Video Games of October 2023

October was a complicated month, so I wasn't thinking too much about what I really played. I did install steam on my Mac and so that was nice to expand the pool, although there's not a lot that plays nicely on my 2016 mac.

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

1. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I'm reaching the ending of my first play through. Maybe should have pushed thought quicker, just to let the story go at speed. ToTK has been
   
   


2. Dicey Dungeons - This has been pretty good for quick pick up and play situations. The number of different ways to approach the core concept of role dice and use them to activate cards is fun alghough, I would love a design my own deck and just play with things, even if it would be stupidly imbalanced.
   
   


3. Pikmin 4 - Continues to be solid and I appreciate just how much there is. Have drifted off in the last little bit, but I'm sure I'll be back.
   
   


4. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - It snowed, and just to confuse everyone, rather than playing Ogre Battle, I played Tactics Ogre. It's a little thin for story, but the actual combat in an encounter is always fun.
   
   


5. Hades - Still great. Does not like my Mac's keyboard.
   
   

Here's my total play time for October:

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

Games of September 2023

I'm trying to focus on other stuff and be intentional with my play time, so my play time was down overall for September and most days I didn't play more than an hour. In trying to be intentional I'm trying to play things I find fulfilling and so I took a deep breath and installed Steam on my Mac Book. I'll eventually get my gaming PC fixed back up, but this will do for today (assuming the laptop survivies, it is a 2016 model).

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

1. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I spent a lot of my time in Tears of the Kingdom wandering around and finishing things up. I'm not sure that hunting almost everything down on the first playthrough has been that good of a choice, but as always the moment-to-moment game play is good so it's usually fun.
   
   


2. Pikmin 4 - Pikmin 4 is a solid game. The only complaint I really have is that it's menu is on a different button than Tears of the Kingdom. It's a little bit conflicting because I *like* Pikmin 3 more, but as I said last month, I'm so glad to have this much more pikmin to play.
   
   


3. Final Fantasy XII - I didn't touch this much and I kinda didn't miss it. There are parts of FFXII which are pretty good, but it's slow and grindy and playing it never really feels that rewarding. I enjoy the concept of the game a lot more than I really like playing it.
   
   



4. Hades - Uh, so, I can play games on my Mac Book. I maybe *shouldn't* play games on my Mac Book, but I can.

   

   Uh, please ignore the melting Mac Book.

   But seriously, Hades is still really good.



5. Super Mario World - I'm not quite sure what's wrong with me that there are so few games that I really love the controls in, but I'm kinda fussy and sometimes Super Mario World is still somehow the game that fits.
   
   

Here's my total play time for September:

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

Games of August 2023

August is always a busy month and it's a transitional one for what I play and how. I tend to think about games for summer and games for fall and August always sits in the middle. My partner also traveled a bunch in August so, I didn't play much of Tears of the Kingdom, which she has mostly watched me play. Instead I picked up Final Fantasy XII, and also poked Pikmin 4. I also played a bit of Cursed Treasure 2 (remastered!) which has suggested to me that it's probably time to get my PC fixed up again so that I can do some medium screen gaming (also also maybe give some money to game makers that aren't Nintendo.

August was also not my greatest month for keeping things organized, so the data for the month is artificially reconstructed in places, but close enough for my purposes.

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

1. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age - I find that I like FFXII provided that I don't invest too heavily in it. Which, if you look at my earlier thoughts on the game matches that, half-hour a day model. If you try to rush it, or to push through, the game pushes back and you find yourself under-levelled and under-equipped. It needs to be played slowly and steadily and you get to advance the plot once or twice a week.
   
   
   There's enough fun in it, especially now that I'm focused on gear and organizing gambits that I keep playing, but I find it makes it really hard to invest in the game. It's done not badly for my audio book listening, and to my watch times for PlayFrame and Noah Gervais.
   


2. Pikmin 4 - If I had a complaint about Pikmin 3 it's that there wasn't enough of it. Pikmin 4 is a brilliant answer to that problem in that a) it exists and b) there's quite a bit of it. As a bonus, c) it's an excellent improvement on all of the elements of all of the games. This is the best Pikmin game and it's really fun. I do wish it was a little better at tutorializing things (I know asking Nintendo for more tutorials is a dangerous game). I played like 10 hours not realising that you could switch to your dog co-captain (in addition to riding them and having them fight all your fights.)
   
