I don’t have much of anything to say in the introduction for this month, so let’s get straight into the video games. Here’s the list of games I was playing throughout September:

Yes – it was a bit of a light month. That’s entirely my fault.

Guilty Gear Strive

I’m sure this will come as a surprise to no one: Guilty Gear Strive dominated my gaming time throughout September. The addition of the newly improved ranked mode, and proper matchmaking made Strive a lot more fun to play when compared against my previous experience with the game. Turns out I’ll actually stick around for longer sessions if I’m not constantly being bombarded by messages about connection failure. Who’d a thunk it.

That said, the main draw for my time commitment throughout September was twofold: updating my May Beginners Guide, and playing more Dizzy.

The May guide took about 10 days of on again, off again work to actually hammer through, but I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out. In general, I think the guide does a better job of handing new players safer combo routing that they can use as a springboard for playing May. 

I also ended up redoing all of the videos for said guide, which meant that I could finally remove all of the background noise. I didn’t even realize it, but Strive plays a wind sound effect passively in the background of every stage. Normally, this extra sound is imperceptible because of the game’s music, but it’s very apparent when you have said music muted so people can’t tell how often you’re cutting between shots in an edited combo video.

Either way, those videos feel like they’re better put together now. It was definitely worth the effort even though it took me over a day’s worth of effort to capture, edit, and render 22 new videos.

After finishing the May guide, my attention fell squarely on Dizzy. Originally, I’d intended to keep bouncing back and forth between her, and May. However, I had so much fun playing Dizzy that I just kept playing her, and eventually reached parity between the 2. At least, that’s true as far as my online ranking is concerned. I’m still far more comfortable using May in bracket, and am much better at putting together loose spaghetti combos with May than I am with Dizzy.

That said, Dizzy is far more fun to play now than she was before, which I was really surprised by. I wrote about it in length here, but the short version is that Dizzy has more situations where she can score a knockdown which increases her consistency. This is a stark contrast to when Dizzy first launched, and stray hits wouldn’t result in any follow through unless you had Ice Field active.

While I won’t profess to be an expert, I have had a lot of fun using Dizzy’s different tools to completely lock down my opponents. Nothing feels quite like keeping someone jailed at the far end of the screen while they helplessly flail around. Doubly so because smothering someone to death is non-trivial thanks to the bevy of movement options that exist. I guess Totsu was right all those months ago when he told me that I’d probably enjoy playing a zoner in Strive.

However, I think the biggest takeaway here is that I’ve been enjoying the process of learning again. Fighting games, specifically Street Fighter 6, were starting to feel really stagnant for me over the past few months. Returning to Strive, and focusing (mostly) on a new character have helped to really reignite my passion for the genre. I think there might be something to that, but I’d prefer to explore it in detail within a dedicated post, so I’ll put a pin in that for later.

Sudoku

Yes – I’ve continued to play Sudoku.

I don’t have a whole lot to say on this front, but I’ve gotten a lot better at solving the NYT, and LA Times’ boards by sticking to Schneider notation. This involves only marking out when a number can appear in 2 different cells within a box, row, or column. The main advantage here is that you don’t clutter the entire Sudoku board with information that can’t be acted upon, while also providing yourself with better information to fill in additional spaces whenever you place another number.

This video probably explains it better, honestly.

Regardless, as someone who typically struggles to solve boards when there are too many candidates listed across several spaces, I really like Schneider notation. It makes many of these more challenging puzzles a lot more approachable than they were when I’d get buried in the weeds of numerous different candidates.

However, there is an unfortunate downside of Schneider notation: it forced me to learn at a pace that I didn’t find particularly accommodating. Schneider notation is heavily reliant on the Sudoku player’s ability to reliably spot, and infer intersections while solving the puzzle in question. As a result, I had to get a LOT better at spotting this pattern so I could actually make use of this particular solving strategy.

On one hand, it’s cool that I can use Schneider notation as I find it far easier to solve puzzles by using it. On the other hand, I’d have appreciated a more gradual build up to this point. Instead, I feel like I immediately rushed hard mode, which added a lot of friction to the entire learning process.

Either way, Sudoku is still very fun, and very satisfying. I’d highly recommend checking it out, especially if you’re looking for a way to give your brain a daily mental workout.

Hollow Knight: Silksong

Like so many other people, I was playing Silksong throughout September. What might surprise you is that I didn’t start playing it until the 20th, so I’ve not actually finished the game yet. I do think I’m over the halfway mark though.

I’m also going to skip actually introducing what Silksong is because I’m assuming everyone, and their dog already knows about this game. It was the source of many memes, and much speculative hype right up until it came out. This was swiftly followed by people complaining about the game being too hard, which I can’t comment on because I started playing it after the first difficulty nerf patch went live.

Regardless, Silksong is a game of high peaks, and low valleys for me. The areas where it meaningfully improves upon its predecessor make Silksong among one of my favourite games to bless the Metroidvania subgenre. However, there are a few aspects of Silksong that I actively question because they repeatedly interrupt the flow of exploration, and largely contribute to it feeling like a less well put together package than its predecessor.

I kind of want to cover off exactly what I mean by all of that in a longer post, but I’m afraid I’ll get lost in the weeds while writing so here’s the Cliff’s notes version:

  • The music by Chris Larkin is fantastic
  • The wider variety of environments, and greater use of colour are a welcome change
  • Hornet’s movement abilities feel fantastic to use, and help to immediately distinguish her from the previous title’s hero
  • Enemy and boss designs (both visual, and mechanical) are great
  • The newly added Crest system provides a much needed revamp to the Badge system of the previous title
  • Side quests actively detract from the game, and feel like unnecessary padding
  • The propensity for Silksong to lock players into combat arenas with a deluge of common enemies is boring, predictable, and also feels like unnecessary padding

In general, I’ve been having a lot of fun exploring every corner of the game, but I can’t shake the feeling that Silksong is collapsing under its own weight. It feels a lot more overtly video game-y, and bloated in the way that open world games do thanks to the inclusion of really nebulous side quests, and combat arenas. When I’m able to quietly explore, and untangle its labyrinthine maze of a world, I’m at my happiest. However, Silksong seems hellbent on ensuring that those moments are few and far between thanks to an endless deluge of unnecessary interruptions.

Hopefully that explains what I meant by high peaks, and low valleys.

Strange Horticulture

Finally, I decided that I wanted something less action-y to play in my evenings so I started up Strange Horticulture.

Well, I say that, but I also wanted to see if I even enjoyed the game. The reason being is Mir wanted to play the sequel, Strange Antiquities, alongside me instead of playing it alone like she did with the first game. As such, I’ve been working my way through Strange Horticulture the past few evenings, so I could give an informed yay or nay to that request.

For those who were as blissfully unaware of this game as I was, Strange Horticulture is a game where you run a shop by the same name, which sells strange plants. Unfortunately, none of the plants are actually labelled, so it’s your job to research, and deduce which plants are which. Ergo, this is a bit of a Detective game.

That said, most of the puzzles haven’t been that involved, and it doesn’t seem like that’ll change either. Instead, the occult story that’s been brewing in the background is starting to take hold, so that appears like it’ll be the focus of the back half of the game.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed by the lack of puzzles, but I am keen to see where the story goes. Hopefully Strange Horticulture can wrap things up in a satisfying sort of way before I completely check out due to the lack of puzzle variety, and challenge though.

As for whether I’ll play the sequel with my wife, I guess you’ll have to tune in next month to see.

And with that, I think we’ll call it for September.

Thank you, as always, for reading if you made it this far, and stay safe out there.

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