17 years on, Okami is still one of the best.

Been slowly picking away at Blue Reflection Second Light. It’s nice and chill, and neat that the first game’s subtext of girls love isn’t subtext anymore.

Also been playing some Gundam EXVS Maxiboost On with a friend. Slowly getting our bearings and it’s neat how every session our play improves, as does our coordination.

Going decently. What little there has been of my summer is nearly over.

Last week of work in my summer position which came off my practicum in the spring, and in September I start my second and final year in my program.

Ah bummer, just looked and it was delisted already. Guess I’ll have to see about getting a disc copy.

Heck yeah, they’re so good!

I’ve got A Certain Magical Virtual-On on my Vita. I know many people weren’t keen on it but I thought they did a pretty good job making it smooth on there! I don’t think I saw it was on PS4 (I assume) but may have to get my hands on that.

I got my friend who wrote the linked post to pick up Masterpiece, so we’ve been playing that a bunch.

Worth looking at the damage and increasingly poorer service they are providing to libraries: https://karawynn.substack.com/p/the-coming-enshittification-of-public-libraries

Yeah a local theatre was my first experience with it as well (and Sonic the Fighters next to it)! Far as I know all the cabs for it had the twin stick setup as that’s integral to the experience.

I was so frustrated the Masterpiece collection didn’t release outside of Japan, but at least it’s easy enough to get a copy of it, and it’s frequently on sale digitally. Just makes it harder to play with folks who aren’t already into it.

I’ve found a lot of these types of games tend to be a miss for me.

Things like what Steamforged put out are more focused on the production and for me lack an interesting game.

Elsewhere we have the “adaptations” of a decade ago which were usually theme slapped on thinly to a deck builder or something like that (think Uncharted or Resident Evil card games and you’ve got what I’m thinking of). I think we can be happy we’re not in this era anymore, though I’m sure there are still some being made.

It’s a lot more interesting to me when they don’t try to simulate the video game experience because they’re such different mediums that it’s hard and often a lot less interesting. While the XCOM board game had a number of issues, I liked how it abstracted concepts from the game and made it a strategy game a few levels removed from what you do in the game. If they hadn’t done that it would’ve just been another tactical miniatures game, which we’re not short on.

It's pretty inconsistent with my friend groups, but most frequently revolves around either Apex Legends or a mix of fighting games, currently Street Fighter 6. Monster Hunter often enters the rotation, as well as other cooperative games.

I've been trying to get folks to play Omega Strikers with me but have had little luck so far, nor have I really had the time to really get into it and get very comfortable with all the mechanics.

From what I’ve heard from friends, the Switch version currently has awful performance, to the point it is near unplayable. It’s not just frame drops, but fully freezing for several seconds at a time before starting back up only to do it again a short while later. Hopefully something they’re able to fix but the current state doesn’t sound like a good one to have released in.

Other platforms seem to run well however.

I used to play a lot back in the PS3/360 days then my group fell apart, but have gotten back into them in the last year. Nowhere near competitive but it’s so hard to top the experience of playing fighting games with friends of similar skill levels and helping each other improve!

I think a lot of it is just, the market changed. People wanted games with licensed cars, either more realistic or way more arcade-y (think kart racers), and the last few RR entries didn’t do so hot, so they packed it in.

It sucks but I can kinda see why it happened. I’d love to see them come back but I think it’s increasingly unlikely from Namco, just because the cost to make one vs the risk is likely to deter them from trying it. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more games in that style in the indie space!