   


3. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I mostly didn't play ToTK this month, but did pick it up a couple of times when I was feeling low energy or down. One of the brilliant things about Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is how easy it is to jump in and find something interesting to do or find something interesting to see. I really appreciate that deeply absorbing nature.
   
   

Here's my total play time for August:

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

Video Games of July 2023

I felt a bit flat overall in July and mostly disappeared into the immense depths of Tears of the Kingdom. I poked a couple of other things, before switching over to Final Fantasy XII at the end of the month when my partner was out of town. 

I haven't been enjoying game tracking as much the last little while and I'm going to institute a cut off that if I didn't play an hour of the game I'm not going to write about it. (Unless I want to, it's my blog).

My top three games (by play time) for July were:

1. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I've really been plumbing the depths of the side stories and experiences in Tears of the Kingdom. Just like Breath of the Wild the amount of good things to go and do is hard to imagine. I have really distracted myself from the main story, so that's starting to feel a bit vague, but I'm sure once I pick it up again the game will snap back into focus.
   
   


2. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - Vroom vroom. Spent a bit of time working on time trials.
   
   


3. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age - I needed something to play that my partner wasn't too invested in. With Dan Floyd playing both FFXIV and FFXVI on Playframe I've been thinking about Final Fantasy more and figured it was a good time to pick this up on switch. Despite having played the first few hours not that long ago, it's interesting how much I've forgotten. I like the game but I can't say it's one of the most gripping, not from story or game play or style even.
   
   

Here's my total play time for July:

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

Video Games of June 2023

June was a relatively chill month. I mostly put in an hour or two on Tears of the Kingdom and also tried to get other stuff done. I felt pretty happy with the month. 

I've stopped recording mobile games. I've also mostly stopped playing them, but I picked up the full blown successor to "Seedship", "Beyond the Chiron Gate". It's a text-based game, where you make decisions about building a crew to investigate a wormhole network with the nifty little caveat that you can never go back to a system after you've found it. I've enjoyed it quite a bit, although the fact that some of the descriptions are repeated frequently enough that it makes it a little hard to get really invested in the lives of any of your little team flying through space. Certainly worth the price to play.

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

1. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - ToTK has been really good. As I said in May, it a lot denser and more vibrant than Breath of the Wild. The ways they've expanded the core concepts in BoTW are really fun and there's usually at least "lne more thing" that I want to do every time I play. The story telling is also quite well done and they balanced the story with the messing around really well this time.
   
   


2. Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp - I played the first few missions and had some fun with Advance Wars, but then ground to a halt when I hit a level I couldn't solve. If you've been reading for a while, you'll know that as much as I *like* tactics games, I'm often not very good at them, and games in the Advance Wars style really seem to stymie me. I find I'm often slow to solve puzzles in a lot of cases, and tactics games that don't give me an unreasonable breadth of actions tend to be a struggle. I may go back, I think they did some good work in the rerelease, but the core game play hasn't been my jam.
   
   


3. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - Vroom vroom, as always. Lately I've been looking for something that's easy to play but kind of interesting for those quick moments when I don't want to risk getting sucked into Tears of the Kingdom. Maybe time to look into reviving my gaming PC.
   
   


4. Donkey Kong Country (NSO - SNES) - Been watching Dan and Dan play through Donkey Kong Country 2 on PlayFrame. I figured I'd see how it felt to play again and how far I could get. SNES platformers from this era also kinda match for that easy to get into game I'm looking for. It's also intersting to look at how games from that era weren't good at really communicating with players how to do well (or even to play) which I think is a mix of a lot of business decissions (don't want those kids renting these games) and technical ones (we already have all the sprites we can have on screen). As a kid, DKC was really impressive, looking back on it from today it seems really limited.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for June:

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

Video Games of May 2023

Given that I put at least 300 hours into Breath of the Wild, it's probably not a surprise that I pretty much only played Tears of the Kingdom after it came out.

I'm excluding a bunch of dipping into to various Mario games because I needed some extra screen shots to acompany my Mario Memories.

