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 most of my gaming time this past week on a review I can’t discuss yet. But outside of that, I got back into Theatrhythm over the weekend. I still had a few of the non numbered entries left in the Series Quests mode, like the past Theatrhythm games section, the Dissidia one, a couple of the mobile games, etc. I finished going through those and I unlocked the Endless World, which as far as I can tell, gives you random songs and challenges you have to complete successfully on your first attempt, or else you lose a life and then you basically just find out how far you can get before all three lives are gone. I like that they added this mode after you’ve finished the rest of the Series Quests, it’s a nice little extra challenge. And like I said before, as far as I can tell it seems the songs are randomly picked and added to this mode. I mean even one of the DLC songs was mixed in at the start of my first attempt. I only have some of the DLC, but until now, it looked like none of those songs were really added to the different Series Quests game categories, so it’s nice they still got mixed in with special challenges. Well, at least the Deluxe Edition songs were, I haven’t seen any other DLC songs in Endless World yet. – Jenae
This week I finished up playing Pixel Ripped 1978, the latest in the series from developer Arvore. I’ll have a full review ready shortly, but I wanted to take a moment to just talk about how well the game provides multiple experiences. The game is split between the “real world” and the “game world” and each plays differently. The “real world” sequences have you playing a video game while also interacting with people and dealing with distractions like the telephone or a coworker throwing you a ball. You will often have to disengage with the game you’re playing to deal with these, but the game doesn’t pause, so you have to do your best not to die while fending off annoyances. It’s my favorite part of Pixel Ripped. The “game world” sequences are first person action with full exploration and feels more like a traditional game. There’s no outside distractions, just you and the mechanics of the game. You need to swap back and forth between these modes throughout 1978 in order to continue, and it’s honestly just a lot of fun and a brilliant way to use VR. I just cannot imagine creating the same experience in a traditional style game. I’ll go into more detail in my full review, so look forward to it!
I also got the mahjong bug this week and managed to get into a few games in Final Fantasy XIV. I’ve somehow made my way up to 1st Kyu despite being generally rubbish at mahjong, but every now and again I get a really good hand, like the one above. XIV‘s mahjong is probably my favorite video game version of the game; I like it even more than the Yakuza series’. Both are great, especially for folks who don’t understand the game without help (like me), and they’re generally easily accessible. XIV‘s has more rulesets than Yakuza‘s, such as using furiten, but it also gives suggestions for which tiles to discard, and displays how dangerous it is to discard tiles once someone is close to finishing a hand. You can turn these on and off as you see fit (I don’t use the suggestions, but I like the little warning dots), and it’s just super beginner friendly. The best part is you can play it on the free trial version of XIV, so if you’ve ever wanted to try out a fun version of video game mahjong, here you go! I’ve also done actual important stuff in XIV like tome capping and getting my Pandaemonium drops, but let’s be real, the dumb side stuff is the real fun in an MMO and for me this week, it was mahjong.
Other than Pixel Ripped and XIV, I’ve been steadily making my way through Resident Evil: Code Veronica X. I just hit the second disc portion of the game and I am loving how ridiculously anime it all is. Resident Evil is a very serious game. Claire is a fun and sassy lead, and I love how whiny and tsundere Steve is. Alfred Ashford is officially my favorite RE villain so far. The levels of camp are stratospheric, and his voice actor is just having an absolute ball with the role. The plot is whatever, but I’ve never been here for the plot. I’m curious to see where it goes and how it leads into RE4 and beyond, though. – Leah
What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!
You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!
