2013 is really the start Console Generation 8, but to me it's still Gen 7 because the Xbox One and PS4 came out late in that year, and I didn't get either one until maybe a year later. Yes the Wii-U was out in 2012, the 3DS and PS Vita in 2011, but it really felt like Gen 8 fully to me in 2014. So this is the last year I'll review until I get past all the Gen 7 systems in my retro journey this year.
I can't seem to find my draft of this blog right now, so I'm rewriting it hastily and with much less content due to time limitations. In any case, this is 2012, the stuff I played during Console Generation 7 and mostly not later, because a lot on the Metacritic list I played years later or literally in 2026. Let's go.
I ripped through a lot of stuff this week, being impatient to get through it all, the slightest annoyance sending me to the next game in my collection. But, I had a lot of good experiences anyway. I'll break these 360 games into two categories, physical and digital only (or, Xbox Live Arcade as it used to be called).
In Stephen King's memoir In Writing, a good piece of advice (regarding reading habits) that King made was to read in small sips as opposed to big gulps. Which is more accessible depends on the person, their schedule, and how much time they have during a given day.
So, that Acer Aspire laptop I blogged about last time? Screen doesn't come on. I've got to get this repaired (and hope that it doesn't cost too much) so until then, I'm using my trusty, won't-die Samsung Chromebook that I got back in 2017.
It's unlikely that I'll get to these within the month of July, but it's fun to see the list and consider if I need to pick up any of these for my collection. These are my picks from page 2 of the Metacritic best of all time games for 2007-2009.
I was going to switcheroo last Monday but, in wrapping up my Xbox Series S, I had to do a few things and that led me to playing several games through Tuesday. I've been all Switch since then, but here's what I did to end my time with Xbox for a while.
November in my year-long trek through the years brings me to the 2020s. Somehow I miscalculated and didn't make December the 2020s, but whatever. December can be 2023 and no other year. So what about 2020? PUBG wins the revenue war with 2.8 billion and Persona 5 Royal tops the critics charts with a 95 on Metacritic. About the only game I've played a lot on these two lists (sales and critical) is Dragon Quest XI. Here's MY list for 2020.
One billion grossers for this year were: Puzzle & Dragons, Candy Crush Saga, World of Warcraft, GTA V, COD: Ghosts, and Crossfire. Tops critically were: GTA V, Bioshock Infinite and Last of Us. My wish list below has little to do with these. The ones I'd like to play now in 2023, allowing myself only 1 game per month, are as follows.
I played a little bit of several titles, but what I mostly played was Earth Defense Force 2025 with my friend and an assortment of randos.
I played a lot of this Greek Mythology action game last month. Puzzle elements eventually wore me out, but I enjoyed everything else.
I'll relate some recent plays and then get on to my current sickness, High on Life, where I took a bunch of screen shots.
Three games played and looking forward to a new retro game to play in November.
My new plan is to look up the highest rated games on a system and play what interests me going from top to bottom. So far it's been Forza Horizon 5 first and then Halo Infinite on Xbox Series S and Into the Breach and Fire Emblem Three Houses for Switch. Of course, I'm still playing games for Game Pass rewards, MS Rewards and a few old projects of mine. I did remove a bunch of games from my hard drive I was planing on playing but don't fit the current plan. They'll come back around again anyway. It's still a lot of games. I guess the goal is to reduce the number and increase the quality of the games I play. There's only so much time, isn't there?
I broke 200k in achievements on Xbox the other day. The top scorers worldwide are over 3 million. The top gamer on my friend's list has around 400k. My score reflects 15 years of playing on Xboxes. But enough of that, on with what I played this week so far.
I returned to Assassin's Creed Odyssey a couple of weekends ago and realized a new quest has been added in which Kassandra and her two friends (Barnabas and Herodotus) go on another quest after Kass has taken a six-month-long vacation. I didn't read much about it when it was released so I didn't realize until it was over that it was the final story mission and thus the actual end of the game. There's still plenty of stuff to do (and I haven't done any DLC stuff yet) but seeing the actual end of a game that took me a little over 200 hours felt very poignant. AC Odyssey may be a controversial entry in the series (for certain AC fans) but it was so satisfying to me. I still plan to return to its shores some day....
Finished the second movie's worth of Lego Lord of the Rings the other day. There's an interesting mechanic where you can quickly switch to another set of characters in a totally different location. For instance from Frodo and Sam in Mordor to Aragorn and Legolas in Helms Deep.
Yep, some more. Seems to never end, but who wants it to. I played my routine games and several others after that.
Just some routine Farm Together and Lego Indy today but I downloaded and borrowed a bunch for next weekend.
So...late October was my last post date? Good to know that nothing has changed. We're about to enter the last week of February so let's see if I can make an effort to blog more before BaD 2021 wraps up.
I always mean to play the Assassin's Creed games but I never seem to get to them. Luckily my theme for the month, The Renaissance (16th century), fits with the setting of this game, and I already had it probably as a free download from my Games with Gold membership.