Blog: Games of September 2020

September was fairly unremarkable. I've focused on a few games as I've been busy teaching and working on some of the other projects I want to get done.

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

1. XCOM: Chimera Squad - I've really been enjoying Chimera Squad. It's got a lot of replayability, with enough differences between the characters to make every mission interesting. Honestly I'd love to see a few more investigations to take on, since this has been a ton of fun to play.
   
   


2. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Didn't play quite as much as I have been. Between being busy with work and trying to get more other things done I've been spending less time on my island. I've also been increasingly disappointed with how little there is to do. 
   
   


3. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - This game is so, so good. I started playing again because my partner bought a copy for the switch (inspired a bit by all the time we've now spent yelling at Stephen & Mal). She's been playing and enjoying it and I wanted in on the fun. I'm over 300 hours in at this point and I'm still finding new things. The switch version feels a little better than the Wii U, but generally this is such a well put together game.
   
   


4. Cities: Skylines - Not a game I played a ton of, but being back to work my numbers are a little more focused then they are during the summer. Still I've been watching All the Stations, and I got excited to make myself a city with a really good rail network.
   
   


5. Golf Story - I think the replayability of this game is really good, I just haven't picked it up that much. It could also use the ability to bring your story mode character into the pick-up and play sessions.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for September:

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

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:

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 February 2016

XCOM 2 came out this month and that's really all you need to know about the video games I've played in February. Beyond that I've had fun keeping track of the games I've play for another month. I think it's been interesting to be mindful about what I'm playing and making sure that I'm getting the most out of my XCOM ... I mean games.

My top five games for the month (by play time) have been:

1. XCOM 2 - I played 42 hours of XCOM 2. That's ... a lot of playing. A bit of that is that at $80 (CAD) it felt really expensive, so I felt like I really should be getting my money's worth out of it. The other part is that the game is pretty great.
   
   

   

   The wanted posters are a really great part of XCOM 2.

   
   I found XCOM 2 really hard in the first little while. I mean really, *really* hard. Eventually I knocked the difficult down and it got to the point where I could at least play it. The game was still pretty tough but now that I've played a lot (and I think I'm near the end) it seems to have balanced out (to a bit easy, which is good since I was playing on the easiest level). The new easiness seems to be one part the XCOM hill (oh wow aliens are hard to kill, oh wait this is a new gun, hahahaha take that aliens) and a bit that I've figured out what the designers were going for.
   
   I will say that I really like what they did with XCOM 2, in most missions now there's an imperative (usually a ticking clock, but not always) that you have to push your soldiers out into the field and take on the enemy. That combined with the new generated maps has kept me really enjoying the game. I feel like there should maybe be one more set of enemies to fight, but it's a little hard to say how far along I am, so I've got not complaints right now.
2. Final Fantasy VI (or 3) - It's interesting that this game is the "runner up" for the second month in a row. I had intended to play a little more of it and to try to play more games with narrative. It's suffered a little bit from three problems. 1) XCOM 2 2) I'm tired of random encounters and 3) the Final Fantasy game decompression.
   
   

   

   Looks perfectly safe to me - From GameFAQs User KeyBlade999 

   
   The decompression happens in a lot of final fantasy games (but it sticks out in my mind in VI and VII particularly. Because the games are so heavily based on narrative for the first part of the game (half, two-thirds maybe) when they get to the "open world" part at the end, it can be difficult to feel like you're doing anything other than ticking off the items on the list to make sure that you're as powerful as you can be to beat the boss. I think later games in the series did a better job of fusing side quests into the story, but at this point I have three dragons to kill and I'm not that excited about it.
3. Hearthstone - It's jumped up the list to third but I've actually played a little less this month (again, have I mentioned that XCOM 2 is good?). I've been trying to take more meaningful breaks from work during the day and I can play a round of Hearthstone in about 15 minutes so that works pretty well.
   
