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. 

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. 

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've chosen ten games from the Metacritic best of list to start my OG Xbox journey. Here they are. 

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. 

This is what my friend's Barbarian in Diablo IV says all the time as we're battling together. I can't resist repeating it whenever I hear it. He's got to work on keeping his rage meter filled. Anywho, I'm waiting for his cleaning lady to finish with his apartment before we game it up today (my day off). I thought I'd relate my progress on the late 90s Metacritic list I'm made. 

The 3DS was released this year. Minecraft came out of beta. The highest rated games were Batman: Arkham City, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Portal 2. Here's a list of what I put the most time into that year followed by stuff I played later and then a wish list. 

Oh, watched the whole first disc of Batman The Animated series and discovered this video game show called Video Power. It's from the 90s. It has a kid DJ who gives you tips on games before and after a pretty lame animated cartoon. I just skip the cartoon and see what he has to say about Shinobi or whatever game it is that episode. Commercials plug the Tiger handheld games relentlessly in the first episode. Aside from the watching, there's the playing disclosed below. 

Games for sure but I also participated in Record Store Day and went to a PA Dutch Smorgasborg. There was a harvest of peas too and texting with a friend I haven't seen for a few years. What else? Think that's it. Here are details on gaming. 

Here's my Top 40 games/series. It's not quite complete but I'm sticking to 40. I also listed the devs where I could because I generally like other games by the same deveoloper. I ditched my other lists for this one. Maybe this will stick. 

In the midst of E3, I discovered that Gearbox had created a new DLC for Borderlands 2. It's supposed to bridge the story to Borderlands 3. So, I had to break out B2 again and play it. Only, I didn't just play the DLC, I started over and attempted to replay the whole game. After several days, I'm still not ready to play the new DLC. 

Late to the Party: As always happens after I finish a game that I've spent over 100 hours immersed in, I really hadn't been able to settle on my next game to play yet. So I booted up the 360 for the first time in months (mostly to see what was available as the current Games for Gold download), and cycled through what I had stashed on the hard drive. I frequently download the free games and then forget about them, so I went through and deleted a couple that I'd finished and knew I was never going to play again, and then decided to give Borderlands a try. And surprise! (please read in a sarcastic tone), there was an update. Oh, yay. So it did its thing, and I tried to get the game to play, and it made it as far as the Gearbox logo screen and froze my 360. OK, I'm used to the occasional freeze, usually when playing LEGO games, so I shut down the console and restarted and tried again. Same result. Hmm... Off to the internet; Yup, update breaks the game on the 360. Solution found, third time's the charm. However, I can't play the game online, which I'm mildly disappointed about. Now, I'm not normally into FPS games, but Borderlands is fun so far. I haven't made it very far into the game and I die a lot, but fun is being had. We'll see how far I get and if I continue to have fun before the whole FPS thing gets to me.

I tried out Battleborn today, watched Mad Max Road Warrior (movie from '81), played Wizardry a lot and the got back to my rental, Odin Sphere Leifhrasir. 

I recently made a list of current gen games and rated them based on how excited I was for them. Five stars was a "must play" game; four stars said, "I really want to play it"; three stars just, "want to play it"; and two stars was a, "curious". There was no need to list one star games. You could say those were all the rest. So here is a list of my five star games for 2017 in chronological order. 

I think I'm about half way in the main story for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. I've been doing side missions along the way. I like doing all the side missions. It's not a completionist thing, I just like hearing all the stories and being sent to all the locations in the game. However, I did start to get hung up on trying to open all the chests that require 40 moon stones. I did five of them and thought the sixth one was going to be the last for an achievement but there are actually 10. I went for this last time I played the game and got to within one of getting it. This time, I backtracked three different times to open moon stone chests that I had found but didn't have the moon stones when I found them. I finally realized I was getting really obsessive about it and just stopped. Maybe I'll come across that one I never found, but it's not important. The story, the environments and listening to all the dialog are my main interests. 

