Next up in my trek through the consoles is the PS2. This will take a while because I have a lot more games for it than previous consoles and the games are a bit longer, reflecting the improvement in technology. But first, two games I forgot to play in the previous weeks.
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.
Also played some Game Boy and a whole lot of Switch games.
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 finally pulled myself away from Army of Ruin and got through all my Atari games. I packed them all up and will be digging into NES next week.
Army of Ruin is taking over and keeping me away from my retro plans. I have half a mind to pull the plug on my Xbox to keep me away from it but I want to finish what I can first. However, an intervention may be in order. But, I did play a few retro games in the margins.
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.
An imagined library of games I would have from the best of the 2010s. In order of rank on the Metacritic list for those years.
I've been going through my games like they were parts of a mini-game collection like NES Remix. I play to determine if I'm going to keep them or not. Or, I set some high bar of difficulty that gets me killed fairly quickly. It's also a test to see if I get sucked into a game for longer. Here's half of the stuff I sampled (I'll write up the rest tomorrow).
November is coming up, and so I'm looking forward to revisiting games from the first decade of the 2000s. However, I will not be doing Dreamcast because I don't have one anymore and have only a passing interest in getting another one. But, I had one back then, and it's fun to remember to good times I had on the system.
Back in 2022, Pac-Man World: RePac was released. It was a remake of the original Pac-Man World game on PlayStation. I even wrote an article about it here. I encourage you to read that article I wrote because the original Pac-Man World game was a very special game to me as a game reviewer, and the remake was even my Game of the Year in 2022! I wondered if Pac-Man World 2 would get the RePac treatment someday, and this year it did! I didn’t like Pac-Man World 2 as much as the original, but it was still a special game to me and I thought I’d explain why in this article, and go over my thoughts on the RePac version of this game as well.
Yes, scouring through the store on Xbox (and other systems) has its rewards. I never know what stealth released title I'll come across. My eyes bugged wide when I saw the following collections.
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.
So, that Acer Aspire laptop I blogged about last time? Screen doesn't come on. I've got to get this repaired (and hope that it doesn't cost too much) so until then, I'm using my trusty, won't-die Samsung Chromebook that I got back in 2017.
I got to 35 hack 'n' slash games in March. The early ones go quick and some later ones just stopped me dead at some point with confusing mission objectives, difficult mechanics or some other dumb thing I couldn't stand. I have been trying to stick to each game as long as I can, pushing beyond my limits. I'll try even harder next month. There's nothing like actually finishing a game. I think I finished exactly 6 of these - all mentioned below.
In this post, I play some of the hack 'n' slash games after the Genesis/SNES era.
My Twin-stick shooter fascination has branched into a genre that is similar but not exactly the same. What I played this week is more along the lines of isometric multidirectional shooters. Really, the only substantial difference is that you use a trigger to shoot instead of using the right stick to both aim and shoot. Overall, it kind of feels pretty similar but maybe with less of a bullet hell feeling. Anyway, here's what I got into this week.
Yeah, not doing any more 70s games but I will just mention Space Invaders Extreme 2 as being awesome before moving onto my theme for this month, twin-stick shooters.
With such game lists as I have, I was surprised to not stick to anything until I hit a RPG on list three.
Only one more half-day game-day left for me this month, Monday. I've been deep into Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel this week but also other stuff. Here's 'bout.