Didn’t make an entry last month and it lines up with lower activity in gaming recently.
The main external factor to my gaming is my free time. I’ve been at my job for around 1.5 years and ideally I’m moving up in the world by the time I get to 2. If it’s gonna happen, I think I’ve got to be serious about the job search starting now. It’ll take up time until it’s over, but getting adjusted to doing it feels like the busiest part. I still have the time to play games, just not as often and not as long. I played tactics game Dark Deity in late August in 3+ hour play sessions, but everything recently feels like it’s been limited to 30 minutes, 1 hour, or longer but actually it was technically 3 sessions and I just didn’t close the game while I was busy for 15 minutes.
My planned schedule has definitely changed as I look for games that work under these new limits, but I’m still on a good pace to reach my goal of 60 completed games. I’ve mostly run out of 1 hour long games I’m interested in, but I’ve been playing a lot of “short level, medium-length game” games. Not under this umbrella were The Big Con (beat in one 4-hour session), Hi-Fi Rush (has hour long levels), and SUPERHOT, which I beat in early September before all of the time crunch, but The Vagrant, DOOM 64, Moonlighter, Severed Steel, and bits of Death Stranding and Neon White were helpful for sure in letting me do shorter sessions. I don’t have much to say about these games until my review stream at the end of the year, just that my Death Stranding update is that I’m now seriously thinking I won’t finish it this year. They’re kind of janky and it’s funny, but also I hate the mountains.
The two other games I’ve played were this month’s club game, Mainframe Defenders, and the Rivals of Aether II Demo, the latest platform fighter on the block. Mainframe Defenders is tactics (I like), but is also a roguelike, and I’ve come to realize I don’t like that. I respect the replay value, but I haven’t been replaying games and cool story beats are usually sacrificed for procedural generation, not a favorable trade-off in my eyes. I’ve got a more complicated viewpoint on Rivals of Aether II, so let me talk it out.
I think it’s pretty crazy reading conversations online about the greatest platform fighters of all time. Consensus seems to give two series: Super Smash Bros and Power Stone. Smash is great, but the last Power Stone came out in 2000; what has the video game industry been doing for the last 24 years that this is all that we have at the top? Power Stone tournaments aren’t even that common (though the 2025 ports could absolutely change things since the game has been unavailable forever). The ultimate fate of newer games/series are still to be determined, but I think the only non-Smash plat fighters that have really lasted are Brawlhalla and Rivals of Aether (the first one) (and Lethal League if you count it since that’s in the category on Wikipedia, but I always thought of it as more traditional fighter-coded). Both of those games are still a niche within the niche that is platform fighters.
I wonder if Smash Bros director Masahiro Sakurai feels the same way with his 250+ episode YouTube series explaining how to make good games. It’s maybe kind of sad, but Smash does so much and so many of the other games fall into two traps.
Trap #1: being a cashgrab. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl should have never cost $50 and also shouldn’t have a sequel 2 years later that also cost $50 on release. And then the DLC is also a worse deal than Smash. MultiVersus is free-to-play but pay-to-enjoy. It legitimately might be $300 and growing to unlock all the characters and buy a couple of the costumes like everyone in unranked online seems to have done. And if you play 300 hours, you might just earn enough free currency for a third of the cast.
Trap #2: too much like Melee. This one might not be so much of a trap since it’s usually Smash mods that do this, so the data on a full game is more inconclusive; but in the world of Smash mods, there is an oversaturation. Super Smash Bros Melee does have majority good and cool mechanics, but I don’t want to see a copy/paste. There’s no way the Melee community is gonna do much beyond: play it once, “cool mod”, then back to Melee. I hate it when Smash mods of Brawl/4/Ultimate revert Falco because if I wanted to play Melee Falco, I would just play Melee. I don’t understand why we need to bring back this laser-camping, pillar-combing, online terror every single time. You could easily do something like Brawl Falco’s shine animation with Melee shine properties and it’d be super cool and unique, what could go wrong?
Rivals of Aether II does have some similarities to Melee that make me wonder if the game can really make it and Zetterburn is netplay Falco, but there might be just enough stuff that isn’t Melee to let it stand out; parries, special get-up, Zetterburn’s shine is his neutral special and not his down special. It might be too ambitious to say it’ll compete with Smash, but at a minimum, it’s a step in a better direction after some of the latest big platform fighters.
With all of that said, the game isn’t for me.
I played as much as I could during the free week to see if my mind changed, but in the end I’ll probably wait for a big discount before even thinking about picking it up. Starting my thoughts with the sound design and the soundtrack; they are above average, but neither does it for me as much as the first Rivals and it doesn’t compare at all to Smash. Now, Smash does get to draw from a library of very good games with very good music, but Smash has unique remixes that are insanely good. Rivals II has some Rivals I remixes and they’re good, but to me they’re not insanely good. My bigger issue is with the gameplay though; a lot of the low percent game feels lacking in impact. The difference between landing a move at 0 in this game compared to a lot of other fighters in a little too jarring for me. Maybe I don’t understand, but every move just feels like the wrong move to be using to get anything started. Rivals II has a huge crouch cancel window, but that’s not even the thing; just landing the move clean has a feel that I’m missing something. I have a similar issue with the popular smash mod Project M/Project + so I think it’ll be a non-issue for many, but it’s something I personally don’t vibe with.
Things could change as this game continues to update. I believe the sound design got some big changes in Rivals I and I know the music in Rivals II has been updating throughout the beta, but 50% of each stock is something I’m not sure will transform so easily. It’s not the end of the game’s chances for me though, I am interested in the potential story mode as well as the new characters. Who knows where it’ll be in 5 years. But for now, I’ll probably be looking to spend more time getting into traditional fighters instead.
Speaking of soundtracks, I’ve been making updates to my third list of “music from the games I’ve played” and every time the list seems to get harder to make.
When I think back to the first list, it’s all music I enjoyed, but I definitely did not have as much trouble. I think it’s the weakest list with the end being more of “additions” rather than “cuts”. Meanwhile, in the second list, Green Hill Zone Act 2 from Sonic Mania was the final song to drop off my list and I’m still thinking about whether I agree with my own choice.
Right now, with around 10 more games to play, Glass Ocean from Neon White is near the end of my third list. I’m not the biggest drum and bass fan, but this is one of Neon White’s flagship songs and it is really solid. It’s a dilemma because I can’t imagine it not making the list, but it’s gonna be on the chopping block if I play any more games with a song I like. There’s also MultiVersus, making it’s final appearance (probably) in my stuff, and it puts out new remixes of classic Warner Bros music every couple of months too. Most of them aren’t coherent enough (does this make any sense?) to make my list, but it’s all dangerous. Maybe I’ll add 5 spots and make a top 20 list.
October is almost over so I’ll probably just be finishing Neon White. If my last weekend ends up pretty open, I may play Invincible Presents: Atom Eve, made by the same group that made 3 out of 10 (played earlier this year). Streaming/recording has been on my mind, but for reasons stated at the beginning, I don’t know if anything will happen. It’s ok, Mike has been on day 3 of 90 since July.
