Showing posts with label Video Game Tracking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video Game Tracking. Show all posts

Thursday, March 14, 2024

The Video Games I Played - February 2024

This is the second new monthly games post.

I'm not feeling very settled in what anything means. The book posts have some basic stats about the books which don't really get into the nature of what I'm choosing to read and why. For January and now February I've tried to divide games into "Games I've played intentionally" and "Games I've played to feel something moving" -- which has gone by a few different names. Given that I'm trying to do everything more intentionally that makes it harder to see what I'm doing and also leaves me in a strange place with games like "Final Fantasy XII" which I seem to be playing mostly to get through it.

You'll also notice this update is coming kinda late into March and that's largely due to me not really having a good feeling for what tracking the games I play means to me in 2024. Still I won't to remember what I've played, so we'll keep going and see what's next.


The Games I Played in February 2024

Two arcs, a smaller blue inner one and a larger green outer one. In the inner blue arc are `Final Fantasy XII`, `Wildermyth` and `Hollow Knight`. In the out green arc are `Into the Breach`, `Mario Kart 8`, `Sunless Sea` and `Pikmin 4`.

I had planned to focus on playing Final Fantasy XII, as the game I'm playing to enjoy the story and chill out with. The problem with this is that I'm finding FFXIII to be profoundly boring. I just don't really want to play it and it doesn't seem to have a ratio of story-to-gameplay that pushes me to keep playing. (I'm not sure what the ratio of story-to-gameplay is nor where it pushes me to play games, but it seems like a workable metaphor, is there something good enough to make you want to play even if something else makes you not want to play.)

I also trailed off Hollow Knight, as I often do. Honestly February was not a month where I wanted to play games much.

Wildermyth I played a bit of and think it looks interesting, but I think it's a think I could play with my partner and we could have a lot of fun with it, so I've been holding off looking closer.

The games in green have all been games I've played for the joy of making stuff move -- as I constructed above -- and they've all done that admirably. I'm regularly struck by just how good Pikmin 4 is.

Thursday, February 01, 2024

The Video Games I Played - January 2024

So this is the new monthly games post.

At this point I've captured two things. Which games I've played and which games I've played "intentionally". I'll probably expand this as I go, but I wanted to do something a little different and give myself a bit of an interesting look. I'm not quite sure I've achieved a look I like either, but again here's a starting point.

Which games I played is self explanatory. Which games I've played "intentionally" is a thing I'm not that clear on myself, but Sea of Stars and Final Fantasy XII are the two games I made time in the evenings to sit down and play. Other games on this list, I didn't choose as an intentional activity, so much as thing to do to rest for a short or long moment. That's a thought I'm still working on and I'll see what makes sense as we go. Games are more-or-less in order of when I started playing them from top to bottom.

I finished and "completed" Sea of Stars, so I tried to add some iconic indicators; an end dot (from sequence diagrams) to signify hitting credits and a "golden" glow to show "complete". 

(Complete goes in quotes because I could probably do more, but in this case I found the "true ending". True Ending goes in quotes because what is truth in a video game.Golden goes in quotes because I'm not great at finding colours and faders in Omnigraffle (which I used to make this).)


The Games I Played in 2024

Tiles representing video games laid out in two rough semicircles, an outer green one and an inner blue one. In the blue one, the Sea of Stars link is attached to a circle with a golden glow. There is also a tile for Final Fantasy XII. In the outer circle there are tiles for Mario Kart 8, Invisible Inc., Super Mario Odyssey, Dicey Dungeons, Europa Universalis, Into The Breach, Prison Architect and Hollow Knight.

As I mentioned, I finished Sea of Stars and wrote up some things about it. I've played quite a bit of Into the Breach especially as a background thinking game. It's (sort of) easy to dip into and out of, especially while I'm working on a project. I've really picked up the rhythm of it and I'm really having fun with it. As always Mario Kart is great to sit down and quickly jump into something to redirect your brain and your hands. ... Also "Vroom".


Like I said, this is evolving, but I kinda like the shape. Does it make sense? Is it interesting? Is there something else that would be good to know? Feedback is appreciated.

Monday, January 01, 2024

2023 in Games

I've been tracking the games I play for a long time now and partly that's so that I can write a post that looks at how I played from a ten-thousand foot view. I've reached a point where that's less important to me than it was and my priorities have changed. I'm going to keep tracking in a way, but I think that's going to look a little more like what I'm doing with books now. I've written a bit more about that in an update earlier in December. but my longer term goal is to make sure that everything I'm producing is fun to make and makes me happy, so that's going to inform how I capture playing data going forward.