Started Pre-Sequel today. My first impression (on this second playthrough) is that it is way less aggro than Borderlands 2. Enemies say less ultra violent things. There's even an option in the settings to tone down the gore. I don't think that was in B2. The game is a little bit less chatty overall. However, it still makes me chuckle frequently. I can't help thinking about the difference in developers in this regard. 2K Australian toning down the violence from the Gearbox, based in Texas, USA, developed B1 and B2. My friend Mark perfers B1 and B2 over Pre-Sequel, but I like it just fine.

But not before I spent an hour or so grinding on Claptrap's Robot Revolution in Borderlands 1 to see if I could pick up a few more collectibles from fallen claptraps. I got a few more of each type but didn't unlock any new achievements yet. I'll continue to just replay that DLC every week and see if I can't get those. 

My friend Mark just told me about this remaster of Bulletstorm coming in April. It's being published by Gearbox and will have new modes and levels. Best of all, if you preorder it, you'll get to play as Duke Nukem! They recorded all new dialog for the campaign with the voice actor John St. John, the original voice of Duke Nukem. This feature puts this in the must-play category for me and I'll be preordering it sometime closer to the release date. 

By now you shouldn't be surprised that I get to be active only in certain months on this site. I've linked this with the analogy of me being a distant uncle who only visits the family on holidays or reunions. Nevertheless, I can never truly leave this site for becoming a gathering of users who moved after the closing of our beloved 1up and you guys are often a great friendly bunch. Considering i've been wanting to talk about some things, I think it's apropiate I continue to detail the games i've beaten so far in this (hell) year and though not as much as my last two entries, I still consider this to be a sizeable count of beaten games, going by the order I beat them since the last blog.

The National Video Game Museum in Frisco, Texas just opened, and Cary here at Pixbit did two articles on it with pictures galore of all the interactive exhibits, celebrities, and cosplayers. Check it out on Gamerdad.com here (http://www.gamerdad.com/blog/2016/04/07/the-national-videogame-museum-opens-in-frisco-tx-part-1/ ). There are two parts so click the link there for that as well. You'll be glad you did. The museum has an arcade, great murals and displays, and video game memoribilia of every type. I don't know how they got all that stuff in there. The place must be huge! Also, if you go, Cary might be working there.

Hey folks, I wanted to share with you all some big news.  There is a video game museum opening tomorrow, April 2, in Frisco, TX, and I’m volunteering there to help out!  I hope that if you are ever visiting North Texas around the Dallas and Fort Worth areas, that you can come and visit!  You might even see ME!

Hey everyone! Since I have more time on my hands, I want to be more involved in writing on here and really connecting with you ladies and gentlemen. When I first started on Pixlbit, I was a newcomer into writing about video games, media, and anything geek related. And you all welcomed me with open arms and always gave me positive and helpful feedback and I'm grateful for that! 

Tommarrow is Fat Tuesday but I won't be getting drunk or wandering the Quarter. I will be at work and that is totally cool by me. When I moved to New Orleans the very first time when I was a kid in 1987, Mardi Gras for me was like discovering that some cities have a second Christmas. King cake, parades, beads and doubloons, purple, yellow, and green decorations everywhere. Now I'm grown and have sadly lost the Mardi Gras spirit. Now its all about rowdy tourist, traffic being a royal pain because the city has half of the major avenues blocked off for a parade. No parking to be found and if you do it will cost you a fortune. I still love king cake and my current means of making a living swings on the success of Mardi Gras so I just have to take it in stride.

Seriously, this will likely be my only blog all month.lol Actually I will make an effort to join in this tradition although my anagram may read out more like BeBM (blog every blue moon).

And I guess I had to watch football too. Funny thing about that. I was playing Angry Birds Star Wars while watching The Birds (Eagles) lose to the Cowboys. For a while there, we were in perfect sinc: I would clear a level, and the Eagles would make a great play. Then . . . not so much. Ah well, it was fun anyway.