PixlBit

The 90s TV this week was The Pirates of Dark Water, a gorgeously animated production that reminds me of animation I saw in Heavy Metal, Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings and Don Bluth's Dragon's Lair laserdisc game. Almost immediately I said to myself, "darn this show has a wealth of interesting graphics, it must've cost a fortune to make". Turns out it did, half a million per episode according to wiki. The story isn't bad either, the characters are good and the voice acting very good. Mad Krammer and I are enjoying it sandwiched in between the following games. 

Retro:

Combat Cars (Genesis): A top-down racer with lovely graphics. You race and fight the other cars with weapons. You can choose between a lot of different drivers/cars with different weapon sets. I didn't like the controls though. The d-pad is a little too sensitive, making it hard not to oversteer on corners or stay moving in a straight line on a straightaway. I didn't enjoy it. Will trade. 

Fire Shark (Genesis): This is the sequel to Sky Shark, a vertically scrolling shooter where you pilot a biplane. Enemies are decidely WWII tech however. The NES port of Sky Shark wasn't great, but this port of its sequel is better. It controls better and looks better. I'd prefer the arcade cabinets, of course though. These two games in the arcade have excellent graphics I really love. Good game, but hard. 

Gauntlet 4 (Genesis): This is very much the same as previous Gauntlet games in style but it has a Quest mode. You start in a hub area where you can buy weapons. There are four elemental themed areas you can enter. Inside each is 10 levels to beat. What happens then I don't know because I couldn't beat even one of them before my health ran out. This game needs food. I enjoyed it though. Quest mode makes it. 

Game Pass Games:

Age of Empires IV (XSS): I played the tutorial levels. I'm loving it. It's as smooth a RTS experience on console as Halo Wars. I love reading the real history behind each mission too. I'll be keeping this installed for further rewards use. 

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War (XSS): I groaned when I saw I had to reinstall this 70GB beast for a Game Pass reward, but when I finally played it, I wasn't too annoyed. I mean, this is a great game, but I dislike stealth, which is what you do in the opening levels. I got my 20 kills though by stealthing until I was inevitably seen and then counter struck everyone dead. I like the countering system. Mostly I would just stand there and let them attack me until the counter prompt appeared and then let them have it. Pretty easy, really. 

Atomic Heart (XSS): Oh man is this like Bioshock Infinite! Story, graphics, gameplay, you name it, it's just like BI, except, it's all about a future Russia gone wrong. You are presented with a Utopia that is hiding a Distopia, and you're at the center of discovering just why. I'm guessing already that my role as an enforcer for the status quo will be overturned by shocking revelations of corruption and tyranny. I say, this is fun, and I'm so happy to be playing another version/reimagination of the Bioshock formula. Great!

Social Game: 

Earth Defense Force 2025 (XSS): I made good progress on my Air Raider and Fencer this week. The Fencer especially and with great pains because this character is really difficult. He's slow and often needs an Air Raider's laser targeting ability to use his heavy missiles. I mainly ignored that and used mortars and close range hammers/spears/battering rams. Mad Krammer and I didn't find the usual badass players to team up with, but we got average teams and made progress on lesser difficulty levels. I'm at 63% completion and hope to get the magic 70% very soon. It enables removal of armor/weapon limits in multiplayer. 

Casual:

I'm grinding levels with a daily Grandmaster Suduku puzzle until the next month starts, which is today. I should get to level 100 pretty quickly. Lucky for me the standard levels have hints because Grandmaster boards almost always stick me at some point. I usually need a hint or two to finish them. There's no penalty for that other than having to watch more ads. I'm thankful for that. 

I gave up on achievements outside of the dailies in Mahjong. This game becomes so much about just pure chance after a while. I've tried various strategies but it seems not to make much difference. I hate games that don't respond to strategy. I'll finish the medals for the daily challenges though. 

Wordament is still going strong. There's a quest mode and I love any kind of quest mode in games even if it's mostly BS. Here you just finish word find puzzles along a path until you unlock a chest full of XP at the end. I have to finish 12 of these areas, each with nearly 100 puzzles. I'm on area 7. I do 5 puzzles a day along the path until the dailies start up again in Sept. which is today. 

That's a week. It'll be Labor Day weekend next, and I'm off a few days from the library which means (probably) even more gaming. I'll be setting up my PS2 and testing my current games for goodness. Those not worthy shall be traded. 

What have you been playing?