PixlBit

Happy New Year!

Games DESTROOOOYED!*

-Final Fantasy Adventure (Collection of Mana, Switch)

FF Adventure is, of course, the first Mana game, though it did embrace some FF tropes, e.g., red mages. It's unsurprisingly rudimentary in many respects but does have a surprisingly large amount of equipment to acquire and the game does a good job of keeping the various types of weaponry viable throughout the adventure, mostly for dungeon traversal. Enemies have many different sprites but tend to be samey in practice and bosses are pretty simple. Still, for a GB game in 1991 it is really solid.

-Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (Switch)

I have really missed Castlevania, and Bloodstained—by design!—scratches that itch. It shares many of the same strengths, like the big castle to explore, tons of items and secrets to find, intense bosses, etc., and weaknesses (namely the occasional vagueness in how to progress). The Switch version suffers from a number of technical difficulties but the inherent quality of the game still shines through. I really hope we do get a Bloodstained 2 eventually.

Games Bought

December was a very Switch-heavy month for acquisitions. On the digital front we got Cadence of Hyrule, LEGO Marvel Superheroes 2 (+season pass), and Degrees of Separation (a cool-looking co-op puzzle platformer) all on sale during the month. Most of us received a Switch game for Christmas—Luigi's Mansion 3, LEGO DC Super-Villains Deluxe Edition, Just Dance 2020, and Dead Cells—and I got Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for my birthday. Plus my copy of Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX came in the mail. That's a ton of Switch games! The PS4 wasn't totally left out. I put Hidden Agenda, a short game where you connect your phone to the PS4 and look for clues to catch a serial killer, in my wife's stocking for us to play together. It's by the Until Dawn folks and I got it very cheap lol. I picked up a new copy of Yakuza 0 after Christmas because I got it for $10. Last and, well, probably least, I found Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare for the Xbox One new for $5 and had to get it. This is the one with the sci-fi space campaign and I always wanted to try it.

Game Being Played

December was very busy for my job and I just finished Bloodstained two nights ago, so I'm kind of between games at the moment. I'm still working on my long-term multiplayer games—Destiny 2 (PS4) and Earth Defense Force 2025 (PS3)—but otherwise I have yet to start something new. As much as I want to dive into another Switch game, I promised my wife she could use it to finally get some quality Pokémon time in, so I'll probably play catch up on some backlogged PS4 games but not sure what yet. There are so many to choose from!

Hopefully over the coming weekend I can get my 2019 recap and Golden Hippo awards put together and posted. See you all soon!

*That was for you, Snee.