Blood West
Good game, but a bit simplistic in it's mechanics, hated the ending tho

Beat SaGa 2: Goddess of Destiny again. This time I used a 4 robot party, and did not rescue the first muse, causing most of the remake exclusive content to not happen. I was still able to use a robot mage, though the inability to get more magical circuits from the arena made it less useful near the end of the game.

Now I need to decide what items to take over to the next playthrough. Can take over up to 8, and will still need to pay for them in that playthrough. (Planning on 3 robots, 1 human, and will be using the arena.)

By the way, before that I finished STARGAZER (Hoshi wo Miru Hito fan remake with early SaGa-like mechanics), though I didn't do the extra content or get the "good" ending (the one that has you fight the final boss that was not implemented n the original). Very unlike the game it's a remake of, combat tends to be glass cannony; enemies die quickly, but so do you. Hope you made enough revival items!

For the Queen (Steam)

NSFW autobattler game. It was just meant to be a quick fun game for a couple of dollars. However, By the end of the final run it actually became seriously engaging for a bit. After failing the final stage about 7 or 8 times I finally realized that I actually had to come up with a plan and build a certain army composition. Once I did that and took it seriously, I won the next run. It's actually a pretty good game for what it is- it sort of reminds me of a NSFW version of a typical mini side game in something like Yakuza- like that auto battle beetle game for example. Fun game...it ended up taking me 12 hours all up.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, May 1 (Xbox Game Pass)-It fills the void Uncharted and Tomb Raider left and it does so very well. The game looks great, voice acting is excellent, the story and gameplay both felt very Indiana Jones. The puzzles were fun but not too difficult. Some of the side quests were rather extensive and a couple of those felt like they were part of the main quest. However most of the side quests and mysteries were generally read a note, go to an area, read another note, open a safe or chest. The collectibles were ok except for the mandatory backtracking at the end which added 3-4 hours of getting lost but I was having so much fun I didn't mind too much. My biggest complaints are that I was able to stealth my way thru most of the game which in turn made the game rather easy. I did enjoy beating enemies with wooden ladles and whatever else was at hand when combat was inevitable. If I could make one change to the game, it would be to have more fleshed out side quests. 5 or 6 of the side quests were really good but I'd like that number to be a bit higher. After nearly 40 hours, I had a lot of fun and I look forward to a sequel.

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Yakuza 5. This took me several months to finish because as much as I enjoy the regular Yakuza gameplay, hitting people with bicycles and such, I found it to be my least favorite of the series so far. I think my problem is that the game's particular gimmick this time around is that not only do you get to play as several characters, each character has their own unique gameplay for side stories. Kiryu is working as a cab driver, so you do these sort of half-assed racing missions. Saejima comes back and ends up marooned in a mountain village that subsists on hunting for food and fur-trapping, so he gets a half-assed hunting minigame. You get to play as Haruka, who's pursuing an idol career, so instead of combat she engages in rhythm game dance battles. A new guy, Shinada, is a former baseball player, so his story is really just doing the batting cages. Akiyama comes back and I don't recall him getting anything specific.

Kiryu is the same old good stuff, and I liked Haruka's section for how different it was (my wife also got really into her story and wanted to be kept apprised of her progress in winning the big idol TV show). Shinada is alright since the batting stuff isn't too bad and his baseball-themed fighting style was fun. I really didn't like Saejima's whole deal, though. First he has a lengthy segment of being stuck in prison and then he hits the mountain and I was completely not into the hunting stuff. I think I got out of that sequence with doing little more than the bare minimum because I wanted it over, but I also had to motivate myself just to turn the game on. The game does get better after that, but I just found it frustrating in that I wanted to just run around the districts, getting into fights and doing ridiculous side activities and I felt like the game kept trying to mix things up from the usual formula. Even when the game does throw something goofy at you, like Shinada's underground chicken racing competition, I just didn't find it very engaging and basically skipped almost all of it. I need to take a good break before tackling the next game.



I, Robot. Jeff Minter's remake of the classic 3D arcade game from Atari. This one is recognizable as a remake of the original in that you control a little guy who has to "paint" the platforms while a giant eye in the sky tracks you and tries to kill you if you jump at the wrong times, while you also have to dodge hazards on the field, but Minter's take is even more abstract than the original, with his usual psychedelics and yak noises. This version, however, throws out the levels in which you enter the pyramids and the ones in which you fight a giant head in the sky as sort of boss levels and replaces them with arena stages in which you skate around an open floor and have to paint the floor by destroying enemies. I wasn't crazy about this move because the arenas quickly turn into cases of having to maneuver enemies just right to cover that last 2 percent of flooring you need to pass, similar to how Breakout can get really tedious about having to knock out that very last brick.

I found the game engaging in general, but it also feels like Minter recycling a lot from his other games. The tetra-blasting stages have a very Polybius/Tempest 2K vibe with the shapes of the grids you're running over and certain mechanics like having to shoot more stuff to increase your speed and firing rate. There's even a certain Hover Bovver vibe to how the game wants you to move very carefully yet quickly to cover ground, and a bit of Gridrunner again. It feels like Minter got bored of the original game's style and just started throwing in his regular tricks. It's fun, but I would say it falls short compared to Polybius, Moose Life, or his last Akka Arrh remake.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PC Game Pass)

Now I've played the modern MW trilogy, as opposed to the older MW trilogy. This one was the worst CoD campaign I've played. Whilst the others were nothing but "on rails" scripted game movies, at least many of the sequences were actually enjoyable. In MW 2 everything was just tedious and restrictive...and some of the stuff that you're meant to believe in this game make Fonz jumping the shark look normal. At least Black Ops 6 had some good freeform open sections that were fun.

i haven't finished a game in the last 5 years because of politics sucking the life out of gaming.
having a hard time enjoying any game.

It's the same as one can say "Football is corrupted. I can't watch football anymore", or "Film-making companies are corrupted, thus I don't watch any films"! You can't generalize everything like this.
Alternatively, if you really believe so about present times, you could play old games. From before, what you mention, start happening. Unless you believe that "Everything is everywhere black and bleak, forever and ever"!

Trials of Mana (2020), May 7 (Xbox Game Pass)-This was exceedingly average and was a real disappointment. I was expecting much better. I haven't played the original so I don't have that to compare it to. This felt like a bad mix between Ocarina of Time and a Tales game. It was also quite short and really easy with the exception of 1 or 2 end game bosses. Its not terrible its just kinda there taking up time and space that could be better spent.

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