Blog: Games of July 2020

I took a "vacation" and played video games in the last half of July. I'm not sure that was the perfect way to spend my time, but it was pretty good. I think I'd have liked something incredibly deep like a Final Fantasy to sink into, but since I didn't really have that I did the best I could with what I had.

My top five games (by play time) for July 2019 were:

1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Always a lovely game. It's not quite everything I could have hoped for in a "next-gen" animal crossing, but it certainly charming and I think compared to New Leaf, it does a good job of hiding the wires that make the world turn.
   
   

   

   Skye always brings a touch of joy.



2. Octopath Traveller - Knowing I'd need to get back to getting stuff done, I really pushed myself to play Octopath as much as I could. I ended up playing a bit more than I really enjoyed, since the game tends to push to long sessions. Overall however I think the game is pretty good. I'm planning a "Thought's on" post for Octopath, but that will be a little bit in coming.
   
   

   

   You know that thing where the ball gets really big when you're playing tennis...



3. Paper Mario: The Origami King - I liked Paper Mario: Colour Splash, and I think that The Origami King improves on it in every way. I've been enjoying playing through and I really like the pacing and the length. It's been easy to play and I appreciate that I'll be able to finish it in a relatively contained time.
   
   

   

   Come for the jumping and hammering, stay for the chill coffee philosophy. 
   



4. Wargroove - I was getting my butt kicked by Wargroove (I have a terrible condition of loving tactics games but also being really bad at them). I adjusted the difficulty down a bit and found it really fun and playable. I appreciated being able to play how I wanted to play without having to "be at the game's level". It's possible I may have to go back and play at a harder difficulty later on, but hopefully I'll have learned the systems better by then.
   
   

   

   Caeser wins hearts, minds and combat encouters.



5. Xenonauts - I do really love the original X-COM style of gameplay and Xenonauts definitely does a good job of recreating the organization and careful combat. It does stick very closely to the original format, so I find myself thinking about elements I'd want in a new X-COM style game, especially when it comes to base building and organization.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for July:

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

Blog: Games of June 2020

June was a bit weird. I spent most of it happily playing Animal Crossing and trying to find cool stuff to fit in my other time. I had some work I needed to get done, so I didn't really sink into any "funemployment".

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

1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Generally the games that get at least a little bit of play time each day end up pretty high on my play time list. AC:NH is a good example of that. It's been really nice to play slow and enjoy the daily play. I think the game could use a few more features, to catch up to New Leaf and also just to give you more things to do each day.
   
   

   

   A Beautiful Night on the Island

   
   


2. Europa Universalis IV - I decided to pay for the DLC subscription, so I'm spending my current play time realing from all of the things that don't totally make sense. I'm still not sure how I feel about the newest DLC, but I'm still having fun. Currently France keeps throwing me into wars which eat all my man power as Castile, but I'm learning.
   
   

   

   A New Monarch

   
   


3. Wargroove - I skipped out on Advance Wars despite it being a game I would probably have liked. Wargroove has proved to be a great game to pick up and play even if I'm finding the "normal difficulty" a little punishing. The style is great and it's fun.
   
   

   

   A Good Boy's Victory

   
   


4. Secret of Mana (Collection of Mana) - I assume I explain this every year, but Secret of Mana is a game you should play in summer. So I am.
   
   

   

   A Confident Moment

   
   


5. Xenonauts - I wanted some slow tactical gameplay to enjoy, which Xenonauts does give. I'm finding the whole thing needs a little boost to be interesting but generally it's still fun if you want to very slowly march some soldiers across a bunch of squares. I did spend a bit of time looking at the mods and I'm facinated and frusterated by how many popular mods there are to "remove all women from the game". Definetly feeling like that's not a community I want anything to do with.
   
   

   

   Almost before anything goes wrong.

Here's my total play time chart for MONTH:

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

Blog: Games of June 2019

My June was mostly dedicated to playing on the Switch. I'm really enjoying the ease of picking up the controller (or the console) and being into a game within second.

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

1. Super Mario Odyssey - Thanks to this game I can now pretty regularly spell Odyssey. The more I've played the more I've gotten into it. I keep thinking I must be running out of fun (or at least Power Moons), but so far it just keeps showing more and more depth.
   
   

   

   In context, this doesn't make any sense either.



2. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Fest - This usually doesn't land so far up the list, but my play time was pretty spread out this month. As always this is a nice way to wake up on weekend mornings with my partner and even though we basically know all the events by heart by now, it's still a charming thing to play.
   

   

   Sunday Morning Business meeting.

   
   


3. Xenonauts - Less charming, but no less fun. I am surprised by how long it took me to get into this game, but I have been pretty thoroughly enjoying it. The only real complaint I have at the moment is that I'm readier to end this campaign than the game seems to be. I think there's a little bit of pacing trouble between the missions you play and the research the game does for you that actually advances the plot. Otherwise, I'm enjoying the combat and I feel like they've arrived at a spot where "failure is fun". (But that might just also be my brain relaxing from the PhD).
   
   

   

   Oh sure, deal with my shotgunners by building all your ships like tubes...



4. Cadence of Hyrule - This game is pretty awesome. I was really bad the first hour or so, but then found my groove (so to speak) and got the idea of the game. Since then I've really enjoyed it, although I find it needs a particular mindset to really appreciate (and because it's rhythm based, you can't drink and play well). I wouldn't mind if it had a little more meat on it, but I'm only about halfway through right now, so there may be more to come. I'm interested to see how it replays (it feels short) and I think I might also take a look at Crypt of the Necrodancer for the purer Rogue-Beat genre.
   
