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!
You’d think as a writer on this site, I’d have spent my weekend playing through Xenoblade Chronicles 3, but unfortunately I still have to finish the first game (I know, I know). So instead I delved back into Xbox Game Pass to check out what’s available. I still want to keep going with Kentucky Route Zero, but figured I’d try something else out first. I decided to try OMORI, which I’d heard good things about and meant to try but never got around to. I’m only about an hour in and it’s … I’m not sure. It’s an RPG that has a lot of at least superficial similarities to Earthbound – child protagonist, enemies are regular animals or people around you, weapons and healing items are everyday items, etc. It’s always easy to throw around the “This is like Earthbound!” critique at kitschy RPGs, but I haven’t played enough of it to have any substantive thoughts on that outside the immediately obvious. The world feels like it’s cut from A Link to the Past, and there’s this pervasive tense sadness to everything. Makes sense, seeing as the game deals with depression, self-harm, and suicide, but so far I’ve only gotten a smattering of what it’s trying to say about any of it. Stylistically it’s really unique, with a hand-drawn, sketchbook quality to everything. This is definitely a game I see myself continuing to play, but I can tell it’s probably going to make me cry. If you’ve any experience with depression, it might be a difficult playthrough as well. – Leah
The beginning of this past week, I actually hadn’t been gaming much at all. This trend of me being burnt out has pretty much taken over the whole year, I’ve only had small bouts of being sucked into certain games. However, obviously we all know that Friday was Xenoblade Chronicles 3 release day. Before XC3 came out, I decided to play a little bit of Splatoon 2. I finally pre-ordered Splatoon 3 and got in a bit of a Splatoon playing mood, so I played just a little bit for a couple days. I did a few Salmon Runs and some Turf Wars. My luck was pretty bad though in terms of getting matched with skilled players and whatnot, I lost almost every match and there were mostly failed Salmon Runs. Maybe I’m just out of practice, although, I was never amazing at the game to begin with. But I just love Splatoon‘s whole aesthetic and find Turf Wars pretty fun. Well it’s more fun when I’m not losing horrendously. Other than Splatoon 2, about the only other games I played pre-Xenoblade day, was something I’m going to try to get a review out on soon and a smidgen of multiplayer Earthbound as well. I love that Switch Online gives me the ability to play these old games, even typically single-player RPGs, with other people online.
Now this past weekend, was spent strictly on Xenoblade Chronicles 3. I wasn’t able to play morning to night all weekend unfortunately, so I am only about 8 or 9 hours into the game. Nonetheless, I’m excited to keep going and see where the story goes. I’ve decided to play in English because that’s simply the language I’ve played every Xenoblade game in and should there be various character cameos from past titles, well I’ve already grown to love everyone in English. Something I noticed while playing in English, is that Xenoblade seems a lot more British this time around. I was reading something somewhere, maybe one of the recent reviews that already came out, about how the voice acting seems better and less over the top than XC2‘s. But in my opinion, it just seems even more British. I mean, did anyone say “innit” in past titles? Maybe they did and I’ve just forgotten. I also went through my usual new game ritual of fiddling with the in game volume sliders, in addition to my TV’s equalizer settings. My number one gaming pet peeve is out of whack sound levels. Sadly, XC3 doesn’t have the most balanced sound. I think my main issue is the fact that battles are significantly louder than exploration gameplay and I keep having to turn my TV volume up and down while playing. Progress wise, I got past all the beginning game Noah and his two friends serving their queen story, I met up with Mio and her friends and I’m now headed south as the story demanded, currently in a hot and dry, wasteland looking area. I believe I’ve just gotten my party to either level 15 or 16. I won’t say more because I don’t want to spoil anyone but yeah, that’s about it for my personal week in gaming this time. – Jenae
What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!
You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!
