“Whatcha Playin’, Pixels?” #003
13 min read
A weekly roundup of games enjoyed by the writers of The Pixels
February is here! Maybe you’re still catching up on games from January (or from the past 50 years) but with a new month comes new games. Here are some of the titles we’ve started, finished, and are still in the process of playing…
This week was a busy one at work, so I didn’t get too much gaming done. However, once again, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot has taken up a lot of my time! The end game content is both fun and insightful! Goku and the others both fulfil requests from old characters from the original Dragon Ball series and fight previously defeated bosses from the game. I really liked how the game took the original source material and fleshed it out to encompass all aspects of Goku’s adventures, from childhood to adulthood and beyond.
On Sunday night, I completed the Sonic LEGO set build. Yes, this is an article about what we, as writers, are playing, but play can encompass both the virtual space on a screen and the physical space in the real world. Plus, it’s Sonic the Hedgehog-related and you know I’m a sucker for that stuff! The final build is breathtaking – the level of detail LEGO put into remaking Green Hill Zone shows that they know and respect the IP. While Dr. Eggman/Dr. Robotnik looks a touch off, it does not detract from the overall experience of the build, at least to me. From Super Mario, to Sonic, LEGO has been highly successful in bringing video game IPs to life and it makes me wonder what’s to come in the future.
Meanwhile, I’m still at Majora’s Mask for my morning streams. After recovering the remaining Zora Eggs, I took some time to gather a few Heart Containers and some additional items in preparation for the Great Bay Temple. I may honestly do a bit more prep off-stream to grab a few more items before next Tuesday’s stream, so as to not waste too much time.
I had a medical appointment to attend to this week and thus brought my Game & Watch: The Legend of Zelda to keep me company as I waited. Honestly, this little unit has been so incredibly useful in killing my boredom while waiting for things. Best of all, it helps to prevent me from diving into the cesspool that is the internet at times!
Finally, in preparation for this weekend’s pod with the Well-Red Mage, I’ve been playing a bit of Octopath Traveler. Between the stunning HD-2D graphics and the peaceful and soothing OST, I soon found myself being lulled to sleep! That’s not to say the game is boring, oh no, but it’s like drinking a bowl of warm soup on a cold day – It, to me, is comforting and cozy and puts me at ease. I’m excited to be talking about this game!
Pokémon Legends: Arceus. What a game. After “moving on” from Brilliant Diamond (though not fully shelving it, as there are still some mythicals I’d like to nab), I picked up the new Game Freak title with much hesitation. I’ve participated in every Pokémon generation thus far and have felt the sorry decline of the franchise’s quality, its staunch adherence to archaic series traditions, but PLA is a blast to play. It just feels… fresh, vast, and inviting. I love the gameplay, the new Pokés, the story so far, I love its references to Sinnoh and the 4th Generation, it all has just been a great experience. It makes me excited for the groundwork it’s laid for potential future sequels, and even the future of the franchise.
I busted my Wii U out and have been combing through the ol’ SNES catalog. My wife and I started by beating Super Mario World co-op. It was my first time going through the whole thing, and it’s a pretty wild ride. I’m very bad at Mario. My wife’s no #gamer herself, but she grew up watching her family play it, so she was able to point out certain tricks and secrets that I never would have found myself. We ended up going down two separate routes: me straight through to Bowser’s Castle, and her doing all the secret levels. It worked out that she actually got a shortcut to Bowser before I could get to him, and she was the one to beat him and save Peach. Next up will be some Mega Man X and Kirby Super Star!
The last but most exciting thing I’ve been up to is managing to boot up a playable version of an old 2007 MMO called Monster Hunter Frontier, which had its servers shut down in 2019. I never got to play it back then because it was only in Japanese, but it was always in the back of my mind because I’m such a Monster Hunter nut. It also just looked straight up insane—some of those monsters are pretty out there. Well, a group of beautiful people archived the game and have been hard at work piecing it back together, as well as translating it for us English folks to enjoy! It’s an early prototype, so only the bare minimum is translated. But to have the game in a playable state, with its mind-boggling 181 monsters and the massive amount of content a 12-year-old MMO would naturally have… it’s pretty amazing.
So I decided to start Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster in the past week. This will be the second time I’m playing through the first Final Fantasy. I’m trying not to use a guide this time! It’s been rough so far, especially with one of my party members being a thief. I haven’t gotten too far in it yet but I really like the water and the music so far.
I’ve also resumed my playthrough of Super Robot Wars 30. It’s a tactical RPG that is full of characters from the mech franchise, namely Gundam, Code Geass, SSSS.Gridman, and more. Considering my track record with TRPGs so far (Fire Emblem) this game is pretty awesome. My main gripe is the difficulty but it’s a grind. It’ll probably be a while until I finish this game since I’m pretty terrible at playing tactical RPGs, but it’s definitely the most absorbed I’ve been into the genre.
