What I’m Playing

What I’ve Been Playing – Mobile Pixel Games Edition

Things have been really heavily mobile gaming focused lately. I suppose its also worth mentioning, sometimes, often times, there are games that I don’t mention at all. Like when I spent ten minutes on some Steam game that was meh. Or the CAT CEO game I played for like, a day.

Games I am omitting this week because I barely played them…

A Godzilla Racing game.
Oregon Trail
Infinity Nikki
Unreal Life
Fortnite
That Cat CEO game
LinkedIn’s Daily Puzzle games
Sky: CotL

Loop Hero

I decided to dig a bit into what was available on Play Pass, since I pay for it, and use it, but could use it more. This is one I picked up there.

Its sort of an, auto playing RPG, though you do have to manage gear and planning out the map. Your character just walks around a looped path, and every round the enemies get harder. But you also get cards that you can play across the map to add power ups and harder enemies for better drops. Each loop you have the option to return to camp with your loot, though each loop resets everything.

Hence, Loop, Hero.

Its fun, I am starting to get some better strategies going for item placement and which stats are the best.

Balatro

I actually just bought this one, after a friend recommended it. It actually kind of reminds me of the sort of, gradual, subtle strategy, of Loop Hero, though way more cards.

You get dealt a number of cards (8 I think by default) and have to make Poker hands from them to tey to score points and beat the blind everytime. The trick is, the blind keeps going up and you need to upgrade points for hand types (Flush, Full House, etc), and use an assortment of Joker cards to beef up your combos and points.

I have a few good strategies but I have yet to make it past round 6/8, yet.

Like Loop Hero, every round you gain a few new unlocks, but everything resets otherwise.

Pokemon TCG Pocket

I am still… Diligently opening packs twice a day. I don’t like playing against people and the Expert AI opponents are cheap as hell impossible.

I kind of want to finish the set of cards, but I am not sure I will bother.

Throne and Liberty

I have almost completely stopped playing T&L. I could feel it coming, and it followed the usual pattern of, “I feel my interest waning” followed by “Lets push and play extra” after. Then Thanksgiving week was busy and I just sort of, stopped. I did all the available dungeons, I did all the quests, now its just, a repetitive gear grind. I can’t even transmog items to play dress up like in WoW, not without paying money. I feel like I have worn the same armor for 90% of the game now.

Beatstar

Another, “I can tell I am losing interest. I want to enjoy it more but its just, very repetitious. And I either instantly ace new song unlocks, or its an extreme tier track that I lose in Stage 2 at 10,000 points because hit detection on swipes is pretty ass for a game entirely built around hit detection.

Seriously though, look at these, they are cluttering things up and wrecking my “% Completed” on my profile.

What I’m Playing – Not Dead Yet Edition

Nov 23rd, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

1 comment

I’m gonna be straight up here. I just have not really been much in the mood for writing and blogging lately.

In addition to just being busy lately, the latest news developments are just, very very depressing, to put it mildly.

Fortnite

I have not been really playing a lot of variety lately either. I have no interest in Fortnite OG 2, I didn’t care for OG1 either. The Music pass was… Weirdly easy to complete, because they changed how you gain pass tiers. I finished it in days and barely played. I didn’t get premium. I am not real big on Snoop or rap/hip hop. This also kind of killed any interest in playing because all of the featured tracks are basically 7+ difficulty on vocals and 1-2 difficulty on every other part.

I don’t like playing vocals.

Beatstar

I am also rapidly losing interest in Beatstar, the other rhythm game I have been playing on my phone. Its still enjoyable, but the replayability of tracks is kind of meh. I also can basically Gold most normal tracks in one play through. Platinum is less easy, and I have no double platinum tracks. Both of those feel like blind luck though. There isn’t really a good strategy for increasing how many Perfect+ vs Perfect hits you get.

Or the songs fall to the other end of the spectrum, which currently is 3 tracks for my 100 or so songs available. They are “Extreme” tier and I lose it randomly on stage 2 somewhere, usually because it doesn’t properly register a swipe arrow.

More irritating is that all of my unlocks now require like, 50 cards per genre. And card cases have 2-4 cards in them. This drip feed of content is excruciatingly annoying. They added in some ways to unlock more by watching ads but I have too many layers of blocking going on the ad mechanism barely works even after I opened a few pinholes for it.

The mobile ads are horrifically awful and weird too. And they are just for more games centered around shoving ads at you. How does this model even fucking work?

I would give them money to try to get some songs I want but the only way to get songs is a slot machine pull and I have no real interest in that crap.

Pokemon TCG Pocket

Though speaking of slot machine pulls, I decided to give the new Pokemon TCG Pocket a go. I can already tell its not going to last. Between in game tasks and general new game push, it really showers you with things early on. I have mostly been playing the vs AI battles, but not really playing a lot. Mostly just collecting up the cards.

