Weekly Game Update: August 21st - August 27th, 2022

Apologizes for the missed update and for this update being delayed! I felt pretty crappy and there really wasn’t much to update on anyway… Still feeling a little off but a lot better!

Anyways, for this week I guess I’m still trying to get out of a bit of a funk since I again didn’t really play all that much. Well, I did play some games, but none of which were games that were already on my playing list. It’s really frustrating since I haven’t made much progress on any of them this whole month! Ugh! Maybe I need to set aside a certain time to game or something, since I often get distracted by random projects I want to do or just doom scrolling through Reddit. ._. I am still interested in playing all of the games on my list, but I’ve been struggling with getting the gears going to boot them up and actually play them. That and the really easy to pick up games (like Genshin Impact) have really been appealing for my brain cause it’s super easy to boot up, do random stuff, and get that quick dopamine. I need to think about this issue for a bit I think .

So yeah this will probably be a fairly short update because of that lol. I did make some reading progress though! I also bought a lot of 3DS eshop games… There’s a lot of interesting games on there that will be (legally) unavailable once the eshop closes, so I’ve been trying to get as much as I can. I guess I could theoretically emulate most, if not all, of them, but I’m still waffling about how I feel about that :/ I’m fine with emulating games that are mega old, but I’m not sure how I feel about eshop games right now.

Regardless, on to the updates!

Book Stuff

The Tea Enthusiast’s Handbook (Mary Lou Heiss and Robert J. Heiss) - 94/181 pgs

Winter (Marissa Meyer) - DONE!

Woo, finished! I basically had just the last bit to finish off, so lots of actiony scenes and tension.

The conclusion was very predictable, but I wasn’t exactly expecting a big twist or anything. It’s a very comforting, sci-fi romance series, so I wasn’t expecting much in that way. Still, I wish the final confrontation scene wasn’t cut off so quick and that there was some more epilogue. Sure you get to see how all the main characters are holding off, some insight into what they’ll do in the future, and who everybody is dating, but I wanted some actual scenes where everybody has gotten back to a new normal.

That being said, there is a short story collection, called Stars Above, which is what I’ll be reading next. Not sure what the stories are about, but hopefully some of them in there are epilogue stories. I guess there’s also a comic in the universe (that I know takes place after the events of Winter), so worse case I should get some epilogue story from there once I get around to checking it out.

Regardless of all that, I still really enjoyed the book. Like most of the other books in the series, it’s a nice, comfy scifi romp. Lots of fun and good characters, mixed with just enough heavier scenes to keep the interest up.

This is also the conclusion the Lunar Chronicles series, so yay, I finished a book series! I have way too many I’ve started and not finished, so it’s always awesome to get one checked off the list. I guess yeah there’s still the short story collection and comic, but they’re aren’t part of the main storyline so whatever lol.

Did I enjoy the series overall? I’d say yes. The series is definitely not a masterpiece, but it’s easy and comfy. Lots of planning and hijinks! It’s a bit predictable, but the characters are interesting and fun. I feel like it avoids annoying character conflicts that I’ve seen in other YA books (the “problems that could easily be solved by just talking to each other but we’re not going to talk for no reason” is one I particularly hate), so I’m thankful for that as well.

However, if you are interesting in checking the series out, I have to give the warning that it does center around a deadly virus pandemic. I don’t think they ever use the word “pandemic” but it’s a virus that’s affecting a large number of people across the globe, so I think that counts. I know that might not be a topic that some want in their comfy media (and understandably so) so I thought I’d point that out. Personally I started this series before the pandemic (I get so easily distracted that it’s taken me way too long to finish the series ugh), but I did have to take it a bit slow when I continued to read the series after the pandemic started.

Game Stuff

Added:
Monster Hunter Stories (3DS)
The Legend of the Dark Witch (3DS eshop)
Brunch Panic (3DS eshop)
Mighty Milky Way (3DS eshop)
Silver Falls - Ghoul Busters (3DS eshop)
Boxboy (3DS eshop)
Boxboxboy (3DS eshop)
Bye Bye Boxboy (3DS eshop)
Summer Carnival ‘92 RECCA (3DS eshop)
Dragon Quest Wars (3DS eshop)
Attack of the Friday Monsters (3DS eshop)
Liberation Maiden (3DS eshop)
Crimson Shroud (3DS eshop)
The Starship Damery (3DS eshop)
Weapon Shop de Omasse (3DS eshop)
The Mysterious Murasame Castle (3DS eshop)
Ikachan (3DS eshop)
Siesta Fiesta (3DS eshop)
Zombie Panic in Wonderland DX (3DS eshop)

