What are you playing right now?

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The World Ends With You.
I'm finally advancing with the main plot...after getting to level 60 and boosting my HP and bravery a huge amount.

Puyo Puyo Tetris again. I'm bummed that Tetris Effect seems like it'll remain exclusive to PlayStation, and that Tetris 99 will be exclusive to Nintendo Switch. The best Tetris game on PC is still a port of a game that was old by the time it released, but it's still great. I just wish we got some of these newer games too.

Dota 2. I play it almost all the time)

I'm playing no man's sky. Reviews made it sound lousy but it's incredible.

I'm playing Legend of Zelda: Windwaker HD (Wii U release). I'd never played it or its sequels and I've been on a Zelda binge. I started with the first game and I'm going all the way to Breath of the Wild. Not playing them in order though, and only the main console games.

Before this I played Skyward Sword then Twilight Princess.

I've been playing Touhou Luna Nights. The story is some nonsense, but the gameplay is excellent. It's like Castlevania with a lot of combat being mostly ranged using projectiles rather than melee. The bosses are fantastic, well designed and finely tuned in difficulty. I don't really play bullet hell games but they seem to be inspired from those sorts of games, with walls of projectiles that require both twitch reflexes and planning. There's also some mechanics that seem to be lifted from shmups, such as refilling energy by 'grazing' projectiles.

The game's unique mechanic is that you can slow down and stop time. It's a great mechanic that sees use in both combat and in the game's traversal. For example, you can throw knives, stop time and then use the knives stuck in time as a platform. Bosses often have small windows to attack them in that require you to be positioned right, and fights are tuned to the point where you need to use the mechanic to get in and capitalise on your positioning. Some obstacles, projectiles and enemies respond differently to time manipulation, such as being in stasis until time is stopped, leading to some rudimentary platforming puzzles.

It looks great too; the sprite work and animation is seriously good. There's lots of little things that impress me with the animation, like how your knives bounce off walls and return to you, how grass and water is animated and reacts to the action, and the massive, detailed and complex sprites of the game's bosses.

It is short though. I've only played a few hours and I've already explored about 70% of the map.

But so far I'm enjoying this a lot. I thought maybe I was getting bored with these sort of games because I've been trying to finish Hollow Knight which had universal praise from... pretty much everyone. But try as I might I just keep finding myself bored with it, whereas I'm having a blast playing this.

I finished Touhou Luna Nights. It really kept up the quality to the end of the game. It does a lot to differentiate itself from the rest of the genre with its time controlling and bullet hell mechanics. The game shines brightest with its boss encounters. In total it took me about 6 hours to finish. The number of things I didn't like about the game were pretty few, mostly that the time mechanic is overly generous and trivialises most normal enemy encounters, that I don't really see why it wasn't just an original IP since whatever ties it has to the Touhou franchise seem pointless (if you're going to make an indie game that's a totally different genre and has no ties to the existing franchise other than using their characters why not just make it something original?). Also, the game doesn't explicitly point out until near the end of the game that a large part of character progression is tied to the gems you pickup, which you've been encouraged throughout the game to sell. Apparently the game will get another chapter later, which I'm looking forward to.

Now I've started playing something I've been meaning to play for a long time. I've played all the Castlevania games for the Gameboy Advance a long time ago and loved them all, but I've never played Symphony of the Night which is said to be what they're most trying to emulate in their gameplay. It's also heralded as a really good example of the genre.

So far it's been very enjoyable, nothing really ground breaking and I can't say it does things better than the GBA variants. The game looks fantastic, with smooth animations and it has a great soundtrack (mostly - I thought the smooth jazz played in one of its many gothic dungeons was a bit incongruous). The combat's standard Castlevania fare, and while I'm missing the more versatile moveset/magic system of the GBA games it's responsive and fluid.

The map is great but with some caveats; I have a few problems with how unclear some progression paths are, and how the game occasionally gets you to backtrack to a place that seems like it's now open to you given new abilities, only to find it's still blocked to you slightly further ahead. There's tons of extended paths that have no reward upon reaching the end - that's generally fine in an exploration focused game, but here it feels unintentional, with entire dungeons and impressive bosses that guard nothing of worth. The map design is fine - it just lacks the more streamlined map design of Super Metroid, Ori and the Blind Forest or Dark Souls.

Not sure if it's just translation issues but half the stuff in the game doesn't explain itself at all - you constantly pick up new skills with no explanation of what they do or how to perform them. For example early on you get an ability called 'Soul of Wolf'. Using this you can now turn into a wolf and perform running dashes like Samus's Speed booster in Super Metroid - except nothing in the game tells you any of that, and unlike in Super Metroid it's not something you'd intuitively learn how to do without a prompt. You also get a bunch of familiars, with many having some utility - again, not explained at all by the game. There are tons of different gear that have identical stats with nothing seeming to differentiate them - except they are in fact different in a way that the game never indicates. It's not hard to Wiki these things nowadays but back in the day I'd imagine I'd just be completely frustrated with the game's obtuseness. Needless to say, this is a really glaring issue.

Despite these minor issues, I'm having fun. But now I've got to the halfway mark and what lies ahead for the second half looks less appealing, with what seems like a drop in the game's level design. I've had the ability to fly in game for some time now, but flying isn't fun and it seems to be getting used as a crutch for the remainder of the game. Hopefully the game can surprise me because the first half of the game has been great.

Stardew Valley and Toontown Rewritten

I've been playing Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1 and I feel incredibly ashamed. This game is miserable to actually play. Half of the dungeons are copy-paste, the battle system seems designed to be as frustrating as possible, and you have to grind constantly. Boss fights can take 20 minutes or so of just hitting the attack button to deplete a bar then using a special move. That said I like the characters even if the whole thing is stupid anime archetypes and nonsensical videogame references. I hate myself for playing this game. Anyway, I got a few of these in a bundle and I think I'm going to finish the lot.

Witcher 3 still, this game is huge!

It may be quite an unpopular game right now, but i'm very much enjoying Anthem.

Working on Far Cry New Dawn. I'm a sucker for that series. Any FPS that doesn't take itself too seriously is okay with me.

Alisia Dragoon for Sega Genesis, developed in 1992 by Game Arts and Gainax (yes, that Gainax).

Sort of obscure fantasy/scifi side-scrolling action platformer where you play as the titular gladiator-dragoon-princess (?) whose main attack is shooting lightning from her hands to vaporize enemies. You also have 4 companions that follow you around that can be used for different purposes (melee, ranged, etc.) to add a layer of strategy, although only one can be out at a time.

It's a pretty hard game, as there are no "lives" and you start the game with no continues (although you can find some), but it's one of those hard games where your character is kind of overpowered so it feels fair. Your basic (and only) attack with the lightning is quite powerful, hits everything on half the screen, and can be upgraded (a la Simon's whip in Castlevania). However, there is a limit to how long you can use it and you have to use it sparingly so you don't run out of energy which has to recharge over time (pretty quickly tho). You can also take a *lot* of hits (for games back then) before you die and your health can be upgraded. This all is balanced by the fact that the game throws tons of enemies at you constantly like the SNES Star Wars games and has challenging boss fights.

The game also looks great and has an awesome soundtrack. Would very much recommend it to fans of 16-bit action platformers 8.5/10

The Sims 4. Made a new household. Instead of The Brady Bunch, I made The Bundy Bunch starring Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, David Berkowitz and John Wayne Gacy.