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: 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 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:

Blog: Video Games of June 2016

I was very busy with my first teaching position in June and so had less time to play than I had in previous months. I also was quite stressed, so wanted to play games that would help me distract myself.

Here are my top five games (by time played) for June 2016:

1. Middle Earth: Shadows of Mordor - In terms of a game that's easy to distract yourself Shows of Mordor certainly counts. It has a lot of things to do and the challenge in the game is moderate, so it's usually easy to go kill an uruk when ever you want. Unfortunately, "victory" comes very abruptly and the final boss is, ... not interesting at all. And while you can keep on playing after you defeat the final boss, the game becomes a lot less fulfilling.
   

   

   It's nice of the bad guys to let me know where they are.

   
   
2. Hearthstone - Looking back I'm not sure if this was already in the window where people were getting excited for One Night in Karazhan or not. Either way, playing in the new standard format made hearthstone more interesting again (and at least removed Dr. Boom from my list of cards I probably should have, but don't). It was also a nice thing to play when I had a half an hour to sit down and I played quite a bit while watching TV.
   

   

   It's a box ... a box of mystery and low level play.



3. XCOM 2 - I didn't play XCOM 2 that much, since it requires a little bit more thinking than I had on hand for June. Most of when I played was my continued trying to get a little traction getting better at the game.
   

   

   Nothing to worry about here...



4. Europa Universalis 4 - Certainly this is another game that allows you to distract yourself. I sort of declared that I wouldn't play again after my initial burst, but then was drawn back in some between listening to Hard Core History discuss the Persian Empire and Extra History discuss the Ottomans.
   

   

   Uh... I think I'm in trouble. 



5. Mario Golf: World Tour - I didn't play as much of this as I meant to as my lunch time game, but it's still a ton of fun.
   

   

   GameFAQs user ollist

Here's my total play time chart for June:

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 May 2016

Quick note: As you may have noticed I'm rather behind in posting these. The retrospective for April was written in early May (and it just took me forever to get it up), but the rest will be written and posted now. As a result, they will probably have some gloss from the passing of time.

May was the first month where I was teaching a course and that ended up eating a lot of my time. So I played with a little less mindfulness than I'd been playing earlier in the year. Most of the stuff I did play was to give me some stress relief and to stop thinking for a little while.
My top five games (by play time) for May were:

1. XCOM 2 - Having played a non-ironman "really easy" run through the first time I played, I thought it would be good to try the game at a little harder. I tried for an ironman run at a harder difficultly level. After a lot of restarts I managed to get a little traction, although honestly this game is *really hard*, or I'm just *really bad at it*.
   
   
   
   
   
2. Stardew Valley - I really love this game. I especially like the 20 minute flow of a day, and I like starting my day with a day or two of Stardew Valley along with coffee and breakfast. It's also nice to be able to drop in for a while in the evenings and play a little extra.
   
   
   


3. Chrono Trigger - It's nice jumping back into old favourites and where I had the time to sit down and focus on a game Chrono Trigger was a nice game to have on hand to jump back into. It's also surprising just how short the game actually is. 
   
   
   


4. Middle-Earth:Shadows of Mordor - I picked this up because I wanted a game I could play without thinking too much. It took a little while to get the flow, but then the stealth to combat mechanic took over and it was a game I could play a lot and let my mind wander while I played it.
   
   
   


5. Super Mario Maker - It's a little disappointing how hard it is to get your levels played, and that's cut down quite a bit on how much I've played. Still there are a lot of good levels out there to play and there's nothing quite so easy to play as 2D Mario.
   
   
   

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.