I also got very clobbered by COVID in November so my tracking, which has been spotty all year got even worse and I haven't written down a single game I've played since December 10.  That really helped me see what was and wasn't important to me. Earlier having very detailed information mattered to me, but now it's just not a priority for when I play or what I do. If I'd finished that software to track playing time, that might be different, but I haven't, I don't really want to and I'm looking to focus my time differently going forward.

That being said, I do know a few things about the games I played this year, so here they are.

I played 31 games this year for approximately 500 hours. That's slightly fewer games and significantly fewer hours than the last few years. My gaming PC broke a while back and between pandemic and other things fixing it was never my priority. Mostly I've been playing on the switch, but that's felt a little less fulfilling this year so I've started to broaden out again, finding the things I can play on my ancient Mac Book Pro and since my birthday on SteamDeck.

Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - Screenshot - Link is looking at his data pad which looks suspiciously like a Switch.
Fortunately the Switch and Tears of the Kingdom, which is a great game, even if you play Tears of the Kingdom on your Switch in the game!

 

Important Games

The five games I think were really important to me this year were:

  1. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
  2. Tactics Ogre: Reborn
  3. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age
  4. Pikmin 4
  5. Sea of Stars

I also played a lot of Mario Kart 8, Dicey Dungeons and Into the Breach, but in less intentional / important ways. 

I've merged time and favouritness this year, at least partly because I haven't tracked well and as I'm looking forward, I'm thinking a lot about what I play for the experience of the game and what I play for managing the moment.

I will say that Tears of the Kingdom is a masterpiece and I've love it to bits. It builds beautifully on everything in Breath of the Wild and is just in general a great game to play. Pikmin 4 is also really good and honestly fills in almost every need I've had in terms of a Pikmin game.

I'm also deeply in love with Sea of Stars, although because it is very much an homage to Chrono Trigger it may not be as great an experience for someone without my rose colour glasses. Still if a modern polish of 90s RPGs is something you want in your life, there's really nothing better.

Sea of Stars - Screenshot - Valerie, Zeke, and Seraï face off with some rock things in a rocky tunnel.
Sea of Stars, home to every thing I've kinda wished SNES RPGs would do, and more.

 

Finishing Games

I didn't finish any games this year. There are a bunch of games which I've started and which I think I will finish with soon, but soon is as good as it gets.

Again with my overall change in how I'm going to track things and think about game playing generally, I'm much less interested in what I've finished. I may keep track, but honestly looking at a lot of the games that have come out in the last few years few of them really even have definitive endings, where you aren't encouraged to go back and play. Even if there's not a New Game + mode, for me the space ending a game leaves in my head often leaves me going back to play a game over again right after I finish until my attention shifts to somewhere else.

Finding What Works on The Mac

Since I did open Steam again for the first time in a year or more, I thought I'd mention what out of the games I like worked well and what didn't. Overall, Steam and most video games don't work well on an 8 year old Mac (Steam has stolen focus from me 8 times writing this paragraph so far, just for example).

Smaller windowed games have been great, so I've played a good chunk of Dicey Dungeons and Into the Breach and a bit of FTL: Faster Than Light. I tried some Civilization VI and some Stardew Valley, but neither was a huge technical success. 

Invisible Inc. was probably my favourite Steam game this year (obviously not from this year). It worked well on the Mac and had the right amount of tactical thinking for me.

Getting some desktop gaming back was nice, but I want to play with a lot more intention next year.

Into The Breah - Screenshot (Mac command bar included) - The defenders of humanity, equipped with giant robots, plan out their turn trying to minimize the damage from the giant bug-like Vek.
Into The Breach, because throwing giant bugs into lakes (sometimes of acid) is a good way to relax.

 

Cataloguing Screen Shots

This is probably dumb, but I learned the correct way to get screenshots off of the Switch this year. You may recall that in past years, I very slowly passed them out via Twitter. That was a slow and laborious process, but I wanted to make sure that I had a lot of screen shots of a game in case I wanted to write about it later. As it turns out you can hook your Switch up to your computer and so long as you have a manageable number of images you can just copy them over. So I now have a fairly good archive of screenshots that I found interesting this year.

Tetris (Game Boy) - Title Screen - Tetris above a view of a towers topped with onion domes.
Because some day I might need this...


