PixlBit

This is the last of the OG Xbox games I played from my collection. It's all DS now for a while. 

Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes - This is a isometric-view, action-rpg like Baldur's Gate: DA but with the DnD license. It's good, but I got stuck unable to find a level for a door in the Lower Crypts. The environment can be a little dark and levers hard to see. I scrounged hard but no luck. 

Far Cry Instincts - Now this (not the sequel, Evolution) is the one I remember. Your boat gets destroyed and you have to survive an island full of desperados. Later on you get infected with something that gives you animal-like super powers. I played for a while, but in one beachside pirate resort, I found myself restarting a lot because I failed the sneakin' and couldn't just run-and-gun it. I tried the sneakin' style a few times, but after that, I went guns a-blazin'. Nope, doesn't work. Maybe next time. A very good game, though. 

Capcom Classics Collection 2 - I mainly played Quiz & Dragons and the Capcom Quiz version of it in the extras. This is a board game rpg with quiz game battles. I read the questions out loud for fun and MK joined in to help answer the questions. I finished the whole game and then did the Capcom only quiz version and found I didn't know much about Capcom games, but I learned a few new facts. 

Arx Fatalis - This is a first-person RPG like Morrowind but with a spell system that was hard to pull off. You have to do combinations on the d-pad (or was it the left stick?) to activate a spell and then cast it. I had a devil of a time getting this to work reliably. It's a timing thing I could never quite master. A very insteresting game. The PC version might play better though. I traded it. 

Metal Slug 4+5 - Darn if I don't love the hand-drawn looking graphics of the Metal Slug series but absolutely get frustrated with their difficulty and somewhat limited control schemes. Why can't this just be a twin-stick shooter where you can aim in any direction at all? Traded it with sorrow. 

Painkiller: Hell Wars - A classic run-and-gun FPS MK and I played like crazy back in the day. It also has a tarot card system that gives you boosts if you earn them. You earn them by completing goals on each level, then activate them before starting the next level. I got pretty deep into it before getting stuck somewhere. I forget now where that was. It was fun using the stake gun again and pinning enemies to walls - bangin' heavy metal battle music too. 

Atari Anthology - I played the obligatory brick breakers: Breakout, Super Breakout, their home and arcade versions and Off the Wall. Then some Sky Diver, Yars Revenge, Bowling, Golf, Home Run, and Realsports Tennis. Compared to Activision's Tennis, I think now (even though I still I love the Activision version) Realsports is actually a bit more playable because you can actually beat the AI opponent. 

State of Emergency - MK used to play this non-stop back in the day. It's a Rockstar game surprisingly and you just do missions inside a mall during an emergency that has all the mallrats running all over the place. You fight mall cops and work for some sort of nefarious organization. It's basically just fighting a lot with weapons you can pick up and delivering packages. I got pretty bored of it after a while. Traded it. 

Wings of War - This is a WWI era air-combat sim that I really wanted to like but it doesn't control all that well. The planes look great though. If only it had Crimson Skies controls, I would love it. Traded it. 

Tecmo Classic Arcade - I played Strato Fighter (horizontally scrolling shooter), Pleiads (fixed screen arcade shooter), and Star Force (vertically scrolling shooter). I remember Pleiads from the arcades back in the 80s. It's actually quite complex as you defend a city or base from attackers. 

Dinotopia: The Sunstone Odyssey - The last and worst rated of all my games but turned out to be really playable, very good looking for the time, and fun. I managed to finish it despite a melee fighting system which was a little tricky when you get challenged with harder foes. Thank heavens you get to respawn immediately and continue the fight in all but one case (which I manged to beat on the third try). Pulling off combos seemed to be a little hit or miss because you had to execute them exactly, which is difficult when your tendency is to mash the buttons. Dodging is a tad slow to pull off as well, but works well if you time it right (and absolutely necessary in the later levels). The more I think about it, though, the less bad it seems.

The game is a third-person adventure, pretty linear, with a lot of melee fighting. You battle carnivorous dinos and humans who have set out to oppose the main settlers. The story is based on the childrens books of the same name. The game made me sweat on some of the boss fights, surprisingly. It's not God of War in controls, but it works well enough. I think the graphics were fine and it was neat to see all the dinosaurs animated in the world, some of which you can talk to. This game gave me basically what I wanted from a licensed property: playable, beatable (especially this), visually appealing and a solid story. 

And that's all my OG Xbox for the year. Onto DS. I've already started playing Mario & Lugi: Bowers Inside Story which, after only a few hours of play, has me thinking about it all the time. So good! More on that next week when, or if, I finish it.