While we here at Operation Rainfall love covering the latest in gaming news and sharing our reviews of titles new and classic, we also just enjoy playing games in our downtime. So with that, sit back, relax, and check out what the oprainfall gaming crew have been up to this week!
I spent the first part of the week finishing up Gore Screaming Show. I had a blast with this amazing horror visual novel, and would highly recommend it to any fan of the genre. I was really surprised the game wasn’t just a gorefest, but it turned out to have an amazing story with some memorable characters.
The rest of the week I spent playing Samurai Maiden. I had been working on this one previously, and I actually held this review up. The developers were putting out patches for the Steam version even a day after it launched, and while these didn’t fix everything they made it a lot better. You can check out my review, but if you’re thinking about this one I would suggest the PC version, as there are some mods that remove the censorship from Photo Mode, and this allows you to get some “Interesting” shots. – Steve
So this week I played a couple different games. First up is the Forspoken demo that dropped after The Game Awards. I played on PlayStation 5, and the game looks and plays fine on that console, at least. Unfortunately, I found the demo very mediocre, which is a bummer since this was a title I’d sort of been interested in. It just feels very 2014, from the constant, attitude-laden banter between Fray and her sentient bracelets (I honestly can’t remember if the game gave his name or not), to the fact all the monsters are just variations of zombie. The world is pretty but incredibly empty, with a handful of spots you can visit to either take photos or find treasure. Even the combat, which I thought was the best part of the demo, feels like a watered down version of Final Fantasy XV‘s, and Fray’s magic parkour just feels like Raiden’s ninja run from Revengeance. (To be fair, neither of these are bad things, because as I said, the combat is the best part of the demo, and I enjoyed running up mountainsides and racing across open fields.) You can, however, pet the cat in Forspoken, which is something. Overall, the demo just felt like it was built from various body parts of other, better games. In a word, it just felt very mid.
I spent a lot of time with Splatoon 3 this week as well thanks to the Big Run event. Grizzco is such a love-hate aspect of the game for me, and doing a ton of Salmon Runs over the weekend as part of the event was an exercise in both extreme frustration but also super high elation. Because the mode forces you to use random weapons, it definitely has helped me get out of my comfort zone and learn other weapon types, but it’s also solidified my hatred of all charge-type weapons and sniper rifles. I hate them with a burning passion. Still, there’s nothing quite like that sweet high of victory when you pull off a last minute special and get out of a wave alive, so I find myself coming back to Grizzco against my better judgment!
Other than that, I’ve been slowly working through Raymond’s side of the story in Star Ocean: The Divine Force, and that’s been a lot of fun. I loved Laeticia’s side of the story, and there’s just enough variation between the two routes to make it worthwhile to do them. The Private Actions alone make it a must, in my opinion. Albaird remains my favorite character and I just love him even more as I continue with Ray’s story. I’ve also been slowly making my way through Horizon: Zero Dawn. I spend most of my time exploring the wilderness and fighting machines because the gameplay loop is so legitimately fun, but I really do need to buckle down and finish the actual story. I think the worldbuilding and lore is fantastic, I just don’t particularly care about the overarching plot. – Leah
What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!
You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!