Friday, December 15, 2023

What I Did About The Books I’m Reading and What I Should Do About the Games I’m Playing

Back at the beginning of the year, I posted about wanting to change up the way I was keeping track of the books I read. Previously I posted a book post every few days with the new books in a big list. I was inspired by Sharon Lee who does that and it seemed like fun.

I wanted to make the changes for a few reasons. First off as technical task it was surprisingly frustrating to maintain a list over a series of posts and it was a bit redundant as my GoodReads profile is public and you can see the list there. The other reason was that the book posts were inflating the number of posts I was making in a month and taking time away from working on other things. I though, as a next step, making a monthly “infographic” update might be fun and interesting and maybe teach me a few things at the same time.

As someone who has worked in post secondary education for a while now, I can assure you that nobody (including myself) has any idea what an infographic is. So I settled on an answer that was high on info and maybe a bit low on graphics.

All of the posts are under the Books in 2023 tag and they look more or less like this:

A screen shot of the top of the Books of November 2023 post.
A screen shot of the lower middle of the Books of November 2023 post.

I’m pretty happy. As I said, it might not be as pretty as it might be, but at least for now I’m enjoying making it. I learned, for example that for some reason I haven’t read a single book published in 2023, which seems weird, but now I know.

More technically, I learned a bit about getting formatting to work properly. I also learned that books are almost never in a 2:3 ration. I mean, I shelved books for years, I knew this, but until I tried making a grid of book covers I hadn’t realised just how wacky the world of book cover sizes is. I also messed around with hand crafting a word cloud, mine is certainly not as pretty as some, but I kinda like it.

A word cloud of authors from June 2023 (listed fullin in that post). Tomohito Oda is very large in the centre and Elizabeth Bear is barely visible below her. Other authors include Charles Todd and Patrica Briggs a little bit smaller that Tomohito Oda.

I’m doing a very simple translation where the author’s percentage of the books translates directly to the font size the author. So in the June example above, Tomohito Oda represented 26.4% of the books I’d read to that point in the year and her name is in 264 point font. Elizabeth Bear only accounted for 1.6% at the time and so she’s in 16 point font.

From a production point of view, it takes me about 3 hours to put together the post and certainly requires more hand done portions than it might. When I set out that was fine but as the year went on, I hand wrote more HTML than I really enjoyed, especially when it came to keeping the two column tables balanced. There’s also still some book keeping that’s duplicating Good Reads.

So eventually, I want to either automate the process or make it more manual. I still like the idea of hand building my infographic, but also creating fewer points where I can get in my way seems helpful too. For the time being I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing because it’s fun enough and kind of meditative, without taking up all of my time.

I’m having enough fun with it that I’m thinking about how I can modernise my system of video game tracking. I think those posts are alright, but they have a few problems.

The top of my November 2023 in Video Games post (I do appologize for the low quality alt text for this post, I wasn't sure how to illustrate it and I'm just short of time to put all of the text from those posts back in).

I’ve had a lot of trouble this year keeping track of what I’ve played and when and so the data going into the posts is a lot worse than it was. This has happened before and I might get better about it again, but I’m also a spot right now where games are less important to me than they were. I’m not sure I need to be quite as granular about it as I have been.

There’s also a problem that a lot of games show up every month. If you read those posts regularly you’ll know that my nuanced view of Mario Kart 8 (Deluxe) is “Vroom Vroom Beep Beep” because I really haven’t had that much to say about it in the … almost decade since it game out (the first time). I don’t mind doing a new review for something new or a point about something interesting, but I think those posts are some of my worst writing and I want to put that energy somewhere else.

One of the things I’ve always meant to do with game tracking is build one of those theme river diagrams. At the moment for me capturing the very large things about what I’m playing is important. For example: “The summer of 2023 was the the summer of Tears of the Kingdom” is the kind of insight I’d like to hang on to (and I’m not sure is even that apparent in what I’m doing).

I’d also like to make sure that I have a picture in my head of what I played in a year, new and old. Like right now I know I played Hollow Knight at some point in the last year, and apparently a lot of that was in the winter, and then I played a little bit of Breath of the Wild just before Tears of the Kingdom came out.

Overall, it’s time for a change, I’m just not totally sure what the change is going to be. Writing it out this way makes me think something similar to the book infographic might be the right way to go. Here’s what my 2024 in games looks like at a glance updated each month, with a few insights to spice up everything else.

