Whether you asked for it or not, chances are, Generative AI is now a part of your day-to-day life. Increasingly, it’s been worked into every facet of, well, everything. If you’re like me, it’s become a huge part of your work life too, regardless of whether you asked for it. GenAI is changing our world; it’s deskilling workers, weakening labor power, increasing the surveillance power of institutions, and reducing our collective agency and intelligence.
Meaning, I'm almost done with all my Xbox 360 games. I think there's less than 10 left both digital and physical. Here's what I got to this week.
Recently remastered and released for free on Steam, Knytt Classic dusts off the classic freeware indie game by Nifflas, Knytt, for modern systems. When Knytt originally released, I downloaded it and tried to play, but the keyboard-only controls proved to be a huge impediment to my immersion. But when I saw that Chasm developer, Bit Kid, updated the title, complete with updated graphics, modern gamepad controls, and achievements, I knew I had to give it another go. Twenty years later, Knytt stands the test of time and shines in its new format.
In console gaming, there is a legend known as the Third Console Curse. Most consoles are not successful enough to receive a follow-up. If they are, then a third console is still not guaranteed. It is a hard industry not only to break into, but sustain a market share in. Yet something happens with the third console every time. It fails to meet the company's initial goals. Maybe it still sells fine, maybe the console has a wonderful library of games. Even if that is the case, the company loses market share and is in a worse spot at the end of the console's life than they were going into it. It could be arrogance from success. It could be a lack of perspective from being too used to success. Maybe it's just rotten luck. But it's consistent.
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.
It's fun to go down the Metacritic [MC] list, so I'm doing it again for the stuff I played in 2010.
Going down the top ranked on Metacritic for that year, these are what I played a lot within console generation 7,
The first thing that comes to mind is changing my Xbox gamertag. I got one in 2004 when Xbox Live Arcade dropped but a mini-game on an Official Xbox Magazine demo disc was giving me trouble in '07, and I thought a new gamertag would solve it. Well, it did solve it, but I lost touch with my old gamertag over time, and now it's probably been deactivated along with the few games I bought under it. It'll be 20 years on my current gamertag next year. It could've been 23 years if I'd stuck with my original one.
I know I've kind of dropped off the face of Pixlbit for awhile, but I'm still lurking. I recently posted two videos to my YouTube channel. Check them out.
I kinda can't wait to do this sort of overview for DS games when I get there in a few weeks.
Idealized because I don't own all of these yet, at least, not in physical form.
I've chosen ten games from the Metacritic best of list to start my OG Xbox journey. Here they are.
St. Patrick’s Day is coming up, and I’ve got a pot of gold for all of you filled with game reviews I’ve recently written at GamerDad.com! Please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe post a ‘like’ or comment or two. I’d appreciate it! OK let’s begin!
Alongside my PS2 gaming is also me trying to play the handheld out at the time, GBA. I've had trouble getting to it, but this week I got super sidetracked on GBA games. I also touched on PS4 and XSS and bought a bunch of stuff both digitally and at my game stores.
I went over the Metacritic list of best DS games and made my own list with comments. There's certainly many more great games I didn't mention for various reasons.
I won't get to NGC this month, but it's fun to peruse the Metacritic best-of list anyway. These are largely exclusives to the system I've played or have thoughts about.
I'm deeply obsessed with Hogwarts Legacy right now, but I found some time to knock off a few more gen six games for either keeps or trades. Then I got some black friday sale games already - also finished a book and watched more Power Rangers.
My girlfriend and I am going on a short vacation to our old college in central New York this weekend. Among other things, I'll be looking to see if that arcade machine, Sky Shark, is still there in the pizza shop I used to go to. The odds aren't good after so much time. But anyway, I played a lot of games this mid-week-end that I have (I'm off wed/thurs regularly) trying to decide what to keep of my 90s game collection.