I feel like I am pretty close to having the set despite not spending a dime, but also, I know this is how this crap works. That last basic Golbat card will have a .0000000005% chance of dropping ever. That sort of nonsense. You think its the fancy colored ones with strong legendary Pokemon, but its not. They give you those to keep the dopamine hits flowing while you chase the completionism of every trash Pokemon.

Pokemon Sleep

On a Pokemon Note, I also have spun up Pokemon Sleep again. It added support for 3rd party watches (Fitbit) and well, it works, but I really do not get the point of this thing. I may have already uninstalled it.

Throne and Liberty

Look at that, I said I had not been playing things and here I am, not even touching on what I have been playing yet. I have made it to the max level, I have started running some dungeons. I still have not tried all of the dungeons yet. Almost every boss has some point where they have a 1 hit KO mechanic. I have only played some of the easier to manage bosses, and even then I still die half the time.

I have gotten some good gear though. Though I need to figure out a better way to beef up my stamina/MP. I keep running out.

Just recently I also started doing some open world dungeons. I have all this weird currency and it keeps telling me “X currency is full so these new ones have been destroyed”. One of these currencies affects drops in open world dungeons. So I figured it was time to use some of it.

On regular currency though, I finally went broke. I kept feeling super rich, but recently found where to craft upgrade books for my high level gear. And I blew through several million in regular gold using up my crafting mats.

Easy come easy go I guess.

What I’ve Been Playing

Oct 20th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

No comments yet

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.

Its hard to take screen shots for a rhythm game in action…

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.

What I’ve Been Playing – Mobile Edition

Sep 25th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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One day I will get some sort of actual cadence going on these. I promise 🤞. Anyway, For whatever reason, I kind of dipped in and out of a few mobile card games recently. I came to a universal conclusion, I really don’t care for mobile card games.

Pokemon TCG Live

I don’t know what the actual name for this is, I think it’s rebranded a few times too. I came across some codes for this game that were unredeemed so I loaded it up. After playing the tutorial and playing a few rounds and trying to spiffy up my deck so it wasn’t so shitty, I uninstalled it.

Of the card games I have been playing, I wanted to like this one the most. And I hated it, the most.

I am sorry Pikachu, I tried, I wanted this to be a go-to game. I really love Pokemon in general, as a sort of underlying always there enjoyment. But I hate playing against human opponents and you have to proper vs AI mode.

Magic The Gathering

Like Pokemon, I had some codes to redeem. On Prime Day, I bought an actual set of M:tG cards in a two player starter set. It came with digital versions of both decks.

I enjoyed playing this one probably the most. Especially because it has a way to play vs AI, which I prefer. It’s not souch I dislike playing against people, it’s that I have no desire to play against people who are making out perfect strategies while I am just here being my casual ass self. Like in Pokemon, I had a game where every round my opponent was throwing out like 10+ cards and there was all this in and out of the discord pile and damage counters flying everywhere and I could not even manage to draw any damn energy.

Ain’t nobody got time for that!

I actually used to vaguely play Magic like, 20 years ago. I thought I hady cards still but a coworker and I were talking about it and I went to find my cards and they don’t seem to be there anymore. I want to say a lot of them were from an early set, maybe even the original sets. Frozen Realms or Forgotten Realms or something. It was “Ice themed”.

Hearthstone

I have tried a few times to get into Hearthstone. I like the multiple minions aspect like Magic has, but I am not sure I like the hero aspects of the way energy/land/resources works.

Part of why I have been playing this one lately is that my Google Play Pass subscription includes a $5 off coupon all the time, so I have been building up a ton of “free currency”. (Roblox has the same thing, and sometimes PokemonGo).

Pokemon Go

I have finally made it to Level 40 in Pokemon Go. This was the original highest level. There is a bunch of task based stuff that is needed to get to level 50, the current highest, but at this point it’s all “end game” style play.

I am kind of considering stopping again. The experience needs feel huge and like most games, I have never been super into End Game Min/Maxing. I kind of got into that for a bit in World of Warcraft ages ago, around Pandaria, but they kicked it all up and I stopped caring.

Anyway, Pokemon Go recently added this Dynamax gimmick, which I guess is from one of the game I never really played. It seemed like a cool idea, you actually fight to capture Pokemon, but it’s not quite a raid, but then battles are stupidly boring. Plus to actually get anywhere on the Dynamax mechanics you need like a zillion candies.

Hard pass.

It seemed cool, it just… Too tedious.

Also, stop spawning Kanto Pokemon damnit. I need Sinnoh Pokemon fory research task.

Sky: CotL

There are like, 3 “events” happening at the moment, and it feels like 2 at any given time. I kind of like that the game is trying to be a bit more actually interactive. For a long while it was just starting to get dull and repetitious. I may or may not have allegedly been using tools to assist with that tedium, but have since stopped because many people were … having “issues” with it.

I never had any “issues” but I figured it’s better to stop while I was ahead and I was at least caught up on a bunch of traveling spirits.