I think I can also dial back the tracking. I’m not sure at this point that it’s doing me any good and while I don’t think it’s doing much harm if I can streamline to “Here are games I played a little and Here are games I played a lot” that might be what I need. That’s going to be weird and I might end up continuing just because it’s an ancient habit by this point (and imagine all the data I won’t have if I want it later!).

Anyway, those are my Updates updates. Making infographics is fun, if a little bit tedious and even I, after doing something for seven years, can make a change. I don’t know exactly what you can expect in terms of my media consumption nonsense in 2024, but I, at least, intend to have fun with it.

Monday, December 11, 2023

Blog: Video Games of November 2023

I spent a lot of November down with COVID, so I don't really remember the month and certainly didn't have a lot of energy to play. I'd planned to pick up Sea of Stars around my birthday and that turned out to be a pretty good speed when I had the energy for it.


My top five games (by play time) for November were:

  1. Sea of Stars - Sea of Stars is a lot of fun. I think it stands up on its own, but it's also the modern extension of great SNES role playing games. It's certainly made with a lot of Chrono Trigger in it's heart and kind works as the sequel I'd been imagining, rather than Chrono Cross.
    Screenshot: The three heroes talk to a wanderer on a mountain top at sunset. The Wanderer says 'Mountains're nice'


  2. Dicey Dungeons - Dicy Dungeons has been the thing to play when I don't want to use my brain too much.
    Screenshot: The Inventor, an orange D6 faces off against Beatrice, a vampy bee woman. The invetor has a shocked card, which they can't use without adding a die, a two handed sword which will do at least six damage plus another die's worth and a jackhammer where when you push the button your opponent's equipment will be shocked.


  3. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - I started a new playthrough to look at the differences of the routes. I'm finding the overall story a little flat, and some of that is due to them trying to keep a dark and gritty tone. The game play in each mission is always fun, so as long as you don't think about the war crimes you keep committing, it's fun.
    Screenshot: Our heroes, lead by the Hawkman Canopus, fight their way up a large rough fortress on a dark and stormy night. The battle seems to have turned with only a few opponents remaining.

  4. Stardew Valley - I found it hard to come back to Stardew Valley. It's still a good an enjoyable game and the core farming is enjoyable, but I found having played through all of the story years ago, I just didn't really connect.
    Screenshot: Our farmer looks at a patch of Kale in a rather patchy looking farmyard.


  5. Mineko's Night Market - I thought I'd try this out as something new in the farming / store management genre. It's fun, but not quite what I'd hoped. It's slow on its own and then has some fairly severe technical issues on the switch that make it frusterating to play.
    Screenshot: A closeup of a white cat, looking bewilderedly at the front of a van which has been made to look like a snail.


Here's my total play time for November:



And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:




Saturday, December 02, 2023

Video Games of October 2023

October was a complicated month, so I wasn't thinking too much about what I really played. I did install steam on my Mac and so that was nice to expand the pool, although there's not a lot that plays nicely on my 2016 mac.


My top five games (by play time) for October were:

  1. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I'm reaching the ending of my first play through. Maybe should have pushed thought quicker, just to let the story go at speed. ToTK has been
    Screenshot: Link stands on a snowy hill looking out on a mountainous landscape, while a korok looks at him squarely in the side of the head.

  2. Dicey Dungeons - This has been pretty good for quick pick up and play situations. The number of different ways to approach the core concept of role dice and use them to activate cards is fun alghough, I would love a design my own deck and just play with things, even if it would be stupidly imbalanced.

  3. Pikmin 4 - Continues to be solid and I appreciate just how much there is. Have drifted off in the last little bit, but I'm sure I'll be back.

  4. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - It snowed, and just to confuse everyone, rather than playing Ogre Battle, I played Tactics Ogre. It's a little thin for story, but the actual combat in an encounter is always fun.

  5. Hades - Still great. Does not like my Mac's keyboard.

Here's my total play time for October:



And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:




Friday, October 06, 2023

Games of September 2023

I'm trying to focus on other stuff and be intentional with my play time, so my play time was down overall for September and most days I didn't play more than an hour. In trying to be intentional I'm trying to play things I find fulfilling and so I took a deep breath and installed Steam on my Mac Book. I'll eventually get my gaming PC fixed back up, but this will do for today (assuming the laptop survivies, it is a 2016 model).


My top five games (by play time) for September were:

  1. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I spent a lot of my time in Tears of the Kingdom wandering around and finishing things up. I'm not sure that hunting almost everything down on the first playthrough has been that good of a choice, but as always the moment-to-moment game play is good so it's usually fun.
    Screenshot: Link dressed in desert garb runs past a giant dragon standing on a huge rock.

