Hello friends!

Last month in a half has been pretty interesting. Me and my brother beat Dying Light and Halo 1 (Master Chief Collection version) in Bro-OP, I finally managed to mop of Final Fantasy 7, I’ve started Xenoblade Chronicles, I’m still working on Bravely Default, I got and beat The Order: 1886, I finally played and beat Hotline Miami in preparation for Hotline Miami 2, and I went to SXSW yesterday! I’ll touch on all of these things and maybe more! Woo and shit. Let’s start from the top of that list.

So Dying Light is the game that Dead Island wishes it was. It is a great open world zombie survival game. The parkour bit did a lot to help the game, and it worked amazingly. There were a few jump puzzle style things that were mildly annoying, but it didn’t detract much from the experience. Combat was quite smooth and very responsive, which quelled my biggest complaint about Dead Island since the combat in that game felt like shit. They definitely worked out the kinks with that for this game. This is pretty much the perfect coop game too. If you’ve got a friend/relative/whatever that is a gamer and you’re looking for something to coop, this game is really solid for that. I played the entire game start to finish over about a month cooping it with my brother. We kind of picked it up as a thing that we’d only play together coop (side note: It is possible that this game might be boring to play solo. That can be a thing. I wouldn’t know because I never played it solo). My only complaint about this game is the last 30 minutes to an hour (Basically the very last mission). You’re forced to do it solo for starters, where I had been cooping through the entire game before. It was a fairly mundane ‘lets climb up a giant tower’ exercise. There were some zombies and stuff, but aside from one section at the very start of the mission where you’re running from Volatiles (super zombies) there aren’t many threats. At this point of the game I was slicing through regular zombies like butter, and even a single special infected wouldn’t give me much trouble. So you get all the way up to the top, and you go through the final fight sequence of the game. Which is horrible. I won’t spoil it, but it was very disappointing. After this you’re left with a fucking massive cliff hanger ending. It was a really shitty end to an otherwise really great experience. If you’ve got a coop partner, definitely look into this game. If you’re running solo, maybe wait for it to drop down in price some. Still a really solid game though.

After Dying Light me and my brother started playing through Halo. I don’t really have much to add there, other than getting my stream setup for the Xbox One was a real bitch. I was having loads of trouble with my audio and it was really frustrating. We eventually figured it out, but I’ve got to figure out a solution so that people can hear my brother when we voice chat on Xbone or PS4. I’m thinking we’ll just leave Skype open with stream mics up. Should have a Bro-Op session sometime this week where we can try that out.

FF7 update is easy. I beat FF7 fairly shortly after I started streaming. I was closer to the end than I thought I was. Also started FF8, we’ve had two sessions of basically just early game grinding to make the rest of the game easier. Going towards getting Lionheart in Disc 1 so that the rest of the game is a cakewalk. FF8 is one of the FF games I’m not the biggest fan of, so I’m trying to make it as painless as possible. That is about all I’ve got there. That journey will continue – on most Sundays >.>.

In the JRPG front I’ve started Xenoblade Chronicles and I’m still working on Bravely Default. I’m liking Xenoblade Chronicles well enough, but I’m not really a big fan of MMO elements in JRPGs and the world seems a little too big right now. Like I’m getting a FF13 feel of doing way too much running. Anyways, Bravely Default is still really good. I’m getting to the point of the game where it starts repeating itself a few times. I’ve been progressing really slowly there, but it is still enjoyable.

And now the Order: 1886. I’m sure you’ve heard that the game is ‘short’ (It took me about 6 hours to beat). I don’t necessarily think this is an innately bad thing. One of my favorite Xbox 360 games was fairly short (Dead Space). The Order’s problems don’t really have much to do with the length. The biggest problem I think is that the game seems to mostly be a proof of concept or ramp up piece for a sequel. You spend the majority of the game investigating happenings and thwarting bad guys until the truth is revealed and then the last hour of the game lots of really interesting things happen that lead to a cliff hanger ending. The story is partially resolved but not fully, and it ends very much like ‘you’ll be the hero we need not the hero we want’ sort of thing. It is worth playing, but waiting until the summer lull and maybe a price drop is probably the way to go.

Hotline Miami was a game I was always interested in but never sat down and played. I managed to do this the week before last, as I was getting pumped for Hotline Miami 2. I’m going to be pretty short and sweet here. The game is really fun, very enjoyable, and has a fantastic sound track. If you haven’t played this by now you should. I haven’t started Hotline Miami 2 quite yet, but I will soon.

Last thing on the list was SXSW gaming expo. This was my first time going to this. The expo hall had more stuff than PAX South, but was a bit smaller. There were no ‘free’ panels I don’t believe. You had to pay for the actual conference (and it wasn’t cheap). I did get a chance to play some Axiom Verge and Titan Souls. I can’t fucking wait to play these games all the way through. They’re both soooooooooo good. Great visuals and gameplay in both of them. I think I spent a solid 30 minutes on both since neither was too crowded. These two games need to hurry up and come out so I can put way too much time into them.

I’m going to go back to kind of giving a general idea of what I plan on playing during the week. It’ll be very rough, but the games I’m playing should stay pretty static. Some days can get swapped around though. I’ll try to post these on Monday of every week

Monday: Minecraft Mondays! Feed-The-Beast Infinity

Tuesday: Final Fantasy 15 demo.

Wednesday: Final Fantasy Type-0 HD // Maybe Halo 2 BROOP

Thursday: Final Fantasy Type-0 HD // Maybe Halo 2 BROOP

Friday: MAYBE D&D. Maybe Ori and the Blind Forest Late Cast.

Saturday: MAYBE D&D. Maybe Ori and the Blind Forest Late Cast.

Sunday: Final Fantasy 8 (Series Run Sundays).

Future Games from Backlog: Xenoblade Chronicles, Bravely Default, Shadows of Mordor, Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Sunset Overdrive, Hotline Miami 2.

That about wraps it up. Thanks for reading and as always I really appreciate the support.