PixlBit

All on Xbox Series S unless otherwise noted . 

Chocobo GP Lite (Switch): Couldn't get out of the tutorial. Use three buttons to drift? The tutorial wouldn't acknowledge my drifting enough times that I gave up with it. This sent me on a quest for a Switch game I really wanted to play, and that was Into The Breach. 

Into the Breach (Switch): I almost preordered the physical copy that's coming in October, but I thought I'd just play it digitally first to see how I feel about it.

It's a fine game like Advance Wars. Thing is, the game killed me before I could finish my first island. Apparently your army is just four units, and when they die, that's it. Seemed a bit harsh. I really enjoyed it though. I love a scifi themed chess-like experience.

This got me thinking about the next Switch game I might try and like. It's going to be Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which I just rented from my library. I think I'll love it, but I'll just see by renting to make sure. 

Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure (Xbox 360): Knocked off another achievement for avoiding all the land mines in the Troll Warehouse level. I think I might have to go after two achievements each time I play or I'll never get through this game. I have a plan now to revisit every toys-to-life game and finish up any locked achievements. 

Citizen Sleeper: An interesting pixelated scifi survival game. You are some sort of cyborg refugee salvaging spaceship wreckage to survive. You get a set of dice each day that you can roll to give you a chance to complete a task and get rewards that keep you alive.

I liked the game, but in the flood of titles I was looking at that day, I got distracted by something and didn't return. 

Gems of War: It seems it may be impossible for me to level the artifact to 10 because there might be a time limit. It's probably a month or so, but even so it's too short for the amount of time I play to get what I calculated as almost 70 tasks done.

This is the thing with free-to-play games. They are an endless time sink and sometimes require that you play it exclusively to get the rewards you want. I see what they're doing with that. Oh no, you're not getting my gaming soul. I'll still play for some more reasonable goals though. 

Calico: What's going on here? You are tasked with furnishing a cafe with furniture and pets. I played with the cat for a few minutes and then had some trouble with the controls. I forget what exactly I had to do, but the controls annoyed me, and so I stopped playing. 

Farm Together: I returned to this as a kind of pallette cleanser, or an oasis of calm amid the storm of games I'm subjected to with Game Pass every week. I planted stuff, reorganized my space on my starter farm (I started from scratch again), and waited for things to grow. If the time was 20 minutes or more, and I didn't have anything to build, I would leave the game to do something else. Time passes in the game whether you are there or not. When I returned later that day, my crops were done and I moved on to the next task. 

Power Wash Simulator: So Mark and I are playing this in tandem. He, as usual, is far ahead of me now, but I am knocking off achievements quicker.

Most campaign jobs have an achievement attached to them, but you have to read them to know what to do, because they are usually strange tasks that you wouldn't think of doing. One of them was to clean all the lanterns on a tree house before anything else.

Mark has now gotten the pro washer gun. It sounds like a bottled huricane or the sound of Niagra Falls close up. With his subwoofers, it can rattle the windows. Ha ha. Now that's a power wash!

Ryse: Son of Rome: Yet again I play this for Game Pass rewards. Microsoft loves to promote this game, I suppose. It's visually stunning and the battle system is pretty good. I continued where I left off last time so I didn't have to repeat the beginning for the fourth time or so. I got to throw spears. That was fun. 

Assassin's Creed Origins: Discovery Tour mode: I learned about this mode a while back but was reminded by a Game Informer article I read this week. ACO is on Game Pass, so I downloaded it to try this mode. I feared it was just an exploration mode with no battles or level progression and no tasks or guidance. Yes, there are no battles, but it's an actual tour of Ancient Egypt with a narrator and supplimentary pictures. I was thrilled. I must've done 50 missions of the 75 or so. It takes a lot of time actually. There are so many locations in the game to explore. Along the way I took some screen shots. 

Don't worry, I carried some gatoraide just in case. 

 

Hippos are best viewed from below. 

This mode has also been added to AC: Odyssey (on sale right now for $12) and AC: Valhalla. I'm excited to run through those when I get those games. 

That's a week. Almost bought a PS4 this week, but I resisted the urge. Can I resist next week?