games. It's great for vertically scrolling games like the 194X series, but the controls are a little bit awkward that way. You hold the directional button on the bottom of the system and shoot with the shape buttons at the top. I got used to it though. That 1943 theme music was running through my head all week. Then I played Commando and Mercs. Mercs is a really great vertically scrolling action game. I got really far in it and blew up a lot of stuff. I think I have a console collection with this on it. I'd like to see it on the big screen. 

That was all I could get to on the weekdays, but when Sunday came around, I resumed playing this PSP arcade game collection. There are a lot of great games on it but my favorites were The King of Dragons and Knights of the Round. These are side scrolling brawlers of the fantasy variety and super fun. I finished King of Dragons and played most of Knights of the Round. For some reason my PSP stopped asking me if I wanted to exit the game every few mintues. It was happening all the time when I played at Starbucks. I think it happens when the UMD disc gets jostled. I don't know why it was working just fine, but I didn't question it. It was nice to have it not interupt me like it was. 

Then I booted up the Xbox 360 and checked sales. I bought Costume Quest 2 for $5 and downloaded Dirt 3 as the Game with Gold freebie. Then I bought Guwange, a 1999 arcade bullet hell shooter NSonic79 mentioned in a blog. This game scrolls mostly vertically although sometimes it goes side to side. It has a Japanese art style and the music is really great. I played with all three characters and learned the controls playing Score Attack mode. Then I played in Training mode where you have infinite continues. I finished all six levels but I didn't get an achievement in that mode. In Score Attack mode, I got maybe half-way before losing my last life. You have a main attack, a bomb special, and a strange spirt attached to chain that helps you turn bullets into coins. There's some achievements for collecting tons of coins rapidly. I didn't get them though. I love playing these types of games for the incredible art style and insanely creative bosses, but I'm often not good enought to finish them, unless there's an infinite continues mode. Onward I went.

I quickly switched to my Wii to download and play some Castlevania. This is a really fun game. The graphics and sound are a little before what I usually associate with great 8-bit style. Some of the sounds reminded me of an Atari 2600 game and the graphics reminded me of Dark Castle on Apple computers around the same time: '86-'87. I'm usually surprised by how old these games feel (like the first Zelda as well) when I play them. It does remind me though how much an improvement these games were to what came before. No Atari 2600, Colecovision, or Intellivision game played, looked or sounded quite like the first batch of NES games. They were a real step up. I played Castlevania for a while and had no problem with the controls, or anything really, until I started getting knocked off ledges by flying bats and stuff. It's all about timing. I just got to work on it. I'd had enough of repeating the same area over and over for one day though. [Just watched some footage of the game again. What was I thinking? This game looks great and is firmly 8-bit graphic awesome. I guess i just hadn't played a NES game in a little while]. 

Back I was to Xbox 360. This week I had looked up games by Left Field Productions, the makers of Mayhem 3D, which I liked so much. Turns out they did Excitebike 64 way back when and a bunch of other racing games since then. Mayhem 3D in 2011 was their last listed on wiki. So I picked up the previous one to that: Baja 1000: SCORE International ($6 at Gamestop). This is a motocycle and dune buggy racing game. It was a strange coincidence playing this since I just started rereading Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which takes place during a motocyle race in a desert just like this game. Anyway, I was hoping for great controls, like in Mayhem, but I didn't get them - close, but not quite. The bikes and cars don't quite hold the road like I'd like, the surfaces feeling a bit like driving on ice. I did a half dozen races ok and then I got one full of rocks and tight turns and kept spinning out and crashing. The controls seemed just a bit too sensitive to the touch. Ah, I wanted to love this game. I guess Left Field perfected their craft with Mayhem 3D. But, I'm going to check out the game previous to Baja 1000 tomorrow, Nitrobike for Wii. Maybe that will be better. 

Finally, I returned to Luigi's Mansion. I'm having a blast with this game. I've gone through most of the mansion now and finally had my first talk with King Boo, who I imagine is the final boss of the game. I had some trouble with the ghost called Nana. You have to throw yarn balls at her, but I couldn't get her to be vulnerable to my vacuum. It just happened after the tenth time I entered the room and chucked yarn at her. I did die once or twice so far in the game. It's not a big deal though. Every time you catch a Boo, you get to save the game, so I didn't lose much progress. I might be able to finish this game tomorrow but I have a DS game to play, Retro Atari Classics, (that won't take long) and Nitrobike to check out first. 

That'd be it for now. Mark was playing Bioshock Infinite the whole time I was going retro and it annoyed me a little bit because Booker and Elizabeth were like yelling all the time. I was only annoyed a little bit though. I was tempted to jump back into that game myself. I still haven't played the Burial At Sea DLC yet. 

Over and out.