I had a really good time with Xbox 360, or 3tricksy as I like to call it, this week. This is what I got to in my journey through all my 360 games.

Skulls of the Shogun - A great little tactics game with cartoony undead shogun warriors who eat skulls to power up. As usual, though, the game wrecks me eventually. I'm just not that interested in repeating levels for perfection - and no respawns this year.

Catan - Around the 2010s a lot of board games came to Xbox Live like Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride and Catan (known as Settlers of Catan originally). They really got me thinking about actual board games again and I've started a collection. Digital Catan works really well and was fun to play the tutorial match again. It's, of course, better with friends than AI.

Puzzle Quest 2 - Even though I knew I was disappointed in this back when it came out, I tried it again. It seemed really just fine, like the first game but with 3D environments. I started doing side quests to make sure I was leveled up enough, but, you know, sometimes a side quest can be a beast of a fight more so than the main quest. Why do devs do that? I went on one for a little girl who was scared of a cat. How could that go wrong? Well, that was one feisty tiger! I nearly beat it, but when I noticed how easily it accumulated mana, I remembered the title of one of achievements, "A.I. Cheater". For that achievement you have to lose in the first turn. Well, I kind of hate fighting loaded AI.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot - For some reason, I can never get very far in this sequel to Condemned: Criminal Origins. Bloodshot has a really good first-person punching system but enemies seem really fast and insanely aggressive. I just can't keep my health up against them for long. I'm going to dig in sometime and really try and master it someday. I find it thrilling to go first-person brawling in a game. The first game taught me that.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon - Forget what I said about the opening cut scene being the best in gaming. It's funny, but pretty bare bones and strongly based off the 80s action movie Predator. I like all the 80s references of music and action movie tropes. The dialog is funny as well. There's something about the gun-play that feels a little off to me though. I feel like it's a tad slow. It's hard to pin down, but I usually get a very good feeling from a shooter only a few minutes in if the controls are tuned just right and this felt off. I don't know, it seems like the game wants you to play more defensively and use cover a lot which is counter to the 80s action movie vibe it tries to convey.

Lego Lord of the Rings - I had to get this physical 360 version because it was delisted digitally for licensing reasons when I was going hard on all Lego games on Xbox Series S. I thought I'd have something more to do in it, but looks like I got all but one achievement last time I played it. That one achievement was to play the game in co-op. I guess I could get MK a copy and do that, but what trouble. Maybe one day. So I didn't actually replay anything.

Darwinia+ - I got this on a sale a few weeks ago wondering what it was all about. Well, it's a RTS with twin-stick shooting, and it's pretty good. Take a look.

You create soldiers and engineers in a landscape within a computer system. By fixing certain machinery and collecting souls of defeated viruses, Darwinians are created. Then you can lead them to work on other machinery to solve a variety of problems and build things. The viruses will try and kill your Darwinians and so you deploy a squad, take control of it, and shoot at the viruses twin-stick style. Some of the sound effects and virus designs remind me of the arcade game Centipede. I played many levels until the complexity got to a point that was a little overwhelming to me, and I put it down, saving a lot more gameplay for another time. I'm glad I bought this.

Purchases

Overlord 2 ($10 at Game Exchange) - Just as good as the first, but is the last to be any good. I can't wait to replay it.

Anomaly Warzone Earth ($3 Xbox sale) - Another Tower Defense game I could swear I played before, possibly on another system.

R-Type Demensions ($3 Xbox sale) - Shmup it up!

Lode Runner ($3 Xbox sale) - A kind of update to the PC game everyone seemed to have played but me back in the 80s.

Marathon Durandal ($3 Xbox sale) - I think I played and owned this on my old gamertag. I thought I'd give it another shot. I hear a new Marathon game is in the works.

Faery: Legends of Avalon ($1 Xbox sale) - I've always been curious about this game. I know it got terrible reviews, but it's has a turn-based battle system and 3D free-flying exploration. I think I'll like at least something in this when I get to it near the end of my 360 list. I'll buy that for a dollar.

And that's all for this week. I had some logging-in trouble near the end of the week which I hope I can fix. I realized that without logging in I am cut off from all my digital games, ability to get achievements or save on the cloud. It's a pretty serious deficiency that must be fixed. It's kind of depressing to think that I'm one log-in error away from complete shut down on online connected Xbox systems.