Lets mix things up a bit here shall we?
Beatstar
So, Beatstar is a mobile rhythm game. Its not new, there have been like 40 some odd seasons of its pass which seem to last around a month or so. So, some 3+ years, at least.
Thats not important, its new to me.
I have made no secret that I enjoy music and rhythm games, and so I have been really enjoying this one. Its a bit different in feel than DDR or Fortnite Festival. There are only 3 lanes, so you can play with your thumbs. You also can’t miss a note, or you fail the song.
I don’t super mind this, except there is a “pay to continue” mechanic that is annoying. I have managed to sprt of train myself to just “tap tap tap” down the countdown timer as soon as I fail. Its almost never worth spending gems to continue with one exception. There are these occasional events where you earn special points for prizes. You only get the points if you actually finish the song, so if you are doing well, and near the end especially, its worth paying the gems. You are basically spending nothing in gems to potentially unlock more tracks. On the scale of spending for songs, its literally the best value possible.
And the game does really try to get you to spend for songs. Its possibly going to be my downfall with this one. I like playing ot, but I am around level 10 (out of 27) and I am increasingly hitting slowdowns and roadblocks on new content.
Basically, I am going to get bored of this and playing the same songs over and over.
I have like 70 songs now, and I did spend a bit of money (one song pack and the current season pass).
You still get a lot of songs for free though just by playing. As you play you unlock cards through various means, collect enough cards in a particular genre and you unlock a song of that genre. The problem is, the more you unlock, the more cards you need. Initially it took like, 5 cards to unlock a box. Now, in some cases, it takes like 40.
The pass seems to work the same way, which is super discouraging for buying anymore passes, because I am not sure I can complete it and unlock all 10 songs. Tier 1 was like 10 Pass Points, I am currently at I think 50 needed.
Anyway, for the game itself I am pretty good, which is to be expected a bit. A lot of my common song fails seem to come from the occasional input lag, especially on swipe notes. And the songs I score low at are ones with a lot of dense notes. Hitting the notes is not the problem, but I find I start to slowly move up in temp during dense clumps, which leads to early hits which breaks the score multiplier combo.
Throne and Liberty
I started a new MMO, and its new to everyone, not just me. Someone I know was playing it. I actually have some potential posts about it written up but I am not sure I want to bother.
A lot of what has drawn me to this one is just how nice the visuals are. Its really nice looking and everything runs incredibly smoothly. It kind of reminds me a bit of Black Desert in that aspect. I have only been vaguely following the storyline, something about some sort of purple energy and an evil lady with a giant evil knight dude.
I am enjoying it so far, though having read into it a bit more it sounds like end game is a bit more PVP focused than I would care for so I am not sure I will go much beyond running through the main storyline and finishing out the base world.
Mirrors Egde
I mostly want to mention this one because its not the first time I tried to play it, and I really really WANT to like this game, but there is just something that keeps me from getting into it.
Super Mario Special
I found out about this game that I never knew existed recently, and decided to play it, via ROM hack. Apparently there was a sprt of, PC version of Super Mario Brothers put out by Hudson Soft in the 80s. It was on various platforms.
Its basically just, SMB with similar but different levels and some new enemies (well, old crab and fly enemies from Mario Bros) and power ups. Turns out the P Wing in Super Mario Brothers 3, was not the first time Mario had flying wings as a power up.
Sky: Children of the Light
I already wrote about the new season. I mostly wanted to mention that I apparently get a fair amount of search traffic related to this game and so I have started gathering some notes to maybe update some of those old guide posts I made a while back.