   

   

   I've really got to remember to take these screenshots during the month. #imbadathearthstone

   Oh! Also I can now say, "to hell with you Dr. Boom!" I'm looking forward for the switch to standard (where old sets will be rotating out). I had a long layoff from Hearthstone, and while I don't play enough to be totally stocked with legendaries in any event, I definetly am missing the most cards out of Goblins and Gnomes. Also could someone please explain to me how these got to be "the old cards"? This time travel thing is rough.
4. Super Mario Maker - I'm still chugging along with this. It runs a little towards the work end of gaming, between the thought necessary to build a good level and the thought necessary to play through all the other levels pushed out there. It's still a little rough, with some levels being really unplayable or trolling you after several minutes of play, but I think the "meta" is levelling out to produce a bunch of pretty fun levels.
   
   

   

   Jitter and Jump

   I've been messing around with making more playable and fun levels. The one thing the game is a little short on is players, so it's a little tough to see what's interesting and what's not. I'd also love to see the game give you a little bit more information about how people have played your level. If you're interested in playing some of the things I've worked on I'm interested in my 1-1 and 1-2. Apparently my most popular is Jitter, so I'm also trying to follow up with that.
5. Mini Metro - Well I'm definitely not as addicted as I was in January. Mini Metro is good, but I'm not terribly good at it, so I find that a lot of my play sessions end up about the same way. I've also played through all the pre-made maps and now time I play is also a little the same. Stations appear in random locations, but the rules for each area are still the same.
   
   

   

   I'm sorry to all the shapes who live in this town.  You are going to be late for shape work.

   
   Still the game is good and it's fun. I definitely don't regret playing for a few minutes each day. It's also interesting how the achievement "Play the Daily Challenge Each Day for a Week" has kept me coming back. I keep not making it, so I've stuck with it. It seems to have slid into a nice niche with Bejeweled and Zuma Blitz.

So that's the top five by play time. I also tracked the number of sessions which left me with a top five of Bejeweled Blitz, Mini Metro, XCOM 2, Zuma Blitz and Hearthstone. I think this stands to reason, it's mostly the games I play for a couple of minutes at a time ... and XCOM. January had about the same results.

I also wanted to talk a little bit about Diablo 3. I've basically never played Diablo or Diablo 2... (It's ok, you can pass out from shock. I'll wait).

Xin is mostly glad she found pants over the course of my play-through.

(Are you back? Great!) So you can play the first bit of Diablo 3 for free and since I have the Blizzard launcher open often enough I was finally tempted to install it and play the demo. I had fun, but I'm not about to jump in and play the full game right now. One reason is XCOM (surprise) both the money I put into that was my video game budget for the mont (and then some) and it also took most of the playing time. 

Another reason is that the game ends the demo really oddly, instead of popping up a message going, thanks for playing the free part now you can play more if you pay us, the game just stops generating new content. So you can run around all you want, but the world just doesn't do anything. I actually ended up googling to see why the game was broken and even there it wasn't communicated very well (mostly it was people trying to figure out why they got the demo when they'd paid for the full game).

So, I think that's it for the second month of game tracking. I'm still having fun, so I guess you'll see more next month.

Here are my total play time and play sessions for February.

Blog: Thoughts on XCOM

I recently finished my play through of Firaxis's new XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I didn't play the original X-COM when I was younger but picked it up a few years ago and fell in love with the sci-fi, grid and turn based tactical   game.

The new game is a nice reimagining of the original idea. The new concepts introduced change the mechanics, but the style and flavour of the game remains very similar. I've also backed the recreation of the original Xenonauts, so I'm totally happy to see a different take on the X-COM knowing that I have access to the straight modernization as well.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown ... actually the enemy is that thing over there!

Things I Liked

The number one thing I like about the game was the game itself (he said somewhat redundantly). It's a lot of fun and it's easy enough to play (although I haven't tackled the higher difficulty levels yet, nor tried the ironman mode). There are moments of great satisfaction when you kill a bad guy cleanly and exactly the way you meant to.

Fast-lane ready to damage an xray.

