PixlBit

Every time I start up the Xbox I first check for any rewards points I can get by watching videos or playing certain games. This leads me to try a lot of stuff and sometimes find a new favorite. Here's what I played recently before long sessions of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. 

Immortality: This is a very interesting full motion video game that might have been a good release for the Sega CD alongside Sewar Shark or Night Trap. It's gameplay is very different though. You are given a large selection of short video clips from an actress's career and have to piece them all together by selecting elements in the clips. I didn't play long enough to really understand how this works, but it was fun to mess around with it for a little while.

I only had to get one achievement for a Microsoft Rewards quest. Oh, and I played this streaming and didn't install it. 

Chivalry 2: I thought this would be an Onimusha-type game but it was more like a PVP battle between 40 or so online players. The tutorial shows you how to fight in medieval style in first-person. It's a pretty good battle system. You weild weapons in a sophistated way. You have to lean into a sword strike to make it hit hard and start a combo move that staggers your enemy and gives you multiple hits. I had a little trouble getting this down, but I got it eventually.

Then you are put into a online battle between two teams of 20 or more players each. You rush in as a group and battle hand-to-hand until one group wins by number of kills. It captures some of the hectic and brutal fighting that might have been the reality of a medieval battle.

I got my achievement for rewards points, played a full battle round and moved on. I had streamed it and so didn't have to unistall anything. Streaming works incredibly well, even for an online multiplayer game. 

Disney Dreamlight Valley: I played this for Game Pass rewards points, but I had played it before on Game Pass because I thought it might be my return to a game like Disneyland Adventures, which I really enjoyed. I think it is now but the gameplay is a little different.

You start in a village that's been overrun with a dark vegetive menace. You meet Merlin and learn some magic to clean up the mess, but now you have to rebuild the town. Along the way you meet Disney characters and do quests for them that help in this project. 

You can customize your house with items bought from Scrooge McDuck's store and customize your avatar with items found in chests around the village. 

I played until I unlocked the castle and discovered that I can do missions in Disney character specific worlds that, when completed, bring them into your village. I rescued Wall-E and put it in my town.

I really enjoy this game and have it installed to play later. 

State of Decay 2:  I really like this game, but instead of playing the main game again, I played the multiplayer mode. This is a PVE experience like Halo's Firefight mode. You team up with online randos and have to protect an enclosure from waves of attacking zombies. It's really fun. It's third-person view and you can use guns or melee weapons to take down the zed. I managed a slew of achievements pretty much without knowing just by taking down big raging zombies hand-to-hand.

I played this for a Game Pass reward. I have this installed and will get deep into the single player game again sometime. 

Immortals: Fenyx Rising: I was glad this came up for Game Pass rewards because I had been playing it weeks ago already. It's a third-person action game with a large open world. I got back in there and completed another main story objective, improving my wings so I could now glide. I changed the dialog from Russian back to English so I could hear it instead of reading subtitles. It's fun to hear other languages spoken in a game sometimes, but not all the time. I have this installed for later play. 

And that was it for the week. There are more monthly Game Pass rewards games for me to play. I installed Zoo Tycoon for one of them. I have to pick up 20 poos just like last time it was on GP rewards, but I love this game and might stick with it a little longer than that. 

Oh, and my friend and I got to level 20 of The Chaos Chamber in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. I got the DLC on a sale and we played through two of the new areas. These are multi round battles against hoards of enemies ending in one or two big boss fights. In one, we had to battle a giant dragon. I got knocked out early and my friend heroically defeated it single-handedly. I still got the achievement even though I was spectating most of the time.