PixlBit

Today I managed to avoid Forza Horizon 2 and dig into my list of freebees and back compat games. First up was the Fable II Pub Games (the whole Fable series just became availble of XBO) that I already owned. Then I played the whole of Gone Home (a games with gold freebee). Then I played a little bit of Halo: CE Anniversay (made back compat a week ago). Finally I saw the new Star Wars trailer during half time of the Monday Night Football game. 

Fable II Pub Games: These are new twists on various gambling games that fit the Fable II universe. Fortune's Tower is like a cross between black jack and solitare; Keystone is a variation of Craps; and Spinnerbox is just slots. My favorite is Fortune's Tower, so I played the most of that. There's a tournament version of each game where you play against AI. I did that most of the time. I came in second once, but most of the time I got eliminated. It was frustrating. I developed a method after a while but it wasn't perfect. You have to do some serious probability number crunching to do any of these games right, and I'm not a math person. I just had fun with it and lost a lot. 

Gone Home: A cool kind of 3D point-and-click style adventure where you explore a character's house to find out about her and what has happened. I found myself really absorbed in it. You search the rooms of the house and do a lot of reading of notes, journals and letters. You get to know the main character pretty well and discover why she is not in the house when you (her sister) gets there. There's also sort of a ghost story and a mystery concerning the previous owner of the house. I kept expecting a kind of horror story. The house is very dark and empty when you get there and I kept expecting to be jumped. There is a creepy feeling though and strange sounds and electrical phenomenon that makes you a littel bit nervous. It was a very touching story. I missed two of the 24 journals. After the ending, I went back in to find them but couldn't. I discovered a few other things, but not the journals, and I searched everywhere. Then i started a new game to listen to the commentary which you can turn on. I listen to the creators of this on the Idle Thumbs podcast, so it was kind of neat to hear them talk about the game they made. I need to go back and listen to the rest of it. Maybe it'll clue me in to the location of those last journal entries. It was a great experience and not a long one. I think I spent about 4 hours. 

Halo: CE Anniversary: I recently rebought this when it became back compat on XBO. I had traded my copy of Master Chief Collection and didn't want to spend $35 to get it back. I traded and got it for the $9 at my local, not-Gamestop, games store. I started on Heroic difficulty and got pretty far in the few hours. It's tough. You have to play very tactical because you take mucho damage and Elites are tough to kill. I was happy I was making progress. Last few times I gave up in disgust pretty soon after landing on the Halo ring. I'm hoping I can beat it on Heroic because there are a bunch of achievements associated with that playthrough. 

Finally, I watched the new Star Wars trailer. The old guard is making way for the new. I guess that's inevitable but I still can't quite get on board with these new lead characters. I'm having trouble identifying with them, I guess, or they just aren't great characters. I'm not sure which. I will see it though and should be fun for the spectical if nothing else. 

I'll be at it again on Thursday since the Eagles play that night. I'll be gaming all around and probably during the game as well. Football doesn't excite me the way it used to. Games do though. I hope I'll get my Fable Anniversay in the mail by then. I want to play Fable and Fable II again. Fable III, maybe not.