Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Blog: Games of July 2020


I took a "vacation" and played video games in the last half of July. I'm not sure that was the perfect way to spend my time, but it was pretty good. I think I'd have liked something incredibly deep like a Final Fantasy to sink into, but since I didn't really have that I did the best I could with what I had.

My top five games (by play time) for July 2019 were:
  1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Always a lovely game. It's not quite everything I could have hoped for in a "next-gen" animal crossing, but it certainly charming and I think compared to New Leaf, it does a good job of hiding the wires that make the world turn.

    Skye singing in the New Horizon town Square
    Skye always brings a touch of joy.

  2. Octopath Traveller - Knowing I'd need to get back to getting stuff done, I really pushed myself to play Octopath as much as I could. I ended up playing a bit more than I really enjoyed, since the game tends to push to long sessions. Overall however I think the game is pretty good. I'm planning a "Thought's on" post for Octopath, but that will be a little bit in coming.

    The heroes fight the huge villainous Left Crow and his minions.
    You know that thing where the ball gets really big when you're playing tennis...

  3. Paper Mario: The Origami King - I liked Paper Mario: Colour Splash, and I think that The Origami King improves on it in every way. I've been enjoying playing through and I really like the pacing and the length. It's been easy to play and I appreciate that I'll be able to finish it in a relatively contained time.

    Mario sits in a coffee shop with a Koopa Barista and a goomba and shy guy at the bar.
    Come for the jumping and hammering, stay for the chill coffee philosophy. 

  4. Wargroove - I was getting my butt kicked by Wargroove (I have a terrible condition of loving tactics games but also being really bad at them). I adjusted the difficulty down a bit and found it really fun and playable. I appreciated being able to play how I wanted to play without having to "be at the game's level". It's possible I may have to go back and play at a harder difficulty later on, but hopefully I'll have learned the systems better by then.

    One undead general pitches a fit about losing to a dog.
    Caeser wins hearts, minds and combat encouters.

  5. Xenonauts - I do really love the original X-COM style of gameplay and Xenonauts definitely does a good job of recreating the organization and careful combat. It does stick very closely to the original format, so I find myself thinking about elements I'd want in a new X-COM style game, especially when it comes to base building and organization.


Here's my total play time chart for July:



And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:




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