PixlBit

I played a lot of different games the last two days, mainly for rewards points, but also for fun. I would start a game for rewards points and then stay with it until it started to not be fun anymore. My real goal was to get to my legacy game, Bioshock, and delete all these Game Pass games so I would have enough memory to install Bioshock: The Collection. So here are all the games played.

A Plague Tale: Innocence: I played this one segment several times before I got sick of repeating it. I had to light a stick, walk through a sea of rats (who are afraid of fire), and light a bonfire; only, I could never quite make it before the fire went out on my stick. I’d be inches from the bonfire and -poof - I’d be devoured by hungry rats. To heck with repetition.

De Blob: This is a fun game. You are a blob that is tasked with recoloring towns and cities drained by a bureaucratic-minded menace. I played for a good long time. As you enter new cities, you can pick up challenges that help you color the area. They are timed though. I found the controls under a time limit a bit frustrating. Your blob somewhat sticks to things and it can only climb a little bit up a straight wall. If you try and jump, it rockets you off in the opposite direction. These aren’t really difficult controls, just specific to this game and need time to master. And the time limit isn’t really that pressing since your progress on a painting project is saved even if you fail. But I get pressured by time limits and ultimately annoyed because my blob can’t just roll all the way up a wall without having to find a ramp to the roof. I stopped but would go back to this sometime.

Devil May Cry 5: I played a good 6 levels of this. I liked the character with the cane because he fights via his panther and falcon, only attacking for the finishing blow. The progression of this game is pretty old school: you traverse an area until you get to a room or courtyard, then the exits get blocked and you fight a hoard of demons, rinse and repeat until you get to a boss. I love the enemy designs, though. They’re very grotesque and macabre reminding me of enemies in Souls games.

Borderlands 3: I jumped back in for the Valentine’s Day update. Here you see hearts appear above enemies. You shoot them for various effects. Get to a hundred “broken hearts” and you’ve unlocked all the rewards. Rewards are a few weapons and skins. One of the weapons was valuable to me. I’m really impatient for the next full DLC drop.

Borderlands 2: Monthly rewards quest had me get 50 kills. I dropped back in with an old character and did a side quest that got me 50 kills very quickly. I completed the B2 quest anyway. B2 is still fun, but I noticed all the things B3 improved upon like being able to teleport from anywhere.

Fallout New Vegas: So after getting through the mission that introduces the VATS battle system, I got stuck. I was tasked with finding plants at the Old School House and Cemetery. I only found Jalepeno at the School House and couldn’t find the Cemetery at all. What’s the first thing a new visitor to a town wants to know? Where everything is. Why can’t villagers answer a simple question about locations? I really liked this game, though, and wandered about a lot, but I felt like I was wasting my time. I’ll come back to this with a guide.

Lego Worlds: This is a fun game, only I lost the feeling of progression after a while. In adventure mode you fly your spaceship from planet to planet (or are they all islands on a single planet?) and collect gold bricks by doing tasks that teach you the mechanics of the game. Other tasks are also discoverable. Basically, you pick up different gravity gun looking devices that let you transform the lego environment. It was super cool for a while, but as I chose location after location, I began wondering what my real goal was. Some locations don’t have gold bricks, so what’s the point? Unlocking more and more items and kits for use later in free-play mode? I guess that’s it, but I kind of wanted a tiny bit of story and progression to help me feel like I was doing something meaningful.

Bioshock: Finally I had enough room after deleting all those other games I just mentioned and played some remastered Bioshock. I have to say this, melodrama and high-mindedness in games is a blessing. Go for the big ideas and dress it up big, I say, because that's entertainment in my book. I played on Survival mode (super hard) first and didn’t get very far. Then I played on hard and am still going. I hacked every darn thing I could. I’m good at that mini-game. I especially like hacking sentinels and having them watch my back. I’ll say though, on survival and hard these enemies have more health, so you can’t let them hit you much. Big Daddy’s are brutal on hard making you search for environmental traps to do your job for you. Another thing, I really like the system of upgrades and how they look. They are very easy to comprehend and manage, which I appreciate a lot. Games can get mind bogglingly complicated. With such an action game, I do not want to spend a lot of time squinting at menus.

That’s a week all at once. I would usually blog after a gaming session, but I’ve been hitting the sheets instead because I just came off a terrible chest cold and am generally worn out from thinking about careers and such. So much for BaD, but at least this is a mega blog for you. Read it over a few days.