Blog: Games of July 2018

I was pretty focused on work and watching football in July, so ended up not playing a lot. Also Dan Floyd started playing Kingdom Hearts, ProJared started playing Illusion of Gaia, and Chuggaconroy started playing  Earthbound, so I've suddenly been watching way more than my usual allotment of Let's Plays. All this reduced the usual amount I play, but I've had a lot of fun with what I've played.

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

1. Paper Mario: Color Splash - I'm 100%ing this game (ish*) and so I've ended up putting quite a bit of time into wandering around and hitting things with hammers, when necessary. I've also been playing with my partner watching for the most part, which has been a lot of fun (plus *someone* gets to see all the jokes).
   
   

   

   My research would have gone way faster if I had a science claw. - Wait no, the other thing. Slower. Much. Much. Slower.

   
   
2. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - I'm still not good enough at the Master Sword Quest (well technically at fighting a pair of Silver Lizalfos) so I'm still just trying to git good.
   
   

   

   Look, I've been on the Sword Trials for a loooong time now.



3. Mario Golf: World Tour - Playing mostly on lunch. I'm surprised at how oddly they have the unlocks structured, none of the playable characters are available until after you unlock all the courses, and to unlock anything you have to complete some fairly tough challenges to get coins. I'm also a little disappointed that they implemented the club house, but then most of the actual content of the game has to be accessed through the main menu, a little more "role play" might have worked nicely.
   
   

   

   Sniper Luigi - Via Super Mario Wiki



4. Pokémon Go - Uh, yeah. Back on this train. Friends help. So does the rebalance in items. I think they've done really good work on this game recently, and I've really been enjoying this.
   
   

   

   Leveling Up



5. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival - Another month, more coffee, Animal Crossing and Chill. The game has 12 months, which changes the events and the length of the game. We've been keeping ourselves to only playing the current month, which keeps the game fresh and fun (and makes us say "We should play one more time while it's still July".)
   
   

   

   Fancy Brother / Sister Game Day

Here's my total play time chart for July:

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

* I've decided not to get all of the cards as that just seems to be a bit more time than I'd like to spend on this game.

Blog: Games of December 2017

I didn't get quite as much time to relax into over the holidays as I'd hoped, but I did still get to play a bit of everything.

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

1. Stardew Valley - Stardrew Valley is still beautiful. I wanted something soothing to play while I spent most of my time marking, this fit the bill. It's also nice that it comes in bitesized chunks. I started a new play-though and now Amri is building a very nice farm.
   
   

   

   Welcome to Old Man's Farm

   
   
2. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Still deep and I haven't even played any of the DLC story missions yet. I'm about 20 shrines short and my plan now is to finish those and power up the armour as much as I can and then tackle the DLCs.
   
   

   

   Always a new vista.



3. Pokémon Go - A pokéstop a day keeps the streak up and the game going.
   
   

   

   It's a new generation, and a new electric rodent.

   
   
4. Ogre Battle 64 - Cold winter nights and a game that plays itself, what else could you need? Whiskey is a good addition actually.
   
   

   

   This is like the second to last battle in the game and the first one that actually feels tactical.

   
   
5. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival - I got this for my friend and I have thoroughly enjoyed Amiibo Fest. If you like Animal Crossing, you might too. It brings a ton of AC charm and is a nice light game, and it has a really nice set of mini-games to play too. (We may have spent a little bit too long dropping cats in to the ocean ... I mean by accident).
   
   

   

   Welcome to Charmingville. Population, however much you're willing to spend on cards.

   
   

Here's my total play time chart for December:

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

Blog: Video Games of October

I was pretty unsettled in October and jumped between games a bunch. I don't love the feeling of not having something serious to play, but for now I'm focused elsewhere and I'm pretty happy just to get a chance to play when I get a chance.

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

1. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - One beautiful thing about Breath of the Wild is just how much there is to do. It makes it simple each time I turn it on to wander off into Hyrule and find something new and fun and engaging.
   
   

   

   Quite the outcome of a side trip.

   
   
2. Pikmin 3 - I love this game. I could play it forever. There's just so much brightness and charm. The game play presents a lovely challenge of first finding a solution and then optimizing that solution. Every Nintendo Direct, I'm always hoping to see more Pikmin 3.
   
   

   

   Work to do, work to do.



3. Kingdoms and Castles - I haven't bought too much in the way of new games lately, but listening to 3 Moves Ahead discuss Kingdoms and Castles it seems like enough fun for $10 to make it worth while. I've enjoyed it so far, although it doesn't have a huge range of things to do. There's something nice about building a simple city and using it to kill dragons.
   
