What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Adios (XBox Series S)

May 12th, 2024

I didn't feel my best yesterday, and my efforts to take it easy ended in my having a lot of stuff to post about here. Right after making yesterday's post, I bounced over to my XBox and finished off Adios, which only took 20 or so minutes. I felt like the Cooking Simulator style controls on the last bit kind of undercut the seriousness of the game's tone. I'm done now, though, and am glad I took the time to play this.

For the first time in a while, I did a couple off brand Lego kits, too. Both of these are from FiveBelow, and ignoring the scale issues, I think they make a cute pair. The flower shop had a misprint in the instructions, so I was glad this was simple enough to reverse engineer from the box photos. The Hello Kitty ice cream truck was ok all around, though, and I think the block colors are really good.

From there, a friend mentioned Altered Beast, and since I'd never messed with that much before, I got my Genesis Mini out and played it quite a lot. I definitely feel like I can beat it, especially if I crank up my lives and HP on the secret options menu. I'm pretty terrible at it, though, so it might take a while. Right now, I'm at the point where the first level is pretty breezy, but the second boss's patterns are still eluding me.

I also let Merge Pixel run for a while, and am documenting it here just to see how long clearing it will take.

May 11th, 2024

I didn't quite get back up to where I should be, but I was able to catch up a little on sleep last night. It meant I didn't want to get up, but when do I ever?

All things considered, I probably spent most of my gaming time idly swiping at Merge Pixel while I did more important things. I'm very determined to finish this, despite the fact that it is mind numbing, and have over a fourth of the little pixel people collected now. I've already half-heartedly been at this today, so it'll make another appearance here tomorrow.

I wanted to finish off Adios last night, but even a first person game this slow and low on action has the power to give me motion sickness. I'm interested enough to finish it off today, but if my stomach gets wobbly again, finishing it Sunday will be fine, too. I just can't abandon this quiet little character study.

To finish the day off, I went back to Love Colors before bed, too. I actually got quite a few screens cleared and felt a little accomplished. No, coloring in the little pixels does not take any skill, but it is still satisfying.

May 10th, 2024

Yesterday, I had to take my asthma inhaler a couple times, which makes me very peppy and almost totally unable to sleep. Breathing is worth it, but today is gonna be a challenge. It's Friday, though, so it's okay.

Buoyed by pharmacuetical pep, I had a pretty good session of Fitness Boxing 2 last night. I'm starting to put together a long term plan to hit all of the game's achievements, and should get about three of them in my next session. It'll take ages, but since they're more of an endurance test than a skill one, I've got this.

I played a couple more scenes in Adios, too, impressed by both the genuinely conversational tone and the fact that I got to feed a horse an apple. The horseshoes minigame was confusing, though- I played the whole thing and am not sure how the controls worked.

My final game of the night was Merge Pixel, an Android play-in-browser game I was hoping would put me to sleep. It did, eventually, which was an accomplishment. All you do in this game is wait around and drag little pixel buddies on top of each other to form more "valuable" little pixel buddies, but it seems to have a clear ending and isn't very nasty about ads. I'll come back to this one.

May 9th, 2024

Today's post'll be another short one, since I'm trying to get it done before running for some before-work errands.

Last night, I started playing Adios, an old Games With Gold download that had been sitting on my XBox for a few months, as it sounded interesting and I wanted a quick sense of accomplishment. So far, it has big relax-and-watch-things-unfold-vibes, but there's a lot of ways things could go wrong for a guy trying to stop working with a hitman, so I'm not sure it'll stay chill.

I also played a tiny bit of Threaded last night, but only made it through a puzzle and about a fourth of the next one. There's nothing to brag about here.