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.
I remember this year mostly for the being disappointed with the World of Warcaft MMO. I wanted another another strategy WoW. But there was also the release of the DS, which got me back into handheld gaming, and cueing up for my first midnight release for Halo 2. The rest of the world was buying GTA: San Andreas and Pokemon FireRed/Leaf Green, numbers 1 and 2 in sales respectively. Half-Life 2 was a notable winner on Metacritic. Here's some stuff I played and want to play.
I saw this 90s animated show called King Arthur and the Knights of Justice. I was attracted by the excellent colors and drawing of the animations. It's about a football team that gets transported to King Arthur's time by Merlin to save Arthur and his knights from Morgana. It's a neat premise. I find the writting a bit dull but not stupid. The real thrill though is the inventiveness of the animation and action. I hope to watch more of it. It's all on youtube.
I played a lot on Xbox Series S this week, but also used my DS, Swtich, PS4 and Retron 3. Gaming breaks included watching another episode of Mighy Orbots, Return of Ultraman, and Dragon Ball Season 2. Also saw a variety of short youtube videos.
My weekends (which are midweek) are a mix of gaming and schlocky TV and youtube watching with my friend MAD Krammer (Xbox gamer tag).
Watched this 1983 one season bomb of a show called Wizards and Warriors and played a bunch of retro games and a few more modern ones.
I'm a big fan of developer People Can Fly, so when I saw that this game was theirs, I jumped on board. I bounced off it a few times initially. I liked it but the feeling of the controls felt slightly off to me. I tried adjusting the speed of the analog sticks, but it didn't quite work. When I decided to really dig into this game, I figured it out.
A lot went on while I was blogging daily in February. I thought I'd let y'all in on every game-related thing, but it'll take a few blogs to do it. I'll start with Serious Sam.
The Atari Video Comupter System, as it was first called (and thereafter the Atari 2600), was a system my dad bought, Christmas 1978. I was 11.
My new plan is to look up the highest rated games on a system and play what interests me going from top to bottom. So far it's been Forza Horizon 5 first and then Halo Infinite on Xbox Series S and Into the Breach and Fire Emblem Three Houses for Switch. Of course, I'm still playing games for Game Pass rewards, MS Rewards and a few old projects of mine. I did remove a bunch of games from my hard drive I was planing on playing but don't fit the current plan. They'll come back around again anyway. It's still a lot of games. I guess the goal is to reduce the number and increase the quality of the games I play. There's only so much time, isn't there?
August is coming up in a few days. My plan is to watch/play favorite and new media from the 80s. I also like to review what I watched/played back then. So here is a list of the games I played the most in the 80s year by year.
Finished the second movie's worth of Lego Lord of the Rings the other day. There's an interesting mechanic where you can quickly switch to another set of characters in a totally different location. For instance from Frodo and Sam in Mordor to Aragorn and Legolas in Helms Deep.
I always download every Games with Gold freebie on Xbox every couple of weeks and give them a try. Sometimes I find something I like and stick with it for a while. MX vs ATV Alive, out originally in 2011, was one of them.
I always save any game ads I see in comics. Some of them are pretty cool. They don't seem to do this in recent comics though. Here are three I found recently.
I guess I celebrated Mario in a way by playing my randomly sampled game, Super Smash Bros. on Wii-U. I randomly rolled the Wii-U and the number 3. The game was number 3 on Metacritic's list of best Wii-U games.
Another year down! What? You don't want to talk about 2021? Can't say I blame you. How about games? First we'll take a look at the games I beat and bought and then we'll move onto the Golden Hippo Awards!
Again I'll break it down between games played for Xbox Game Pass/MS rewards and my own choices. All Xbox One this week. Wish I could mix it up more with the other console makers, but I only have room for two systems up at once at my friend's place and right now it's Xbox One and Xbox 360.
Donkey Kong made me a fan of Nintendo very early on. To this day, DK is my favorite arcade game of all time. I loved it for being one of the most colorful, expressive games out there. It was probably as close as you could get in the early 80s to having a playable cartoon show. So naturally, when more Nintendo games started showing up at the arcade, my young self was excited. And if any game could tear me away from DK, it was Mario Bros.
I was below decks for part of the time but eventually, I joined in the sailing of the ship (that's code for I was playing solo and then coop later). I didn't eat the Cheez-Its but we came across a patch of sour cream and onion chips and I scooped up a few. You never know what you'll come across on the salty snack seas. It pays to keep alert. The following is the captain's log for the day.
Well what do you know, I got hooked into playing Minecraft even though I'd finished the achievements. I took a pitstop to delete a bunch of games off my hard drive but then right back to Minecraft.
Got back into the Season 2 DLC. I finished the story missions solo and then Mark and I did the Arms Race mission and then some tasks on the daily challenge list that's new to B3.
Borderlands 3 annoyed me to no end. Then hen I started my casual run of games and then played one for a Game Pass quest, the last of the week.
