PixlBit

I played Switch, X360 and XSX systems. I'd like to make that Switch, PS4, XSX sometime. I always wanted to get to all three major systems during play sessions. 

Day 1 (half day):

Fire Emblem: Three Hosues (Switch): Oh, I'm really getting into this. I spent another in-game week. You spend time wandering the halls of the school, eating meals with students, doing tasks for other teachers and administrators, and teaching classes all to raise your team's stats before the main battle. At the end of the week, you fight a battle and level up. It all made me think a bit of Valkyria Chronicles. Like that game, you have two modes of activity, battle and school. That VC has come up at all in my mind absolutely cements it that I will buy this game later this week. 

Conan Exiles (XSX): I had to download this massive 150GB game again for a Game Pass Monthly quest. I'll keep it on my external drive in case it comes up again. That takes way too long. Anyway, I had to make 20 items. I popped back in with my previous character, who hadn't done much of anything so far, so he was barely dressed and without equipment. I managed to scrabble together a bunch of sticks and stones to make an axe and cut some vegetation to make some clothes. More importantly though, I had to find water in the desert you start in. Luckily I found a river but then got speared by natives.

Second life, I fought some turtle-like things and made a bedroll out of 'em. Then I tried to cook some food but found it very tricky to do. I got the fire built and stored meat there, but it wouldn't cook. This menu system is a bit tricky to figure out. But, I had played a bit beyond the making of 20 items and so enjoyed it.

This is a MMO. I set it for PvE but didn't see any real people in the time I played. 

Power Wash Simulator (XSX): I quickly replayed a level for an achievement. I had to wash a bungalo but leave the gutters for last. Not hard. 

Lego Marvel Super Heroes (XSX): I got past the area I was stuck in last week. The Invisible Woman is key to a lot of areas with her psi-powers. It's just a little tricky to figure out just how to use them. Frustrating. HULK SMASH!

The Forgotten City (XSX): Tried this new release out on Game Pass. It's a first-person adventure game in a big open world.

You start out not knowing what happened except some accident. You meet a woman who wants you to find her boyfriend in some old roman ruins. I played it real grumpy and uncooperative. I don't know who she is, why should I just go on a fetch quest for her? I resisted as much as possible, but the game inevitably steers you to entering the ruins.

Of course, this takes you to another dimension in a "real" roman town where some mysterious power is keeping everyone captive. You have to talk to everyone and get interested in them, inevitably leading to more fetchy-type questing. I wasn't going for it, so I did what I wanted, explored, got killed by an assassin I insulted, and met a guy in a cave who was annoyingly enigmatic. I, honestly, was not in the mood to solve someone else's mystery. I only wanted to make trouble, and since there wasn't much trouble to make, I stopped playing. Fun though. In a different mood I'd have stuck with it. 

Forza Horizon 5 (XSX): I had just a half hour or so before the end of game time, so I found an achievement to go after that might be short. It was to destroy 500 cactus during Mexico's wet season. That, I found out, was Summer, and I was luckily in Summer when I started, so off-road I went and smashed and smashed and smashed. It occured to me that in the real world this would be an heinous ecological crime. The Summer cactus are soft, being full of water I suspect, and I was just mowing them down with my super car. Edward Abbey (nature writer who wrote Monkey-Wrench Gang and Desert Solitaire) would be rolling in his grave. 

Day 2: 

Lego Lord of the Rings (X360): I got so carried away with this once I got comfortable with the quest system. People in the various locations in Middle Earth will give you quests to either find or make an item for them. You collect mythril bricks to make items and replay levels to find items. So I started doing all the quests in Hobbiton. And I made second breakfast. 

I also looked up how to blow things up, 'cus. . . that's what you do in vidya games. Only one character, the Berzerker (remember that guy who carries the torch to blow up the bomb under the walls of Helm's Deep in the movie/book?) can blow up things. The internets said you can make the mythril fireworks to blow up stuff with any character, but that thing won't blow up a plain rock, much less a metalic rock. Berzerker dude did the job, though, to my great delight.

Game Room (X360): I opened this again just to see if it worked and whether I had Intellivision's Sea Battle (I had forgotten if I had ever bought it). The app took forever to load. I thought it was broken, but it came up eventually. All my games were still there, but now you can't even see the ones you haven't bought, like my favorite Intellivision game Sea Battle. I guess it doesn't matter though because the store is gone now anyway. They had a lot of Konami games which, I don't think, are on any other collection. Luckily I bought a handfull of them. It's a weird place these old virual spaces. I spent money there. Will it survive forever? I feel like it could disappear any time. It doesn't seem fair. 

Farm Together (XSX): I spent so much time on Lego LotRs, I had only a little time left to harvest for my previous quests and start new ones. I can sell spices now, and I started cooking for tickets again. Tickets help you buy furnishings for your houses and feed you workers, when you get them.

I'm hoping I don't get frustrated with this game down the road like every other time I've played it. I'm thinking of ways to keep things simple so that when my farm is enormous, I can handle it. To unlock those last few plots of land you need a lot, and I mean a lot, of diamonds earned from selling crops. I'm taking it slow and easy, taking my time, little by little. 

Tomorrow is another game day. It's dessert after my workdays' meals.