PixlBit

Also played some Game Boy and a whole lot of Switch games. 

Game Boy

I just played my four owned games, Alleyway, Space Invaders, Super Breakout and Game & Watch Gallery. Alleyway is still my favorite, but I enjoyed the others too. I'm excited to try and pick up other G&W Gallery collections in the future. I'm going to play them again on my Super Game Boy Player I got for SNES next week probably. 

On Switch I played a bit of Sword of Hope in the Game Boy area. This is a nifty RPG but navigating the world is confusing. You just choose arrows in a frame to move but they often don't match up well with the frame showing the scene above it, so you don't really know where the arrows go until you've messed it up several times and had to fight a lot of extra battles while getting lost. I still want to find both physical Sword of Hope games in the wild though. 

Genesis

I discovered I can't save in Road Rash II. I guess the battery in the cart is dead. Too bad, I wanted to do the level 2 races with my character from last week.

I got pretty frustrated with the rest of my games including the new one, The Tick. This is a brawler but very simple and not great fighting mechanics. I'm disappointed, but I'm not trading it as I need one thing with The Tick on it in my collection for memories. 

SNES

Not actually started, just set up. I have Fight Fight in my Retron 3 ready to go when I can pry myself away from my Switch. 

Switch

I finished the story of Lego Horizon Adventures on a rental. It's a bit simpler than most Lego games in terms of exploration and puzzles but much more robust in fighting mechanics. The world is basically just a hub town with branching paths to arenas where you fight the robot-animals over and over again. I almost got bored until I cranked up the difficulty and then the fights got interesting. It didn't scratch my itch to explore and collect though. I tried to master all the extra boss fights you can do, but I got a little fed up with some wonky platforming along the path to them. It's very forgiving for falling though, I just have this pet peeve for missing hand holds. I enjoyed the game but it was kind of short. 

I played several rounds of Darkest Dungeon II. I have the collectors edition which comes with a paper craft horse drawn carriage. I built it. Here's a pic of one that isn't mine but is identical. 

I love the atmosphere of the game which is super dark and gloomy with a doom obsessed narrator and grim graphics of a ravaged world full of demons and zombies. It's a kind of rogue-like with turn-based battles. There are a lot of options to play with in building your team, outfitting them and boosting their abilities. It's not an easy game. It's meant to punish you and make you replay it until you start learning how to play it. I have to play it in short bursts though. It feels like a super grim journey into hell and I kind of love that.

The story seems like it was penned by Edgar Allan Poe, a tale of lives gone wrong with grim consequences.

My team fought in a library at one point and they battled a librarian boss which made attacks like, "mandatory reading" and "cataloging". SInce I work at a library it made me laugh until the librarian burned my whole team to ash. Damn this game, but I have to try it again. 

I started Trials of Mana within The Collection of Mana and realized that this is the original game and not the remake I liked so much on Xbox but didn't finish. I played it anyway but got lost in the castle unable to find the guy I needed to find. I think I'll wait until I have the 3D remake. 

I made a long wish list of Switch games and which ones I can get as rentals from my library. I'm getting Hello Kitty: Island Adventure next. 

Then I finally cracked the seal on my copy of Paper Mario Thousand Year Door remaster and played it all afternoon one day. I beat the Hooktail Dragon and had to stop in chapter 2. I really love this game. I'm still not at the point I left off in the GameCube version I used to have all those years ago. I'm hoping to finish it, but I'll take a break to play my rentals first. 

I think that's it for this week. If I survive snowmageddon, I'll play more next week.