PixlBit

I broke out the OG Xbox and played some Halo CE, not without some technical hiccups either. Then I dove into all the Game Pass Quests for the week and month and found myself playing a lot of survival horror games. It was all a barrel of monkey laughs. 

That's three of the four generations of Xbox shown: X360, OGXbox and Xbox Series S. I played the middle one first. I had some hiccups. I couldn't get any color and a annoying flicker persistant with the component cable I was using. That was the then (2004) upgraded way to connect to a TV and get better colors. It had three colored jacks and two for audio. I switched back to what was contemporary with OG Xbox, the AV cable which is one yellow jack for colors and two audio. This got the color back and eliminated the flicker, but then I started getting blackouts at checkpoints in the game. It was like observing an old brain go temporarily unconscious every time it was asked to do math. I lived with it (just like I do with myself) and played through the part where Master Chief is rescuing soldiers from escape pods on the surface of the Halo installation. It was just as fun as it used to be. 

I found this item while playing Prey for Game Pass rewards points. I played all the games on the list for rewards points within Game Pass. Usually I spread them out over time. I got a bit farther in Prey this time (I've played it before) because it took me a while to find the nano device things to upgrade my skills. I needed to fix somthing and you need at least a level 2 engineering skill. I played on "story" difficulty, which is super easy, but it was still tense fighting those morphing aliens everywhere. I really found myself immersed in the environment of the game even though I only played an hour or two. 

I also played Dead By Daylight. I had to heal someone twice. It's a 4v1 multiplayer game. I played as one of the survivors. I played several rounds before I finally had a chance to heal someone. In the end of that session, I and one other player cooperated really well to fix the generators and unlock the door to escape. He got knocked down at the last minute by a guy dressed as Freddy Krueger and had to crawl to safetly while I ran for my life. I had healed him before but at this last moment, it was everyone for themselves. Haha. It was a great kind of movie ending to the session. It always surprises me how fun some of these brief moments I have with games I don't normally play. Thanks Game Pass Rewards. 

I broke my TV a bit too. It's tipped forward slightly because I broke something plastic inside the stand while plugging in cables. The hazards of retro play. I'm on the fence about getting a new TV. This one cost me all of $25 at Goodwill. I should splurge (especially since it's my birthday this weekend) and get a new one, but I like cheap. I'm Goodwill hunting at the moment. 

Mark and I got together and finished the last achievements in Lego Lord of the Rings. We synced an old controller to his Xbox One and got the co-op achievement. Then we found a cheat to completeing the "finish Mines of Moria in 15 minutes". You just enter the level, save and exit, and the achievement pops. We didn't discover that until we had tried to do it legit several times though with a timer. 

I'm almost finished with Skylanders: Giants. At least the main story missions. Then I'll look at what achievements I don't have yet and tackle them. My favorite character is the Whale who says, "Hail to the Whale" everytime you mount him on the portal of power. 

My favorite move is to belly flop across the screen while barfing water and fish everywhere. It doesn't get any better than that. 

Tomorrow, a trip to Classic Game Junkies near North Philly with my friend Mark. I'm looking at a PS2 top 12 game list to get at this moment. Reveals at next blog.