JDubYes

PLAY

As well as all the arcade-y stuff I dabble in, and my continuing Picross problem…

Persona 5 Strikers - I'm still intermittently plugging away. It's a pretty good P5 sequel, and it;s implemented a lot of the Persona quirks into a Musou game very nicely, but that doesn't change the fact that I struggle a little to engage with Musou games. I need to get a good session in at some point and hope it gets its hooks back in.

Shogun Showdown - turn-based roguelite strategy, which I had "accidentally" double-dipped on, and am now slightly obsessed with. Lovely little game. My only issues are that the two versions of the game I'm playing have slightly different controls, and that I keep calling it 'Samurai Shodown', which is a very different game.

Turbo Overkill - a cyberpunk boomer shooter where you also have a chainsaw for a leg. Very good fun, even if the party piece can also render the game a little too easy at times.

Star Fox - barely dabbled, but it's lovely. Still plays great, and looks so nice.

WANT

GTAVI, at least sort of.

At some point, Stranger Than Heaven, Marvel Tokon Souls, Muremasa: Revenant Blades, The Adventures of Elliot, Final Fantasy Resonance, Persona 4: Revival and Persona 6. And the time to play them. And all the stuff I already have.

BIN

Besides the obvious, I also did not like being a little bit fat. I was running three times a week up until a year or so ago, and had gotten to the point where I was pretty lean and fast, especially for a man of my advanced years, but then injury and whatnot led to my being unable to run 5k at all anymore. I am now back on the Couch to 5k, and have a new kettlebell to throw around, which I actually quite enjoy, so progress is being made back in the right direction.

Picross S+
Holedown
Luck Be a Landlord
Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon
Azure Striker Gunvolt
Ball x Pit
Resident Evil
Resident Evil 4
Mariokart World
Alan Wake
Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana
Ridge Racer
Rave Racer
Burnout Paradise
I Am Your Beast
Nothing Door
Fashion Police Squad

Drainus
1000000
Treble Bull

1000000 is mobile game royalty, and I fancied something of that ilk, so why not go with one of the originals. Treble Bull is Balatro for darts, a little indie a saw a recommendation for, and did quite enjoy, though it didn't take long for 100% it, and there's something that doesn't quite work for me in there, even though I did enjoy it. The balance is just a little off - you can basically ignore upgrading the darts, and just focus on the items, and also fail on the first leg if RNG is against you.

Drainus though. That's the main event here.

The Switch (and therefore Switch 2) has proven to be an absolute dream for any fan of shmups. I am one of those, despite generally not having the attention span or talent to "'do it properly" - see also; beat 'em ups, and often roguelikes/roguelites - which is the case on shmups is generally fully mastering and 1cc-ing them. Basically, anything without an obvious and appreciable long-term goal or objective I will struggle to focus on, and likely eventually drift away from, despite the fact that all of these games really appeal to me in principle. Instead, for me shmups are a lovely side dish, and I'm generally fine with that.

Drainus circumvents this by a) being structured more like other games, with unlockable power-ups, builds, and also having the facility to restart levels, or indeed pick up again mid-level, plus b) being absolutely fucking brilliant.

It's an excellent shooter in its own right, also doing that thing I like where it looks like it could've been an old game while also doing things that the Mega Drive or SNES couldn't have actually handled. The upgrades and builds are fun, and the story is actually weirdly pretty good, such as it is. The big thing though is that, like Ikaruga and many other shmup greats before it, it has it's own unique mechanic that elevates it still further, which is that you have the (limited) ability to absorb enemy energy attacks to power up a powerful attack of your own. Not entirely original, but here the game is designed around it, and it is fantastically satisfying.

It's an easy recommendation for anyone who likes this sort of thing, and is up there with the Cave games, Ikaruga itself, and Crimson Clover as my favourites of its ilk on the system.

If you slow down a bit, to still go round the corner as quickly as you can, you’re keeping traction, so can then start accelerating again as soon as possible, and that’s generally the fastest way to do it, aka the “racing line”.

Drifting is normally slower because it means that you’re scrubbing off speed, because your tyres have lost traction, so you aren’t putting power down anymore, plus it takes longer to regain that control/traction and start accelerating again.

That’s my basic understanding, anyway, as well as quite a good indicator of why the best (or at least most fun) racing games are the ones that eschew completely realistic physics and instead encourage sliding around like a lunatic (and/or are rally games).

