PixlBit

I played a lot of different games today. Most of them annoyed me in different ways, but I was happy to get a bunch of them done and put aside as trade bait. My mission is to pair down my collection as far as possible. I guess my onlly problem is that I sometimes still add games to it like this week when I bought Ys I & II Chronicles for PSP. Here's the pic.

                           

I really wanted the DS version called Legacy of Ys: Book I & II but no one near me had it. I settled for this PSP version in a generic box. Well, at least I'll have it when I get to it in my list.

So I'm going to quickly go through what I played today. 

The Maw [X360]: I played just a little bit of this today in the morning and late night to see if the achievement for playing at six different times would pop. Nope. I think I either need to play even earlier than the 9:45 am I played today or maybe I missed lunch time. I'll just keep playing a level here and there until it pops. 

Tales from the Borderlands Episode 5 [X360]: I downloaded it but then never actually played it. I wasn't much in the mood for a TellTale game today. I think I'll wait a bit to get to it. 

Ticket to Ride [X360]: Played just a few rounds of this with Mark. I got really annoyed when I couldn't get that card I needed at the end of one match. I must've gone through a half dozen turns without getting one of the two cards I could've used to win the match. I seriously started questioning the randomness of the card drops. It was just too weird. 

Lost Kingdoms [NGC]: Got my Game Cube memory card in my Wii and started this. It's a real-time fantasy card battling game. I mean, I guess that's what you'd call it. It's like an action RPG but you use fantasy cards like in Culdcept or Magic The Gathering as your weapons. You would think battles would be turn-based but they're not. You have four cards from your deck assigned to the controller's buttons and use them to battle monsters. Some turn you into a monster that weilds a weapon, others conjure a monster to fight for you, some give you one big attack from a magic creature and some give you stat boosts or heal you. It works pretty well, although, the areas you fight in, which are just fenced off areas of the world you explore, are sometimes crowded. I found it hard to avoid taking a lot of damage because many times I'd be conjuring a creature and getting hit while doing it. If you die, you have to restart the entire section of the world you're in, and I dislike too much repetition in games. 

P.N.03 [NGC]: This is an action shooter with some rhythm game elements, although, I couldn't really figure out how the rhythm aspect of it played into the gameplay. I just shot stuff and executed specials while a pumping dance beat played and my character bounced to the music when I stopped moving. I had some trouble getting my first special to work consistently. Maybe I had to time it to the music, but sometimes it just wouldn't happen even though I did the button presses correctly. Thus I took a lot of damage and died a bunch. I don't react well to dying. Does anyone?

Secret of Monkey Island 2 [X360]: This game looks and plays much better than the first Monkey Island remake, but, inevitably, I got myself stuck tying to find something to put Largo's spit into. I litterally searched the whole island and found nothing that would serve. I just hate getting stuck like that. 

Aliens Colonial Marines [X360]: Played this a while until I got to a part where you have to run past a large xenomorph and get through a gate. Everytime I did it my character would stop running right in front of the xenomorph and then I couldn't make it to the gate in time. I did that run over and over and got right to the opening gate before getting drilled for the seventieth time. No sir, I don't like it. Not one bit. 

Bodycount [X360]: Called the spiritual successor to Black because it was headed by the same guy, Stuart Black. It feels like Black and there's even more destructiblity to the environment but there's just a little something lacking in the controls and feel of the weapons in this FPS. In Black the weapons felt really powerful. Here, they're just a bit weak and enemies are kind of bullet sponges. If I unload a shotgun at a guy point blank, you would think that would be enough, but sometimes I had to shoot three times to bring him down. Just silly. I did get deep into this though. I loved creating my own paths through environments by blasting away sections of walls. Howver, It just didn't seem fair at times. Black, even though it got hard, always seemed fair and was a great challenge at higher difficulty levels. This, not so much. 

Homefront [X360]: Jumped right back to the section I left off at running up a metal staircase to a walkway full of enemies and me, with no cover, trying to blast them all with an assault rifle and avoid their grenades. There was no other way to approach this area, You're in a corridor with nowhere to go and a half dozen enemies raining fire upon you. It just pissed me off. 

Conflict Desert Storm [Original Xbox]: This, unlike it's sequel, is backwards compatible on Xbox 360 and it isn't a bad game. I played the tutorials which have you being lead around by a drill sargeant and shown how to move, fire, and direct squad mates. The layout is very intuitive and easy to learn and you can do a lot with it. I just got annoyed at this tank having laser frickin' vision and hitting me even just inside a doorway before I could run to the second floor for the anti-tank rockets. Russian made tank my ass, that thing is alien tech. 

Goblin Commander [NGC]: I really settled in to this one and played during commercials all during the football game. This plays exactly like a streamlined Warcraft II, and that's not surprising since some ex-Blizzard devs made it. It reminds me strongly of the Overlord series, which I have to think, took a few lessons from this. My only gripe is the AI enemies always seem overpowered and crazy fast to spawn new goblin troupes. It makes the game a little hectic and I like the art style so much, I just want to explore and find stuff Pikmin style in it. I'll be playing more of it tomorrow for sure. So I'll yap more about it then. 

Football [TV - real people sport]: Eagles vs. Panthers and the Panthers won. Panthers were, and are still, undefeated and I thought the Eagles would be in trouble but they put up a good fight and kept it close the whole game. It still frustrates me to see the Eagle's offense sputter as it does. At least running-back Matthews had an 80 yard run for a TD - highlight of the year so far. 

Day two of weekend shenanegans starts in just 8 short hours. Over and out.