The first time Kratos and Atreus head into Svartalfheim, the story keeps you moving fast enough that a lot of side content slips by. The Myrkr Tunnels are one of the worst offenders. You come through them on your second trip to the realm, the story pulls you forward, and by the time you think about going back you have no idea how to get in again.

Today, it's 1988. What are we playing today?

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.

Continuing the share, my games of the 80s, maybe a few others if I'm into it. This is 1981.

It’s been far too long since we’ve seen a proper entry in the Castlevania series. After Igarashi was unceremoniously removed from working on the franchise, it basically went stagnant. MercurySteam worked on the three Lords of Shadows games, but even the last of that subseries was released twelve years ago. Enter Belmont’s Curse, the newest entry in the series, which now rests in the hands of Evil Empire, best known for their work on Dead Cells.

I got to thinking about how to create a Random Encounter Table for PS3 games, because I always loved those things from my DnD days way, way back. Here are my results from the top 200 PS3 games on Metacritic.

And now the digital titles I revisited 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.

It was the summer of '97 - we were on a family vacation in Montreal and went to La Ronde Amusement Park for the day. I couldn't believe what I was seeing when I was there; a Nintendo Megadome, right inside the park. It was like a dream come true. Even better, it was right before the release of GoldenEye 007, so I got my first look at what would soon become one of my favorite games ever. We played everything we could and left, VHS in hand, promoting some of the upcoming releases, including GoldenEye. There were some other promotional materials too, a dossier that would be thumbed through hundreds of times before we were graced with a copy of the game that Christmas.

I had a really good time with Xbox 360, or 3tricksy as I like to call it, this week. This is what I got to in my journey through all my 360 games.

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.

Revisited this week on Xbox 360:

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. 

When a game console is considered “dead,” I like to write a tribute blog about that console and its games.  While most people would probably consider the PS4 ‘dead’ for a while now, I’m still reviewing games for it.  I guess a game console is really only considered ‘dead’ once you stop playing it.  But since recently I wasn’t able to get simple games like LEGO Batman and Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection on the PS4, I figured it was about time.  I’ll probably do a similar blog with the original Switch later towards the end of this year.  Most of the games on this list you can play on other consoles as well, I mostly used the PS4 as a third party machine if I couldn’t play or review it on the Switch, or if I’d rather play it on the PS4.  Anyway, there are so many games I’m going to split this up into two parts.  And the first part is going to be all about classic game collections, and remakes of classics and styled games.

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). 

'cause it feels so good. Stuff I played a lot in the 7th generation of consoles, 2005-2013ish. 

I got through a lot combining the end of last week's and all of this week's gaming. I'm clearly not going for complete runs. I just play to revisit and go as far as I stay interested. Here's the lot on Xbox 360:

Just a few but with some interesting death throes in most of them. 

I'm on vacation this week for the most part. LJ and I went to Washington D.C. to visit the Smithsonian Zoo and Museum of the American Indian (also, accidently - 'cause we parked beneath it - the Bible Museum and saw the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit), but I manged to squeeze in some gaming on a few days here and there and last week, which I couldn't report on 'cause Pixlbit was down. 

In conjunction with Metacritic. I'm numbering all my games with the Metacritic rank to give me a play order as I go through my collection. Its just my lately metagame. Here's my 1-10 with the Metacritic rank in parenthases. 

First, some new stuff, then the old stuff. Eight more down and less than a dozen left. I'm chomping at the bit to start into my DS collection. 

Thanks to the recently released Mario Galaxy movie, I’ve got a bunch of themed articles about it along with my usual GamerDad game reviews.  So 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 blast off!

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. 

I put away the modern consoles to focus on my retro journey. So all I have up is the GameCube and its Game Boy Player. I put the most time into Metroid Prime, Pikmin, Advance Wars 2, Metroid Zero Mission and Fire Emblem Sacred Stones, but here's everything I played.