My trials and tribulations as I go through my PS3 collection. I'm still in the top 100 critically on Metacritic.
This is the last of the OG Xbox games I played from my collection. It's all DS now for a while.
After a brief time with Monster Hunter Stories, I really managed to focus this week on my PS2 stuff and get through a lot. Then I traded a bunch of them, but also picked up some new ones.
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.
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'm all over the place lately. I'm trying to do games set in the 50s and keep up with the new stuff. I eventually just reduced it all to playing the largest files size games first on my hard drive. It's all a mess now, but I'm having fun, so I guess it's all good. Here's the sloppy story.
I got another day, maybe, but I got a weird work schedule again this week and so am here recalling the day and half I spent so far.
It’s raining, I just finished my sixth book of 2024 Reading Challenge on Goodreads, and I am ready to throw down my random thoughts about whatever I played this past week and a half…GOOD MORNING PIXLPEEPS! Alright let’s see what I remember playing
Finally, I am Switch exclusive right now. I already have youtube running for meal times, and I'm exploring the story and news apps thoroughly. I'm also just as impatient with every game I'm playing, taking breaks and jumping around like a manic flea from game to game. Well, maybe I've found a game I will stick to for a while in Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince. Details below.
A dozen games as if I played one a month that year. What would I play now? I thought I'd share the list and make a few comments.
I just got two of my favorite TV shows of the 2000s from Amazon, Venture Bros. and The Mighty Boosh, that I wanted to watch but now there's no time for them. Instead, my regular goto without a tv show to watch during meals at game time, is Fail Army on youtube. Why this is endlessly entertaining, I'm not sure. The psychology of it elludes me. But it is constant source of hilarity even topping other distractions like sports highlights, hobbyist vids, and miscellaneous trivia. It's like the sauce on the sandwich of gaming. Details below.
Specifically the Irkens from Irk, and more specficially, Invader Zim, voiced by Richard Horvitz (Chaos in Skylanders). This 2001 animated TV series didn't even make it through its second season, but its still pretty good. It especially appeals to me for its angular design, wild humor, surrealism, and sometimes dark tones. Zim is assigned to take over Earth and he assumes the disguise of a middle schooler to hide his secret. Dib, a fellow student, is not convinced and seeks to expose him. Another selling point for me was the voice of Kevin McDonald from Kids in the Hall as one of the Almighty Tallest, co-leader of the Irks and Zim's boss. Oh, and there were more aliens in the games I played this week.
I preordered DQ Treasures from my favorite indy game store (Gamebox Video Games in Topsham, Maine, because they deserve a shoutout) last fall shortly after it was announced. Dragon Quest is probably my favorite JRPG franchise, and Erik was my favorite character in DQ XI, so this was pretty much a no brainer for me. December rolled around and... I realized it wasn't going to be the game I wanted it to be. But that's OK, because I had fun with it anyway. Which is a first for most of the DQ spin-offs for me (with the exception of Rocket Slime, just because I know Cary will say something if I don't put this in, it's his favorite DQ title).
Every time I start up the Xbox I first check for any rewards points I can get by watching videos or playing certain games. This leads me to try a lot of stuff and sometimes find a new favorite. Here's what I played recently before long sessions of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands.
I’ve cooked you all up a Sunday Easter Brunch with all sorts of game reviews I’ve recently written over at GamerDad.com. Please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe even post a ‘like’ or comment or two. I’d really appreciate it. OK let’s begin!
Some Friday and Saturday gaming while eating mint cookie bites. I'm counting those calories, so it's not unrestrained snacking.
My gaming routine is as follows: play any game needed for MS Rewards; play any game needed for Game Pass rewards; go through all the games on my hard drive from smallest file size to largest. For this last objective, I play a game for the next closest achievement, decide if I want to keep it or not, and then move on to the next game. I repeat the process weekly until, hopefully, I clear my hard drive (not likely when I keep adding new games). So here is what I did the other day.
There are certain combo cartridges games that leave me wondering why they were ever sold as standalone releases in the first place. I found myself asking that question after playing the Hang-On/Astro Warrior cart on the Master System. I mean, don’t get me wrong- it’s nice to have both games on a cartridge. But neither one held much weight when all was said and done. Even so, I was still able to come away with some goodwill toward Hang-On. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for Astro Warrior, but I’ll touch on that shortly. So, without further ado, let’s get to it.
Microsoft Rewards wanted three achievements from me so I dove into my casual stuff to get them. I only got two achievements because I'm somewhat far along in the games I played today which means achievements take longer to get. As I get to the last few achievements in a casual game, I just play it for a short time to make some progress and move along. Today, I got really into Lego Batman and never did get to my Game Pass stuff or my main game, Torchlight III. Sometime later this weekend I'll get to them I suppose. So here's a breakdown.
One of the most recent downloadable titles for from Square Enix is one of their 32-bit classics, SaGa Frontier. Originally released on PS1 in 1997 in Japan and in early 1998 in the US, it was one of the first games after FFVII that I bought for my new PlayStation. It certainly didn't have quite the razzle-dazzle of FFVII, but it had a style I really liked. Unlike a lot of other Square classics, SaGa Frontier never got a re-release as a Greatest Hits title or a PS1 Classic, though it was popular enough in Japan to be included on their version of the PlayStation Classic. It seemed destined to be lost to the ages, until now. SaGa Frontier Remastered is now available on the PS4 and the Switch, which is remarkable when you consider that when it was originally released, Nintendo and Square weren't on the best terms, as well as PC, iOS, and Android. I chose the Switch version.