  2. Pikmin 4 - Pikmin 4 is a solid game. The only complaint I really have is that it's menu is on a different button than Tears of the Kingdom. It's a little bit conflicting because I *like* Pikmin 3 more, but as I said last month, I'm so glad to have this much more pikmin to play.
    Screenshot: Red and yellow Pikmin are blasted out of a dark cave. Their faces remain vacent.

  3. Final Fantasy XII - I didn't touch this much and I kinda didn't miss it. There are parts of FFXII which are pretty good, but it's slow and grindy and playing it never really feels that rewarding. I enjoy the concept of the game a lot more than I really like playing it.
    Screenshot: Ashe fights a dinosaur at the beach.

  4. Hades - Uh, so, I can play games on my Mac Book. I maybe *shouldn't* play games on my Mac Book, but I can.

    Scrrenshot: Zagreus arrives in Asphodel, flooded with lava and he stands by a large engraving in the floor of a skull holding a bone.

    Uh, please ignore the melting Mac Book.

    But seriously, Hades is still really good.


  5. Super Mario World - I'm not quite sure what's wrong with me that there are so few games that I really love the controls in, but I'm kinda fussy and sometimes Super Mario World is still somehow the game that fits.
    Screenshot: Mario swims down into a tunnel surrounded by grey stone.

Here's my total play time for September:



And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:




Monday, September 04, 2023

Games of August 2023

August is always a busy month and it's a transitional one for what I play and how. I tend to think about games for summer and games for fall and August always sits in the middle. My partner also traveled a bunch in August so, I didn't play much of Tears of the Kingdom, which she has mostly watched me play. Instead I picked up Final Fantasy XII, and also poked Pikmin 4. I also played a bit of Cursed Treasure 2 (remastered!) which has suggested to me that it's probably time to get my PC fixed up again so that I can do some medium screen gaming (also also maybe give some money to game makers that aren't Nintendo.

August was also not my greatest month for keeping things organized, so the data for the month is artificially reconstructed in places, but close enough for my purposes.


My top five games (by play time) for August were:

  1. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age - I find that I like FFXII provided that I don't invest too heavily in it. Which, if you look at my earlier thoughts on the game matches that, half-hour a day model. If you try to rush it, or to push through, the game pushes back and you find yourself under-levelled and under-equipped. It needs to be played slowly and steadily and you get to advance the plot once or twice a week.
    Screenshot: Protagonists Vaan, Ashe and Balthier fight a (relatively small) Tyrannosaurus in a desert.
    There's enough fun in it, especially now that I'm focused on gear and organizing gambits that I keep playing, but I find it makes it really hard to invest in the game. It's done not badly for my audio book listening, and to my watch times for PlayFrame and Noah Gervais.

  2. Pikmin 4 - If I had a complaint about Pikmin 3 it's that there wasn't enough of it. Pikmin 4 is a brilliant answer to that problem in that a) it exists and b) there's quite a bit of it. As a bonus, c) it's an excellent improvement on all of the elements of all of the games. This is the best Pikmin game and it's really fun. I do wish it was a little better at tutorializing things (I know asking Nintendo for more tutorials is a dangerous game). I played like 10 hours not realising that you could switch to your dog co-captain (in addition to riding them and having them fight all your fights.)
    Screenshot, The Rescue Squad Rookie and Oatchi the dog direct glowing green pikmin to take start bits back to their nest in the dark of night.

  3. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I mostly didn't play ToTK this month, but did pick it up a couple of times when I was feeling low energy or down. One of the brilliant things about Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is how easy it is to jump in and find something interesting to do or find something interesting to see. I really appreciate that deeply absorbing nature.
    Screenshot: Link aims an arrow at a Moblin Boss and crew coming up a rise in a grassy field.


Here's my total play time for August:



And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:




Sunday, August 20, 2023

Video Games of July 2023

I felt a bit flat overall in July and mostly disappeared into the immense depths of Tears of the Kingdom. I poked a couple of other things, before switching over to Final Fantasy XII at the end of the month when my partner was out of town. 

I haven't been enjoying game tracking as much the last little while and I'm going to institute a cut off that if I didn't play an hour of the game I'm not going to write about it. (Unless I want to, it's my blog).


My top three games (by play time) for July were:

  1. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I've really been plumbing the depths of the side stories and experiences in Tears of the Kingdom. Just like Breath of the Wild the amount of good things to go and do is hard to imagine. I have really distracted myself from the main story, so that's starting to feel a bit vague, but I'm sure once I pick it up again the game will snap back into focus.
    Screenshot: Link stands in a sun drenched golden forest looking at a stone platform.

