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!
So fun story. My sister and I beat Phantasy Star this week, and decided we wanted to tackle Popful Mail next. I first played Popful Mail on the Sega CD around 20 years ago at a completely different time in my life, but I didn’t get particularly far (I couldn’t beat the Mad Bomber). Then around two years ago I tried again and made it as far as the Wind Cave but once again stopped playing. It wasn’t even a case of me disliking the game – I quite enjoyed it, campy acting and dialogue included. I know Working Designs is a hot topic, but I never had a huge issue with their scripts. While I wouldn’t give that style of localization a pass nowadays, at WD’s heyday it was a lot more of a wild west (and quite frankly, coming immediately off Phantasy Star‘s abysmal translation, I have zero issue with a translation that has flavor and readability). Anyway, while I find the WD localization charming and the voice acting acceptable, I’m not a huge fan of the difficulty changes, so for our joint play session, my sister and I are playing the Un-Working Designs version on my husband’s MegaSD. It keeps the localization but reverts the difficulty and money changes. And it was great! We made it past the Mad Bomber in like half an hour, saved, then transitioned to the next screen and – nothing. Game crashed. Unfortunately it didn’t just crash the game: It corrupted our MegaSD SD card and wiped our entire game library and save data. So while I’d like to write more about playing through Popful Mail for this week, it will sadly have to wait until next time because my luck is cursed.
In less stressful situations, I also played Is This Seat Taken?, which I first saw announced during the Nintendo Indie Direct. I’m a fan of puzzle games, and this looked right up my alley. It’s a charming logic puzzle game where you move little shape people around based on their preferences. So you might have someone who wants to be alone, another person who wants to chat, someone else who didn’t take a shower and a fourth who hates bad smells, and you need to arrange them all in a way they’re happy. There are five levels with five scenarios each, and the specifications and amount of characters you need to shuffle around increase the difficulty the further along you go. At its core, this is a fun experience. It’s never so hard as to be frustrating but not so easy as to completely check out. There’s even a cute little meta narrative about a rhombus who is looking for where she belongs in the world (though I will argue that having predestined places for every shape sort of undermines that idea a little). The biggest problem with Is This Seat Taken? is repetition. Despite having five levels, they each rotate through similar scenarios: a bus, a movie theater or concert venue, a classroom, a dining establishment. The criteria for each shape also never gets particularly complex, so you’re dealing with the same style puzzle with the same factors the entire game. There is some variety in the bonus levels, and they’re by far the best of the bunch, but the others begin to overstay their welcome. Thankfully the game is only around four hours, and you can play it in short bursts to help mitigate the repetition, which is how I spent my weekend. I enjoyed what there was, but it’s definitely not a marathon-style title. – Leah
What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!
You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!