   

   

   **Guitar Riff**



5. Secret of Mana (Collection of Mana) - I was not spoiled on this, so when Nintendo announced the Collection of Mana in its E3 direct I pretty much fell out of my chair. Seeing Seiken Densetsu 3 released in English in North America is fantastic and so I bought it as soon as it was released (which was that night as I recall). I haven't played too much of either SD3 or SD (Final Fantasy Adventure) yet, but having Secret of Mana to hand has been a total blast. Also I discovered that the UK localization is very slightly different (and better?) than the US one.
   
   

   

   **British Whale Sounds** 

   
   
6. Pokémon Go - I really haven't spend that much time sitting down to play PoGo the last little while, but trying to keep streaks up, I've played a few minutes each day. That's been enough to get it into the top list for the month.
   
   

   

   Good catch ... 

   
   

Here's my total play time chart for June:

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

Blog: Games of April 2019

I'll write more soon, but April marked the end of my PhD. Not of course the end of work, but definitely a change in my levels of stress and business.


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

1. Fire Emblem: Awakening - This game. I'm not sure I like it, but I like lots of parts of it. The thing I like the most is the support conversations, where in if two units work together during a mission, they might have a chat together afterwards. I find this somewhat warps the balance of the missions themselves (and somewhat pushes the game off of the style I love in Path of Radiance). They're also biased significantly towards your units falling in love and having kids, which ... is not what I want in the game? Still it gets its hooks into me and I do enjoy it.
   
   

   

   Teaching the team to talk.

   
   


2. Breath of Fire II - I want to finish. I would like to be finished, and I am at least getting closer to the end. Sadly, not the finest Breath of Fire entry.
   
   

   

   Oh sure!

   
   


3. Xenonauts - I've bounced off this game so many times, but for some reason this time it's really sticking. It stays very true to the XCOM original, with many nice quality of life improvements and, somehow, quite a bit of fun.
   
   

   

   Starting to feel organized when we land.

   
   


4. Cursed Treasure 2 - I think this is the best tower defense game. I lament that 3 has never happened and I really would just like people to turn out a ton of interesting levels to follow up with.
   
   

   

   It warms my heart every time.

   
   


5. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - I ground myself to a halt in my Master Mode Quest, I wanted to finish everything in Master Mode and I cannot kill those two damned Silver Lizalfos. So I started a new game. Regular mode, and no fast travel (so far anyway). And I'm having a blast, this game is so, so good.
   
   

   

   Running back again.

   
   

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 March 2019

I was pretty steadily busy in March and still holding out on getting to invested in playing anything while I had work to do. I didn't play anything particularly of note, although I probably did get deeper into Xenonauts than I'd planned. I also very briefly started trying to play a version of Simon's Cat branded Snood on the phone, but that has the standard addictive gameplay and pay-to-keep-playing model so I ditched that pretty quickly.

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

1. Breath of Fire II - I'm struggling to get through this a bit. Some of this game is really well done and some of it isn't. The translation is obviously awful, and it has a very SNES RPG habit of sending you to do something ... somewhere, so I've had to resort to a guide (well, several guides) to find a decent way to play. On the other hand, something does keep me playing and I enjoy the overall feel of the game.
   
   
   
   via GIPHY


2. Xenonauts - I got listening to a Podcast where they were talking about XCOM (the real one from '94). So I figured I'd fire up Xenonauts until I got frustrated and quit. So far that hasn't happened and I've been enjoying Xenonauts quite a bit.
   
   

   

   Nothing to worry about.

   
   


3. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival - As (pretty much) always.
   
   

   

   Brother and Sister

   
   


4. Pokémon Go  - Also as (pretty much) always.
   
   

   

   I take it back. I'm slightly worried.

   
   


5. Mario Kart 8 - I needed something more tactile to play and this was really up my alley.
   
   
   
   via GIPHY

Here's my total play time chart for March:

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

Blog: Video Games of April 2017

April was pretty much dedicated to Breath of the Wild. I played other stuff pretty much either to give myself a palate cleanse or because I was somewhere where I couldn't play (I played BotW on the WiiU). I haven't really dedicated such a long period of time to a game before (at least intentionally) and it was interesting to get immersed that way. There were definitely times where I felt like it was too much, and it did cut down on how much sleep I was getting but overall it was a fun month.


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

1. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - In short, I spent sixty hours playing Breath of the Wild and I'm not sure I spent enough time playing Breath of the Wild. There is so much game there and so much purity of fun that I'll be back before too long. At this point I've played 110 hours of that game in total and it's one of the best gaming experiences I've had. I'm not sure it's one of the best games, but I'll talk about that later. For the time being I'm waiting for a little bit until I feel like it's time to pick it up again. 
   
   
2. Hearthstone - I'm not sure what's up with the current state of Hearthstone, but I'm really enjoying it at the moment. (And I'm still not any good at it, but I'm really enjoying it). I do think Blizzard perked up the competitive game and for us scrubs at the bottom of the ladder, I'm seeing a pretty even split between classes.
   
   
   
   


3. Marvel Puzzle Quest - It's a game! On a bus! And it's fun!
   
   
   
   


4. Fire Emblem: Awakening - I like my RPGs on the TV and so Awakening makes me kinda sad. For some reason even if I'm sitting in my game playing chair the 3DS still just doesn't feel quite right. Other than that I think it's a pretty good game with a lot of nice features added to the classic formula. (Although it's still freaking hard.)
   

   

   From GameFAQs user MasterBass



5. Xenonauts - XCOM, real XCOM, is a great game. Xenonauts is a faithful recreation with a modern make over. It has a lot of the charm of the original and it is cleaned up some, but it also feels like some of the faults in the original were also recreated. There are a few spots where the game just feels really devoid of fun or interest. On the other hand there are plenty of times where it's a lot of fun and well designed. (Also it's quite freaking hard, I just seem to suck at a lot of genres that I love.)
   
   
   
   

Here's my total play time for April:

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