Knocked off a bunch more in the 360 collection. I was writing down all the digital only games I wanted to play on 360 and came across a lot of them. I own a lot more than I remember and there are ones I missed as well. This is just adding to my "collection" and making getting through 360 a real chore. I passed my usual burnout on year-long gaming projects a month ago, so I think I'm good for the distance now. Here's this week's plays plus a few buys.

Sonic's All-Stars Racing Transformed - I really love this racer and found quite a bit more to do in it this time around. I grabbed a few more Hard difficulty finishes in World Tour mode, finished all the Grand Prix races, and worked on Time Trials until I'd just exhausted myself. I also redesigned my avatar for the avatar vehicle you can use (Battle Block head with top hat, Dust An Elysian Tale T-shirt and punk pants and boots). I was surprised 360 didn't cut off all this avatar stuff by now. I'll play this game again sometime to try and unlock the rest of World Tour and do races on Expert difficulty which I unlocked this week.

Dragon Age Origins - I found this cheap at a Goodwill and scarfed it up. Then I played it a good long time. What a great game! I thought I had tried it years ago too and didn't like it that much. I think it must've been DA2. This game has great voice work, really nuanced and varied responses from characters, a great story and fun leveling. The battle system is... interesting. I guess a CRPG style, part turn-based, part action. You can move around and give orders to your team but battling itself is automatic. It's pretty good though. I played as a human Rogue and got to the part where you have to enter The Fade to exorcise a demon from a child. I sent in Morrigan and didn't realize she didn't have an ability lined up to self-heal. I wish there was a tutorial on the battle system in this game, because I couldn't use potions while in battle and wasn't sure how you get that to work (my main character has a self-healing ability). Needless to say, in the final battle with the demon, I died and got a game over screen. No respawns this year, and so I stopped, but I can't wait to revisit this game again.

Minecraft 360 Edition - My buddy MK has been playing this while I do my thing and it keeps making me dive back in for another round. I did the usual thing that I do: dig a mineshaft, get some diamonds, build a nether portal and battle Wither Skeletons (I got a Wither Skull this time - two more to conjure the Wither). I also did night battles in the Overworld with my dog team. I acquried six dogs (the max allowed), and I'm on the hunt for mobs every night. It's like I'm the king of my own kingdom but I kind of yearn for multiplayer. That was so much fun back in the day.

Halo Wars - I have only the Heroic and Legendary achievements left, and so I played on Heroic and got stomped. It seems I'm impatient and always send out too small of an army. Most of the fun of it to me is building units and exploring, and I want to get to that asap. What is this "Can't has" phrase? What does that even mean?

Torchlight - I thought I was going the full distance this time, but I put it on Hardcore, and you know, no matter how careful you are, there will always be something unexpected to rip your health way faster than anything else. I was quite deep in the mines and had beaten a difficult boss when some enemy while I was mopping up started casting spells that ripped my health faster than I could react to it and I died. I knew it would happen, but I was being so careful, I thought I could pull it off. Ah well. . . Frickin' great dungeon crawl game! I had a pet Troll and taught it spells!

Renegade Ops - This is basically an update to Jackal on the NES. You drive vehicles from a top down view, twin stick shooting everything, and rescuing prisoners. It looks great and plays great but it beats me every time. Sometimes there are time limits, and I hate time limits.

Toy Soldiers: Cold War - Holly crap, I thought I'd played this, but I think it was the first Toy Soldiers game. This is basically tower defense but with lots of real-time action options. You can drop into any emplacement and fire in first-person view. Build a kill meter and you get a special attack which is sometimes a Rambo-styled character you can run-and-gun with on the battlefield. Maps usually have a vehicle or helicopter/plane you can jump into as well. Everything is styled as toys and so they are battery powered. The environments look like diorama's one might make for your toy battles. Intros to a level show you a toy box of soldiers and equipment like one might have got as a child in the 50s or 60s. That retro look is fantastic! I played through a lot of maps before a game over on one where you defend an aircraft carrier and can fly a jet plane against a super-sub called The Typhoon, which I nearly beat. It was an awesome battle as I switched back and forth between building emplacements, manning them, and taking off in my jet to directly attack the sub. Land forces are dropped on the carrier deck, bombers attacked and destroyed my emplacements, and attack helicopters came wave after wave. What a cool game!

Ilomilo - A puzzle game with a look like Yoshi's Woolly World, everything is made of cloth. I was really into it through the prologue and first set of levels, but then the puzzles got very large and complex. Your object is to get Ilo and Milo together on a maze of 3D block paths and to collect everything you can along the way. You can carry special blocks to fill in gaps so you can get around. Man, do levels get big, though, requiring some serious planning. What a great look this game has! So weird and full of fabric you can almost feel. I'll be glad to revisit this in the future.

Purchases

Last of Us (PS3) - Even though the stealth elements bar me from ever finishing it, I felt it was an essential game for my PS3. $11.

Dungeon! (board game) - I'm already planning 2027 and this was on my list to play. Amazingly, I found that Barnes & Noble carried a reprint of this 1975 DnD game for $13! With a rewards member discount, I got it for $8. Bazinga!

Dragon Age Origins (X360) - Another rare find, a worthy video game at Goodwill that wasn't beaten to all heck. It was practically brand new in fact. $5.

Views

MK and I watched The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Movie (1995) that I found on DVD at Goodwill. I was looking for crazy practical effects like in the TV show, but, except for the costumes, there was more CG than I expected, which kind of disappointed me. However, I got to dig some interesting casting and voice work. First, Paul Freeman as villain Ivan Ooze. This guy is a great British actor most known for Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Also, the robot in the Power Ranger's lair called Alpha 5 was voiced by one Richard Wood, stage name at the time of Richard Horvitz (Invader Zim, Kaos in Skylanders, Pox in Destroy All Humans! and many other roles). Some silly lines from the film are: "You ooze, you lose!" and "Time to boogie with the bear!". Very silly stuff and a permanent part of my movie library now at MK's place (this is a special library I started with films that are video game adjacent).

That's a week. Now playing Skulls of the Shogun (XBLA) and Prof. Layton Last Specter (DS).