Play

Persona 5 Strikers - I'd been told this was a surprisingly good and faithful sequel to the main game, but still wasn't prepared for just how much of a good and faithful sequel it really is - boil the social links down into one overarching Bond system, and replace the turn-based battles with a Musou-style fighting game, and you have Persona 5 Strikers. The overworld navigation, the soundtrack, the vibe… It's just more Persona 5.

The one issue here, of course, is that I've rarely found Musou games enormously engaging for any length of time, so while this is very good, it doesn't hold my full attention in the same way as persona 5 itself did, and I suspect I will be playing it for some time.

Returnal - I have finally gone back. Again. I am so close to getting to the end of the second world, where I am certain I will get a grappling hook-type arrangement that will open the game up further. Unfortunately I am still not quite over my mental block, and will randomly bottle runs for no good reason. I am so close. I will get there. It is so good.

Sektori - I have a nasty habit of double-dipping on shmups and arcade-style games, so the Switch 2 release of this triggered a bit of a renaissance for me. As with most games of this ilk, I am not very good at it, but it is a fabulous game nonetheless, and I hope to continue to improve.

The aforementioned shmups - my bonus came, and much of it went into savings (boring), but I then also spent a fair bit feeding my burgeoning shmup (and other assorted arcade-style game) habit, partially enabled by sales that meant a lot of them were priced a lot more palatably than normal. Add in that you can get millions of the buggers downloaded at once, thanks to the meagre file sizes, and I was away…

On that basis I have been dabbling with Mushihimesama, Dodonpachi, Akai Katana Shin, Sophstar, several Cotton and Darius games, and so many more. I'm also still playing Crimzon Clover World EXplosion, which has been a favourite since becoming one of my first Switch purchases many years ago, and ESP Ra. De., which I picked up in Japan last year. I even loaded up Ikaruga for the first time in years.

I'm still terrible at all of these, of course, but I really enjoy them.

I've also tried to start Pokemon FireRed, but only managed a couple of hours in the last month, and am in a similar position with Advance Wars Reloaded. They haven't really fit into my gaming schedule properly yet, as much as I'm enjoying what little I've played, but they've been sidelined a bit by the above, and my ongoing Picross addiction.

Basically, I may be spreading myself a bit too thin at the moment, gaming-wise, but I am enjoying myself, so fuck it.

Want

There are a few things I could mention here - GTAVI (because I won't be able to resist the hype), 007 First Light (because IOI), Saros (because Housemarque) and Forza Horizon 6 (because Japan), but I'm not really desperate for any of them. A sentiment that is I suppose lent credibility by the fact one is already out, and I haven't bought it/finished it's predecessor, I suppose. Another doesn't have a release date on my platform of choice, so I won't be swept away by the hype there either.

My issue with most of the above is that I'm not really vibing with many (non-indie) Western games these days. I'm sure I'll enjoy some of them, but I'm more interested in my backlog than most of the Western releases I've seen announced.

On which note, I do think Adventures of Elliot and Onimusha look really good, and I'm also seemingly less down on the "new" Star Fox game than most, so I'm looking forward to that. Really looking forward to Rhythmn Paradise Groove too. Oh! Stranger Than Heaven! I really need to get back on the Yakuza/Like a Dragon train…

Bin

There to be less real-life stuff to reference here every month, or at least there to be a light at the end of the tunnel, please.

Picross S+
Holedown
Luck Be a Landlord
Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon
Azure Striker Gunvolt
Ball x Pit
Resident Evil
Resident Evil 4
Mariokart World
Alan Wake
Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana
Ridge Racer
Rave Racer
Burnout Paradise
I Am Your Beast
Nothing Door

Fashion Police Squad

I will try and at least semi-focus on Persona 5 Strikers again now. Probably.

Fashion Police Squad is an FPS (geddit!) that I randomly heard of recently on a podcast, bought for cheap, played and then finished, all in the space of 1-2 weeks. It is a "boomer shooter" that satirises many of the genres tropes, with maybe one person dies throughout the entire (5 hour or so) playtime, as you switch between your arsenal of "weapons" to correct fashion crimes; a paints gun jazzes up people in corporate grey, or extracts colour from people whose clothes are too bright; a water gun shrinks ill-fitting suits; your melee weapon, which is of course a belt, lifts the trousers of the baggy-panted enemies who vape at you, and so on…

It's pretty good! Plays nicely, evokes memories of some of the best stuff in the genre even as it playfully mocks it, and knows when to end even while giving you plenty of other stuff to do if you so choose. There's a bit too much platforming, which for me is generally a cardinal sin in an FPS, and it's nothing ground-breaking, but I liked it a lot.