PixlBit

I dipped my foot in a lot of games over the July 4th break. I was still on my random kick but also played some for rewards points, some gladly so. I have to admit, I have been using streaming in order to get Game Pass rewards points on games I mostly don't want to play. I only had to start them for the points anyway. Anyhow, here are the barrel-full of games I played. 

Dragon Quest Builders 2:  Played for MS rewards points. I got to the second island where you learn farming, but I somehow lost my hammer on the boat trip. I couldn't find it for the life of me, and so I couldn't progress without being able to cut down trees. Weird. I don't remember having this problem before. I got an achievement for the MS points anyway, so I stopped. 

Shadowrun Dragonfall: Plays just like Shadowrun Returns and is just as engaging storywise. I busted up a bunch of drek punks in a club and discovered my information source had been fried by a powerful cyberspace security attack. Well, I got his retro dvds from his safe, scrounged up an old dvd player at the dump, and got some key information anyway. I'm a melee expert troll like in Shadowrun Returns again. 

Library of Ruina: A very strange Game Pass game where you work for a librarian who is collecting souls and turning them into books, I think. You fight the patrons in turn-based card battles and try not to die. I kind of liked it, but I still don't know exactly what I was doing. 

Dirt 4: Full game downloaded. I played a half dozen races or so. You do have to keep to a very narrow path and try and not make any mistakes. A fellow player calls out every little nook and crany in the road ahead as you drive. It's pretty annoying. But, the game controls better than Dirt 3, and I kept at it a while before getting bored with driving down roads like cattle shoots.

Bloodstained Curse of the Moon: I didn't realize this was designed so closely to a 90s aethetic. It really looks like a SNES or NES game. I just can't get into it though. 

Gnomes Garden 3: I kept trying the last four or five levels I needed 3-stars on but couldn't get anywhere. Always 2-stars. Bah. I'm moving on. 

Phoenix Point: I love this game made by members of the XCOM dev team. It's so exactly like XCOM but with a different story. I played through the first few areas again to relearn the controls. Will return for more!

Spacelines from the Far Out: Neat casual game where you run a space yacht of sorts. You take guests to destinations in space and take care of their needs along the way. You also have to drive the ship, repair it, gas it, watch out for asteroids and do it in a timely fashion. I was not in the mood to multitask like crazy this day and moved on. 

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed: I declair this is the greatest cartoon racer ever! I love the controls, the tracks all based on game worlds, the many characters from those worlds and their vehicles, and the way the vehicles change from car to boat to plane within one race. I'm going to continue to work towards a better license and unlock everything I can. 

Chaos on Deponia: I bought this for $2 on a sale with my rewards space bucks - so, basically, for free. It's a point-and-click adventure game exactly like Monkey Island and such. It's a game from England, full of English accents. It's beautifully drawn, and I find the writting pretty funny. I am, however, stuck, yet again, in part of the game where I have to convince a cyborg lady to help with a revolution against an elitist space colony. Why can't there be a hint system like the remasters of the Monkey Island games? It probably, like I found in those games, would not help me much anyway. 

Microsoft Solitare: Xbox was slow, so i put in five minutes on a few rounds of Klondike and Spider Solitaire on my phone. I really hate Spider, but I'm learning new strategies to win it faster. 

Doom 3: I have bounced off this game many different times, and all for the same reason, darkness. There was a time when games wanted to show off their lighting mechanics. The game was, however, effective in making me jump at one point. I was hastily returning to the headquarters on Mars and thought I'd killed all the possessed workers when I opened the last airlock and a zombie-like undead soldier appeared and scared me. Ha! Good one Doom 3. You got me. But to heck with your fighting by flashlight. No!

Bloodroots: Game Pass game. Neat top-down view action/brawler. You rampage through levels and pick up anything you can to fight your way through the attackers. Get hit once, though, and your dead. There are different ways you can progress through a level making it interesting when you inevitably have to repeat levels. I, however, hate repeating levels. 

Farming Simulator 22: For rewards points, but I was interested. I harvested a field of wheat with a tractor, dug up another field and laid some seed in a third. Then I got in my pickup truck and took a tour around the farm. I couldn't figure out how to unload the harvester when it got full of wheat though. Darn game. 

Vandal Hearts Flames of Judgment: My old save file on this Xbox 360 Live arcade game was 2013! It's a tactical RPG like a Fire Emblem but simpler. I like it alot and want to replay it again and hunt down all the optional missions I missed the first itme. 

Minecraft: My friend Mark was making serious headway in his map which encouraged me to get back in there. I didn't join his game though. I made my own with the same seed file. I set myself the modest first goal of finding 64 coal. I did by spelunking a lot, built a house and saved. 

Gems of War: Mark got me back into it again. I did all but one Campaign mission left to me for the week. Now I have to think of something else to do until they reset. There's plenty, too much really. I don't like these games that never end, usually free-to-play ones like this. I've got to have some end goal. So I'm trying to focus on the achievements so I don't spend the whole day just matching gems for no reason. 

Well, that's an exhaustive list.. With all this, I'm starting to notice games I truely enjoy again and maybe staying with them a while. I do like sampling a lot of different games though.