PixlBit

Monday was a day of e-sport, a day of whimsy. Lots of time spent in front of a TV with a controller in hand. It's what we do, we gamers. Halo, Peggle, Skylanders. It's genres all over the place, but that's how I like it. On to the details. 

I spent most of the day chasing achievements in Halo 1 within The Master Chief Collection on XBO. Mark and I finished the last cross-game playlist for an achievement and played a Halo 4 level for the first time in a while. Boy how the game has changed from Halo 1. So much more detail, variety of enemies, spiffy HUD, and RUNNING! Thank you for that. Drudging around in Halo 1 got very, very frustrating after a while. It seems so slow in every way compared to the newer games. But I wanted to stick to my backlog and only play Halo 1, so away from cross-game play I went. 

I discovered in the career section of the menus that you can look at achievements just related to one game and even have it launch the appropriate level when you click "A" on a particular achievement. I wish I'd discovered that a week ago. It would've saved me some time. I did lots of speed runs of levels to beat the par times for achievements while racking up kills and medals for other achievements. I got quite a few of them but it's been a while for some of these levels and I didn't always know the right direction to take. I came up short on many of them. I had more achievements to get when I stopped but I had finally had my fill of Halo at about 8pm. 

Then I downloaded Halo 3: ODST for $5 to play sometime later. I had wanted to play that one Halo 1 level made for firefight multiplayer mode. I didn't see a firefight mode in MC Collection and then remembered that firefight started with ODST and that Halo 1 level came with Halo: Reach. Maybe it's included with ODST now that it works with MC Collection. We'll see about that. But no multiplayer for me. Halo online would be punishment beyond doing levels on legendary with all skulls active - at least for me. 

So I popped in Skylanders Superchargers and played Peggle while the install took place. I only got a few levels in before Superchargers was ready. I let Mark choose some Skylanders but I started the game on my own. I guess he didn't want to jump in since we only had a few hours left in the day. I wanted to see the opening cut scenes and check out the setup. 

I'm using my favorite Supercharger at he moment, Smash Hit and Thump Truck. See pic:

                                  

You put both character and vehicle on the portal and they merge. In the game, Smash Hit runs around with a ball and chain weapon and then when you race, or go to an area with a road, you jump in the vehicle and do that. I got quickly to a hub island called Skylanders Academy where you can upgrage your ride and add parts to it. There's in-game purchases for the matterials to get this stuff, but you can just play the game to find parts instead. The game isn't pushy about it, but it's there. I love the customization of your vehicle. It really changes its look to add new parts, and it gives you different boosts to your attributes. 

The presentation of this game reminds me of Ratchet & Clank but with less fine detail. It's still a very busy world full of things to look at but everything is sort of rounded off and more cartoony. I like its look. It's presentation with a big wow factor: lots of exploding visuals and flashes of big primary colors. It's like that in the voice work department too: big characters with big personalities pushed to the edge. I know Kaos, the primary villain in all the Skylanders games, will eventually get on my nerves with his loony, over-the-top, bad guy talk. It's all fun though and seems to be well written so far. 

I tried some races and did the main story mission through several parts. I think you could really play this whole game with just the starter pack characters if you wanted. There are lots of side missions for characters in the sky or sea catagory. You get a land character and vehicle in the starter pack along with a Super Shot Stealth Elf. I kind of wish I'd resisted the urge to purchase all these figures I now have and seen how far I could get with just one character/vehicle. I'm going to try it with Smash Hit / Thump Truck and see what happens. I'm getting away from my obessive, got-to-do-everything, attitude and trying to keep things simple, despite my recent shopping binge. I want to stick to this one character/vehicle like nothing else mattered. 

Well, that's a weekend. On to the week. I'm already looking forward to my next offset (Sun-Mon) time off.