Recent Posts11
General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?
« Last post by broodwars on January 20, 2026, 06:52:07 PM »I've shown her the trailers to Princess Peach Showtime, Yoshi's Crafted World, and Animal Crossing so those will be played soon as well.
Having recently played through Princess Peach Showtime, I can tell you that it's alright, but it really just made me want to hook up my PS3 and finally do that full run of Puppeteer I've been putting off for years. Getting certain collectibles in Showtime is so annoying.
I bailed on Crafted World fairly early on, due to it being so repetitive and the music being so utter ****. Still hoping to see a modern port of Woolly World.
If people are are going to post on the forums again, I might as well post some impressions of my own from recent games I completed or are actively playing:
- Yooka-Replaylee- A much more polished version of the original game, perhaps to a fault. The game has a distinctly Mario Odyssey feel to it now that seems to override the franchise's actual identity. It was a nice, quick play, though.
- Cocoon - very clever Zelda-esque Inception puzzles, though I haven't the slightest clue what the story was trying to be.
- Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter - A much less interesting clone of the first game with difficulty balancing that seems nonexistent. Easy is such a cakewalk it's boring, and Normal is so punishing it's aggravating. Glad I only paid $5 or so for it.
- Ball x Pit - Dangerously addictive. Had to force myself to put it down and not come back to for some time, because I would have just kept playing it. Currently on Level 3.
- Terminator 2D: No Fate - The name on the tin doesn't lie. It's exactly what you think it would be: a SNES-style movie tie-in game that's well-made for what it is. Unfortunately, it has next to no replay value, as well as strangely VERY little actual Terminator content. It's also fairly punishing even on Normal, and don't even bother trying to play above Normal without using the in-game cheats.
- Cronos: The New Dawn - I put this one down about 5-6 hours in because I just lost interest. Horror is all about emotion, and this game is incredibly cold and detached. It's just not clicking with me. Maybe I'll get back to it at some point.
- Metroid Prime 4 - Perhaps this one is a surprise considering all the drama in the official topic, but I had some decent trade credit coming off Showtime, so I thought I'd give the game a shot.
The game's...not great. I'd probably give it a 5/10 overall. Surprisingly, the Federation Troopers were probably among the game's least-damaging sins, as they mostly just fade into the background. They're neither interesting nor overtly offensive. Even Mackenzie basically stops being an annoyance after his tutorial segment, and his occasional hints towards where you should go next are basically mandatory considering how **** the game's level design is.
The game in many ways reminds me of Final Fantasy 13, a game I had a decent time with back in the day but can completely see why people hate it. And like FF 13, this is a game with level design consisting...entirely...of linear hallways. No branching, no interesting choices. There is only...the hallway, and it's such a boring hallway that if the game didn't actively tell you where to go you wouldn't remember where you couldn't go previously due to missing upgrades. And between the hallways, there is the desert, and **** all worth mentioning happens in the desert. But boy does the game love to ping pong the player through that boring desert every 20-30 minutes.
And I sure hope you enjoy the whopping 5 enemy types recycled in such about every hallway: crawling bug; flying bug; griever; robots; and explosive flying things. Even most of the bosses have the same basic attack pattern.
I tried to like this game. Despite how boring the game's design is, it's a pretty good-looking game. It also runs pretty well. It's just a very boring game whose edges have been so thoroughly sanded down and dumbed down to appeal to "everyone" that it appeals to no one.
And whoever designed that final boss fight can **** all the way off. Planning on trading this one in soon to pick up Xenoblade X and complete the set.
- Trails in the Sky: First Chapter - This is a game I wanted to get to last year, but I had Xenoblade games to catch up on, so it's the RPG I'm currently playing. So far, I'm enjoying it a lot more than I did the original PSP game, mainly because the battle system is much more enjoyable. That said, a little of this kinda repetitive and grating music and these pastel visuals goes a long way. I'm taking a bit of a break from the game to reset.
And finally...
- Astral Chain - Part of my attempt to catch up on my Switch backlog, this is my current "lunch time game". I originally put this game down around...I think Mission 7(?) years ago due to how ungodly long the chapters were starting to get.
Restarting the game to refamiliarize myself with it, it's still probably my favorite Platinum game (and it still looks fantastic) but the controls are definitely still extremely wonky and unintuitive. Definitely not going to go for the higher scores.
