PixlBit

Worshiped the gods of gaming. Played a few. Here's the breakdown. 

Super Paper Mario: I'm trying to unload a bunch of old games, but I want to play them first to see what I want to keep. I started with Super Paper Mario and I'm pretty sure it's a keeper. I played through Chapter 3 (that's 1-3) and really dug it. The ability to turn 2D into 3D at any time is a revelation. I don't think I've done that in a game before. This seems to be less an RPG than an action-adventure game. You level up, but you mostly battle in real-time as you progress through the levels a lot like a regular Super Mario Bros game by jumping on enemies and using Pixls to manipulate things in various ways. These are little ghost-like characters that hover around you and give you abilities like the first one lets you examine the environment and the second one lets you grab and throw objects. I'm always amazed by something in Nintendo games (here it's the 2 to 3D effect). They're so creative and often break new ground in gameplay. 

Tales of Vesperia: I had to play it for Game Pass Rewards points, but I was very glad to revisit it. I started over and played it with as much auto-battle as I could apply. I'm curious how it works and if it works well. At least through the castle escape, it worked just fine. I eventually stopped, but I shunted it over to my external drive, which is now my backlog drive. Hopefully, I'll get back to it. 

Farm Together: I basically just made more slow progress towards gaining all plots of land. I usually play until I find myself waiting more than 15 minutes or so for a crop to be ready to complete a quest. Then I make sure all my fields are planted and I leave the game until another day. When I return, a lot of quests will be done and I can start on new ones. 

Forza Horizon 4: I finished the Super7 level 10 achievement but somehow couldn't get myself to leave the game for the rest of the time I had on Sunday. I did another Eliminator round and then started trying to collect car photographs for another achievement. I need 200 shots of cars and I ended at 182. I chased around online players on my map to see if they had cars I hadn't shot before; I did a few driviatar races to capture all the new cars at the starting line; I took photos of my own cars until I got to the Lamborghini Countach, which I couldn't stop driving. I have a new car love affair with that thing. This car was in production when I was in high school in the 80s and I remember seeing one once in my neighborhood. My memory was that it was a very loud car. 

Finally, I've discovered the daily set on Bing on my phone, which I've begun doing regularly for rewards points. They are tied to my Microsoft account so go into the same pool of points I get on Xbox for both regular rewards and Game Pass Rewards. I'm shooting for at least 8k points a month and $10 in money for more games. So far, I've hit that mark the last three months.  I think I'll easily get it this month as I'm already at 7k points. 

Well, that's a weekend done. Another work week to complete ahead.