It’s been out for years but I FINALLY finished The Last of Us. There isn’t much that I didn’t like about the game, it was very fun and challenging all the way through. I played it on Hard which gave me the perfect challenge for my skill level. The sparse ammo and tense confrontations made it feel like a survival type of game at times. Actually, I became so good at sneaking around by the end of it that the last few sections were actually easy for me. I will probably be playing the ‘Left Behind’ DLC chapter this weekend and then I’ll be excited to try The Last of Us Part II in the coming weeks!
After many years of wanting to play it, but making myself wait until I owned the cartridge, I finally started Paper Mario. So far, I’m loving it. As much fun as I had with Mario RPG as a kid, I can’t believe how long it has taken me to play another RPG featuring the Nintendo superstar. Unfortunately, after a great and lengthy start to the game, my dog had some health issues and I have not yet been able to get back to it. In Hollow Knight news, I did, however, finally complete the Pantheon of The Master with all bindings, and I began working on the Pantheon of The Artist.
Like many out there, I too picked up the tablet-only game, Pokémon Legends Arceus. So far so good! It’s neat to see something as traditionally formulaic as Pokémon stretch its legs a bit. I picked Rowlet because it’s a rush starter and I’m not a real fan.
Other than that, I’m still playing clean-up with several other titles: Guacamelee!, Starlink, Total War: Warhammer II with Clan Skryre Skaven on Mortal Empires, and of course, Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster. I feel like I’m getting toward the last third of the game, without having finished it previously, and the Wednesday giveaway streams have continued to be a blast. So refreshing to see a goofier Final Fantasy and protagonist. The bad boy vibes hadn’t set in for the mains yet. Sure Butz has an iffy past but he doesn’t go around frowning at everybody for it.
–Red
Somehow I always manage to forget how not long the Pokémon main games are. Engrained somewhere in my mind is the idea that they’re 60-some hour RPGs, so when I inevitably kick the League Champion off her throne after 23 hours, I’m left feeling like “Well, now what?” That’s where I am with Brilliant Diamond. Cynthia has been de-Championed, her Garchomp destroyed by my Bibarel with a hefty Ice Beam critical (I’m so proud.) I’ve done some of the post-game, caught a few legendaries from other games, but I doubt I’ll do much more. Completing the Pokédex is more a chore these days, and my backlog is still so big. I could try to idly catch more Pokémon and spend more time in the Underground, or I could just…do something else. Post-game Pokémon has never really held my attention much without a story tie-in.
I’ve also started playing Super Mario RPG for the first time on stream. It’s not a blind run, I’ve seen several people play it both vanilla and randomized, so I know what to expect for the most part. Still, I’ve never played it, and I felt like I should, so I am. Actually, it’s the last game on my SNES backlog, so it’s kind of exciting. Will I fight the blatantly Square secret boss? I don’t know, maybe. We’ll see how I’m feeling when I get to that point. That fight looks like a bear and I’m not really a fan of slog bosses.
Finally, I dipped a toe in Superliminal, which is a super cool concept that plays with space and structure in fascinating ways, but it wasn’t scratching the “what do I want to play” itch, so I decided to try Artifact Adventure Gaiden instead. Oh yeah, that’s the stuff. This little RPG has notes of Dragon Quest and Zelda 2 but is much, much more forgiving than both. It’s also got serious replayability with new game plus and splitting paths on practically every quest, so I’ll probably be delving into it for a little while longer. And I will get back to Superliminal. Just gotta scratch some more first.
Erannorth Chronicles is a bizarre combination of a CRPG (think Morrowind) and a deckbuilder (think Slay the Spire) that hasn’t gotten a whole lot of attention. Naturally, I picked it up and put about a dozen hours into it over a few days. I think that’s due to its extensive and detailed character creation system, which allows you to assemble builds using a vast array of different “decks” such as various magic schools, weapon-based combat, stealth and more. Figuring out how different decks work together to create a functional character is a great time, and there’s a lot to be said for watching as your experimental character gets off their feet and becomes a killing machine.
Vampire Survivors goes the other direction, offering a very lo-fi experience that amounts to a bullet hell. Your weapons, by and large, automatically target enemies, so most of what you do revolves around dodging incoming attacks. Such a simple explanation doesn’t really do this game justice, though. There’s quite a few different characters, weapons and accessories that you can select to customize your experience. You’ll start as a lowly chump shooting a single bullet, snapping a whip or sending down a single lightning bolt every once in a while… but as you play, you’ll level up, and within ten to fifteen minutes in a given run you’re a force to be reckoned with, flooding the screen with deadly nonsense. It’s basically an old-school shoot-’em-up where you play as a boss. At $3 on Steam it’s comically underpriced and very much worth a shot.
