Weekend Gaming Review – June 2020

Greetings! We’re already at the end of June and it’s been a while since I wrote up another of my recap/ramble posts about what I’ve been playing recently. My summer has consisted of work, video games, coffee and working on weekly blog post ideas so far; pretty much the same as last summer, save for venturing outside for anything more than supplies. I’ve been busy working on my backlog of games as well as a few newer ones. Here’s a quick rundown of the games I’ve been keeping busy(?) with…

The Last of Us Part 2

The vast majority of time spent gaming this past week has been playing through The Last of Us Part 2 which has been out for just over a week. I’m not sure I’ve seen the lead-up to a game release being filled with the level of vitriol and hyperbole as TLOU2. I wanted to go through this experience myself and make my own judgement about it, and I’m glad I did. There’s a lot to digest and discuss concerning the game, so writing up a post of my thoughts of the game may take a few days. I’ve been pretty damn impressed with the game so far…

Overwatch

I’ve been playing a bunch of Overwatch on pc the past month after not playing it for some time. I downloaded it after putting together my pc as a game to get a little more acclimated to using mouse/keyboard controls after spending 95% of my gaming life playing on consoles. I’ve spent countless hours playing the game on my PS4 only to be disheartened a bit when the player base started to dry up, but it’s been far easier finding matches online since picking it up once again on pc and has revitalized my love of the game. I’ve even started to prefer playing games like this mouse/keyboard and find it a little restrictive and almost uncomfortable using a controller(what’s happening to me?). The Overwatch Anniversary Event ran from May 24 – June 9 and I had a blast (re)collecting all the different skins and sprays. Much of what I love about Overwatch is how it handles being a class-based shooter in contrast to the primarily run & gun approach of others like Call of Duty, striking a nice balance between ‘arcade-y’ and tactical shooters like Rainbow Six: Siege.

F-Zero

I wrote last weekend’s blog post about the original F-Zero, a game series that I’ve played here and there over the years but had never spent a significant amount of time with. I really enjoy the original SNES release despite a some annoyances around the “bumper car” physics and A.I. opponents. The fact the Mode 7 backgrounds in SNES games like F-Zero or the overhead levels in Contra 3 can end up causing the feeling of motion sickness not long after playing. I would like to track down copies of the following F-Zero games and continue to write about them over the summer as something resembling a goal further out than what I’m gonna do tomorrow. Next up is F-Zero X for the N64, a game I know my local retro game store usually has a couple copies of at any given time…

Summer Steam Sale

As someone who has spent the entire life playing games on console and the last decade using a Mac as their at-home computer, it’s pretty awesome not having to drastically limit your search results by filtering only Mac-compatible games. The summer Steam sale began this past week and I’ve spent a fair amount of time browsing through all the games as there’s plenty I wanted to catch up on. I’ve managed to limit myself to a few games here and there; a couple games I do have on PS4 but want to give a run on pc. There’s also a few games I missed out on in previous years like Max Payne 3 or Dead Space 2. I also picked up the Deus Ex collection as I’ve always heard of the games, but have never played anything more than a few minutes of Deus Ex: Invisible War that was included on a Playstation 2 demo disk years ago. As indicated below, I will have plenty of games to keep me busy with over the summer, not to mention both Ghost of Tsushima and Paper Mario: Origami King release on July 17th…

What games have you been playing recently? Any new pick ups from the Steam sale? Let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading!