Thursday 16 July 2020

Video Game Round-Up! - June/July 2020


Welcome to another Video Game Round-Up! Look at me not being (very) late! It’s like I planned everything ahead of time this time!

So, did you watch the thing we did with the National Art Gallery? It was... okay? We’re not super great in front of a camera for scripted things, even less so when we have to film ourselves, so we were very clearly nervous and constantly checking the script as we spoke. Also, they ended up cutting a lot out of the final video for some reason. The final video ended up being 18 minutes long, but we were told we had a half hour. Maybe the rest of it was just really terrible :P

I’ve also been streaming almost daily (more on that below), and that’s been pretty fun. Sometimes only the girl watches (because she is a great partner who supports all my nonsense), but sometimes I’ve got a pretty good audience, even if most of them don’t like to chat :P

I have stopped watching movies like a madman, mostly because the listing of films I was doing with my friends is basically done (we finished with 1920, but then Hal started up again with 2008 going forward, but I’ve seen a lot more movies in recent years and feel no need to “catch up” now), so now I’m trying to catch up on my YouTube watching. I’m about two months/700 videos behind. I will eventually catch up :P

But enough about that, let’s get to the games!

Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch) - New month, new fish and bugs! But also, an update! We actually streamed AC:NH twice, first on the first of the month to show off new bugs and fish (which we caught very few of on-stream), and then again on July 3rd for the new update, which included swimming and diving for new creatures on the ocean floor. That was a much better stream as we caught a bunch of new creatures and gave them to Blathers. Unfortunately, all the really cool stuff we caught off-stream, so no one saw us catch the Vampire Squid, the Ocean Sunfish, the Horned Hercules, or the Gigas Giant Clam. Also, we still need to find a Cicada Shell to complete July creatures, and I don’t think we’ve even seen one of those yet.

Otherwise, life continues as usual on Tardisland. Sherb the goat continues to be the most adorable neighbor, and I continue to buy far too many clothes. We’ve been having storage issues lately, and so had to sell a bunch of clothes.

...But I still want to buy all the clothes.

The Last of Us Part II (PS4) - I finished this, and man, it was rough. I won’t spoil anything here as it’s still a pretty new game, but I liked it a lot, even as it made me yelp and scream, and hate and love most of the characters. If you want to watch me play it from beginning to end, the 14 videos are in this playlist, and the last episode, Episode 14, has most of my thoughts on the game at the end as the credits roll. However, if you just want to see and hear me yelp and scream a lot, Episode 12 is gonna be your jam :)

My favorite bits were probably the safe bits. Every once in a while, a safe would pop up and you had to figure out the code to open it and get all the goodies inside. Sometimes it was as simple as finding a note that gave you the code, but other times the note only contained contextual clues and you had to figure it out. That was pretty cool and I could probably play an entire game of just that :) I also really liked the two collectibles: superhero cards and US state quarters, two things I’ve collected in real life.
I will be platinuming this game in the near-ish future, as it has the same level select option Uncharted 4 (PS4) and Uncharted: Lost Legacy (PS4) did, so I can go back to the specific places where I missed stuff without having to play the whole thing all over again :D

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Switch) - A new fighter dropped! Min Min from ARMS (Switch), and I’ll talk about her a bit later, but she came with a bunch of new spirits (that I immediately got), as well as a new stage and 18 new music tracks from the same game. I also unlocked the four new Octopath Traveler (Switch) spirits, but the three Trials of Mana (PS4) spirits continue to elude me. I fear they will become like the Astral Chain (Switch) spirits. But let’s talk about that new fighter!

Min Min - Min Min is one of the fighters from ARMS, a game all about punching opponents with extra-long arms. She isn’t one of the main characters, though (those are Spring Man and Ribbon Girl), but she is ramen-themed and one of her arms has a dragon, so that’s pretty cool. Her main attacks come from her arms, of course, but she can kick. ARMS is a weird fighting game that is the most fun when the JoyCons are unattached to the Switch, at which point it becomes like the boxing game from WiiSports (Wii), where you used the Wiimotes to emulate punching a dude in the mouth.

Baba is You (Switch) - I played more of this after doing a bit of quick capture last month, and actually managed to solve some of the harder puzzles! I was very proud of myself... and then immediately lost confidence again when I ran into another impossible puzzle :P

As I’ve said before, every puzzle in this game feels impossible, and I feel like such a goddamn genius when I solve it, but then immediately feel like the dumbest motherfucker alive when the next puzzle pops up and I can’t make heads nor tails of it. It’s one of the greatest games of all time.

Yakuza Kiwami (PS4) - After finishing The Last of Us Part II, I needed a new game to stream, so I picked the remastered first game in the Yakuza series. I had previously played Yakuza 0 and enjoyed the hell out of it, so I was excited to start this. And don’t get me wrong, I love this game too, but I had forgotten how ridiculously tedious the opening tutorial missions are. They do not make for great streaming, you guys :P There’s one mission where Kyriu has to buy a ring, and then he gets pickpocketed, then he has to find the pickpocket (not once, but twice), then he has to go to the pawn shop where the pickpocket sold the ring to buy it again, but can’t because he has no money, then he has to go borrow some money, then the pawn shop guy raises the price, then he has to borrow more money, and only then does he finally get the ring back. This is a ridiculously long fetch quest, and I don’t even think it taught me any new mechanics. But it’s part of the charm of a Yakuza game, a game that has an incredibly serious main story, and the most ridiculous side quests of all time.

I will continue to stream this, but it will likely take a back seat to another game (or two) that will be coming out tomorrow.

Tecmo Bowl (NES/Switch) - I had forgotten how fun this incredibly simple American football game was! I played this game a lot as a kid, and hadn’t realized it was part of the Switch’s NES Online app! I played two games: I lost the first 14 - 28, but won the second 41 - 20 (we both missed extra points). You only have four plays to choose from in offense and defense, so this isn’t exactly a deep simulation game, but it’s damn fun. It’s also pretty easy once you figure out how easily exploitable the AI is :P


And that’s it! It doesn’t look like a lot of games, but I did play one of them for over 30 hours to finish it, so it’s a lot of gaming!

I will continue Yakuza Kiwami next month, but I will also be playing a lot of Ghost of Tsushima (PS4) and Paper Mario: The Origami King (Switch), and probably streaming them both, along with Yakuza Kiwami. We also have plans to stream more Animal Crossing (at least once on 1 August when the new fish and bugs and sea creatures come out) and Overcooked (Switch), so you can watch our marriage implode in real time. No, I kid. We’ve played Overcooked before and it’s been fine. I’ll just have to remember that it’s not always about winning :P

Until next month, play more video games!

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