   

   

   A dragon in the rain.



4. FTL: Faster than Light - I suck at FTL. I've been bad at FTL since it came out. Then I watched Eurogamer play it and thanks to Jonneh, I suddenly understood a lot about how *not* to suck at FTL. Either way, even if you're bad it's still a good time.
   
   

   

   Finally.



5. Pokémon Go - Daily bonuses keep me going, other than that I haven't played too much.
   
   

   

   This ... was a bad idea.

Here's my total play time chart for October:

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

Blog: Video Games of September 2017

Well, it finally happened. I played something more than Breath of the Wild. Generally nothing grabbed me too much again in September so I tended to default to some basic choices. I did try to keep my streaks up in Pokemon Go, but other than that I didn't feel too attached to anything.


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

1. Civilization 6 - I figured at some point I'd sit down and spend more time with this game. As I think I've commented before, much as I like strategy games I'm never that good at them. I feel like Civ 6 is a bit more open to how you play, although it remains a little bit bland if I set the difficulty low enough to play well. And of course much as I did enjoy it, it managed to get to the top of the list through a couple of "just one more turn" nights.
   
   

   

   I am the mightiest (and only) navel power in the world and yet I can't keep the barbarians off my shores. 

   
   
2. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Still awesome. I'm still discovering new things. I'm still having fun. I'd like a little bit more story at this point, but I guess we'll be getting that before too long now.
   
   

   

   I was just standing here and then suddenly realized how beautiful this looked.

   
   


3. Kingdom Rush HD - My love of strategy games has a strong component of loving tower defense. Kingdom Rush is one of the best although (as noted above) I suck at it more than I probably should for how much I play it.
   
   

   

   The standard state of any Kingdom Rush game for me.

   
   


4. Pokemon Go - A few minutes a day keeps a game up on the list. Sadly I didn't really get time to deep dive too much on PoGo, but keeping my streaks alive was enough to get me logged in most days.
   
   

   

   His name is Tiny.

   
   


5. Cities:Skylines - I do like city building. But, I also like pretty pictures of video games. I keep a rotating selection as my desktop, and, more than anything else looking at those pictures makes me play Cities:Skylines so I can go get more pictures.
   
   
   

   

   The roads are quiet this late at night.

Here's my total play time chart for September:

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

Blog: Video Games of August 2017

I don't have a very coherent story ab out the games I played in August. I'm finally able to access most of my games again and so can play whatever I'd like. This of course means that there's nothing that I own that I want to play. Hopefully as I get busier I'll find more things to enjoy and if not then I'll be able to put the time I'm not gaming to productive use.

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

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - It's good. It's still really good. I haven't even looked at the Trial of the Sword yet. I'm just over 164 hours right now. I also wrote a long blog piece about how cool I think this game is.
   
   

   

   160+ hours in. I have never been here before.



2. Pokémon Go - Well, it's summer, they cleaned up the game and it turns out if you keep playing a lot PoGo gets really good. I think they'll need to keep changing up the array of pokémon I'm getting to keep me in, but it's been a fun addition to the commute home lately.
   
   

   

   GASP! It's YOU!



3. Super Mario 3D World - I've mentioned a few times here that I've finished an embarrassingly small number of Mario games over the years. So I jumped back in and figured I'd try to finish all levels of 3D World. I'd thought some about getting all the stars, but I'm feeling right now that life's too short. The game isn't bad but suffers from not being other Mario games, especially Galaxy. It also has some really bad camera positioning making me feel like the 3D effect would be better left to the 3Ds.
   
   

   

   This game feeds my love of rainbows. 




4. Sid Meier's Ace Patrol - I listened to Soren Johnson's 4 part interview with Sid Meyer on Designer Notes. I was surprised how much he talked about Ace Patrol and so figured I'd fire it up again. I'm curious to try the starship game too at some point.
   

   

   Balloon busting is great. It's like shooting fish floating in the air on strings...



5. XCOM 2 - I'm not buying myself a Switch until I finish the PhD. But, ... uh ... my mind may be taken ... somewhere. That and the new DLC looks like a ton of fun.

   

   XCOM2 Firing at things you can't see the game. (Sometimes)

   
   

Here's my total play time table for August 2017:

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

Blog: Video Games of of July 2017

July was a really busy month and so I didn't play too much, making it quite boring. My PC was also in pieces for most of the month so I was mostly down to console games. DLC 1 for Breath of the Wild also came out, so, you know, I mostly played that.