The class system is nice, not a new concept in gaming, but new to me in X-COM (I haven't played the original sequels). In the original game, especially at high equipment levels late in the game, you tended not to have any real difference between any of your team. One giant armoured turret was basically the same as any other. With the classes in XCOM it makes the game a little easier in the early running and a lot more fun.

The armour types were also fun, especially the ones available later in the game (although some of them I could have picked up a little earlier if I was smarter going through the research tree). In particular the armours that let you grapple around the map are a huge amount of fun. There's nothing like jumping across a giant gap to put your rifle up to the final boss's head and blowing him (it?) away.

Look, dude ... I like it too, but could you take it off to shower at least?

Things I Didn't Like

The number one thing I didn't like about XCOM was the voice acting. XCOM is based on the concept of a military created from volunteers from all over the world. My final team included an Israeli, an Argentinean, a Japanese, a Nigerian, an Italian and an American. All of these sounded like they were recorded by the same person, who lived in LA. There were no accents, there was no local flair. In the character creator there are only 5 voice choices per character and they're all completely interchangeable. Given a game that has a strong international flavour, this is really disappointing.

It's also worth noting that most of the credits are localization teams, meaning that there are tons and tons of INTERNATIONAL VOICE ACTORS voicing the same game. It makes the lack of diversity all the more annoying knowing that if the internationalization teams had just switched up some of their work it would have made the game so much stronger.

We're ready to go. From all around the world, just don't listen to us.

The next thing that I didn't like was the memorial wall. It's a nice concept, your soldiers put up a memorial for all their fallen comrades. You, however, are not allowed to see it. It's always behind the UI where you can see how many kills the soldier got before they died. You can't even sort the UI to see when they died, only the number of kills mattered. Again for a game where you're encouraged to care about your soliders this is disappointing.

Just let me see the wall too.

The rank system the game uses to give soldiers new powers is good (although I'd love a few more options for customizing the team, but I'll always have Xenonauts), however linking it with military rank is slightly annoying. I took 4 Colonels and 2 Majors on my final mission. This is weird, but only in terms of the story that I make in my head as I play, not in terms of the game's systems. I would have much rather be able to organize my command structure separately from my skill selection. The way the original X-COM organized rank (where you had 1 sergent per 10 soldier and 1 lieutenant per 3 or 4 sergents) felt much more appropriate, but that wouldn't suit the style of this game that well.

I also found that in this game they didn't make as good a use of the interceptors which shoot down UFOs as the original game did. In particular you used to be able to team up into squadrons to take down bigger ships as an interm measure before you got stronger interceptors and they left that out. It doesn't detract from the game, but was an element that felt missing.

The last thing I didn't like is much less important than the others, but probably bugged me more actively during the game. In order to help you know where to look for the alien scum, they developers included an indicator which shows where "noise" is coming from. The problem however is that every time the indicator goes off the solider nearest the noise asks some version of "What's that noise?" It was aliens, it's always aliens.

Things I Noticed

I haven't played another tactical game with cover implemented this way. On the whole I really liked the way it makes things easier to manage, I know soldier X is pretty safe because she's standing in the right position. I know I'm taking a huge risk with solider Y because he's out in the middle, but hopefully he can take a reaction shot and keep himself out of trouble.

I know where they are, and my guns are loaded!

Things I'd Include in a Game

The number one thing I'd take from XCOM is the feeling of the combat. You always feel powerful and in control, but never invulnerable. Even with your normal weapons you can fight any alien, although it may be harder, you're never out classed so badly that the game becomes impossible. On the other hand then you're never so secure in your position in the late game, no matter how good your armour or your arms that a lucky shot from even the weakest enemy can give you trouble. You always have to play smart, but playing smart is always rewarded.

Final Thoughts

XCOM is really good. I'm certain I'm going to play it on and off for years to come. Fraxis took X-COM and made it modern, easy to play and fun without losing the fundamental aspects of the original games. I always felt like I knew what was going on.

We will be watching you.