PixlBit

Three games played and looking forward to a new retro game to play in November. 

I played a whole buch of Assassin's Creed Odyssey the other day. I finished all the Discovery Tour missions, customized my character and got myself a horse. Then I played the main game for a good long time. I got killed by a Wolf, by two Lions and chased around the island by a mercenary looking for the bounty on my head. I wasn't all that bad, but people still wanted to kill me for money. I guess that's ancient Greece for you. Anyway, I really enjoyed it up until I had to sneak into a compound for the tenth time and steal something. It seems that's the main thing you do in this game. Everyone wants you to steel something for them, which requires a stealth approach. I enjoy that sort of gameplay for a while, but not all the time. I mean, I did do a lot of hand-to-hand fighting, even on horseback, which was fun; and I explored the world a lot. It's enormous. I never really got much farther than two small islands. The stealth gameplay just irks me after a while. Anyway, I'm looking forward to playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla when it goes on sale or gets added to Game Pass like Odyssey just did. 

I then spent some time with Airmech Arena. This is an old Xbox 360 downloadable game. It's a RTS where you control a mech that can turn into a jet plane like a Transformer. You have bases but don't build them, just capture them and use them to build units to send into battle. You can pick them up in plane form and take them to other parts of the map and give them orders. You fight yourself like a twin-stick shooter. The controls work really well and the gameplay becomes very fast paced after a while, maybe too fast for me. I ran into a stalemate against the AI in one challenge map. I just couldn't build units fast enough to overtake the last base. I've found it's always the case with these RTS games that the AI builds way faster than you. It was fun though. You can play online against real people or locally against a friend. 

I played through several more missions in Lego City Undercover. This game just keeps getting better. It's clearly the best Lego game I've played so far, and I'm about half way through the entire list of Lego games. I still can't figure out which character is the strong man who can lift heavy objects. I'm given a quick head-shot of the one who can do it, but there are a lot of mustachioed characters. I've unlocked all the basic character types too, the construction worker being the last. I'll figure it out once I've gone through all the story missions. 

I'm cranking through Microsoft Solitaire Collection on my phone. I'm trying to accumilate badges in the Daily Challenges. I figured out that if I build up the bonus games by playing regular hands, I can double my XP for four days or so. So that's my routine. Play nine or so regular games to unlock the bonus games, gain the double XP bonus, and then play Daily Challenges to unlock badges for achievements. I was starting to get a bit obsessed with the game for a while there, so I've tried to establish a routine and limit to my game time. It can really get in the way of daily interpersonal interactions, and that is not healthy. 

November is going to be about reminiscing the 2010s. For gaming this includes systems like 3DS, Wii-U, Xbox One and PS4. I'm starting with 3DS. I made a list and Fire Emblem Awakening is number one for 3DS. I played this game when it came out and found it great but very complex. It kind of overwelmed me. So, I'm renting it from my library to see if I really want to make it my number one 3DS game. I remember enjoying Fire Emblem Echoes much better because it seemed a little simpler. I have that game, but it's not as highly rated as Awakening and the Fates series, so I'll try Awakening again. I am still looking for an affordable 3DS XL. I got a New 3DS a few years ago, but I love the XL size screen. I've only seen the XL being sold for $250 so far though and that's a bit much. $150 might be my limit for that system. I wish I hadn't traded it back in 2017 or thereabouts. What was I thinking?