What I've been playing - October 2023 Edition

I thought it might be fun to talk a bit more about games that I'm playing as I'm playing them. After all, I think I play more games than I realize, and it seems my memory is such that if I played something a week ago, it might as well have been ten years, I'll just forget. Also, sometimes I'll look back and think that it would have been nice to talk about things as I was playing them, and see what I was thinking then. If you go back far enough in this blog, back when it was hosted on a different service, you can see that I put up a blog post on the day of the Wii launch. But I thought I would be cheeky and not talk at all about my thoughts on the Wii, or Wii Sports, or The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. No, instead I wrote up a post on Sneak King, the Burger King stealth title for Xbox 360, which launched on the very day of the Wii release. That was fun and all, but maybe I should have talked about how awesome Wii Sports was! Or heck, talked about the launch, since I was working at GameStop at the time!

So with that rambling explanation of WHY I want to make some more 'in the moment' video game posts, let's talk about some of the games I've been playing for October. And man was there a big one!

Of course, Super Mario Bros. Wonder came out last recently, and I've been spending as much time as I possibly can playing it. I believe I'm in my fourth world currently? And of I'm absolutely loving it. I'm always down for a new 2D Mario game, but even I was starting to feel like Nintendo weren't putting as much effort as I'd like into their 2D Mario titles after the 4th "New" Super Mario Bros game. This really feels like they're trying to recreate the...well, wonder...of the best Mario had to offer through Mario 3 and Mario World. Those games had loads of weird things, and you just felt like you never knew what your next challenge would look like. The care they've taken in the animation really adds to much to all the characters, you get a much better feel for their personalities. The wonder seeds segments in each level are pure joy, you never know what weird, crazy thing is going to happen, but you'll always look forward to it. There have been levels where I missed the wonder seed, and I know I'll be back to find it, not necessarily because I want to 100% the game, but because finding them is so much fun.

I especially want to spotlight the mutiplayer and online functionality, which I'm loving. As a lot of people have talked about already, this game changes up the mutliplayer formula from the last couple "New" games by not having the players collide with each other. That means that you can't pick up and throw your friend, and it also means that you won't mess up a jump because you landed on your friend and bounced off their head into a pit. While the chaos did add a unique kind of fun, I think being able to focus more on the gameplay and less on where three other people are on the screen probably allows them to make levels that are a bit more tightly designed, since they don't have to worry about the areas feeling too cramped with four players bumping into each other.

But I haven't actually had any couch co-op experience yet. All my multiplayer has been online, and it has been, surprisingly, a joy. I really thought I would switch it on, try it a bit, and then switch if off to focus on the game itself. But to my surprise, I've kept it on almost the entire time I've played! I haven't found it at all distracting to have a couple other players joining me in the stage, and sometimes other players will do something like put a standee where a secret is. It's been fun to try and save a player that died by catching their ghost within the five seconds they're given, and it's been fun when I've been saved the same way by others. And I'm impressed at how smoothly everything runs; having other players in the level does nothing to the frame rate at all, and everyone seems to maintain a solid connection. It's a far cry from Super Mario Maker 2, where any online match was pretty much guaranteed to be practically a slide show the frame rate would dip so much.

Another big launch recently I was looking forward to is the 4th DLC pack for Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed! When this game first came out I did actually write a blog post about it, surprisingly! The new DLC pack is free, just like all the ones before it, and it adds a lot of new great features, including being able to save 4 pre-made Ghostbusters so you can switch between different looks. They even hang around the firehouse, chillin', which I thought was a great touch. You can also save loadouts to your equipment now, meaning you can try different combos and switch around to see what feels best, which I appreciate. Two new maps were added, a Chuck E. Cheese style area, and a subway, both of which feel like great places to find hauntings and fit right in with the other locations. And of course, the new ghost added, which was teased about a while back, is Samhain, the spirit of Halloween himself, first seen in The Real Ghostbusters episode "When Halloween Was Forever". He looks great and seems to be quite a formidable opponent from the few matches I had against someone using him. I haven't played as him myself yet, as I just unlocked him. You have to go through the new story content before you're able to use Samhain, which leads to the next big part of this update, new story content, with the full cast, including Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson back to voice their roles, which is always so appreciated!

My wife and I have been getting in the spooky spirit by playing Para Eyes on Steam, which is pretty much a copy of the I'm On Observation Duty games. But we've already played through all 5 of those, so we were eager to try a new one. This game is good, and more than just a simple rip-off, it makes some much needed improvements and quality of life upgrades. First off, there are multiple difficulty levels, with the difficulty effecting things like how fast anomalies happens and how quickly you have to deal with it, and how many rooms you'll have to watch. At first it seems like a bummer that you have to start with easy in order to unlock the next higher difficulty, but it adds some nice replay value, because when you go up a level, now you have one new room to focus on, but you're already kind of familiar with the other rooms. Reporting is also much snappier, with you just having to click on the screen where the event occurred, instead of having to report the room, and the type of anomaly. Overall I've enjoyed the changes this game introduces. There's also a few additions you can buy with in-game currency you earn, so you get additional anomalies like shadows and spiders added to the mix. If you're in the market for another game in the I'm On Observation Duty style, I'd give this one a recommendation.

Lastly, I've also been playing a bit of Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 on the Switch for the spooky season. I really loved the first Bloodstained Curse of the Moon game, with both games being heavily inspired by Castlevania 3 on NES. This one definitely feels like it upped the challenge over the first game, to the point of occasionally feeling frustrating. I still like it, but I'm completely stuck at a boss battle that I will have to watch someone playing through on YouTube to figure out how to advance, I think. The atmosphere it top notch though, and the NES-esque graphics are a delight. The weapons all feel good to use, and the various characters all fee different enough that you can find good uses for them in different situations. A solid Castlevania style game!

I meant for this to be a short post to quickly record what I've been playing, but it somehow ballooned out! I'm not sure if future posts like this will be quite this long, but I do like the idea of trying to write down all the games I've been going through, along with some impressions.