Summer of '22 | What Did Floof Do? Vol. 1 Part 1
In the first of hopefully many editions of What Did Floof Do?, we'll be taking a look at everything I did over my summer vacation earlier this year, which I thankfully wrote down in my notes app. Thanks Past Floof!
22. The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve
PEAK FICTION
Honestly? Like, 100% honest? This is arguably the best Ace Attorney game. Looking at the Great Ace Attorney games as one story divided into several parts, the same way we look back at the original trilogy, there are very clear advantages that these games have due to how it was clearly planned as a duology from the start. It's not something I can explain without spoiling the whole story, but it's very much apparent when you're playing Great Ace Attorney and mysterious plot threads that don't really make sense in the first game slowly lead into earth-shattering revelations in the second. The 3D graphics are also put to incredible use here, with characters who actually fucking walk and some neat camera trickery that wouldn't be possible in 2D.
That's all me being technical, though. I don't feel super qualified to judge whether the original trilogy or these games have a better story. They're both masterpieces in my eyes.
23. Aria of Sorrow Persephone Hack
I was debating whether a romhack should be counted as a seperate game for the purposes of this blog, but this specific romhack changes so many things that it's basically just a fangame that just happens to use the Aria of Sorrow engine.
You play as Persephone in this hack, and the creator gave her a bunch of unique attacks and equipment that were made specifically for the hack, as well as cool reskins of many of the souls from the vanilla game. There's even a unique story that actually tries to fit in with the canon lore, which is really neat! I very much recommend Persephone Hack if you've played Aria before- it's basically a whole new game.
Here is a link to the romhacking.net page for the Persephone Hack.
24. Dawn of Sorrow (Julius Mode)
Speaking of Castlevania: I played Dawn of Sorrow's Julius Mode for the first time this past summer. I can't say much about it because a certain mig is playing Aria and I don't wanna give any spoilers... but it was surprisingly well put together and fun, and I especially like how they made a whole new final boss for the alternate mode this time around. Castlevania alternate modes usually don't feel like they have this much effort put into them.
25. Marble Madness 1
Marble Madness released in arcades in 1984 and was very profitable for 6 weeks, after which it severely dropped off in revenue. In the game, you roll a marble downhill and attempt to reach the goal under a certain time limit. It's an incredibly challenging & satisfying little game that's very fun to try and learn and get good at. Nothing in the game jumps out as cheap- each level is designed to be very fair, with tricks and shortcuts that you can find and exploit to reach the end with less deaths and a better score (score in this game is directly tied to how quickly you beat the game, which I really like). Sadly, the game is very short, having only 6 levels, which is probably why it only had a lifespan of a little over a month in the arcades.
26. Marble Madness 2
...Of course, that didn't stop them from trying to make a sequel, but without the original designer this time. Marble Madness 2 entered location testing in 1991, and never left- it was cancelled and the ROM remain undumped for over 30 years. When it randomly surfaced on archive.org this past summer, people had it working on MAME within days, and then quickly found out why it got canned all those years ago: it just isn't as good as the first game :P
Okay, well, the fact that it was a non-fighting game that attempted to release in the same year as Street Fighter II probably had something to do with it, but I was still left feeling a little disappointed after playing Marble Madness 2. The core gameplay of rolling a marble in a race against the clock is still there, but that's about where the similarities with the first game end. Instead of the focus being on navigating tricky geometry in the most efficient way possible, now the focus is on avoiding wacky cartoon-like enemies that chase you, abusing power-ups that let you completely ignore the level design, and collecting all the point items scattered across the many levels (y'know, like every other arcade game). Y'know how Nintendo rebranded Doki Doki Panic as Mario 2 instead of releasing the actual Mario 2? That's not what happened here, but it feels like it. Marble Madness 2 isn't even a bad game if you judge it on its own, but they still very much missed the point of what made the first game so good.
27. Fall Guys (PC Version)
Goat Guys.
This post turned out to be way longer than I expected, so I'll be splitting it into two parts. Stay tuned for part 2 floofers!!