I'm really proud of myself. I finished three game over the course of 30 days. El Paso Elsewhere in the first two weeks then Mad Max and Ghostwire Tokyo in the last two weeks. I don't think I've ever done something like that ever in my video game career. It's always been that I start one single game, if I like it enough within the first two hours then I'll finish it in a few to several months then start the next. To plow through three games in 30 days is insane.

I mentioned El Paso a little bit on my last blog and I don't have much to add to what I already said. Yes, the voice was good for a small indie developer. The music was okay. The game was a breeze once I got to the first boss and after I beat him. It got hard a little bit at the last boss but not as hard as the first. It was satisfying. I appreciate the PS1 character models. The enemy placement and AI wasn't great at times. There were some frustrating moments but overall I'm glad I played it. It was a solid 7 outta 10. I started Ghostwire Tokyo next but saw I had to get the trading card drops from Mad Max so I switched to that before the Christmas sale ended. But then I sat here and thought why am I just playing one game at a time? I have enough time during my days off to play a little of both at the same time. It's not like these games are the size of Infinite Wealth. Tokyo was a little less than a dozen levels? Pretty quick if I bee-lined through the story. Mad Max was 15 but there were a lot of small things to do in the open world which I loved to do. I took a shine to the combat system of Mad Max. Do 2-3 levels this day, another 2-3 levels the next. Grind open world stuff in Mad Max in the early mornings on my days off. Quick and easy.

Ghostwire was okay. Not great. It had a personality, good presentation but it was very dry, no sauce. The combat didn't capture me. Not intimate enough. the visuals were plain but good. The enemy designs were cool. I did maybe 3 or so side quests. They weren't necessary at all to finish the game. I was given enough moves, health, ammo to beat the bosses in one or two attempts. The power-ups were boring, some not useful. There was an upgrade that let you charge up your attack faster but what's the point in that when your quicker, smaller shots did better? What's the point in doing the core grab finisher move if the enemies can rush me down, knock me out of it and now I have to start all over again, losing ammo and health trying to expose their core again. The story is the usual, 'some people handle the deaths of loved ones differently. Some want to burn down the world if that means getting back the ones they loved. Others handle it more reasonably'. I can't sit here and tell them they were dumb to talk about this like there was no point in telling the story they told. They wanted to, they maybe needed to. It's important to tell a serious story like this for healing and remembrance. The game wrapped around this small story wasn't the best. Microsoft did ya dirty Tango Gameworks. You didn't deserve the fate that was handed to you. A talented studio like you will be missed. Hopefully Krafton will treat you better.

Mad Max was my jam. It truly is an underrated gem. A third-person open world action adventure with combat reminiscent of the Batman Arkham games but visceral, hard hitting punches, kicks, clotheslines, joint breaks and body slams that had me going ape. I german suplexed a dude so hard that his head was planted in the ground and his knees were touching his forehead. I got hype as shit and yelled out, "BY GOD HE BROKE HIM IN HALF!!!! GET FOLDED BITCH!!! GET YA ASS PLANTED SON!!!" I couldn't get enough of the combat. The complete opposite from Ghostwire. I loved the loop of driving around, destroying camps and any other structures, obstacles, dangers the enemies may have constructed. To get into fights with half a dozen or more and continuously get that perfect parry into counter into a bone-crushing finisher. To hear that crunch and painful grunt and to see the ragdoll as I hit the enemy and the enemy hits the floor. Dopamine release. Even after the credits rolled I went back in to clear out the map. I almost finished it. I had two more areas where I had to clear out the enemy then I was going to do one final round of clean-up of the scavenging locations, max level my car, get as many of the cheevos unlocked minus the racing related ones then uninstall. After several more hours of progress I decided to stop and move on. What am I doing wasting time like this? For seven or eight more cheevos? Naw, just stop dude. There's so many other things you could be doing. Video game and non-video game related. Maybe one of these days I'll complete that clean-up.

I gave Dark Sector a shot. The walking/running animations are bad. The camera shake and angle while running would probably make me sick if my constitution was weaker than it is. Only got to level four I think before tapping out so I didn't see everything. DE did have some good ideas. The execution of those ideas and UI of the game needed a lot of polish though. The glaive is a good weapon but when I find the pistol to be more efficient, we have a problem. After clearing the entire room I had trouble finding where to go and that's one of the things that peeves me off quickly and makes me tap out. It was super interesting to see the progress they made from Dark Sector up to them just releasing the newest expansion to Warframe last week, "1999". 25 years of learning and improving. What a great studio DE is. I'm a big fan and I'll continue to support them through Soulframe.

I want to take this month to chill out from playing anything big until Pirates. I'm gonna take a couple days to try out the Dreamcast and Sega Genesis collections that was delisted on December 6th. Maybe play more of that Marvel collection. I also need to do some adult things. Maybe a couple other games but I don't know. It's a small vacation Until February 20th

January 18th 2025: I got as many cheevos as I could from Mad Max but ran into a snag where I couldn't find three metal scraps from one location and had to abandon getting that one. Then I couldn't find the survey crew part for one stronghold and had to abandon the rest. Ended up with over 50 hours in that game. I can't remember what I was playing in 2015 but had I been playing that, it would have been one of my GOTY contenders. Played some roguelikes. Roboquest makes my hands hurt. DRG: Survivor difficulty scaling is stupid. Thinking about playing Dead Cells again but every time I do I think about fighting The Hand and I say nope. Of course I'm still playing Balatro on my phone but I suspect I'll tap out once I get to the gold stake just like I did with the pc version. I got my eye on a few from that genre. I'll hold back for now. Completely out of fighting games once again and it feels even more solid. I wanted to see if I could with the Marvel collection. There was no one online which meant if I truly wanted to play against people then I would have to go to Fightcade and I did not want to so I dropped it. Yeah, I am done. I probably won't even watch EVO this year. I don't care anymore. This month has felt refreshing. Just playing Warframe and vanilla DRG a couple times a week. Might drop DRG once Pirates is released. Ok, enough wasting time. I have adult stuff to do.