Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Blog: Games of May 2019


My May was fairly busy, but it was also the first month I owned a Switch. Generally I've been pretty happy with the Switch so far. I think I haven't enjoyed the "gimmick" of the Switch so much, but the joy-con are pretty good controllers. I generally don't like the hand-held consoles, so I've mostly used it docked, but the couple of times I've taken it "on the road" (all the way to the back yard) it's been fun.

In addition to Super Mario Odyssey and Mario Tennis Aces, I also played Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. All in all it didn't quite grab me the way Odyssey did and I found it a touch ... sloggier ... than I'd hoped. I also picked up Celeste, but actually only played it on the one day in April I owned the switch. And finally I downloaded the Demo for Katamari Damacy Reroll, and I owe Dan a real apology for all the shouting I did watching his let's play. (But seriously, how do you TUUUURN?)

Also really enjoying having a console with a working screen-shot facility again. If you want to see what I'm up to you can follow @gamesTJPlays on Twitter.

My top five games (by play time) for May were:
  1. Super Mario Odyssey - This is a really good game. I enjoy the bite-sized nature of the moon hunts in the "after" game. I also generally like the "main" game play following bowser, even if the "story" is possibly the worst ever in a Mario game. There's no question that between the this and Breath of the Wild (as the two big games in the first year of the Switch), I love Breath of the Wild significantly more, but I have fully enjoyed my play time in Odyssey. (Even if I've been slow learning to spell odyssey.)

    Looks like a nice place to adventure.


  2. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Back in with my no-fast-travel play through. It's been fun and caused me to be a little more thoughtful about how I play. I've enjoyed the planning and side tracking such as, I need more storage for swords, now I have to go all the way to the Deku tree to get my inventory expanded, maybe I should stop in on Kakariko on the way. Also I'm still mad at the Bokoblins who exploded my horse.

    It feels like we've been here before, but it's good to be back. (Still need to fix the Wii U internet connection)


  3. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Fest - I have news. Your Amiibo top out at Level 6. We are not amused. (There are like 40 different emotions!)

    True Love.


  4. Pokémon Go  - I haven't really deeply settled in to a routine playing, but I'm still doing the mostly daily.

    Adventuring.


  5. Mario Tennis Aces - This game has a single player and I basically can't finish the first 4 levels. I assume I'm just not getting the idea of the game, but my history of not really hitting it off with the Mario Tennis games is long. However, I figure the best way to point out that I'd really like a new Mario Golf or Mario Strikers (in that order please) was to pick up Mario Tennis.

    Even the start menu is kinda hard to learn.


Here's my total play time chart for May:



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



Tuesday, June 04, 2019

Project 1 & Project 11: Monthly Update

Woah. That was harder than I figured. A little bit because I've taking a sessional teaching gig for May/June, but more so just from the freedom to be able to sit down and write. Blogging wasn't too bad, mostly things I'd been thinking about for a while, but the fiction was really hard to start.

Updates:


Project New Words Total Words Percent of Target (for Month)
The Roofs 81 81 2%
Blogging 2233 2233 55%

As far as the blogging goes, most of that was my Earthbound Post, I also counted my Games of April post, but I didn't count the book updates. For next month I'd like to produce at least 2 posts of the size of the Earthbound one.

For the fiction, I'm not sure I'm ready to dive in as much as I thought I was. I'm going to keep the goal where it is for now, but I'm working on a few other projects right now (more blog posts to write) and I'm not feeling like diving into a project the size of the the thing sitting in my brain right now.

Rereading

A little while ago, somewhere out there on the Internet, I ran across a thing about the joy and value in rereading books. I’ve managed to lo...