Looking ahead to 2018 in Gaming

With the new year upon us I am writing a post about what I am looking forward to in 2018. One of the things I want to do is write more posts on this here blog of mine, hence this post.

The Games I am Looking Forward to
There are a decent number of games coming out this year that I am a actually looking forward to this year. I will go through some of them below but I doubt that I will actually get all of them let alone play them all to completion.

• OwlBoy: A neat looking pixel art style game that is colorful an looks like it could be be fun and is a Metroidvania like game. I know it has been out on other platforms but it is now coming out on the Xbone. 
• Sea of Thieves: A colorful pirate theme M.M.O. like game (in the non subscription Destiny kind of way). It actually has a very good look to its, which makes sense considering it came from Rare. The more I see of Sea of Thieves, the more I like it. I am a little concerned that it might not have enough content to it but as it is only in beta form right now so there is plenty of time for that stuff to be unveiled. 
• Darksiders 3: It looks like Darksiders is going back to its Zelda roots with he third game and that makes me happy. A current gen Darksiders after having been impressed from my play through of Darksiders for the Xbox 360 last year, it only makes sense that I would be excited about this release. 
• Anthem: Another Destiny style game that looks good, but in a different way. Anthem is in a seemingly post apocalyptic sci-fi future (it kind of looks like Star Wars, a little). I have heard that this game might have been delayed until 2019 so I should remove it from the list but oh well. I wanted to at least give this game a mention. 
• Mega Man 11: A new 2D Megaman game that looks like it could be good. I played through the Megaman Legacy collection on Xbox One in 2016 and enjoyed it (though I did save state my way through the more difficult sections). I will probably wait for this one to go on sale before I get it, because I am cheap after all. I am also glad I never really got caught up in the Mighty Number 9 hype as I would have been to soured by that experience to give this game the time of day. As always, only time will tell. 
• Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Edition: a Massive collection of like 12 Street fighter games from the first to 3, third strike. I'm not  normally a fighting game fan but I am a sucker for these type of compilations. Unless this release ends up being Super Hyper Turbo EXpensive I will most likely end up getting it. 
• Metro Exodus: This game is on here solely because of how good it look, but wow it looks really good. I know by reputation that the previous Metro games are difficult, dense, and hard to get into but hope springs eternal that this new one will be significantly more approachable.  
• The Wolf Among Us (Season 2): I have had the first season from games with gold for a long time now and I still want to finish it at some point. Maybe the release of season 2 will be what it take for me to actually finish it because it really is pretty good. I just have not had the patience to do so as of late. 
• Ori and the Will of the Wisps (This year ?) Another game with a questionable release time, in that it does not have one. I do not care, because I want this game. The announcement of the sequel  to my favorite Xbox One game and my best game from 2015 alone was enough to make last year's E3 a memorable one for me. The trailer that was shown makes this game look even better than the first. I can not wait to play this and I hope it comes out this year.

Potential Hardware Purchases 

• 4K OLED TV: My first hardware purchase of the year will almost certainty be my largest. I will be buying my first 4K TV, an OLED (LG OLED55C7P) My current TV is a 51 inch plasma circa 2011 and since OLED's are considered the successor to plasma TVs, I figure that this would be the only kind that would be a true upgrade to what I already have. This one is currently the top rate TV of its size according to Consumer's Report. and since I already have and Xbox One X and a PC that can do some games in 4K. I very much look forward to seeing games on it. 
• Sega 32X: at some point I would like to complete my Sega Genesis monstrosity by getting a 32X. I actually had one of these set ups back in the day but I ended up trading it for a PS2 when that system was still new. I am a annoyed that I will have to buy a new RGB Scart cable (it uses the model 2 AV cords and I have a model 1 Genesis) but there are some of games for the system I would like to play and I think I can get one for a reasonable price from nearby used game store in my area. 
• Dreamcast (With VGA/HDMI connector): Another Sega system, the Dreamcast, makes it on this list and whats more it is another one I had back in the day before I traded it (in this case it helped my buy an original Xbox, seeing a pattern here) I found about a VGA box that outputs directly to HDMI and it seems pretty good. Dreamcast systems these days are pretty cheap but unreliable so make sure to buy one from a reputable place. On a personal note, the Dreamcast was the first time I had a "current" system as I always had were old ( I had an NES and a Game Gear when the Playstation was coming out. It would be nice to have that again. 
• Xbox One Duke style Controller: I was very exited when I first heard the news of the Duke Controller remake for the Xbox One. It was announced at the same time as the OG Xbox Backwards Compatibility program (maybe that had some thing to do with it) and I new I had to get it. It is coming out at the end of March and it will be $70 and I will totally get one. I always preferred the Duke as opposed to the more popular Japanese style S controller as I did not like the placement of the Black and white buttons on the S (and the size of the Duke never bothered me anyway)  

Writing more blog posts more about games (and possibly movies )
Its pretty obvious from the long time in between post that I do not use my blog nearly enough. I intend to change that this year. I am not sure how often I will post but I hope that by simply making public my desire to do so will help. I have the rather unfortunate habit of coming up with ideas and not doing them. Since this a blog primary dedicated to games that I play or think about I will be doing more posts on the games that I play (or want to play anyway). I also see a decent number of new movies every year so I might blog about that as well if it seems worth while.

Stuff I will be keeping an eye on 
There are a few games that I will be keeping and eye on but do not expect to buy for one reason or another so I made a list for those as well, and here it is.