  2. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - Vroom vroom. Spent a bit of time working on time trials.
    Screenshot: Roselina races towards Toadstool Castle.

  3. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age - I needed something to play that my partner wasn't too invested in. With Dan Floyd playing both FFXIV and FFXVI on Playframe I've been thinking about Final Fantasy more and figured it was a good time to pick this up on switch. Despite having played the first few hours not that long ago, it's interesting how much I've forgotten. I like the game but I can't say it's one of the most gripping, not from story or game play or style even.
    Screenshot: Vaan looks towards the camera, he seems to be whining and has been hit hard enough on the side of the face to leave a welt.


Here's my total play time for July:



And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:




Sunday, July 16, 2023

Video Games of June 2023

June was a relatively chill month. I mostly put in an hour or two on Tears of the Kingdom and also tried to get other stuff done. I felt pretty happy with the month. 

I've stopped recording mobile games. I've also mostly stopped playing them, but I picked up the full blown successor to "Seedship", "Beyond the Chiron Gate". It's a text-based game, where you make decisions about building a crew to investigate a wormhole network with the nifty little caveat that you can never go back to a system after you've found it. I've enjoyed it quite a bit, although the fact that some of the descriptions are repeated frequently enough that it makes it a little hard to get really invested in the lives of any of your little team flying through space. Certainly worth the price to play.


My top five games (by play time) for June were:

  1. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - ToTK has been really good. As I said in May, it a lot denser and more vibrant than Breath of the Wild. The ways they've expanded the core concepts in BoTW are really fun and there's usually at least "lne more thing" that I want to do every time I play. The story telling is also quite well done and they balanced the story with the messing around really well this time.
    Screenshot. Link looks over three boats fused together and outfitted with batteries and drive fans.

  2. Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp - I played the first few missions and had some fun with Advance Wars, but then ground to a halt when I hit a level I couldn't solve. If you've been reading for a while, you'll know that as much as I *like* tactics games, I'm often not very good at them, and games in the Advance Wars style really seem to stymie me. I find I'm often slow to solve puzzles in a lot of cases, and tactics games that don't give me an unreasonable breadth of actions tend to be a struggle. I may go back, I think they did some good work in the rerelease, but the core game play hasn't been my jam.
    Screenshot. The aftermath of two units fighting, a head shot of one sad commander with nothing and a grinning one with a bunch of tanks on the other side.

  3. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - Vroom vroom, as always. Lately I've been looking for something that's easy to play but kind of interesting for those quick moments when I don't want to risk getting sucked into Tears of the Kingdom. Maybe time to look into reviving my gaming PC.
    Screenshot. Rosalina jumps her Harley style bike over a glittering lagoon.

  4. Donkey Kong Country (NSO - SNES) - Been watching Dan and Dan play through Donkey Kong Country 2 on PlayFrame. I figured I'd see how it felt to play again and how far I could get. SNES platformers from this era also kinda match for that easy to get into game I'm looking for. It's also intersting to look at how games from that era weren't good at really communicating with players how to do well (or even to play) which I think is a mix of a lot of business decissions (don't want those kids renting these games) and technical ones (we already have all the sprites we can have on screen). As a kid, DKC was really impressive, looking back on it from today it seems really limited.
    Screenshot. Diddy Kong cheers beating a boss while standing in a gigantic hoard of bananas, next to a gigantic banana. Donkey Kong stares at him lifeless and unanimated.


Here's my total play time chart for June:



And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:




Sunday, June 11, 2023

Video Games of May 2023

Given that I put at least 300 hours into Breath of the Wild, it's probably not a surprise that I pretty much only played Tears of the Kingdom after it came out.

I'm excluding a bunch of dipping into to various Mario games because I needed some extra screen shots to acompany my Mario Memories.


My top five games (by play time) for June were:

  1. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I'm really enjoying Tears of the Kingdom. It has the same density of interest that Breath of the Wild did, but the variety of things to do and the interest of those things is much higher. The game feels more vibrant than its predecessor and it's delightful at practically every moment. Also, rocket shields.
    Screenshot, Link stands on broken and mossy rock projection with ring of glowing green text. He's looking out over the clouds of Hyrule, with a few floating islands scattered and a menacing glow under the clouds off to his right.