I picked a heck of a time to stop though, one of the current events is the return of the Shattering Season spirits, and they need like 800 candles to finish out. I have decided to accept that I don’t need everything.

There has also been a new event centered around Riddles and the Moon. Usually these are based around holidays, but I am not sure what holiday this one is for. It’s a neat sort of event where you can leave and answer riddles, but it’s not great since, the riddle lanterns never seem to refresh each day, and half of them are not in a language I can read (well enough).

The last event is the regular seasonal event, the Season of Duets. I’ve finished that one off. I have seen a fair amount of people saying the season was lame but I don’t see it. It had several instruments and the music mini game feels like kind of a core part of Sky.

Fortnite Festival

Speaking of music, I have been playing a lot of Fortnite Festival still. The Rhythm game mode that is the spiritual sequel to Guitar Hero/Rock Band. I have backed off on it some since I finished the pass and I don’t super care about the bonus styles for the Keytar.

What I’ve Been Playing – Cruisn’ the USA Edition

Jul 13th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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It’s been a while since I posted about “What I’m Playing”. I’ve done a few specific game posts but no generic ones. Mostly it’s been Overwatch. Because I stopped playing Fortnite and apparently I hate myself because I can’t NOT play a grindy shooter game. I’m probably not going to really talk about Overwatch. I’ve finished the base Ultrawatch Pass already, helped out because I bought the Ultimate pass like a sucker because it had Kaiju skins, but it had 20-level tier skips. I still have titles to try for, which is another 100 levels. I also spent my Mythic Coins on the base Rita Repulsa Ashe skin. I probably won’t bother with the upgrades, and I have a ton of Mythic currency still because I skipped the Evil Mercy.

I have plenty of good Mercy Skins.

I said I wasn’t going to talk Overwatch, yet, here I am.

American Truck Simulator

In an effort to not play so much Overwatch, I’ve gone back to the American Truck Simulator Well. I tried the Elite Dangerous (Space Trucking Simulator) route but I have forgotten all the controls. I’ll get there. Instead, I’ve been actively working to visit every city in all the DLC I have. Also other achievements. I often use this time to watch some TV my wife isn’t interested in as well, or Youtube videos. It’s just generally a very chill game.

I have a LOT of the state DLCs too. I will eventually get them all, but I decided I should actually travel around the ones I have before buying more. What I really want is my own home state of Illinois. And they are getting close. I think Iowa and/or Missouri are next. I can’t see them pushing Illinois after that though. Probably it will be Minnesota or the Dakotas. I actually wouldn’t mind if they took the “American: part more seriously and added Canadian Provinces and Mexico at some point.

I really want Illinoi though. If only to get a feel for just how much it “feels right” to get an idea of how much the rest of the game “would feel right”. All of the states so far are west of the Mississippi river. I’ve been to almost every state East of the Mississippi, and a few West, but none that have been released so far.

I need some context man!

Anyway, I mix between long and short trips depending on my free time. I’ve gotten good enough at parking I almost always take the “hard parking” option for the bonus XP.

I did recently disable traffic fines in the options. I still drive safely, because it’s more enjoyable. But sometimes the red lights are just a little too long and you can’t make right turns on red at all without triggering a fine. Plus I can be a little more floaty with my speed without worrying about a speeding ticket for 2 MPH over. Basically, I still play the “right way”, but I don’t have to stress about it.

Also sometimes, just for fun, I can now just, absolutely blast if at full speed and barrel down the shoulder and blast through cars at the intersection. Which is sometimes fun.

X-Box 360

This is a bit of a blanket category. I’ve been playing a few X-Box 360 games. Off the top of my head, 1942: join Strike, Wing Commander Arena, a few others. I’ve been picking up some titles cheap because the 360 marketplace is closing at the end of the month. Another round of sales drops in a few weeks just before closing. I’m hoping the Saints Row 1 and 2 games go cheap, but I may pick them up anyway.

So far I’ve picked up, but not necessarily played:

Mighty No 9 – Made by the Mega Man creator, though I hear it’s meh
1942: Joint Strike – A lot of neat shooters on the 360 right now for like $1.
Bionic Commando Re:armed – I have this on PC but the platformer seemed good for 360. I want to get the sequel but the store keeps bugging on me.
Frogger Hyper Arcade – Seeing a trend yet, it’s all mostly cheap arcade titles, because i have most everything else on PC.
Wing Commander Arena – An arena based space shooter that is 360 exclusive in a favored franchaise.
Geon – a neat looking puzzle game
Kane and Lynch: Dead Men – I think this one is 360 exclusive maybe, but it was cheap
Star Raiders – Another shooter
Ziet^2 – Another shooter
Yar’s Revenge – An update of the classic Atari title
War World – It looked neat and was cheap
Dogfight 1942 – Another shooter

I still want to get a few more, Saints Row 1 and 2 hopefully. I keep hoping the 360 version of Minecraft goes on sale. I have a wish list of maybes. This also fits nicely in my recent push to update my console set up and use it more as well.