Blue Fire is a game I like, but I don’t love. It’s a game I want to love - it draws influences from some of my favorite games, broadly 3D Platformers but with a bit of Zelda, Metroid, and Dark Souls thrown in for good measure. But despite this, it just doesn’t all come together as well as I hoped.
Not so many games really. Actually, my favorite thing this year wasn't games but audio recording. My best friend and I would get together in breaks from our different colleges and go on road trips. Our favorite thing was to record ourselves doing skits or other nonsense on cassette tapes while listening to our favorite music. I still have them, some 30 or so. I converted them to CDs in the early 2000s and stored them as files on a now defunct hard drive. However, MK and I would go to arcades still here and there. I watched a lot of movies as well.
Beat, Heart, Beat is an action-rhythm platformer that puts a unique spin on the auto-runner, incorporating a midwest emo soundtrack and a truly bizarre cast of characters and premise. Through fifteen unique levels/songs, you’ll avoid obstacles, attack in three directions, chain combos, and try to do it all to the beat to earn the highest scores. The short quest relies heavily on replayability and high score chasing and your enjoyment will likely hinge on your affinity for the distinctive midwest emo soundtrack.
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.
It's taking me a long time getting through Xbox 360, and probably a while to get through PS3. I may be starting Wii next year at this rate, but I think I'll just keep on going until I get to the present and then start from the beginning again sometime next year. I really want to get through everything I have and weed out the stuff I don't like.
For years Microsoft hoovered up more and more of the games industry. It was shocking when they purchased Bethesda - a huge third party publisher and development house. By the time they secured the deal to buy Activision-Blizzard, it was much less so, and it was clear that Microsoft believed they could buy all the properties they needed to make GamePass a success. It didn't take long to see that their strategy wasn't working.
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.
Here's my "waiting for a car repair" blog about the 2011 games that I played relatively close to release date in order of Metacritic rating for that year. Also, I'm just noting the system I played the game on, not all available systems.
It's fun to go down the Metacritic [MC] list, so I'm doing it again for the stuff I played in 2010.
These are games that are still stuck in my memory today. Many highly rated games are good, and I've been revisiting them, but these are the ones that come to mind first when I think of 360.
In conjunction with Metacritic. These are my first 10 picks for DS, going from best to worst on Metacritic.
I might have gotten confused, frustrated and dead in many of them, but I enjoyed them all. Who says you got to finish stuff? It's the journey not the destination, I say.
This is the blog from last week I couldn't get posted until now. I was snowed in on that Sunday the 31st [edit: 25th], but I made it to MK's place Mon-Thurs to play a ton of stuff as work was cancelled those days. Here's the lot.
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've returned to Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime and found it amazing. I don't know what I was thinking quiting it out of confusion years agoo. I think I just wasn't paying attention to the instructions. Now I'm really enjoying it.
It's fun to go down the list of best of all time on Metacritic and make a personal list of favorites. Here are mine for the original Xbox.
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.
More farming this week in Farm Together 2. Approaching the endgame as regards achievements, but it won't be done quickly. I also picked up two digital games on sale on Xbox, Valiant Hearts: Coming Home and The Bluecoats: North & South.
The dreaded stealth gameplay got to me again in several new games I tried out this week. But I finished Doom Dark Ages, discovered some new Atari games, and got sucked into an old classic again.
My June theme, continuing my traipse through history, is the 1950s. I'm finally down to a single decade a month until the end of the year. With regards video games, since no video games were made, unless you count Tennis for Two on an oscilloscope in 1958 - and who wants to play what is basically proto-pong (new band name found), I'll have to go with trying to match anything 50s related in modern video games. This is my first list of titles.
I'm kinda not doing the turn-based rpg thing anymore. I've pivoted to a new plan, but I'll mention that after my progress report on Friday's gaming.