July 13-19, 2025
That’s right, I had a surprise completion last week, and I
wasn’t even documenting it! Just like the old days 😂 The
emulation cataloging continued as well, of course. More on that in the
conclusion section as always. But first, let’s talk about my self-control in
resisting several game bundles this week!
Game Acquisitions
So every few
months, Fanatical will put on what they call Bundlefest where they’ll reveal a
new game bundle everyday for a week with different themes. Last week, they
revealed bundles for RPGs, strategy games, shooters, arcade games, and roguelikes.
The first bundle for RPGs looked pretty interesting, and it was only $10.15 for
7 games (like the rest). With how long this genre tends to be, this seems like
an absolute steal. I was too busy to look into the games right away, so I saved
the page for later so I could investigate further. The bundles kept
accumulating and I finally found the time after a couple days. The game I was
most interested in from the RPG bundle was removed at the request of the
developer who claims there was a mistake and it should never have been included.
I felt deflated after that, and I wasn’t sure if I would like any of the other
games on offer enough to justify spending the money so I decided to resist. I
like strategy games as well, but most of the ones on offer are real-time and/or
4X which I’m really not a fan of so I skipped those too. There were some decent
shooters on offer, but a lot of them are shorter experiences that retail for
less than $10 anyway so I didn’t quite feel like the value was there. Same with
the other bundles, a couple decent games that looked interesting but nothing
that I felt I had to get. All-in-all, a decent Bundlefest but not one that I
decided to partake in. At least I won that Wanderer game in a Reddit giveaway!
That should keep me occupied for a couple hours.
# of Games: 2
Total Money Spent: $0
Price/Game: $0
Game Recaps
This is going to be a weird one. This is
a game that I played exclusively at a friend’s house casually and very
sporadically over the course of a couple years. As such, I don’t have any
recordings of it or know how long it took me to beat it. I also decided to keep
it in my backlog (as well as marking the completion) since there are so many
routes you can take and I’m curious how the game will feel when played in a
normal period of time. My review is below so you can learn more about it. Long
story short, it was a decent visual novel.
Game Reviews
Growing Up is
essentially a visual novel where you play through 18 years of a character's
life learning new skills, going to school, working, and making friends.
Different skills have different attribute requirements you need to meet to
unlock them. They all require spending knowledge points, but they also have
their own requirement such as intelligence, charm, memory, and so on. The basic
gameplay loop consists of increasing these attributes through something called
a brain map, going to various areas around town and the school to participate
in different activities, taking a test every few years, and rinse and repeat
until high school graduation.
The brain map is laid out as interconnected nodes that are slowly revealed as
you click through the few revealed ones. These nodes raise your attributes.
Depending on the route you want to take in life, you can choose from many
different activities like working to make money, playing video games (so meta),
studying for exams, sports, and much more. There are two primary meters to keep
track of from year to year that you need to keep in balance: happiness and
parent satisfaction. The different activities can raise or lower these meters,
but also have the benefits of increasing your attributes, making money in the case
of jobs, and ultimately determining the path you take in life. I wanted to be a
video game designer, so I made sure to visit the arcade often and talked to a
couple game enthusiasts there whenever I got the chance.
The gameplay loop is broken up every so often with social interactions and
exams. Every "run", you'll meet various characters picked seemingly
at random that you can choose to befriend, potentially romance, or ignore
completely. There is a high degree of replayability since there are many
different people you can talk to and activities to participate in. Every few
years, you'll take an exam which presents itself basically like Bejeweled (or I
guess Candy Crush for a more modern example).
There are numerous grammatical errors which is unfortunate for a game that is
mostly reading. They never detracted from my enjoyment, but it's worth
mentioning. I playing this game sporadically over the course of a couple years
so I wasn't able to time how long it took me, but I imagine a first run takes a
few hours if you actually read everything. Subsequent runs can probably be
completed in a couple hours if you know exactly what route to take and skip all
the dialogue. The art style is alright but nothing groundbreaking, and the
writing ranges from good to cringey. Despite the many different routes you can
take, the moment-to-moment gameplay never really changes so you really have to
like the characters to keep playing. Still, I had a good enough time and
recommend this game to anyone looking for a simple visual novel experience.
Rating – 7/10
TV/Movie Recaps
Here is everything I watched this week:
·
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Season 1
Episodes 15-22 (still watching, show ended)
·
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Ghost in the Shell continues to be an enjoyable anime. The
visuals aren’t as impressive, but I think I like it more than the first two
movies now. That tends to happen when you get more time to flesh out the
characters. I also haven’t brought this up yet, but this show takes advantage
of my surround sound system more than most. I love the sound design. I’ve seen this
Harry Potter movie before so no surprises here, I still think it’s fine. Looks
like a slower week for watching stuff.
Conclusion/Upcoming
Cool, I haven’t had a game review in a little while. It was
nice getting back to that. On the emulation front, I mentioned last time that I
only had Sega consoles left to go. More specifically, I have the Master System,
Genesis, Game Gear, CD, and Dreamcast to get through. I had already gone
through the Saturn earlier. I’ve finished up the Master System and Genesis. The
Master System games could be rough given their age, or they could be great! The
Genesis looks like it has a lot of a hidden gems as I expected. I guess these
systems are known for their shoot-em-ups and beat-em-ups which are genres I’m
not interested in so I didn’t add as many as people suggested I should. A lot
of classic platformers such as Wonder Boy have since been remade and released
on PC so I left those out as well. That’s been a common theme throughout this
process. There seems to be a lot of cross releases between the Genesis and Game
Gear so the Game Gear doesn’t have a big library of its own heavy hitters. I
imagine that probably won’t take too long to get through. After that, I only
have the CD and Dreamcast to go through, unless anyone here has any other
console suggestions. The cataloging phase of my emulation project appears to be
nearing its end. I’ll talk about what’s next when the time comes so stay tuned.
For this coming week, it’ll be more Ghost in the Shell
watching. I’ll be finishing up season 1 of Stand Alone Complex and moving on to
season 2. I’ll also be continuing my Harry Potter “marathon” with Prisoner of
Azkaban. I’ve seen it once before but it’s been a while, so I don’t really
remember anything about it. After that, all the Harry Potter movies will be new
to me. No gaming planned this week, unless a surprise Tales of Phantasia
session happens. Thanks for reading!
Backlog total: 3,323 (+2)
