Games I'm Playing: The Funny Animal Edition

Bit more productive with games this week.  It's amazing how not being sick increases your ability to do stuff.  I even managed to finish another game this week, which means I've actually managed to beat at least one game every week since I started this (Rocket Knight Adventures and Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past would be the past two).  That's shockingly productive as far as I'm concerned.  Anyhow then:

Klona: Empire of Dreams (GBA) - About a month ago I got the remake of the original Klona for the Wii.  After playing through that I started to revisit some of the other games.  Currently I'm on this one, which is also the first Klona game I owned.

I've always had a bit of a soft spot for the Klona series, having first discovered the series through a in-store demo for the second game on PS2.  Unfortunately I did not have a PS2 at the time, so I was unable to jump into the series until this game.

Unlike Klona's console incarnations these games are much more puzzley.  There's been a couple times where I had to pause for a few minutes and wonder how the heck I was supposed to proceed.  I'm still going through it faster then my very first playthrough, especially since I'm skipping the forced scrolling and hoverboard stages.

Overall the game is still as fun as I remember, though I'm noticing how it lacks a lot of the charm and polish of its console brethren.

Sparkster (Genesis) - The second Rocket Knight game (or third, depending on how you're counting) brings a lot of new elements to the table, thought not all of them are improvements sadly.

Changes that are awesome: The rocket pack automatically charges, and you can now boost consecutively.  This means Sparkster can effectively fly in most stages, opening up a lot of new options for the player.

Changes that are not awesome: For some reason Sparkster lost his projectiles, and is left only with a very slow sword slash.  This makes combat a lot more awkward then it needs to be since you have to get so close to enemies now.  Also collecting gems now activates an item roulette, which largely gives you items that are either superfluous or even dangerous most of the time.

The game is still pretty good, but I'm not enjoying it as much as I did Rocket Knight Adventures.

I also played a bunch more of Sonic Chronicles, but since I actually finished that one I'll talk about that separately.  What I will say that it is a bizarre game that feels both highly polished and yet very amateur at the same time.

Games I'm Playing: The Plague-Born Edition, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the Dark World

Well this is somewhat awkward. I make a big show about how I'm going to give gaming snapshots every week, and then I go and mess things up by playing practically no games the following week.

There are many things I could blame this on, but the most appropriate target would be the fact I was sick for the better part of the week.  While I was never sick to the point I stayed the whole day in bed (the fact I'm only working temp being a contributing factor), I was sick to the point I had trouble gathering enough focus to write.  In between the time I spent coughing up lungs and feeling generally miserable, I did have time to play one game...

The one everyone but me likes

In that past I've been rather...unkind to this game, to put it mildly (link to come when I can actually find it).  The reasons for my dislike are long and complex, so I won't go into detail with them right now. Instead I will give the highly-abridged-but-concise version: I was being dumb.  Really dumb.  In fact, I was being so dumb, I made the Zelda CDi games seem like a good idea.

Games That I'm Playing: The First Set

I've recently realized for all the time I spend talking about games, I don't really talk about what I'm actually playing.  Occasionally I might do a review/opinion piece on a game after I finish it, but due to time and forgetfulness these come few and far between.

So I'm going to try and change that by posting weekly snap shots of the game I'm currently playing.  Be warned that they might be somewhat eclectic, because sometimes I'll just jump between games for no good reason.  I'd also mention some of them might be a bit obscure, but that's kind of a given for me.

So without further ado...

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood - This is the game I've sunk most of my gaming time into lately. It's one I've actually been meaning to play through for a while, but I didn't really have an opportunity until I saw the game in a bargain bin.

While the game overall is pretty fun, it does have some surprisingly large flaws that I won't go into now.  I'm about three-fourths of the way through the game, so hopefully I should finish it so I can write a more detailed piece.