PixlBit

A whole lot, but not really because some I just looked at or played a short time. Still, a good long list. Here we go. 

Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones: My randomly rolled game that I'm trying to play at home during the week (I rolled one for the week and one for the weekend - see below). I originally rolled the first Fire Emblem on GBA but I couldn't get it working until my friend used his Nintendo cleaning kit on it. So I started playing Fire Emblem Sacred Stones on my TV via the Gamecube GameBoy Player. Boy! This game looks great and plays great. It's a fantasy Advance Wars, is how I look at it. Same developer, Intelligent Systems. I'm loving it, but I'm having some trouble finding the time so I've only played into the first few missions in Sacred Stones so far. 

Microsoft Solitaire Collection: I reinstalled this on my phone and got an achievement just for signing in again after a long break. I may or may not get into it again. So far I don't have the time for it, but you never know. Maybe I'll be in a line at the gas pump soon. 

Ori and the Will of the Wisps: Game Pass made me play it for points. Speaking of which, I got my 10k last month even though I thought I didn't. Seems the point count on Bing on my phone doesn't always exactly match with that shown on my Xbox. Yeah! Another $10! Anyway, Ori is a great game that looks amazing, but I'm pretty bad at it apparently. I didn't feel like torturing myself any more than necessary so I didn't play it for very long. 

Max: The Curse of Brotherhood: Game Pass rewards again. I've played it before and went pretty far but, like Ori, I didn't want to get stuck again somewhere so I just did the required task of drawing 5 objects. Great 2D side-scrolling action/puzzle game though, if you can make it all the way through. 

Dragon Age Inquisition: Game Pass monthly quest. I've bounced off this game a few times before but this time I got really into it. I played it a good long time. It's pretty great. I love how you have a four player team that you can control. I customized the AI routines and only used my created character, but once I had to switch to my Mage into order to revive me. I really liked it until I came across a large beast in the wilds that seemingly couldn't be killed. I tried to leave the area but it followed my team and killed everyone. I got a game over screen and decided to stop. I'm looking forward to returning to it someday though. 

FAR: Changing Tides:  Day-one release on Game Pass. I had preordered it on Game Pass months ago liking the graphic style of it. It's a 2D left-to-right scrolling survival game similar to something like Limbo or Inside. You awake on a planet full of ruins and find a functional piece of a space ship (I presume) that can float on water and so becomes your ship. It has a sail attached to start but along the way you pick up power packs that reveal its other abilities. You just have to periodically clear a path, sometimes leaving the ship to solve a puzzle. It's very cool, and looks amazing. I did, as usual with these types of games, get stuck, but I went pretty far into the game before that happened. I really like these games where you see a cutaway of your craft so you can navigate inside it. Bomber Squad did that too. 

The Flame in the Flood: This was a Games with Gold freebie this month. It's a survival game. You have a raft and float downstream stopping at shores and islands along the way to find resources to survive. I liked it a lot. I eventually died of starvation. I figured out how to catch a rabbit, got one, then built a fire to cook it. Then it rained and ruined the fire. Before I could sleep through the rain, rebuild the fire, and eat, I got chased off the island by a wild boar. I rafted down to an island that had a medical building but it was still raining and I couldn't build a fire. I finally, with a shred of health left, tried to sleep in one of the buildings to wait out the rain, but I died. Fun! I stopped because, I take a game-over screen as an opportunity to try something else. Maybe I'll return. 

Asphalt 9: Legends: Did my routine of daily challenges. I also played a bunch more campaign missions trying to find a need to upgrade a car. I didn't have any I could upgrade to keep going in the campaign, so I stopped for the day. Very fun free-to-play game. I'm at it every week. 

Red Dead Redemption: Part of my randomly rolled series. I rolled Xbox 360 and a 4 or something on the top 100 best 360 games on Metacritic. I already own this game digitally, so I was glad to revisit it.

There's a good reason this game is so high on the best-of-360 list. Its story is delivered in AAA film quality with great dialog, voice acting, and even stellar animation. It's incredible how they managed to edit scenes like a film and get the bodies to move in such a way that made it feel like a great western flick. Also the horses look and move incredibly realistically. I love to drive in real life and so riding a horse around the prairie is like second nature to me. So fun to roam around and pick up missions and see how the various side-stories play out. It gives a great sense of the natural look to the prairie both at day and night. I was at the end of my weekend of gaming (my weekend is thurs-fri right now) so I built a camp fire and saved the game for later. I'm going to try and play the heck out of this week to week. 

Greedfall: Another monthly Game Pass quest game I just booted up to remind me what it was. I've played it before. I believe it takes place in the 18th century or maybe 17th. In any case, all about sailing ships and muskets and such - Three Musketeers period. Anyway, a very detailed look to this game. Reminds me of The Order 1886 from a while back. It's very cool and I'll get into it next week again and see if I can not get shot while swiming around a sailing ship like last time. 

Gems of War: I ran through the daily adventures and finally won all nine battles. They always throw an impossible or nearly impossible fight at the end of it. I played some PvP and Kingdom quests in order to rack up wins against blue enemies for a Quest challenge. My friend played nothing but this game all weekend. There's a lot you can do if you don't mind playing match-three gameplay alot. This free-to-play game is great for short or long play sessions.