Cooking Simulator (Game Pass)
Coffee Talk (Game Pass)
Wolfenstien 3D (Game Pass)
Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard (Game Pass)
Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire (Game Pass)
Return to Castle Wolfenstien (Game Pass)
Quake 4 (Game Pass)
Midnight Fight Express (Game Pass)
OPUS: Echo of Starsong (Game Pass)
EXAPUNKS (Game Pass)
Commandos 3 HD Remaster (Game Pass)

Started:
Meow Tower (Android)

Finished:
Nothing…

Current Games:
Astro Bot Rescue Mission (PS VR) - 0:45 (No change)
Everybody’s Golf (PS4) - 21:05 (No change)
Horizon Zero Dawn (PS4) - 45:46 (No change)
Trails in the Sky FC (Steam) - 0:43 (No change)
Soul Hackers (3DS) - 1:41 (No change)
Stray (PS Plus) - 0:45 (No change)

Played But No Time Recorded:
Genshin Impact (PS5)
Meow Tower: Nonogram Cute Cats (Android)

No idea about how much time I spent on either of those games ._.

Genshin I’ve never timed and so I didn’t think about doing that while I played. Should I start? Really not sure on that.

Meow Tower I don’t think that I’ll time since it’s a very quick pick-up-and-play kind of deal. Don’t really want to spend the effort to remember to set/stop a timer or what time I started/stopped playing.

Genshin Impact

Genshin Impact came out with a new big update that I’ve been enjoying quite a bit. There’s a new region (Sumeru), which also includes a bunch of new quests, new mechanics, and a new element to play around with. However, this best thing for me is that it means I get some new places to explore and more random doohickeys to collect! Those are honestly my two favorite things about the game lol.

I’ve already completed the mainline story quests, but I still have so much that I want to do. There’s still plenty of cool quests and places to explore, so I’m not going to be running out of content any time soon lol. I just wish I could figure out how to balance this and the other games I want to get to though, especially since those games actually have endings ._.

Meow Tower: Nonogram Cute Cats

I’m not sure if I’ve really mentioned picross/nonograms much on here, but I really love those kinds of puzzles! I feel like I play them a bit too much sometimes (I’ve only beaten 8 games this year and half of them were Picross games…) but they’re addicting I guess.

Anyway, Meow Tower is another picross game. It has cats! It’s very cute and has wonderful art. At its core it’s just a basic picross game which only has 5x5, 10x10, and 15x15 puzzles (quite small compared to what other games have!), but it has a good wrapping around it. Basically you help various cats (each with their own little biographies!) move into an apartment by giving them furniture. You get the furniture by getting gold tuna cans, which you mainly get from doing the picross puzzles. Sometimes you get a little update from a cat (just them being cute and silly really) but there’s really not much more to it than that.

I guess one thing that’s a bit annoying is that it can be a bit difficult for me to fill in squares. I’m not used to filling in picross puzzles with my hands though so I’m not sure how much I can blame the game for that. My hands can be a little jittery at times and I often use my thumb to fill in squares (instead of my index finger) so that probably doesn’t help. There is an option to have a d-pad on screen, but I haven’t tried that out. Oh and the music during puzzles is really annoying and repetitive, but you can turn that off thankfully.

It’s a free to play game, but thankfully it’s VERY reasonable. Ads do occasionally pop up, but not obnoxiously often like I’ve seen with other mobile games. You can pay a one-time fee (I think it’s $8?) to remove the ads if they’re a both though. There is an energy mechanic, which limits how many puzzles you can do, but it regenerates really fast and your cat residents will give you some on occasion anyway. If you do run out of energy and still want to play, you can pay real money or just watch a quick ad. Watching the ad gives you a very generous amount of energy, so again it’s not really a bother for me. I know it might sound weird to praise a game for not being too much of a jerk, but it is free and free mobile games are often incredibly stingy, annoying, and .predatory. I’m glad it’s not a problem here!

So yeah I’ve really been enjoying doing the puzzles! I’ve enjoyed it so much that I think I’m getting close to finishing all of the hard puzzles lol. So yeah, maybe I need to slow down a little bit…

Backlog Update

Backlog: 2017 (+30)
Time to Beat: 41,511 hrs (+322 hrs)

Heh, yep. Just broke 2k in the backlog, and I still haven’t finished adding all of the PS Plus game! I think I’m I just finished the Q games, so I think I’m getting close to finishing that up. Then hopefully I won’t get so many big jumps in future updates lol.

Yep, that was the week… It didn’t really go as well as I’d like it but oh well. Maybe I can figure out a way to get going on those other games I want to play? Maybe? Please??