In console gaming, there is a legend known as the Third Console Curse. Most consoles are not successful enough to receive a follow-up. If they are, then a third console is still not guaranteed. It is a hard industry not only to break into, but sustain a market share in. Yet something happens with the third console every time. It fails to meet the company's initial goals. Maybe it still sells fine, maybe the console has a wonderful library of games. Even if that is the case, the company loses market share and is in a worse spot at the end of the console's life than they were going into it. It could be arrogance from success. It could be a lack of perspective from being too used to success. Maybe it's just rotten luck. But it's consistent.

I can't seem to find my draft of this blog right now, so I'm rewriting it hastily and with much less content due to time limitations. In any case, this is 2012, the stuff I played during Console Generation 7 and mostly not later, because a lot on the Metacritic list I played years later or literally in 2026. Let's go.

Going down the top ranked on Metacritic for that year, these are what I played a lot within console generation 7, 

I'm getting closer to the end of my 360 games now, but it may be a few more weeks still before I move on to PS3 or Wii. I really can't wait to start those. 

The first thing that comes to mind is changing my Xbox gamertag. I got one in 2004 when Xbox Live Arcade dropped but a mini-game on an Official Xbox Magazine demo disc was giving me trouble in '07, and I thought a new gamertag would solve it. Well, it did solve it, but I lost touch with my old gamertag over time, and now it's probably been deactivated along with the few games I bought under it. It'll be 20 years on my current gamertag next year. It could've been 23 years if I'd stuck with my original one.

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

I kinda can't wait to do this sort of overview for DS games when I get there in a few weeks. 

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 launch sequence ensues, Thunderbirds style. 

I got through the last of my PS2 games, or so I thought. Here's what I got to this week. 

The next 25 games on Metacritic for the GBA. I'll have my favorites, but I'll look up everything and see what's available to me to try out. 

I only have a few here I put on my must-play list, but I like to look at everything anyway and perhaps try something new if I can find it for cheap enough. Remasters are also of interest since sometimes they vastly improve the experience. So this is Metacritic's top PS2 games 26-50 with comments. 

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 always fun to go down the list of Metacritic's top games for a system or year. Here goes for the GBA, which I'm trying to play alongside my PS2 games. It's all about the early 2000s. 

Alongside my PS2 gaming is also me trying to play the handheld out at the time, GBA. I've had trouble getting to it, but this week I got super sidetracked on GBA games. I also touched on PS4 and XSS and bought a bunch of stuff both digitally and at my game stores. 

I'm going down the Metacritic list for PS2 and seeing what might be worth trying out. Journey along and see the sights. 

I dove through a bunch of my PS2 games in chonological order. I'm in the 2003 games now. Then I played a lot of my rental game, Mario & Luigi Brotherhood and took another stab at Ys Origin on Xbox. Also a few digital purchases. 

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. 

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. 

I went over the Metacritic list of best DS games and made my own list with comments. There's certainly many more great games I didn't mention for various reasons. 

It's sort of roughly so because in gaming it means to me the seventh gen consoles which really started in 2005, but it's more strictly so for my TV/Film and reading. So this week I set up my PS3, juiced my DSi XL and got to work. 

All the stuff I played last week to end the month. 

I'm deeply obsessed with Hogwarts Legacy right now, but I found some time to knock off a few more gen six games for either keeps or trades. Then I got some black friday sale games already - also finished a book and watched more Power Rangers. 

I got through a lot of GBA/PS2 stuff this week and retro on Xbox Series S. I got some good purchases on sales this week too. Also progress through the Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue show, books and podcasts.