Blog: Games of August 2020

Having taken a good chunk of July off to play video games (and like, vacation, sort of), I started back to getting things done. As such I played a little less and tried to focus a bit more on one game at a time.

My top five games (by play time) for August were:

1. Golf Story - I love Mario Golf, and I'm patiently waiting for a new one on the switch. In the mean time, I watched Proton Jon play Golf Story on his stream back at the end of July and the itch got me. I really enjoyed the golf mechanic, and thought the story was fairly charming. I think I'm going to do a post about it, but its definitely interesting to mix RPG mechanics with non-combat mechanics.
   
   

   

   Victory!

   
   
2. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Still enjoying the daily grind in ACNH. Feeling a bit sad that there's stuff missing from New Leaf. I'm sure COVID sheltering has affected Nintendo's plans for the game, but the game is wearing just a touch thin finally.
   
   

   

   Fireworks!

   
   


3. Paper Mario: The Origami King - I really enjoyed The Origami King. Conversely to Golf Story I think RPG mechanics without experience griding actually works very well. The Paper Mario games are also extremely well written and this one was no exception.
   
   

   

   Paper!

   
   


4. XCOM: Chimera Squad - I think taking modern XCOM and breaking it down into bite sized chunks works really well. I've been enjoying Chimera Squad more than I remember enjoying XCOM 2. It's not always the tactical game I want, but overall I think it's great.
   
   

   

   Clear!

   
   


5. Octopath Traveller - I *want* to like Octopath, but compared to Golf Story and The Origami King, this is really hard to pick up. That's a bit on the mechanics, it's very slow in the UI and requires a lot of menuing. The addition of very, very slow cut scenes is also not helpful. Finally, while I love the game's combat, if you are low leveled some fights can last up to half an hour for no particular pay off. I'm left wishing for them to use the engine to remake Final Fantasy VI.
   
   

   

   Victory!

   
   

Here's my total play time chart for August:

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