  2. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - I played this a little bit while waiting for the Tears of the Kingdom release, but also to test out our new portable Switch dock. While I think Tears of the Kingdom is more moment to momefffnt fun, Breath of the Wild still has a beauty all of it's own.
    Screenshot, Link rides through a grassy field towards menacing rock projections that look like bones.

  3. Mario Kart 8 - Vroom vroom.
    Screenshot, Rosalina flys her bike towards the camera in front of a giant autumnal tree.


Here's my total play time chart for June:



And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:




Tuesday, May 09, 2023

Video Games of April 2023

April was pretty quiet in terms of games. I was mostly focused on making stuff and organizing in my own time. Plus watching more stuff, particularily "Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These" since apperently I really like lots of space ships, even if not accompanied by very nuanced stories.

My three games (by play time) for April were:
  1. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - I'm still really enjoying Tactics Ogre. I think there's some mechanics I'm still a little fuzzy on, but the game has given me enough resources that I can push through most things.

  2. Hollow Knight - I started a new play though and it's been a nice reminder that I am getting better at the game, however slowly. My other play through is pretty far along, but I'm certainly struggling and I find each time I restart I get a little better and a little more momentum.

  3. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - Vrooom. Honk. Screeech!


Here's my total play time chart for April:


And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:



Saturday, April 01, 2023

Video Games of March 2023


I played a weirdly low amount this month, but March was pretty busy and I didn't really have the time or energy to pick much up.

My top five games (by play time) for March were:
  1. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - I'm continuing to really love this game. I think I've got a pretty good feeling now for how the game works, so the combat is feeling good. The story is also interesting, if a little dark. I'm not sure about playing for other endings, but it's nice to know I can jump in and do that.
    Screen shot, a mass of soliders in purple and blue obscuried by a magical glow from a critical hit of Aquablast II.

  2. Hollow Knight - Still having fun with this too, although definetly finding the edges of my skill. I'd like to find something that gives me the same feelings of motion and control without me needing me to spend so much time learning.
    Screen shot, a room full of bugs throw money for the bug knight.

  3. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - Vroom.
    Screen shot, In second place, Rosalinia flys down to the beach on her flame motorcycle, hanging from an Animal Crossing paper-plane, while holding a green shell.

  4. Final Fantasy IX - I've been trying to find something to play in the evenings to follow Xenoblade, but as it turns out this was not the month for playing in the evenings. I also found, for having only played the first hour, I'm baffled by how slow the game is. Putting the card game right up front and making it more or less manditory really derails the whole experience.

    I remember the begining of FF IX being really engaging with swashbuckling and adventure, but so far It's a clumsy kid trying to find tickets to a thing and wandering back and forth between 3 scenes. I think it's interesting how you only keep the high points of a lot of games (or at least I do).

    Screen shot, Vivi wearing a blue coat and a pointy hat, says 'Pointy Hat' to a moogle standing beside him in a round room.

Here's my total play time chart for March:



And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:




Sunday, February 05, 2023

Games of January 2023

For a bunch of reasons, January just hasn't been a time when I've really wanted to sit down and play much. I've mostly been poking at Tactics Ogre and picking up Xenoblade Chronicles more when I've wanted to play something with more story and activity.


My top five games (by play time) for January were:
  1. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - I'm a sucker for Ogre Battle stuff, what can I say. The game is pretty satisfying, although I do wish it has an easy mode just to make moving through some of the game a little easier.
    Screen shot from Tactics Ogre: The knight Folcurt and a team of others, fight octopuses on an icey lake.

  2. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - I'm enjoying the replay and trying to get through doing as little side content as I can. Doing all -- most of -- the side quests and stuff was really important to the world building, but as with all of the Xenoblade games it really ruins the pace, so now that I'm seen everything I'm hoping to get a better feeling for what the story feels like when you're keeping your pace up.
    Screen shot from Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Our heroes stand at the edge of a small pond at sunset looking at a huge rock in the distance.

  3. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - Vrooom vroom.
    Screen shot from Mario Kart 8: Roselina passes through a gate on Rainbow Road on her hover bike surrounded by bananas.

  4. Super Mario World (Nintendo Switch Online)I had 10 minutes to spare and wanted to play something quick, responsive and fun. Super Mario World is one of the best feeling games I actually have installed on the switch.
    Screen shot from Super Mario World, Mario waits for a mushroom to come out of a question block on Yoshi's Island 1

Here's my total play time chart for January:


And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:


Sunday, January 01, 2023

2022 in Games

 One of the benefits of tracking what I play is that I get to make a little post at the end of the year talking about what I played and how my year was in video games. While 2022 was not a great year in a lot of ways, it did have a lot of pretty good video games in it.