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

1. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I'm really enjoying Tears of the Kingdom. It has the same density of interest that Breath of the Wild did, but the variety of things to do and the interest of those things is much higher. The game feels more vibrant than its predecessor and it's delightful at practically every moment. Also, rocket shields.
   
   


2. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - I played this a little bit while waiting for the Tears of the Kingdom release, but also to test out our new portable Switch dock. While I think Tears of the Kingdom is more moment to momefffnt fun, Breath of the Wild still has a beauty all of it's own.
   
   


3. Mario Kart 8 - Vroom vroom.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for June:

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

Games of July 2022

Time is funny. When I play Eastward, it bends all of my expectation of time and I'm perpetually surprised at how little I played it. When I play Loop Hero it seems to go the other way and I feel like I played for a few minutes when an hour has passed.

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

1. Loop Hero - Loop Hero is pretty good. I'm not sure I'd have started playing it, but a few people online swore by it and it wandered past me when I was buying stuff on the Nintendo eShop. (I still need to fix my PC). It's a mix of RPG and Rogue-like and NES throwback nostalgia bait, but at it's heart it has a lot of interesting ideas and the game play is really compelling.

   

   I'm reminded of a short story Navigators by Mike Meginnis, which I listened to LeVar Burton read on his podcast. The stories aren't exactly similar, but there's something about the stories that we wove into games on the NES or Atari where we filled in a certain dark richness. Loop Hero puts that up front and I guess follows a trend for gothic themes right now. (Still waiting on Nona the Ninth.)
   
   



2. Hollow Knight - I really love the feeling of getting better as I keep playing Hollow Knight. I also really enjoy the depth of the story told in the game and shape of it in general.
   
   
   



3. Eastward - Eastward is a very good game. I pushed through to complete it and I'm really glad I did. As I've said I'm fascinated by how dense it is. I feel like I played significantly more Eastward than I did Loop Hero or Hollow Knight, but as you can see I didn't play that much. The story is good, if a little convoluted, but the characters really stand out. If you like the idea of a slightly dark adventure with good people in the style of earthbound, then I think you'll like this game.

   

   The combat feels like it's just on the verge of being really interesting. Even though it felt good to play, I found it to be a little limited, but I think there where quite a few things I didn't really understand how to use properly. When I finished the game, I wanted to play it again right away to really get good at the combat.

   
   
   


4. Triangle Strategy - I'm very slowly trying to work my way through to the "Good Ending". I'm disappointed that the game is so slow and the story ends up being rather frustrating (or maybe dull). The actual tactical game play is fantastic and I think the voting mechanic is really interesting. It's another really good game, but it's hard to play and doesn't pay off as well as some others.
   
   
   


5. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - I don't know why this is on the list again, but here it is. I guess I'll say it's possibly the easiest game to pick up and play.
   
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for July:

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

Video Games of March 2022

Most of my March got taken over by Breath of the Wild and Triangle Strategy. I didn't manage to keep up my "play whatever whenever it feels good" plan from January and February, but that's alright. There are plenty of games and plenty of days and it's nice to spend more time with something new ... and something older...

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

1. Triangle Strategy - I like Triangle Strategy. It's not perfect, but the game play is pretty fun. The tactical combat stages are great, and especially the ones you can replay whenever you want have been a lot of fun, especially as you try out different combinations of units. I also like the mechanic where your council votes on what happens next and you have to persuade them how you'd like them to vote (although I really struggle to get them to vote how I want.
   
   

   

   (Another) Fight for the bridge

   The game is really slow in the way it tells its story. I'm a little frustrated with the pacing, although I'm struggling to detect exactly why. There's some repeated storytelling, and the voice acting is very isolated, but honestly as soon as they let me out of the cutscene I'm happy again.
   
   


2. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - I really didn't mean to put this much time into Breath of the Wild, but here we are again. What's interesting this time is that I actually replaced a lot of my quick mid-day sessions with Breath of the Wild. I should have known, but it's surprisingly easy to drop into for fifteen minutes, find something interesting or do a shrine and then get on with your day. It's always a joy, it's still my favourite game and it's been fun to find a new way to enjoy it.
   
