PixlBit

"Christmas bells those Christmas bells / ring out from the land" I absolutely love the chorus in that Snoopy vs. Red Baron song. So joyful. Also John Denver's "Christmas for Cowboys". My all time favorite low key Xmas song. 

I've been thinking a lot about Sumo Santa from Clayfighter 63 1/3. Those silly lines like "Cane pain", come back to me at Xmas time every year. Songs though. . . can't say I have a video game song I think about at Xmas time. Those Rare game soundtracks are so great. Especially Diddy Kong Racing. That Frosty Village song is very familiar to me. 

I'm doing a very specific mix right now. I'm picking whole albums from a particular year and listening to them on shuffle for a whole month. Initially I wondered if my streaming site, Last.FM could do such a thing easily. I haven't checked but it seems to me it might be a pain to arrange. Maybe on Spotify though. I thought I could save myself some time by doing that, but I really love getting the files together. I might look into it though. Time is always a consideration and I wonder sometimes if I spend too much time on such things as music mixes. These youngsters wouldn't think twice about it though. They'd make it happen on a streaming site. 

I played it on Xbox 360. You can get surprised sometimes and end up surrounded. You got to be careful. Luckily you use brand new characters and not the ones from the main game. I wouldn't want to lose a level 70 character that I'd played in the campaign.

Ok, I'll try that next time. It's still something I want to finish, hopefully this year. 

Thing is, I think I love strategy games, but then playing them usually is a chore. I don't think I approach games analytically like you have to in a lot of strategy titles. I approach them more like a sport. I like the physical challenge but not a repetitive one like in a lot of platformers. I like a free roaming game with good physics but not so much a sports game. Stuff like Halo, or other shooters, or games with also a lot of exploration and natural environments is my thing, I think. 

I am a bit burned out on it. Plus, it makes games take much longer than they should. Sometimes that's fun, but other times, I wonder what other amazing experiences I could be having with another game. 

My friend Mark was way into it when it came out. I got a copy later, but only played about half of it. I'm excited to play it all with Duke. The dialog and cutscenes in the game are already totally rediculous. Reminds me of Far Cry Blood Dragon in a way. 

The trend towards making games easier has dominated recently. Not in Banner Saga or XCOM that I've noticed though. I just want to make some progress in XCOM. I just can't keep dudes alive for very long. I was playing a bit wrecklessly that day though. I really didn't want to be so awful cautious. I wanted to wreck house SWAT style. Guess I gotta micromanage to win in XCOM. Not my style at all. 

I've been hitting the armor if it's more than my attacker's, then going for their health after that. I'm not sure that's exactly right, but it worked ok today when I played for an hour while I waited for Diablo to install. 

I'd love to spend some time out west. Went there once as a kid, but I'd like to revisit.