To be honest, I started Xbox 360 sometime in May. So it took around four months to go through everything in my physical and digital collection and play a few new ones too. Here's the list of stuff I ended with. Note that I've been playing in order of Metacritic rating, and so these are the lowest rated games I have (doesn't mean they're are actually that bad though).
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.
Around this time of year, I like to make a list of my best games SO FAR, because usually the AAA titles are released later in the year during the holiday season, and the titles that came out earlier tend to be forgotten. So here’s when those games get their due. Keep in mind that this is my list only and no other outside opinions contributed. And if a game isn’t on this list, it either just didn’t appeal to me as much or I haven’t had a chance to play it yet. Ok with that out of the way, let’s begin!
In revisiting my collection, I'm trying to keep it brief by not respawning unless I can't resist it. I restarted many times in Space Invaders Extreme, for instance. I wanted to respawn in Minecraft, but didn't. Sometimes I just want to leave something for later. Going back to one I've 100% completed is kind of downer. So these are this week's revisits.
In the last part of my PS4 tribute blog, we looked at the games I enjoyed on the PS4 that were classic collections or remakes. And on this one, we’ll look at the more AAA titles (well as AAA as I get anyway), as well as the indie titles on the opposite end of the spectrum. Like I said before, most of these games you can enjoy on other platforms, I just played them on PS4.
But here they are. All the stuff I played last week while my car was laid up with repairs.
In 1991, Origin Systems gave Game Boy owners a taste of the Ultima series with a unique entry, Ultima: Runes of Virtue. Unlike many Ultima spinoffs, this was actually developed in-house at Origin Systems, by many longtime Origin staff who had most recently worked on Ultima VI: The False Prophet. As a result, the art style in this games resembles Ultima VI.
What it is: Stuff I played close to the year of release or at least during console generation 7, listed in order of Metacritic ranking for 2008.
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).
Another ten on my list to play this year going in order on the Metacritic all-time best list for DS.
The next 25 games on Metacritic for the GBA. I'll have my favorites, but I'll look up everything and see what's available to me to try out.
I only have a few here I put on my must-play list, but I like to look at everything anyway and perhaps try something new if I can find it for cheap enough. Remasters are also of interest since sometimes they vastly improve the experience. So this is Metacritic's top PS2 games 26-50 with comments.
It's always fun to go down the list of Metacritic's top games for a system or year. Here goes for the GBA, which I'm trying to play alongside my PS2 games. It's all about the early 2000s.
I dove through a bunch of my PS2 games in chonological order. I'm in the 2003 games now. Then I played a lot of my rental game, Mario & Luigi Brotherhood and took another stab at Ys Origin on Xbox. Also a few digital purchases.
I got scores/progress on all my owned NES games and began my Genesis stuff. I also played the remaining games on my Xbox Series hard drive and stowed the deck to bring out the Switch next week. Some purchases made also and a return to Star Fleet (known as X-Bomber in Japan).
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.
So in revisiting this 2000-2009 this month, I thought I'd go down page one of the list of Metacritic's best of for GBA in this time range and make some comments for the games I have something to say about.
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.
I forgot to mention the two digital buys earlier in the week, plus, I need to share what I picked up after Game Boy trade-ins at Game Junkies yesterday. C. O. M. P. U. L. S. I. O. N!
Recently, I livestreamed an (almost) complete playthrough of Richard "Lord British" Garriott's 1982 RPG, Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress. These videos were originally simulcast on my Twitch and YouTube channels.
I got bored one day and started my 90s playlist for next month. I came up with a new solution to what always ends up being a gigantic list I can't possibly tackle. Here 'tis.
Grinding for levels in Farm Together 2 and thinking about what retro games I'll play in September.