   

   

   Down into the Valley



3. Ogre Battle 64 - I mostly played Ogre Battle while sick. The fact that it more or less plays itself is extremely helpful.
   
   

   

   Ogres but There's Always Time to Party



4. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - As the one person who really liked the WiiU and bought almost everything which came out for it, I've strongly resisted rebuying all of those games for Switch. The new DLC announced for Mario Kart 8: Deluxe pushed into finally picking it up and I've really enjoyed it.
   
   

   

   The Fastest Space Queen



5. Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 - I ... like Puyo Puyo. I play Tetris like every game is getting reviewed to let me into the world championship, and sometimes that's exactly what I want from a puzzle game. The bit where I don't have any instinct for Puyo Puyo makes it a lot of fun to just jump into (and I'm getting better).
   
   

   

   I Have No Idea What's Happening

Here's my total play time chart for March:

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

Video Games of February 2022

 

February was a weird. I mean, there was a lot weird in February, but particularly I lost that happiness and flexibility about playing that I was feeling in January. So I mostly played comfort games and at least I managed to be a little productive in the other areas of my life. I'm still not feeling right, but hopefully I'll get a little spark back before too long.

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

1. Ogre Battle 64 - It's been a little bit since the last time I played, but on Axe of the Blood God they've been talking lots of strategy games lately and I jumped back in. Also it snowed. Are you surprised?
   
   
   
   
   I tend to feel a little defensive about Ogre Battle, and it still has a lot of features that aren't as polished as they could be. This play through I'm trying to play a style that's a little different than what I usually do and seeing the game from that different perspective has showed me quite a few elements that are pretty cool. Also I kicked off the vampire story line by accident, so that was fun.
   
   


2. Hollow Knight - This game is pretty great. The more I play the more impressed I am and the better I get. 
   
   
   


3. Eastward - I've continued to play Eastward, and enjoyed it a lot. The dark Earthbound / Mother 3 vibes are strong and that leaves me feeling hesitant to invest in the characters or the world. I'm also finding that there's a bit of padding in the section in the 3rd town I'm in now, which makes me want to play a little less, but I'm sure I'll pick it back up.
   
   
   


4. Triangle Strategy - I'm sure part of the reason they're talking about strategy games on Axe of the Blood God is the forthcoming release of Triangle Strategy. Along with Ogre Battle, I loved Final Fantasy Tactics (made by some of the same people). It's a broken game with a lot of weird jankiness, but there's just something that is deeply satisfying about moving pixel characters across an isometric grid and getting to watch attack each other with cool animations.
   
   
   
   
   The little bit they give you to play in the demo for Triangle Strategy felt like it honoured a lot of that history, but have some good modern design. The demo does seem to have some technical flaws, but overall I'm pretty excited to play the full game later this week.
   
   Stephen Georg put out a tweet, transposing the name to "Strangle Tragedy" and that has stuck with me hard. Also it feels like it may be a synopsis of the plot to come...
   
   


5. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - I wanted to find something simple but fulfilling to play and I couldn't figure out what I wanted. Out of a bit of desperation I put Breath of the Wild in, spent a few minutes feeling like it wasn't as good as the remake of Skyward Sword, but after that, I was back in and I still think this is my favourite game. 
   
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for February:

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

Blog: Games of April 2021

April was a pretty good month. I did better at striking the balance between enjoying playing games and getting other stuff done too. I didn't play as few games as I did last month, but I was pretty focused and enjoyed what I played.

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

1. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - The Wii sequel to Path of Radiance. It feels like the developers got to take all of the things that worked well in Path of Radiance and build on them. Unlike pretty much any other Fire Emblem game I can think of, it's divided into several parts where you run totally different armies with a lot of different characters. That's been interesting from a story perspective and it does let you make better use of all of the characters. I'm pretty sure I played this all the way through when it came out, but I really don't remember any of it any more.
   
   


2. Battle Brothers - It's still a ton of fun, but the game does seem to require some good decisions (and luck) early in the game to succeed later on. I think the heavy world randomness is also making the game a little bit harder than it needs to be. I find that interesting because in the battles, the game does a very good job of allowing you to manage and mitigate bad randomness (certainly compared to the Fire Emblem games, for example) but it feels like some worlds are just less winnable than others. Still, overall, I'm really enjoying the moment-to-moment gameplay and learning about the ways to do better later in the game.
   
