What are you playing right now?

[E. Gadd Industries]

I've been endeavoring to clear out my Steam library by playing, and hopefully beating, as many games as possible (some games are multiplayer or are designed to be played continuously with no clear end in sight; and I may even abandon some games for various reasons).

The most recent game I completed was Alwa's Awakening. Overall, while I enjoyed the game, I wasn't a huge fan. Although the game is a Metroidvania, you really don't get a lot of powerups that directly power up the main character. For example, by the end of the game, your jump isn't any higher than it was at the beginning of the game; you don't gain any more hearts (though you do gain a vial which refills your hearts after you die from non-instakill damage); the only special attack you gain is the lightning magic. With the relatively short length of the game I feel it works out well enough, though I'd rather have gotten two extra hearts instead of the vial, which is annoying to have to manually refill.

The game seems to enjoy wasting your time and is overall more tedious than difficult (though I'd say the first three bosses are well designed and actually difficult). There are waaaaaaay too many instakill obstacles, especially for a Metroidvania, which makes the game feel more like a standard platformer that got converted to a Metroidvania late into development. Travel is frequently annoying, since there are a lot of instances where it's difficult if not downright impossible to go back the way you came (at least until you unlock the upgraded bubble). The movement feels a bit stifled at times, and hitboxes/hurtboxes tend to feel unfavorable to you and favorable to the enemies/obstacles even when you wouldn't expect them to be.

Apparently the sequel, Alwa's Legacy, improves a lot of some of the game's issues, so I'd be open to trying it in the future if it ever goes on sale.

Yeesh that sounds like a harsh experience :') At least the dev was open to improving issues in the sequel? Though, I can't say I've heard of either of those games... I also wonder, Atcero if you read this, what is your opinion on it as our resident Metroidvania connoisseur?

Still playing through RDR2 slowly and surely, same with Tears of the Kingdom. I'm having the same problem I had with Skyrim where I interact farrr too much with the environment as opposed to the main quest.

Uf I feel this. I ended up just trying to get through TotK as fast as I can and I don't think I enjoyed it as much because of that. But I was trying to get back into a busy semester and realized I was playing entirely too much and not devoting enough time to other important things I needed to take care of.


To answer the question of the thread, I'm actually back in Super Mario Sunshine B) I've progressively gotten more focused on glitches each time I play it, and now I'm trying to max out the number of Shine Sprites I get before fighting Shadow Mario in the Plaza the first time he appears. I'm currently keeping my game open (though the Switch is in sleep mode) while I'm in the chase sequence with Shadow Mario (I think I got all 17 possible shines because I'm not yet skilled enough to access the police station shine turboless quite yet). But uh... I got distracted by a side mission mid-chase. I'll have photos for you soon. I don't think I've done anything this absurd in a video game ever.