What I Played in September 2024

Posted on 2024.10.06

Another month, another recap of games I played during it! As the college semester progresses, I’ve found myself playing even less games than last time. But what little time I had with games, I made sure to make the most of it, ESPECIALLY for the first game I’ll mention in this post. I really wanna talk about it so without further ado, here are the games I played in September 2024, in some particular order.

Splatoon 3

Excuse me for a sec, but I really gotta talk about this more than any other game. This month was very special for Splatoon. It was Splatoon 3’s 2nd year anniversary, and the Grand Festival happened! I’ve been waiting for this moment for four years: I got super into Splatoon in 2020, well after the Final Fests of the first two games already happened. This was my first time experiencing a finale event! First of all, something that happened before the event was the Big Run in the Grand Splatlands Bowl. I had an insane run with so many firsts: I beat my first ever Triumvirate, I beat my first Hazard Level Max, I reached EVP 999 for the first time, and I got over 200 eggs in a single shift for the first time. This will probs go down in history as my favorite Salmon Run moment.

A week later is when the festival itself happened. I’ll try to keep it short but oh my god, it was a magical experience. The whole venue was so amazing. I screamed and nearly cried when I heard a new remix of a Squid Sisters song. Speaking of, OH MY GOD THE MUSIC!!! I adore Splatoon music and the fact that we got MULTIPLE remixed versions of tunes we know and love gets me super giddy. Hearing Ink Me Up not only on the concert stages but also while battling… It's enough to make a grown man cry. On top of that, NEW SONGS!!! I like how they started appearing as the Splatfest progressed. Also can we go back to the venue? IT’S SO COOL! I love all the big areas and all the little details. I love how you can do emotes and they sync up with the music, just like all the other jellies! Have I mentioned how good the music is yet? Dude, the rock concert instrumentation gives me life… I kinda wanna learn some of these songs on the drums. The battles are still just like any other Splatfest. I guess I can comment on the ink colors: they’re pretty, and I like the swirly patterns. Also I was on Team Past so I got very few mirror matches (and yes, I ended up picking this team, Marie won me over). Also that Tricolor stage? AMAZING. Good gimmick and GREAT MUSIC!! Apart from being an awesome combination of one song from each idol group, I honestly really like this take on a battle song. There’s no Now Or Never theme, instead it’s adaptive music that reacts to who is in the lead. And I love the crowd cheers! Also, THREE WISHES!!! What a beautiful song to represent this whole event. The concert performance was simply spectacular, no more words. Well, I don’t know what else to say about the Grand Festival, I think I covered all the bases? It’s hard to talk about something that excites you so much in so few words (well, “““few”””). I’ll edit in anything later if I forget.

All in all, I had a really positive experience with it, and of course I filled my Switch with hundreds of Marie screenshots :3 (and Squid Sisters in general :3). I will never forget this whole thing. I will forever be grateful for what Splatoon has done for me and the endless joy it has brought me. What a send-off. Thank you, Splatoon 3!

Mario Party 6

Super Mario Party Jamboree is right around the corner, and I’m really hyped for it! In anticipation for the new game, I’ve been playing a lot of Mario Party! Mainly, I’ve been playing Mario Party 6 with friends. Some days we play a normal board game like usual, other days we just go to the minigame hub and take turns dueling in the Lunar Lunatics minigame, and one time instead of playing we just watched 4 CPUs just go at it. I’ve also tried out the solo mode for the first time. I didn’t realize how many stars for the bank you get from this! Might play it more often if I ever feel like grinding the Star Bank. Apart from this game–

Mario Party Superstars

–I also played a bit of this game solo. Speaking of, am I the only one who can enjoy this game solo? Obviously, playing with other people is a million times better, but playing alone is not necessarily boring for me.

Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

I still don’t own this game yet, but a friend of mine does. He sometimes brings it when coming over to my place, and so I’ve played a bit of it. I still don’t fully understand the physics of this game, and I find myself slipping all over the place. One day I’ll get a grasp of the controls and not run into every wall or off-road… Regardless, this game is quite fun and I wanna get good at it. Man, I need to get my own copy sometime soon.

Clone Hero

Played more of this game of course, both guitar and drums. Nothing noteworthy to mention about the game so uhhh, here’s a fun story: this game got me into the band Paramore! In case you don’t know, 99.99% of the music I enjoy listening to on my own is video game music. And not just from any video games, specifically the games I like and play a lot (I think it has to do with me forming a connection with the music thru playing the game itself and stuff). It has been years since I last got into something more typical and not video game related… yet the method stayed the same as my current tastes. I had downloaded a bunch of Guitar Hero and Rock Band songs to play on Clone Hero, and a few songs from Paramore were included. Not only were those charts really fun to play, but I really liked the songs themselves! (Side note, that’s the sweet spot for rhythm game songs/charts: both fun to play and good to listen to.) It inspired me to listen to more of the band’s stuff outside of the game, and here I am. Anyway, see what I mean? I played a game, connected with its music, then found myself enjoying and listening to said music outside of the game. It’s just that this time, instead of being an OST, I was playing rhythm game charts of regular ol’ popular music.

Tetris Effect: Connected (+ tetris.com)

Can’t go wrong with Tetris. It’s Tetris! I played some more Tetris Effect: Connected (such a good game, man), and also played 1 time on tetris.com. One day I was taking a college midterm exam in a computer lab, and despite finishing early, I wasn’t allowed to leave. The TA told me to “do anything you want that’s on the internet. Go play Tetris or something” to pass the time. I took that statement quite literally, and so I went on the official Tetris website and played one round. Got around 550k points. I’m just built different I guess?

Picross (puzzle-nonograms.com + Mario's Super Picross)

I love picross and will often just play it randomly. My go-to for when I just want to play a quick game is puzzle-nonograms.com as I mentioned above. This month I got a new personal best of solving a 15x15 puzzle in less than two minutes (1:50 to be precise)! I also played a bit of Mario’s Super Picross on the Switch Online’s SNES app and cleared a few more levels. At this point, I find that game really easy but I wanna complete it anyway. It’s not about the challenge, it’s about the end reward (bragging rights).

Terraria

It’s been a hot minute since I last played this game… Last time I played was summer 2021 I believe. Some friends suggested we get together to start a brand new Terraria world and I accepted. We’ve only played one session so far (busy-cuz-college moment), but we’ll return to it when we can.