Ultros immediately drew me in with its gorgeous neon sci-fi aesthetic, but it kept me hooked by completely subverting my expectations as the game progressed. At first glance, and by the developer’s description, it appears to be yet another Metroidvania game - which, frankly, have gotten to be extremely plentiful and much less interesting due to their abundance. But quickly, you realize this is no normal Metroidvania - nor is it quite a roguelike despite the cyclical nature of the experience. It borrows these designs to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts.
I started with just arcades but then got carried away with other interesting releases and facts of the later half of the 70s. This is the time I became more interested in games.
Whether you asked for it or not, chances are, Generative AI is now a part of your day-to-day life. Increasingly, it’s been worked into every facet of, well, everything. If you’re like me, it’s become a huge part of your work life too, regardless of whether you asked for it. GenAI is changing our world; it’s deskilling workers, weakening labor power, increasing the surveillance power of institutions, and reducing our collective agency and intelligence.
Knocked off a bunch more in the 360 collection. I was writing down all the digital only games I wanted to play on 360 and came across a lot of them. I own a lot more than I remember and there are ones I missed as well. This is just adding to my "collection" and making getting through 360 a real chore. I passed my usual burnout on year-long gaming projects a month ago, so I think I'm good for the distance now. Here's this week's plays plus a few buys.
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.
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.
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.
Recently, I livestreamed an (almost) complete playthrough of Richard "Lord British" Garriott's 1982 RPG, Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress. These videos were originally simulcast on my Twitch and YouTube channels.
Summer is winding down, so let’s have one big last bash with game reviews I’ve recently written over at GamerDad.com. 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 begin!
Mario Kart World was recently released as a Nintendo Switch 2 launch title. I was lucky enough to get a Switch 2, thanks to help from my family. So let’s take a road trip tour at all the tracks you can race on in the game. So grab your road trip snacks and let’s roll!
I decided to go strictly with games released in the 70s next month. This really limits the video game landscape for me, but I made a list, and I'll see what I can do with it. Here's what I got so far.
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.
I'm ending April this week even though there are a few more days left and moving on to my next theme. It was a grueling month for me who has so little patience for repeating levels and making that perfect jump; but I, like they do in special ops training, pushed beyond my limits as much as I could. I'll be putting up a blog of all the games I played over at wordpress very soon and a what-I-liked best of blog here. Here's what I got to this week before I decended into incremental games out of exhaustion.
One last review blog dump for the end of the year. Here’s some more reviews I’ve written recently at GamerDad.com. 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 begin!
Yes, playing nothing but Diablo IV right now with my friend Mad Krammer. I have, however, been picking up other games including retro stuff. Retro gaming is ready to go whenever I can pull myself away. Here's Diablo IV and the games I've picked up lately.
Over the Thanksgiving holidays I played quite a few games on Xbox. I'll try and list them below, but December, which starts today, is going to be nothing but Switch games, especially the Super Mario RPG remake I got last month. I've discovered that if I don't put the Xbox away, I will never get to anything else, so into a case it goes. I have plans for 2024, so I may not use it again until next September. More on that later. Onto the last two weeks' plays.
With Super Mario Bros. Wonder being recently released, everyone is talking about the new power-up that turns Mario into an elephant! I didn’t realize Mario was such a University of Alabama fan! He DOES wear red all the time, though! Roll Tide, Mario, Roll Tide! Anyway, Elephant Mario isn’t the ONLY elephant in video games, so I thought I’d talk about my other top video game elephants. So let’s stomp our feet and trumpet our nose! These aren’t in any particular order or anything, though.
The Philadelphia Phillies baseball club played its wild card playoffs this week and the play times fell on days I could actually watch them. Other than that, there were the games. I think I'll go in order of time played this time.
Specifically the Irkens from Irk, and more specficially, Invader Zim, voiced by Richard Horvitz (Chaos in Skylanders). This 2001 animated TV series didn't even make it through its second season, but its still pretty good. It especially appeals to me for its angular design, wild humor, surrealism, and sometimes dark tones. Zim is assigned to take over Earth and he assumes the disguise of a middle schooler to hide his secret. Dib, a fellow student, is not convinced and seeks to expose him. Another selling point for me was the voice of Kevin McDonald from Kids in the Hall as one of the Almighty Tallest, co-leader of the Irks and Zim's boss. Oh, and there were more aliens in the games I played this week.
I saw this the weekend it came out on IMAX. I enjoyed it quite a bit from story to cast to music.