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

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Master Mode has breathed (pun sorta intended) a whole new games worth of play into Breath of the Wild. Another 30 hours played this month and I'm still loving it.
   
   
   
   
   
2. Mario Kart 8 - Really in a different category at only 3 and a bit hours played, but still a lot of fun.




3. Pokemon Go - Between the update and it being summer, it's been fun to haul this out again.





4. Cities: Skylines - I've been hoping to start making cooler cities. Everything I make tends to come out a little bit boxy. So I've been trying to think a little more creatively and make some neater places.


5. Marvel Puzzle Quest and Mario Golf: World Tour - A bit of an odd tie at just over an hour, both of the games I tend to play on breaks in the office. Either way, more fun playing two games which seem to show up here quite a bit.

Here's my total play time chart for July: 

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

Blog: Best Game of 2016

I've played 8 games that were released in 2016. In this post I'm going to talk about those 8 games, which ones I liked and which ones I didn't.

So, what were the 8 games I played this year? They were Bushido Bear (a mobile game from Spry Fox), Civilization VI, Halycon 6: Starbase Commander, Pokemon GO!, Rimworld, Starfox 0, Stardew Valley and XCOM 2. The one game that I missed in 2016, that I wanted to play, was Dishonored 2, but hopefully I'll catch up to that some time soon.

Its an interesting set of games and for the most part they were good games. Roughly I'd sort the  games I played into The Bad, The Okay, The Good and The Great. I'll talk about each of those now.

The Bad

Star Fox Zero

Star Fox Zero is the worst game I played this year (not just out of games made in 2016). Now I think I need to say first that if the control scheme clicks for me, I might take that back, but until then there wasn't much to redeem Star Fox Zero at all.

The controls are abysmal and unintuitive and sadly I don't think there's a good reason for them to be as difficult as they are. Nintendo gets into their gimmicks some times and I think that they let the gimmick override the game play. There's no reason for the single player to be this difficult to control especially when there are a lot of other good uses the game pad could have been put to. Sadly the game it self does nothing to support this, the missions (that I got to) are boring and repetitions of Starfox 64 (which they easily could have just done an HD version of). The characters and story are bland and boring and while you don't really look to Nintendo for the best story if nothing else is drawing you into a game then there's not much else.

On the positive I can only say that it's pretty, but Nintendo really got off in the wrong direction on this one.

Bushido Bear

Bushido Bear, from Spry Fox who is one of my favourite mobile/web developers is uninspired for the most part. I played it both on iPad and Android phone and just wasn't hooked. The mechanic of swipe to send your sword bear around isn't that compelling and none of the progression rewards seemed worth it. Tied with a limited energy monetization system, I just never felt like it was worth playing.

The Okay

Rimworld

Rimworld is a graphical Dwarf Fortress in beta. It's okay. The game is okay and the game is Dwarf Fortress. It's "fun". Sadly it lacks the charm of Dwarf Fortress while keeping the ick factor and its interface is rough. Maybe when it's released for real the interface will at least be cleaned up, but at the moment it wasn't compelling and didn't really scratch the Dwarf Fortress itch for me either.

The Good

Pokemon GO

I like Pokemon GO. It's fun, it encourages you to go out for a walk and for that little while it was awesome to see so many people out together playing the same game. The game is a little simple, but its satisfying (and compared to Bushido Bear it's a much more satisfying screen scribbler, if I may coin a genre), and the walking to find pokemon and pokestops is good and a good thing to do.

I've found myself hesitant to play quite a few times over the course of the year. This stems largely from the technical problems they've struggled with, although they do seem to have worked out how to make the game work now (and for a team as small as Niantic, I'm very impressed). That being said I would like it if the game could load faster (there's a pikachu, someone shouts and then I get to stare at the Niantic splash and the loading screen for the next five minutes. The other thing is that it would be nice if the game had some mechanic that didn't rely on your location, I may not always have the time (or inclination) to take a walk and it would be nice to have a reason to pick up the game.

XCOM 2

XCOM 2 is a lot of fun. It's the game I played the most this year. It's also really hard. The difficulty, especially the expanded added by the DLC, really holds the game back from being something that you just pick up and play (again I'm talking about a game I played for 88 hours this year). I think it's a great improvement over its predecessor and confidently divides the modern XCOM games from the originals (and the remakes) into a new style of gameplay (within a grid based tactics game).

It would be nice if the difficulty was a little more balanced, even while you're supposed to be underpowered, better alternate mechanics for stealth or hit-and-run might have made the story blend better with the mechanics. It's definitely good, but lacking a little bit to be great.

