I’ve been playing a lot of different games lately, but I’m usually juggling a lot of them at once, so that’s not all that different. I’ve been playing a lot of Battle Chef Brigade, and It’s been a lot of fun.
It gives you a lot more freedom to be creative than most cooking games, and the art is pretty nice, even if there isn’t a lot of movement. I’m replaying it on Hard mode right now and making different story choices, so I can get the most out of it.
I also recently got a Sega Genesis, and that’s been an interesting learning process. I bought it to play Rocket Knight Adventures – which is Konami hard so far, but a lot of fun and really charming – because it’s never been ported, but looked like it would be right up my alley. Getting used to a button scheme with three primary buttons instead of two or four has been a surprising bump in the road for me, and I’ve had to adjust to the stiffness of the Genesis D-Pad, but other than that, I’m a blast. Rocket Knight has a lot of surprises, a cute, bumbling protagonist, and boss fights every five minutes or so. Hard, but creative, and lots of fun. Also, it has a possum with a jet pack and a sword, so of course I had to try it at some point.
I’ve also been playing a lot of Streets of Rage 2 on my Genesis. I picked it up because I heard that it was one of the best beat-em-ups you can find, and so far, they’re pretty right. Slick, pixelated graphics, tons of combos, and a wonderfully robust and bright ’90’s radical aesthetic. And the music. Oh sweet lord, the music. A lot of Genesis games can have flat out awful music, made of nothing but bubbling blips and chips with no direction, but this stuff is Grade A classic. The theme of the first level is so good I would seriously blast it out of my car’s windows if I was driving downtown… You know, if I had a car. Yuzo Koshiro knows what’s up. Check out the soundtrack if nothing else.
Super Mario Odyssey has been great, but there’s not much point going in to that, since most people have heard about that already. Though I will admit that I’ve been playing it a lot when I’ve got a spare minute -just picking it up to collect a few moons before I leave for a class or whatever. Fantastic game; still not sure if it beats Galaxy for me, but it’s damn good.
I also replayed VA-11 HALL-A recently on the Vita for the sake of my review on GameSkinny. Nothing much to say here I haven’t said already. It’s just a really pretty, compelling, well-presented visual novel with unique gameplay and a great cast of sci-fi and manga misfits, in a world of Bladerunner meets Cheers.
Lastly, during the Thanksgiving festivities I played a lot of Jackbox Party Pack 3 with my friends and family. I seriously think Jackbox might be the best names in Party games right now. They make cheap, easy to understand, fun and funny games that basically anyone can understand and play without a lot of complicated set-up. If you haven’t played Quiplash 2 or T.K.O. with a full group of people at least once, then you haven’t lived.
That’s most of the interesting stuff I’ve been playing. The list will grow after Christmas, I can tell you that much.