Ever suffer for your art? Press against the unpleasant for the sake of another? That’s what I’m doing right now playing Bioshock Infinite. My pals at the Games My Mom Found podcast are recording an episode on the game at the end of the month and I’m joining in. This is the second time I’ll be completing Infinite, the first being upon release in 2013. To put my thoughts succinctly, Bioshock Infinite waters down the immersive sim beauty of 1 and 2 into a standard corridor shooter. The story has massive holes, the gameplay is uninteresting, and the world of Columbia, while pretty and unique, feels empty and lifeless. I’m having a bit more fun than I expected but not by much.
Otherwise, I’ve been messing around with Doom Ultimate for my podcast and playing with a title called The Coin Game. Doom 1993 still plays like butter and is an absolute blast. The Coin Game is an early access title that plops you into the middle of an 80’s arcade so you can play ticket games. There’s a story mode where you can earn money around town to buy more tokens, but I put it on casual “Birthday Mode”. Your rich uncle gives you $200 and you roam the arcade playing coin drop, skee ball, and hockey puck. It’s my new favorite “I have 20 minutes to kill before bed game” and I think you’ll love it too!
For the first time in over a decade, I’ve allowed a Pokémon game to completely consume a huge chunk of my gaming time! Pokémon Legends: Arceus is everything I had hoped it would be, in that it’s a hybrid of the aspects I enjoyed about Breath of the Wild and Monster Hunter. The simple joy of wandering around an open world, sneaking up on a devious little creature and leaping out from the tall grass armed with a Pokéball really satisfies that urge to catch ‘em all, and I can really see myself sticking with this one. Maybe it’ll even be the first Pokémon game I actually finish since Gold!
As for the indies, I’ve recently finished the excellently titled Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion on the Switch: a comedy adventure in the top-down-Zelda style. As the titular Turnip Boy, your mission is to complete simple fetch-quests and tear up all the other characters’ important legal documents. It’s got some neat items and fun little dungeons and it doesn’t out-stay its welcome, but while it lasts it’s a good fun time. Speaking of short games, I also finished Horror Tales: The Wine on PS5 which offers four chapters of around 30 minutes each, comprising mostly physics puzzles, code-locks, and an awful lot of running away from a headless chap who staggers comically towards you. As a budget title, I’m not disappointed by the amount of entertainment it offered on a cold Saturday evening.
Everyone knows I am a sucker for indie games, but this week marks a slight gravitation away from the norm. I start off the week (Monday and Tuesday) with a few indie titles that I pledged to review live on my Twitch channel. Those are Velocity Noodle, a speedrunning platformer, and Go! Go! Pogo Girl!, a simple platformer built with a Sonic the Hedgehog aesthetic. After that, however, I take it back to my favorite N64 game, Star Fox 64! Now toting a new capture card, I can stream games from my Switch, so Thursdays have officially become Retro Day, and there is no better way to start that than with the fast-paced, able to beat in under an hour, gameplay of Star Fox 64!
Casualty Friday caps off my week with a game I have been heavily invested in for the last year. The Outer Worlds is an incredible FPS RPG that allows for the player to make a wide range of choices among a dying space colony. This is a third-party game I play on the Switch, and it does surprisingly well considering the system’s limitations. I should get to the end of it this week and hopefully start the DLC, Peril on Gorgon, next week. My Twitch viewers can watch me play it live, but I don’t wait for Fridays to play it myself; the game is just too good to wait.
I’m back from my wanderings around the internet, and I bring tales of what I have been playing lately! My main ongoing challenge is mastering the punishing (yet massively entertaining) gameplay loop of DayZ, Bohemia Interactives’ zombie survival game. I play it with my brother and we’re having a great time, having worked out the janky inventory system and how to not die of hunger or cholera before getting big enough guns to keep other players at bay!
Between these sessions, I have also been revisiting Bioware’s science fiction epic, the Mass Effect trilogy, because it’s on Game Pass in its remastered form at present! I’m almost through the slightly dated first game and about to smash into the sequel and I’m very happy to have talked angry party member Wrex out of getting his big, lizard butt killed.
I’ve also restarted Cyberpunk 2077 with the intention of seeing what’s different if you choose the nomad background for the main character. It’s still a busy, janky thing but my goodness is it a fantastic game world full of great stories!
Don’t forget to let us know what you’ve been playing this week!
