Games in 2015: Spring

Dat Northwest climate. It's in the low 60s, half the days are grey, and every other day is rainy. Perfect gaming weather to balance out the sunny get-out-and-do-something days. I've been adjusting to living in suburban Seattle, but I haven't stopped gaming. We're going to list these by time invested.

April

ABSO-gorgeous

This month's star feature is Child of Light for the Xbox One, free via Gold membership . This game is a sidescrolling adventure game with turn-based combat, to use technical terms. In other words, it plays like a freeflowing Metroid, and the battles are like Most Japanese RPGs. There's a twist, though. During combat, your friend and source of rhyme maintenance, Ignicius, is controlled to gove realtime battle effects. He can heal characters, slow enemies, and collect items, among things.

Also, the game looks and sounds classy. The graphics look hand-painted, characters join the party at a quick rate and bring their different abilities and quirks to their party. Did I mention the entire game is spoken in rhyme? This creates some interesting grammar choices, but blends with the game's presentation wonderfully. Also, the score to Child of Light is top-tier. Most music leads you around by piano, until certain times call for a larger orchestra sound. The different battle and boss tracks cause me to venture into more--avoidable, by the way--enemy encounters. 

Aww...c'mon, now. Why you gotta...:(

Also in the cards is Legend of Zelda, which I won through a giveaway on Reddit. This game is 27 years old, and still fun as hell. One thing this series always did was present itself very cinematically, even in it's first iterations. The very first sword you grab is in a dark room, lit by candles, with an old man telling you to take it. The last boss reveals himself to his own short theme and then shifts around the dark room. If you haven't played this game, it's on just about every Nintendo console available, so there are no excuses! There's even a master quest mode, which is one more playthrough with completely different levels and puzzles! This is the game that got me into video games.

Other ventures are more Titanfall, #IDARB, Smash Brothers, Zoo Tycoon and Cyber Defense, which I'll get to next update. Ohh, and Mortal Kombat.

Update: May

This month was the looming dark cloud of all that involves finishing Final Fantasy X2. At 107 hours, I completed fighting every monster in the game, beating the story and replaying a section with different choices, and beat a 100-floor dungeon TWICE. On the night that I finished the story, I had a realization.