PixlBit

In poking around the internet for more games set in the 17th century, I came across this winning submission to the British Library's annual "Off the Map" videogame design competition (http://www.bl.uk/projects/off-the-map) by six students calling themselves Puddling Lane Productions (http://puddinglanedmuga.blogspot.com/). It's a 3D render of 17th century London before The Great Fire of 1666 destroyed it all. Here's the video:

In looking at games set in the 17th century, my theme for February, I came across this 2001 PS2 game Dark Angel: Vampire Apocalypse. It's full of dark gothic fantasy visuals and supposedly set in 1670. Gothic fantasy was created in the 18th century in literature and it looks back to medieval times for its feelings of horror. So is this game really set in 17th century? No, only in its own world's timeline. Whatevs, It takes as it's influence Diablo and Fallout, enough said. I got my retro store to mail it to me from New York for $8. Here's a pic:

Since 11am this morning I've been waiting for Destiny to install on my Xbox 360. It's been just over 2 hours so far. Mark tells me it took him 2.5 hours, so it should be done soon, but WHAT A WAIT! This is by far the longest install I've ever experienced for a game. I hope it's worth it.

In preperation for February, and my study of the seventeenth century, I made a list of games that take place in that period from the wiki pages on the subject. I ordered one from my retro store, Jay Street Video Games (which I'll mention when it comes in the mail) and picked up Port Royale 3: Pirates & Merchants from Gamestop for $9. Here's a pic:

Yeah. This screen shot sums up Monday. Horses to ride during the day, and dogs to help me control the mobs at night. What a life it is. 

I started the download of Assassin's Creed II on Xbox 360. I wanted to play it because I'm kind of studying the 16th century right now and want to see how they rendered Italy and the various famous characters in the game. While I waited, I played Minecraft with my friend, and well, I got really carried away with that, and it ate up the whole day. 

I'm sitting here in Eastern PA watching snowmageddon and putting together the paper craft figures that came with my preorder of Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam. I just finished them and took a picture. See below.

Picked this up today and got the paper craft characters as a preorder bonus. See pic below:

I bought Destiny for Xbox 360 today. My friend Mark got it and played it last week. He was really uninterested in it until a friend of his got it for him and he tried it. Now he's super enthusiastic, and, well, that means I'm going to get into it too. But not today. Today was all Minecraft on Xbox 360 and my trials with my Star Wars Edition 360. More below. 

So last week I started The Banner Saga. I got several hours into it. I love the Disney annimation art style. I kept thinking of animated Lord of the Rings though, both Rankin/Bass and Bakshi versions. I like the tactics combat. It's simpler than something like Final Fantasy Tactics, but it's still really fun. The story is neat too, all about politics with these Viking-like peoples, and characters can die if they get knocked out too often, but there's no going back. You can't undo anything with a previous save file and I like that. It'll make replaying it a lot of fun. All that being said, you'll see ahead how I got side-tracked by other things this week.