   


3. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance - Compared to Radiant Dawn, I do remember this one pretty well. I think some of my enjoyment stems from nostalgia, but it seems like a very balanced Fire Emblem game both in terms of difficulty and in terms of gameplay and story. I think every aspect of the game gets improved on in later sequels, but it feels like this has a lot of seeds for what went well in the later games.
   
   


4. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - I am bad at this game and I would like to be not quite so bad. I picked it up thanks to watching Play Frame's Let's Play of the Link to the Past / Super Metroid randomizer. I've enjoyed it and I want to keep playing to some extent just to get to the point where I can play through mostly knowing what I'm doing and not getting myself into stupid situations. Playing this also left me really wanting to replay Ocarina of Time, particularly thinking about how OoT built out so many things that are hinted at in A Link to the Past, but aren't really included.
   
   


5. New Pokemon Snap - I suppose I played the original game, but I don't really remember doing it. I feel a bit like I was mostly interested in New Pokemon Snap because it's a new game that I could pick up day one, during a pandemic where I'm feeling a little cabinfevery. It's bright and sparkly and pretty fun. I think it also has quite a bit of depth and replay, although I'm not sure I'm interested in mastering it.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for April:

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

Blog: Games of January 2021

January was a transitional month for me, so I had a different month playing games. My days are a little more structured and I'm much more able to take an evening or a day on the weekend to play. I've also been trying to play more intentionally, and focus on a couple of games.

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

1. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity - The more I play Age of Calamity, the more interesting I find it. I do find that the musou style of game play doesn't really appeal to me, but with practice I do feel like I'm doing epic things now. The story and especially the cutscenes are really well done and have made it worth playing.
   
   


2. Dicey Dungeons - I needed to find something to enjoy during lunch. Now given that I work, take lunch, play PC games and do my hobbies all at the same desk, maybe I *don't* need something to enjoy during lunch, but I'm still looking. Dicey Dungeons has more-or-less been a good fit for that, but I am finding I'm hitting a bit of a wall as I get to its harder difficulties. It's fun and has a lot of good mechanics, but the pacing is a bit harsh.
   
   


3. Hades - Still totally awesome, but I've been playing a bit less just due to focusing on other things. The one thing I find frustrating is that if I don't play for a few days, my next few runs are really rough.
   
   


4. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Uh, I'm sliding out of this. They have announced several updates and events for February, but I'm finding it harder and harder to stay interested. I'd still love to love this, but they're just not really finishing development. I don't know if it was caught in the pandemic, it was just successful enough that Nintendo decided to put resources else where, or this was their original idea of the game, but as anything beyond a doll house it's hollow.
   
   


5. Mario 35 - I suppose Nintendo's gambit that putting a time limit on how long you can play the game worked because I keep choosing to play this over other games because it's going away in March. It's good game and the battle-royal is interesting. 
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for January:

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

Blog: Games of October 2020

October was pretty busy. Keeping two classes in the air while teaching remotely has been a bit of a struggle. So I've been playing more of the bite sized things. I can jump in to and out of really quickly.

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

1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Getting some seasonal, halloween, things to do did perk the game up a bit. I'm still finding it a touch bland.
   
   

   

   I'm mad they won't let me pick my own costume...



2. Ogre Battle 64 - Did it snow? Yup. I described Ogre Battle to my partner the other day as "my favourite spreadsheet".
   
   


3. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Again and again this remains a classic and my favourite game to just relax and play.
   
   

   

   He must dance.



4. Mario 35 - This has been a ton of fun. I've always been a little embarrassed at how I never learned the first Super Mario Bros. This has been great motivation to actually get good (even if it isn't quite the same game from 1989). It's also bite sized
   
   

   

   I seem to have died. Again.



5. XCOM: Chimera Squad - I tailed off playing Chimera Squad a little just because sessions can be a little long and I've had a ton of stuff I need to keep working on. There's also the drawback of going back to the desk you've sat at all day to play more games is sometimes a bit hard.
   
   

   

   Sometimes the fighting goes bedroom to bedroom.

Here's my total play time chart for October:

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