August 17-23, 2025
Not a lot happened last week. I was pretty busy, so I didn’t get to gaming or cataloging very much. This’ll probably be a shorter update as a result.
Game Acquisitions
So, this is kind of interesting. I have a decent chunk of Google Play credit from taking rewards surveys. I normally just spend it on in-game purchases on Pokémon Go, but this time I decided I wanted to get some actual games. After looking through some top-rated games available on Android and tracking app sales, I decided to make two “purchases” with the credit. The first was Slay the Spire, a game I’ve heard amazing things about but somehow haven’t acquired yet. I normally will buy everything on PC if it’s available there, but I made an exception since the experience for this particular game probably doesn’t change much between platforms. It was also on sale for $6.99 from $9.99 which seems like a good deal to me. I had over $30 of credit so I still have money left over.
My second “purchase” was for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. This one would play better on PC, but the mobile version does support a controller so the control scheme should be the same at least. It was discounted from $14.99 to $9.99, and Google gave me another $2 coupon bringing the total down to $7.99. This is much lower than the PC version has gotten so I figured this was a good deal as well. I’m not counting these as spending money since the Google Play credit has no monetary value and would just go towards Pokémon Go otherwise. It’s been a long time since I’ve purchased a mobile game and thought I never would again after some early purchases of mine have been deprecated so couldn’t be played on the phone I have now. Hopefully I will get to these soon enough for them to still be supported.
The other games I got this week were giveaways and Reddit trades. I traded away Say No! More and Lil Gator Game for both Fault visual novels. I’ve never heard of them before, but they have very good reviews on Steam so I’m looking forward to experiencing them! I also traded Descenders for Wolfstride which looks like another cool visual novel. I actually didn’t realize all my trades last week were for visual novels until I started writing this. Interesting! I’m more mixed on the giveaway games since they aren’t genres I’m typically into, but they were free, and the reviews are positive so hopefully I get some enjoyment out of them.
# of Games: 9
Total Money Spent: $0
Price/Game: $0
Like I said, I was pretty busy last week so I didn’t get around to cataloging nearly as many games as I was hoping for. Even so, I managed to add a few series to my list, including the rest of the Paper Mario games. I only planned to play the first three, but I was told the others are worth experiencing (at least Color Splash and Origami King anyway). I also decided that since I already own Valkyria Chronicles 1 and 4 on Steam, I might as well emulate 2 and 3 while I’m at it. For some reason, they’re both exclusive to the PSP, and 3 never released outside Japan. What an odd decision by the publisher. The last series I got around to cataloging this week was the Xeno games. This includes Xenogears, Xenosaga, and Xenoblade Chronicles. They aren’t TECHNICALLY the same series, but I read they share similar themes and there are fan theories that they’re all connected through the multiverse or something so that’s good enough for me. I’ve heard great things about these games, I hope I can get into them.
TV/Movie Recaps
Here is everything I watched this week:
· Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 Season 2 Episodes 3-12 (complete)
· Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
It’s hard to believe I got through the entirety of the Ghost in the Shell catalog in less than two months. There were some stumbles, but overall, I really enjoyed my time with it! I said this before, but I still recommend it to any anime fans that are into military action and/or cyberpunk aesthetics. Even 2045 is worth watching, I liked it more than the first two movies and Arise honestly. Maybe that’s a controversial take. I told my sister who’s a huge Harry Potter fan that I was going through all the movies when I just finished up Order of the Phoenix and she told me it’s all downhill from there 😭 Hopefully that’s just an exaggeration, or only something people who read the books think. Half-Blood Prince was alright I thought, and I only have the two-parter finale left.
Conclusion/Upcoming
So yeah, no gaming last week which was unfortunate. I wrote a lot more than I expected to in the game acquisitions section though which kinda makes up for it as far as the blog is concerned. I gotta say, I only played through act one in Slay the Spire for testing, but I was really enjoying it. I can see why it’s so highly regarded. It made me wanna keep going, but I must resist. I have my priorities! Now that Ghost in the Shell is done and dusted, I’m going to go through Ironheart next. It’s only six episodes so it’ll be a quick watch. Assuming I get through all of that, I have Raised by Wolves and Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld on the backburner. As I just mentioned, I’m planning on watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 as my movie this week. Nothing on the gaming front unless another Tales of Phantasia session happens. Speaking of, Tales of Xillia Remastered was announced last week. I had recently tested the PS3 original through the RPCS3 emulator, so I removed it and added the new one to my backlog and play order collection instead. It’s a shame it won’t include both games though, I feel like that’s a missed opportunity. Still, it will be nice to play it on PC natively, and it won’t be taking up SSD space in the meantime. I mentioned last week that I would provide a status update for roughly how many emulated games/series I have left to add by stating how many lines are left on my “Emulated Games to Add to Backlog” text file. I was at 423 lines on the last blog post. Now I’m at 418. Not much progress, but to be fair, I was adding whole series to my backlog which takes a much longer time. That’s unlikely to change next week either as I see that I have my Castlevania and Metroid series coming up for testing. My work is never done it seems. Back in the testing mines for me. Thanks for reading!
Backlog total: 3,474 (+22)
No comments:
Post a Comment