This is my list in coordination with the all-time best OG Xbox games on Metacritic. I'm playing games in order of MC rating instead of release date this year.
A half-a-day left to game, but I had some time to write, and so here's what I've played so far.
Let’s start 2022 off right with some reviews I’ve written recently at GamerDad.com. Please click on the reviews and read as many as you like, and maybe even post a ‘like’ or comment or two. I’d appreciate it. OK let’s begin!
The weekend's gaming went quite well. On Xbox One I completed a monthly and all the weekly rewards, knocked off all my Game Pass quests, and tried a few new games.
One of my first RPGs was Ultima III: Exodus on NES and PC. Ultima, along with Wizardry, was considered to be one of the two ancestors of the video RPG genre. Eventually I was able to get a hold of the other games in the series. The entire series is on GOG, including the spinoffs like Worlds of Adventure and Underworld.
Earlier I skipped over one of the oldest books I read last year, Out of the Silent Planet, by C. S. Lewis. Published in 1938 as the start of a trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet imagined space travel before we really knew what it is like and it shows, but it is a fun adventure story with some moments of deep thinking. Like Clark after him, Lewis was adept at describing in rich detail the alien vistas and creatures he imagined. Later I read its sequel, Perelandra, which in some ways is the inverse of its predecessor. Perelandra is mostly a series of deep thinking moments sprinkled with adventure bits. I don't want to bash it because it is very good at what it is doing but I do hope that when I read the third book of the trilogy this year, it hews closer to the first one.
2016 sucked for me. Not because a bunch of celebrities bit the dust or our politics got even more polarized, though that didn't help, but for extremely personal reasons I won't go into.
The Speed Rumbler, 1986, is basically Mad Max. You live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland plagued with car gangs, one of which has kidnapped your family. You have 24 hours (actually 24 minutes, I think) to get them back. You do that by driving and shooting your way through six top down stages, and it starts off pretty well. Your car drives a little stiffly but it's manageable. There are a lot of bad guys to shoot, both in other cars and on foot, as well as other hazards like exploding barrels and boulders. You can also free prisoners from little standalone jails for bonuses and power ups. If your car takes too much damage, it will catch on fire and you need to get out of it ASAP. It's cool that you can go on foot even if you're probably gonna die. If you can survive and make some forward progress, a new car will be dropped off for you. It seems like a missed opportunity, however, that you cannot jump in an empty enemy car. You'll just die and instant deaths is one of my big pet peeves with this game. Okay, you're very vulnerable when not in your car; that makes sense. But there are enemies with instantly kill your car no matter how much life you have. That is super frustrating. Continuing that theme is the time limit. You have to beat the game in 24 minutes, which gives you 4 minutes to beat each of the six levels, and the game makes this a hard limit. If you hit 4 minutes before reaching the end of the level, you gotta start it all over. So doing well on earlier levels does you no good in the later levels. You get no time bonus.
I started PUB G recently courtesy of my new roommate Mike. Goddamn, really? 2 Mikes?
I said I'd talk about movies, and well here I am. To talk about movies. I have two this week, both are foreign, both are bloody, so if that's not your thing, sorry but you're a boring cunt. On with the movies!
I missed Sony's E3 press conference livestream due to work, but was able to catch the highlights. Looks like they have a pretty great lineup:
Another comic I've been reading lately is quite old. Batman Chronicles collects all the oldest Batman comics in chronological order. It's really interesting to see where the Dark Knight originally originated from (note: he has yet to be called the Dark Knight). Batman, as it turns out, was pretty different back then. The second issue describes Bruce Wayne as a "bored young socialite" and it's not until the seventh issue ("Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom") that we learn about his parents getting murdered when he was a boy. He also uses a gun on occasion and has purposely killed several bad guys or done things that directly led to their deaths. Egads!
This is definitely the latest I've ever posted one of these recaps. I had the one-two punch moving last week, not having internet, and then heading straight back to work. (I guess that's three punches lol.) The new apartment is great but we still have stuff everywhere. But that's not what I'm here to talk about, so let's get to it!
Pixlbit it is Friday, and it is time for us to get back into Quick Hits, but before I do that how are you good folks? Everything good? I’m currently a bit cranky because it is No Meat Friday, and I have a Fillet O-Fish in my future and maybe a cheese pizza (I have a package of pepperoni I throw on the leftovers to “Un-Lent” the pizza on Saturday morning.) It is a nice Friday Morning here, and I am back on my Ice Water kick. For a week or two it was nothing but Root Beer, and Ginger Ale, anything that doesn’t have caffeine. Anyways I am here, you folks are here, let’s get started with another Quick Hits with Chris.
What was the last movie you saw? Was it good? Rate it out of 5. No spoilers.
You know I really liked The Grudge. It was a crazy and at the time scary japanese horror movie. Even the american version wasn't too bad. Although to be honest. It did lead us down the rabbit hole of similar movies such as "One Missed Call" and "The Ring" So it's been over 15 years since the movie, and 6 since the game. So let's simulate a horrifyng haunted house experience in Ju-on the Grudge.
