PixlBit

These are the games I played last Tuesday when I was off work. The routine is somewhat different every time I get to play. Like last week I played some Gears of War Judgment in four player co-op. It was fun and I'm going for a hardcore run of the game that way. I didn't get to Gears last Tuesday though. Here's what I got to. 

I picked up another physical copy of Lego Lord of the Rings for Xbox 360 at Classic Game Junkie (the game has been delisted on the digital store on Xbox Series S). It worked. My other copy, which wouldn't load on my Xbox 360, went to my friend and he got it to install on his Xbox One. I guess the X1 has a better drive than X360. I played the game through the events of the first movie. The credit roll made me think that was it, but the game covers the whole trilogy. I stopped for now on my way into Mordor. It's a fun romp through the film in Legos. It follows the film closely but shortens some scenes or adds puzzles and humor to make it a Lego game. It's always a novelty to play a game of a movie as long as it's decent. Lego games are usually decent. 

Dipped my toes in the Forza Horizon 5 waters to get an achievement for rewards points. I was going for the "all roads traveled" achievement but got a different one for doing one of the campaign challenges. I had a feeling an achievement would pop if I did that. I'm almost done the "all roads" one though. Maybe 20 or so roads left. It's my favorite thing to do in the Forza H games, but I usually finish it way too quickly. There's a ton more to explore in the game after this, and I'll be keeping it in rotation for a while. 

Jurassic World Evolution. I don't know why MS asked me to play this for Game Pass rewards when the sequel is out on Game Pass, but I played it again and enjoyed it up until I had to take a picture of something and couldn't for the life of me figure out how to do that. I love the devs of this game because they did Zoo Tycoon (I believe), but JWE is a tiny bit more complex and inscrutible at times with how to do things. However, it is good, and I'll return it to someday as I will try JWE 2.

Oh Gems of War, what endless trials are you putting me to. I've been going for achievements as a way of giving me a reachable goal but even that has me grinding away for hours with only minimal progress. It's fun though. I swapped out my summoning character for a new one to see if it would be an improvement. I'm set up thusly: Card 1 - lead attacker with a shield to keep him alive as long as possible; Cards 2 and 3 - two characters that turn gems to skulls. They work well if their spells are loosed in sequence. One creates skulls and changes a gem color to the one that the second character turns to skulls. The result is a screen full of skulls that lets my lead character dish out devistating damage; Card 4 - a character that creates doom skulls and new characters to fill spots if I lose a character. In tough battles this is sometimes key to eventual victory.

Pinball: I looked for the oldest pinball machines on any collection playable on a Xbox console. I found one 1960s table on The Pinball Arcade platform on Xbox Series S called Central Park. So I played that a bunch of times trying to unlock all the basic table goals. I got all but one. I thought there would be 60s and older tables on Pinball Hall of Fame: Williams Collection that I own for Xbox 360, but there wasn't. I'm sure there are pre 70s tables on Pinball Hall of Fame: Gottlieb Collection but this game was only released for Wii and PS2. I own it but right now I only have my 360 and Series S hooked up. 

Minecraft has returned to my rotation because of the new update and the addition of four new achievements. My friend and I got the first one for jumping from the new highest point to the new lowest point. The sky goes up to 320 blocks and the underground to -64 blocks. It wasn't too difficult only that there was a lot of ladder to be made and digging to be done. The one problem I'm having with the new lower limit is that I don't know where the resources are anymore. They've changed some of the locations of things like coal and lapis and where lava lakes occur. I was able, after a time, to find diamonds and iron. It just seems to take longer to get all the resources together, which is a pain. Of course, all of this is being done in Survival Mode, which gets me thinking - perhaps I should explore Creative mode a bit and see where things are generally located. 

The next achievement I was after was to trade with a villager at block 320. Building the staircase to that height isn't so bad but getting a villager to climb up there is tricky. A normal villager will not follow you anywhere especially up a staircase. One walkthrough suggested finding a zombie villager who will pursue you but then you have to cure him which requires a potion and golden apple. Finding the zombie villager is the tricky part, although, one night in my town, a zombie villager came to my door, only, I wasn't ready with the potion and apple, so I left him. I then realized I should've trapped him in my house until I had the means to cure him, so I built a special room for that, but now I can't find a zombie villager, and the world I'm in is a winter one with no other village in near proximity. So I'm considering other options. Sometimes Minecraft drives me to fits of annoyance.