PixlBit

I was so worried about rumors of online shutdown for Disney Infinity that I didn't play my backlog game today - today being Monday - so that I could try and get the online required achievements. There were only two. One was for knocking out another player, so Mark and I jumped in a predesigned arena map and killed each other once each for the achievement. The other was for playing 10 matches in any game in Flynn's Arcade. I didn't get that one because all the games there require four online players and there were no randoms to be found. I may try one more time on a Saturday or Sunday next week just to see if there are more players those days, but I have a feeling I'm just not going to get that one - and it'll be the last one I need. As it stands now, I have all but two achievements left: the one I just mentioned and the one for getting 75 Feats. Feats are like achievements just within Disney Infinity. I'm not sure how many I have yet but after playing almost three full playsets and all the Hub tutorials, I should be close. 

I didn't have time to blog on Saturday so this is really about the whole weekend. Saturday I played Episode 5 of Tales from the Borderlands finally. I had the season pass and played ep. 1-4 as they came out, but with almost six months to wait for ep. 5, I kind of lost interest. Well I finally finished it. Great story, predictable, but still very entertaining. My big gripe with it was the way it chugged almost constantly on my Xbox 360. Load times were long but worse than that was very regular slowdown that came near to ruining the experience for me. I'm not sure what the issue was. Maybe this runs better on XBO or PS4. I'd be tempted to get it again to play it without hiccups. 

So just as I begin playing Disney Infinity 3.0, they cancel the whole series. In fact, Disney is cancelling their whole games division. That's just crazy! D.I. was beating Skylanders for Pete's sake! Well, it seems toys-to-life stuff is dipping in sales across the board and they're getting out before it gets worse. I for one, am still crazy for toys-to-life stuff, so here's what I picked up today:

Started off with Metal Slug 2 on Monday. This one has an Egyptian theme. It's also about twice as long as the first one. It's full of fun stuff like getting turned into a mummy in the early stages. You fly a plane, drive a tank and the screens scroll up sometimes; lots of little improvements and the same great music and graphics. It also has the same great difficulty. This one has continues but they are not infinite. At some point you get a game over screen (I never counted the deaths), but the game does save your progress but only up to the beginning of the chapter you are on when you died. So if you have a tough time with the level end boss, you may find yourself repeating the whole level several times. This is what happened to me in chapter 5 (I think there's 8 chapters). I just wasn't up for any more today. I tried using the classic controller, it's suported, but I went back to the Wiimote for somet reason I forget why right now. My mind is completely blotted out with the next game I played all the rest of the day. 

Played through the whole of Metal Slug 1. I love it except I don't love the arcade, quarter munching, game mechanics. They throw at you impossible waves of bullets and bombs so you die and have to put in another quarter to continue. I don't have to put the money in, but it's still frustrating to die so much. I never did get really comfortable with the Wiimote ( the classic controller wasn't supported) but it was ok. I downloaded Metal Slug 2 on virtual console for Monday. I can use the classic controller for that. 

I saw Captain America: Civil War on Friday with Mark. I'm not a huge fan of the Avenger's movies but they're fun. This one was pretty good. I liked Bucky, Winter Soldier, the best. He has the best look and fights very agressively. I liked every fight he was in. Yea, he's troubled, being partially mind controlled and all (not a spoiler if you know the comics) but I actually like him better for it because he's more human than these mostly pristine do-gooders (Iron Man has his flaws, sure, but he basically has good intentions). I didn't like how they left Bucky though. No spoilers, but it was a boring wrap-up. I wanted to see more of him riding motorcyles. 

Went to Jay Street Video Games as is becoming my habit early in the week. Traded a few and bought a few. Here's a pic:

I hooked up my slim PS2 today to play Neo Contra. This is a top down twin-stick shooter. I suppose it's in the Contra series. The best thing about it was the opening cutscene which was so full of over-the-top action that made me laugh.

Started off Sunday with Scrabble for PSOne. This is a good TV version of the board game. Everything works fine. You have a tournament mode to play against A.I. characters and solitare in case you don't have anyone to play with. I played some tournament mode for a while before I got kind of bored of it. Get it, board? Yea, that's dumb. Anyway this was good to have way back when but now I have Scrabble on Xbox Live where I can play online. Yea, I don't need this anymore. 

I was looking for the Metal Slug Anthology on PS2 or Wii today at Jay Street Video Games but all they had was 4 and 5 on Xbox, so I got that with some discount for trade-ins. Here's a pic: