PixlBit

Over the Thanksgiving holidays I played quite a few games on Xbox. I'll try and list them below, but December, which starts today, is going to be nothing but Switch games, especially the Super Mario RPG remake I got last month. I've discovered that if I don't put the Xbox away, I will never get to anything else, so into a case it goes. I have plans for 2024, so I may not use it again until next September. More on that later. Onto the last two weeks' plays. 

Stuff I played longer than an hour:

Pac-Man Championship Edition 2: I'm still amazed at good this modernization of an 80s arcade game went. I had a lot of fun going through the tutorial levels and a bunch of the unlockable levels. 

The Big Con: It feels like an old PC adventure game. Your mother owns a video store that is soon to be taken over by the shady people who lease the space. So what do you do? Become shady yourself and take up with a rich ner-do-well youth and learn the ways of crime starting with pick pocketing, moving on to numerous other petty scams. You goal is to earn enough to get your mother out of debt. A good cause, but at what cost, I wonder. I felt a little weird learning the scams, but it was fun. 

Clicker Heroes/DPS Idle/Idle Champions/Vampire Survivors: Lumping all the auto-battlers together here. These games are sort of endless, which discourages me after a while. I like a goal to get to and a feeling of accomplishment. Everytime you beat a boss or whatnot, there is a bigger one waiting for you ad infinitum. Make it stop!

Viva Pinata Party Animals: Surprisingly fun collection of races and minigames with the Viva Pinata animals. You can play up to four players online, if you can find anyone. Mad Krammer and I played it online a bunch of times, and I went after achievements solo. 

Dungeon Siege III: I got really into this action RPG but couldn't figure out how to heal up after a tough battle. There are no potions and no places to sleep that I could find. Weird. I feel like I must've missed something. I'll try again sometime because I really liked it. 

Until The Last Plane: I beat the easy levels for the Americans and Russians but couldn't beat the two harder levels. The Germans, however, I got through easy and normal before being beat on the most difficult level. I really love this game, if only I could manage the cash in the US campaign and the political influence (used as currency) in the Russian one. 

Saint's Row The Third: I think this is where Saint's Row went really, really zanny, and I love it. You can customize your character in any wacky way and it'll show up in every aspect of the game. I love that. Gameplay is destructive as heck and the story is silly to the extreme. It's just a whole lot of fun, like GTA with more humor and less realism. Perfect!

Wargroove: Steadily trying to beat the main story line. I think I'm in Act 4 or 5 now. Levels take a good long time, so I usually just do one and then play other things in a sitting. I'm glad to finally make some more progess on this best modern take on Advance Wars. Wish it had a portable version or was released for 3DS when that was a thing. I have Wargroove 2 on Switch now, so that will do. 

Minecraft: For some reason Mad Krammer and I got back into this and played many seeds in survival mode trying to get armored up and find diamonds. The mobs in the current version are so darn aggressive and ever present even on easy difficulty. It's fun, but many times super annoying things happen such as Creepers roaming in daylight hours and Skeletons shooting arrows with machine gun rapidily. I can't tell you how many deaths I had and fumed over. I finally had enough and wouldn't play anymore. 

Puzzle Quest 3: I wish this wasn't free-to-play, but I'm still enjoying it. The quest never ends and probably not the story either. I'd rather a single, time-limited story like in the first game, but I'll take what I can get. 

Suduko/Mahjong/Wordament: Clearing up achievements outside the dailies at the end of the month. Now I'm back to the dailies today. The end is in sight for all of them. I don't think I'll put another game on my phone for a while. It's a little too distracting for me during work-days. 

An Hour or less:

Mineke's Night Market
Zoo Tycoon
Railway Empire 2
Chivalry 2
Lies of Astaroth
Tembo The Badass Elephant
Onechanbara
Pinball M
Car Mechanic Simulator 2021

Those short plays just finished off my Game Pass rewards for the month. I'll be off the subscription for a while now as I get to the Switch and then lots of retro systems for most of 2024. I can't wait.