Halcyon 6: Starbase Command

I haven't played as much Halcyon 6 as I might have and I've liked what I played. It has an interesting mix of game play elements, jrpg style combat, XCOM style base building and adventure style decision making. It does seem to lack a little bit of depth or at least diversity in tactics but generally its been enjoyable and has been worth playing.

The Great

Civilization VI

As I mentioned in my Games of November post, Civ VI is the most nostalgic and best Civ game in a very long time. If games are a series of interesting decisions, they've increased the size of the series and the interestingness of the decisions. The game looks great, feels great (if a little slow) and rewards your time. I think it has some room to grow and get polished, but its the most fun I've had with a Civ game in a very very long time and I look forward to playing it for a long time to come.

Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley is my favourite game released in 2016. I've always loved Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley cleans up so many of the rough points in that series and improves on the genre beautifully. The chance to build your own farm and engage with a small town at your own pace is incredibly peaceful but still engaging and fun. The writing in the game is good and it doesn't shy away from difficult topics while not losing its own light-hearted tone.

The only complaint I have about Stardew Valley is that there isn't more of it. It feels almost as if it could be extended by programmatic event creation, but the strength of the game is just how well all of the interactions and events of the game are written. It would be sad to lose any of that, so instead I play it as slowly as I can an enjoy every minute of it (while I keep hoping for a new update from ConcernedApe). If you haven't played and you'd like a game that lets you farm at your own pace then I really recommend picking up Stardew Valley.

Blog: Video Games of August 2016

I didn't play that much in August and ... I don't remember why. Possibly you should blame Netflix ... Voltron is quite good. Anyway, I definitely didn't feel the need to play that much and did other things. Possibly even read a book.

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

1. Hearthstone - Since I was mostly not playing games, it's easy to end up playing Hearthstone when you're watching TV. Also the One Night in Karazhan expansion was quite a bit of fun to play.
   
   


2. Stardew Valley - I really like starting the day off when I can with a bit of Stardew Valley. Usually I just played a day (or two) per day, but I also used it as a reward when I had a lot of housework to do. Finish your work and then you can go pretend to work. (Farming is slightly more fun in game than in real life).
   
   
   
3. Civilization 5 - Civ VI is coming.
   
   
   
4. Pokemon GO - Sadly, PoGo had some tech problems in August which kept me from playing as much, still it was nice to get out sometimes and play.
   
   
   
5. Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon - So this game is great. Also hard, which you might not realize given how cute it is. It's an actual rogue-like, by which I mean it's like Rogue and you wander around dungeons fighting enemies, changing jobs, restoring town's folk's memories and getting clobbered if you're not very very careful.
   
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for August:

And here's my total number of times played:

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

Blog: Video Games of July 2016

I spent a lot of July recovering from May and June and I definitely got a bit more time to play. I was also still quite busy for the early parts of the month. Generally I tried to play games to give me a bit more focused fun, aaaand I also played a lot of Pokemon Go.

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

1. XCOM 2 - I dunno. It just eats time without me even noticing really. I also started to accept that even when I'm not actually having a lot of success playing, getting a team out to fight a level or two is pretty fun. That also lead me to tryout some Invisible Inc (which I also quite liked).
   

   

   My first ever total party wipe.

2. Pokémon Go - So Pokémon Go has changed a lot since it first came out and I started playing it before it even officially launched in Canada. While a lot of people have said a lot about the game, it's a huge amount of fun and in the early days seeing people crowding together in groups to play. I think it really delivered on the promise of creating a Pokémon adventure in the real world.
   

   

   A Pokécrowd. 



3. Chrono Trigger - I'm pretty sure that Chrono Trigger is my favourite game of all time (top 3 for sure) and so once I was finished with my first course it was nice to be able to sit down and play it for a while (even if it wasn't all that much). I got most of the way through the main game (it's shorter than I remember) and then stopped waiting for the "perfect time" to finish the game.
   
   
   


4. Cities: Skylines - Hey have I mentioned that I really like building cities? I really like building cities. And Cities: Skylines is a great way to build cities. I didn't play all that much, but I really enjoy all of the phases of city building (although I do tend to get a little board in the later ones and keep starting over). This game is great, really well designed and well executed. It's a huge amount of fun if you want to play a city builder (and they keep adding really cool things too).
   

   

   Golden Hour



5. Civilization V - I was not ready to wait until October for Civilization VI, so I played Civ V instead. It's a lot of fun, but ... it's time to move on.
   
   
   
   

   

   I can't remember why I have a city in the middle of the bay, but I do!

Here's my total play time chart for July:

And here's my total number of times played:

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