PixlBit

Jumping around quite a bit trying new things on Xbox One. 

South Park Fractured But Whole demo. It's really great. I wish I owned it so I could finish it. This is about making fun of super hero movies. Lots of great irreverant jokes and situations. I found it very inventive too. I liked the way the menu system was introduced piece by piece as apps on your phone. And the implementation of social media into the story and gameplay. Really cool. Battles are fun too with rediculous power attacks. It's a laugh and fun to play. I love exploring and finding crazy stuff in drawers that you'll use later to craft items. When a sale on this and the previous game, Stick of Truth, gets good enough, I'll be all in. 

Maliwan Takedown. The latest addition to Borderlands 3 is basically a huge multi location battle ending in a mega boss that is super hard to defeat. Mark and I and several randoms finally got to the boss but after 3 of 4 tries, we still haven't beat it. It's going to come down to getting lucky by being paired with two bassass players. You need four players to do this thing, and four good players too. Mark and I are pretty good, but some players out there have managed to find some killer weapons that put them a step ahead. I want to play with them.  

Escapists 2. A recent addition to Game Pass that I tried. Its sort of a 2D environment with sprite characters. You are in a prison and have to break out. In the early stages you get objectives from other inmates. It helps you understand all the things you can craft and do in the prison in order to escape. It was pretty cool until I got a mission that seemed to have a bug in it. I dug a hole to escape and was told to go seek the inmate helping me, but the marker kept pointing me to the hole I'd already dug. So I couldn't find the guy to continue the mission. Ah well, I wasn't really in the mood for this sort of game anyway, but I liked it. The prison is full of other inmates and cops and a whole routine where you have to show up for lineups, go to meals and sleep on a schedule. Fights break out, and if you get caught escaping, you get sent to solitary for a while; or if you get hurt, sent to the infermery. It's pretty neat. 

Gnomes Garden: This is a simple resource gathering sim in a very cartoony style. It's fun for me like solitaire. But it can get hektic when your are going for 3 stars on each level. I had already beat this game but was replaying levels for a perfect score. It's timed, so the faster the better. This is where some strategy comes to play, making it more interesting. I improved my score on a dozen or so levels and then went to start the second game in the series. 

Gnomes Garden 2: The story continues. This time the princess is sent to another realm by a witch, and she has to get the gnomes to help her get back. I played the first dozen levels and got 3 stars on all but one. For some reason there isn't a meter showing the time passing, so it's difficult to know where you're at. I just did them all as fast as I could. I'm not sure what's wrong because the time meter is in all the other games. I'll figure it out. 

I also discovered Xbox Rewards. Every month there is a new set of quests. It's usually by playing certain games, getting a certain number of achievement points over time, or using an app. I checked it out, and without really trying, I had almost 10k points. So I redemed some for a chance to win a new laptop and gaming pc,and the rest I got money put into my online account. I think the points reset every month, so I used up as much as possible today. I think I'll start checking my rewards a little more often now that I know I can get $5 or more doing these "quests".