Time Spent

I played 33 games for 600 hours in 2022. That's about the same amount of time as last year, but with fewer games. It was a pretty tactics / RPG heavy year, so had quite a few games that took a lot of time and then a few games trailing along at the end.

Overall my top 10 games by time played where:

  1. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - 158 hours
  2. Dragon Quest Builders 2 - 74 hours
  3. Triangle Strategy - 64 hours
  4. Hollow Knight - 49 hours
  5. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - 43 hours
  6. Ogre Battle 64 - 35 hours
  7. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - 28 hours
  8. Loop Hero - 27 hours
  9. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 23 hours
  10. Eastward - 22 hours
Xenoblade 3 Screenshot: The Main Six's ship, sailing past an island with a floating castle in the background and aurora blazing across the sky.
Xenoblade was an absolute joy to look at. Good in a lot of other ways, but Monolithsoft know pretty games.


Finished Games

Last year I started tracking games I finished. The list is pretty short this year, but mostly the games I finished were the ones that took the longest to play.

  • Dragon Quest Builders 2
  • Triangle Strategy
  • Eastward
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Dragon Quest Builders 2 Screenshot: A view of a house under construction in a happy looking farm.
Building myself a farmstead.


Favourite Games

I've recorded how I felt about the new games I played this year, but overall my favourites for 2022 were:

  • Eastward
  • Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  • Ogre Battle 64
  • Super Mario Odyssey
  • Tactics Ogre: Reborn
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Nothing really surprising on there. The one game that *maybe* should be included is Dragon Quest Builders 2, but I'm not sure I loved it so much as got obsessed with it.

If you haven't played Eastward I would suggest you look it up and spend some time with it. I think it's an absolute gem of a game and a wonderful example of a really well designed and built game. Especially if you loved 16-bit era games, there's a lot there for to feel nostalgic about but in a new and well thought through way.

Eastward Screenshot: Sam and John stand looking at a run down tower with a helicopter stuck to the top.
The whole game is beautiful and rundown and messy and sharp all at once.



Things about Games in 2022

My PC broke in late 2021 and I spent all year meaning to get it fixed, (or replaced) but never really got around to it. There are a whole mix of factors into why, but the outcome is that I spent all of my game time on the Switch, which worked out well with a number of big RPGs and some really strong tactics games.

I'm utterly in love with Tactics Ogre: Reborn. I'm not quite sure why that series gets to live in my head so deeply, but I love them and Reborn has been a lot of fun. Sparks of Hope is also really good and just below that "Favourite" threshold, but certainly fun to play. I've grumbled a lot about Triangle Strategy, but it is a really strong take on the Tactics Ogre / Final Fantasy Tactics model. Other than my complains about slowness, I think the other reason Tactics Ogre wins for me is that it gives you so much more flexibility in how you want to take down problems.

2022 was a good, stable year over all (as far as games go). Beyond getting a little taken away by Dragon Quest Builders, I was pretty intentional with what I played and I played a lot of good games. 

Xenoblade Screenshot: Eunie saying "I am actually trying to control myself. If I start going crazy, nudge me."
Eunie's the boss.



Monday, December 05, 2022

Games of November 2022


November was a little more normal, but I spent a lot of recovering from the nonsense from October. I did finish Xenoblade and started a New Game + playthrough.

My top five games (by play time) for November were:
  1. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - Starting a replay has been really rewarding. There's a lot of things I didn't recognize on my first playthrough that I hadn't seen or noticed or understood. It's also reinforced just how awesome Eunie and Sena are.


  2. Ogre Battle 64 - Snow ... but also, the second half of the game still has some pretty interesting parts. It's always a nice game to chill out with.


  3. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - Way back, when it came out on PSP, I picked it up, found it really hard and kinda gave up. Getting to revisit it on the Switch has been good so far.

  4. Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope - I drifted off of Mario + Rabbids a little faster than I thought I would. I still think it's great, but it just didn't have a time it fit into during the month.

  5. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - Mario Kart felt into a bit of the same as Mario + Rabbids. Not much time really to play it, and honestly, much as I love it, if I had time there was something more appropriate to play.

Here's my total play time chart for November:



And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:




The Video Games I Played - February 2024

This is the second new monthly games post . I'm not feeling very settled in what anything means. The book posts have some basic stats...