October Video Games

By EricMesa

- 3 minutes read - 637 words

Team Fortress 2 (33 hours):

https://youtu.be/uF9N-mD_3UY?list=PLEJrELYLxNgWsp76cFb5sqedFrKP9qQLw

I’m a seasonal Team Fortress 2 player. Although I play it here and there at any time of year, I tend to really play a lot during October for the special Halloween missions. This year Valve was busy working on a new mode that was released earlier this week so they released a community-made Halloween mode: Invasion. It’s the first time I’ve spent any money since I spent $2.50 to get a bigger backpack a few years ago. Overall, the new modes were a lot of fun and I’m glad that Valve has gone from what should be the basic level of video game company support- supporting community mods- to allowing the best of the best to make money by sharing in the profits made during community events.

Cook, Serve, Delicious! (12 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEJrELYLxNgUI_u5KwkXCwpz3BiIxUx39

Here is a game that shows how interesting a video game can be in depicting work. Anyone who’s worked serving food to the public knows it’s a grueling job full of burns and ungrateful customers. Yet, here’s a game in which people gain enjoyment out of the stress of rush hour. My theory is that it’s fun because you can come and go as you please and your livelihood isn’t actually dependent upon it. (Similar to EuroTruck Simulator, Farming Simulator, and all those other European games) I also had one great Saturday session in which I was joined by someone claiming to be from Belgium. He or She helped me out with some tips on how to play and we had a fun conversation. I always love it when I have people join in on the chat.

Go! Go! Nippon! My First Trip to Japan (5 hours):

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEJrELYLxNgW4IAUzOtbafFtYnM7CIyM_

The first visual novel I played was Analog: A Hate Story, and readers of this blog will remember that I really liked the story and found it to be pretty emotional. I was hoping that this game would also touch me as other games and regular, written novels do. Instead there was clunky dialog that seemed most often to be written by the tourism board of Japan - containing lots of phrases that wouldn’t be used in normal conversation - like an old comic book. There were also pretty unnecessary anime-like nude-ish scenes. I’m no prude, but they seemed to serve no context, but to be anime-like. I’m more of a either make it count or don’t do it type of person. Like make some consequence of the scene. Or just go the other way and make it a rated R game. The tsundere and normal girl sister routine was also quite trope-y and didn’t add much. I did learn a bit and it’s probably still the closest I’ll get to visiting Japan, but it wasn’t my favorite game.

BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger (1 hour):

https://youtu.be/7GW0QJyXSYY?list=PLEJrELYLxNgU7cVn0Txq37fccYuydP89A

Speaking of anime, this was one heckuva anime-inspired fighting game. It’s not something I expected to want to play a ton of, so I made it the first game in my version of Dan Demos or Giant Bomb’s Quick Look. I don’t know if this is a new trend for fighting games, but it has much more of a story between matches than anything I remember from my youth. There are even choices to make in an RPG-like setting. I’m not opposed to checking this game out again, but it’ll probably be a bit before I play it as there are other games I really want to play right now.

Civ 5 (40 minutes):

https://youtu.be/ba57mTcW_TA?list=PLEJrELYLxNgVwd6MWpI64II_fu14o3KpB

Dan and Dave played a few more turns in our multiplayer games so I did likewise. Perhaps by next year at least one of them will be done.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (17 minutes):

https://youtu.be/wtKLpdT2KhQ?list=PLEJrELYLxNgWBWQqqLSFw-f7n26EwUSow

Scarlett wanted to play a round of Sonic 3, so I fired it up.