GRID 2! Resident Evil! Sound Voltex! And a return to my casual what-I've-been-playing segment Letely... after a break since June.
For those who are new, Letely... is my hobby journal where I talk about what I've been reading or playing recently, with a spin of the experimental to keep myself sharp. It lacks the Evergreen tag that marks my more formal, article-style pieces, and is meant to be more conversational.
Let's get started with my latest earworm.
the song that's been stuck in my head today
I Get By - Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives
i've been waiting on another bright idea
i've been working on a song that you won't hear
GRID 2
- Current Hours Played: 15
- Total Races: 148
- Latest Milestone: acquiring a Super Touring car!
the mood-maker
I'll be blunt--I've flip-flopped on how much I like GRID 2. The highest peaks rival the best times I've had with the original Race Driver: GRID, and the lowest lows make me question whether I want to give GRID 2 any more of my time.
The moment-to-moment racing is my make-or-break with GRID 2. Slippery, loosey-goosey handling makes for edge-of-control moments that might err a little too much on the "not fun to manage" side of the spectrum for me. And the ultra aggressive AI that tends to rubber-band at the least opportune moments make learning the tracks and quirks of the handling model all the less appealing.
But! I can appreciate that these also contribute to the excellent mood-making that GRID 2 can, at its best, achieve brilliantly. Sweeping vistas and global locations are the backdrop to some dramatic, nail-biter races where you're never sure that you've clinched the victory until the checkered flag. GRID 2 can be a genuinely tense game when that tension isn't being deflated by broken immersion of how contrived its theatrics can sometimes feel.
the zone
This is why I've adjusted my approach to GRID 2. It's now a game I boot up when I want to relax with a phone call with a friend, or a long YouTube video I've been meaning to check off my Watch Later list. I enjoy the methodical format of racing games, and GRID 2 is no exception, but the only way I can reconcile that method with the game's inherent arcade-y madness is with a healthy amount of distraction to keep me from getting too sucked into every flub, questionable hitbox, abrupt traction loss, and supernatural AI hijinx.
I realize I can get the most out of the game when I'm in the mood for something lighthearted and low-focus, half tuned-out and half tuned-in. A perfect after-work game, in a sense. So, unintuitively, the extreme swings and chaos of the game are relaxing, at least with the right mindset. If I find myself wishing I were playing something else, I know that GRID 2 is best reserved for another night.
Resident Evil HD Remaster
- Current Hours Played: 4
- Total Deaths: a lot
- Latest Milestone: unlocking the first safe room and item storage box
until it sticks
Over a decade ago, I tried to get into the original, 1996 Resident Evil to no avail. I tried out the PlayStation version and the well-praised Nintendo DS port, and I wasn't able to get through either.
Skip ahead to this October, 2025, and we make another attempt--this time, with 2002's Resident Evil, or more precisely the 2014 HD Remaster of 2002's Resident Evil.
From what I've encountered so far, REmake, as it's often called, seems wonderfully faithful to the original game. Which also means my struggles with the original game remain. Lots of dying, reloading saves, getting lost... feeling stuck and frustrated. But I'm an older, more experienced gamer than I was ten-plus years ago. Resident Evil demands patience, and I thankfully have more of that this time around.
Honestly, the most air-quote "outdated" parts of RE--the fixed camera angles and stiff tank controls--are the aspects I have the least issue with. In fact, I sort of love them. They work perfectly for the kind of game Resident Evil is, and I have no complaints about them.
Okay, one complaint, which is when you're fighting a zombie right at the edge of a screen transition so you're unable to see them. It certainly contributes to a sense of suspense, being incapable of visually confirming your dodges or shots, but you could say something similar about playing DOOM with your monitor turned off. I digress.
No, the parts of RE that I struggle with are deeper, more foundational to the game's design. It requires patience and experimentation to develop a command over the game. You stop feeling lost in the mansion when you've back-tracked dozens of times and can mentally re-create the map in your head. You stop feeling overwhelmed by the basic zombies when you've encountered (and died to) them dozens of times and know how to handle them better. You stop feeling deprived of resources when you learn how to optimize their use. At least, that's what I think the game is signaling to me as I feel my experience slowly turning on the game for the better.
My experience with REmake has been like unraveling a tightly-wound ball of twine, where the hardest part is simply finding a foothold (er, finger-hold) to start. My first hour was miserable, but my fourth hour has been much better. Example: I knew about baiting zombie lunges to dodge them, but it's one of those skills that you don't get unless you practice (and fail) a few times. A lot of times. 20 minutes on the first zombie corridor repeatedly dying and reloading as I figured out the exact range and timing of the lunges. I still don't have it down perfectly, but I can get in and out of the graveyard/tomb area cleanly pretty consistently now. Baby steps.
I really want to stick with Resident Evil this time. I am acutely aware of its well-deserved reputation, and would be loath to "just not get it". But it's the exact type of game that I have the most kind of trouble with. Slow and steady, I have to tell myself. RE has its rules, and only by playing by them will I make it through.
Fear can't kill you
Fight your fears and survive
Sound Voltex
- Current Hours Played: maybe 15-25-ish?
- Total Songs Cleared: per my rough math (~9 songs per hour), that makes for maybe 135 to 225 songs
- Latest Milestone: my first ever EXHAUST 13 clear!
eyes on the faucet
Sound Voltex and Chunithm are the main reasons I go to the arcade nowadays. I'd consider myself still relatively "new" to SDVX, and I'm not yet fully comfortable with the control scheme--I catch myself making silly mistakes as I switch between the buttons and knobs at the arcade cabinet.
As I start plateauing with my improvement through basic repetition, I have to look for other sources to kickstart my SDVX skill. One big way of doing this is watching skilled players. Specifically, watching their hands.
Let me illustrate. The tsumami knobs on a Sound Voltex cabinet are free-turning, like ones you'd find on an old hi-fi to tune the volume. Although they're sometimes affectionately called "faucets", they have no set stopping point, and can be turned in a single direction infinitely, as needed.
If you turn the knob using your fingertips like you would a typical volume knob, you inherently have a very limited range of movement. That sort of presents a problem when tsumami notes in more advanced song charts can make you turn the knob really far in a single direction.
So I've kept an eye out on how other players extend their turning range. What I have seen so far: using the flat of your hand from wrist to fingertip, making a loose "L" shape with your thumb and forefinger and turning the knob along the arc, or rotating your grip in a way that you can loop your turning in a perfect, repeatable circle.
I've adopted the "flat hand" technique myself, and want to work on boosting my dexterity to try out the other tsumami techniques the next time I'm at the gesen. It'll be key to get this stuff down in order to break through my current difficulty wall of level 12-15 EXHAUST charts.
The practice continues.
the wrap-up
If you've made it through to the end, hello! Long-time readers will know I try to mix up the Letely... format each entry and try something new. The theme this time is "piecemeal vignettes" where I try to be really focused on a specific topic or two per game, rather than try to talk about the whole game in its entirety.
My drafts tend to be rambling and meandering, so this is absolutely a tactic to curb that by the time I hit "publish". Did it work?
Thanks for catching up with me, and I hope you have some fun this weekend.
-Lete