• We Happy Few: A game with a neat premise and introduction but the procedurally generated levels built around a survival stealth mechanic is not really my cup o tea. This is the definition of a game that I came up with this list for as I am still interested in it because of the premise.  
• Red Dead Redemption 2: A game that I have been recommended many times and did buy used last year was Red Dead Redemption. Open world games have not done it for me as much the last few years (even the good ones), as such I have been resistant to wanting to give this game a fair shake. I does look good, and on Xbox One backwards compatibility it runs and looks better. The new one looks even better but I do feel that I should play through the first one before I commit to getting the second.  
• Shenmue 3: As a PS4 exclusive for someone who does not as yet have that system, this game has a big thing going against it (although I could get it for PC) I also did not have that great a time paying the first one (and had to hand it off to a friend for the dumb stealth sequence that I could not do) nor have I played through the second game (even though I rented for the Xbox back in the day). I never the less want to see how this epic concludes, assuming this is the last one of course. 
• Detroit: Become Human: Another PS4 exclusive means another game I can not even get but as I live in the Detroit area, any game that features my home town (let alone takes place entirely in it) is going to get my attention. I did buy the previous game from That Game Company, Heavy Rain (although I did trade it in with out ever playing it) and those games do look amazing, I think I would rather just watch someone play it instead of playing it myself. 

I should not have taken as long as I did to make this post as one of the things I want to do is post to my blog more often. I have not really spent much time really typing stuff since I finished college all those years ago. These were just a few things I though to write down that I am looking forward to this year, 2018 in Gaming.

My 2017 Gaming Year in Review

With 2017 coming to a close I though I should write a few things about the year that I had personally in gaming. While I am not sure what the point of this is, I thought it would be a good idea to write about a few of the things that for whatever reason I did not write about when they happened. 2017 turned out to be a pretty good year in gaming for me as I played plenty of new games as well as old ones I had not played before. I also purchased a few interesting pieces of hardware and started a new venture that I hope could turn into something more than just a hobby (though even if it doesn't, it is still fun to do).

My PC Build from 2016
While this is mainly about 2017, I start it off what a little from the previous year, 2016. In December I assembled my first  desktop PC from parts purchased on Black Friday. I build it with the intention of upgrading it in the future while still making it a capable machine in the present. I chose a Core I-7 6700K CPU, a GTX 1060 GPU, 16 GBs of DDR4 RAM, 500 GB SSD, 2TB HDD, and a Liquid CPU Cooler. All together my build came to about $1300. I wanted to build a system that could eventually handle 4K graphics with a simple GPU but could DO VR or a 1440P monitor. I hooked it up  to my living room TV, a 51 inch plasma circa 2011. I have a few other monitors hooked up to it as well. My hope is that this is a good platform for my gaming and general computing needs for about a decade. Only time will tell, of course.

Emulation
One of the first things I did with my new PC was to try out some emulators I had been wanting to use for a while, most notably Dolphin. While it might have been possible for me to have tried it before with my laptop, I wanted to be able to run it with as much power as I could throw at it. I wanted to be able to see some of the Gamecube and Wii games being rendered in High Definition (something that Nintendo at the time said no one wanted). I was suitably impressed with the results. Not only was Dolphin quite a bit easier to use than I expected (Version 5.0 had been released no too long before hand) but it made some of these 15 year old games look pretty good. Nintendo has always had a good, simplistic art style that scales wonderfully in HD. I especially enjoyed seeing The Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker and Mario Galaxy in 1080p.

Streaming
Starting early this year, I began to experiment with streaming some of my games. I started with Twitch directly from my Xbox One. I then moved onto a dedicated internal capture card for my PC, which allowed me to record and stream any system that could hook up via HDMI. I was limited my by slow Internet upload speed, witch was capped at about 2 Mbps and resulted in a lot of bad streams with low quality video and frequent buffering for any unfortunate individuals who watch any of them (sorry). Since then, I have upgraded my internet speed to a more reasonable 10 Mbps on the upload side and started streaming at that speed with Cuphead for the Xbox One. To say that the improvement is noticeable is an understatement. I have also switched to streaming on You Tube (my Twitch stream archives wound up on You Tube anyway) and while it will be a long time before I can even start to monetize my videos (let alone get any money from them) it is still enjoyable for me to do so.

Games with Gold
I managed to play some great games this year with my Games with Gold one Xbox Live. I just want to go through some of the standouts that I played through this year.

• DarkSiders: I had heard about the comparisons to Zelda for years about Darksiders and had always considered getting at some point but for what ever reason I did not take the plunge. This year I got it for free and played through it from start to finish. (actually streaming it the whole while too). I was pretty good, and very much a game that was deliberately taking after Zelda (bomb plants anyone?) I am looking forward to Darksiders 3 (which should come out next year) however I don't have all that much interest in trying the second game as I heard it was pretty different and not in a good way.
• Giana Sisters: In my ealier days of streaming and wanting to do more of the games with Gold games, I was less picky about the games that I did. One game I played through that I enjoyed quite a bit was Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams, (specifically the directors cut  version with the D.L.C.) It was a nice looking game with some interesting platforming and was worth playing through even if it is not quite the game I would usually play otherwise.
• Bayonetta: One game I should have played sooner was (considering my affection for Devil May Cry) was Bayonetta. A very Crazy, Character action game that just goes off the walls at all times. It took me too long to adjust to the different style of combat from most other games in this category. When I did figure it out I was glad I put in the effort and I was certainly glad to have played this game through. As the equals are Nintendo exclusives and I don not currently own a Switch, it is unlikely that I will be able to play those anytime soon.

New Purchased and Completed Games
I purchased a decent number of new games this year (by my standards anyway) I will make about a paragraph for each of the note worthy ones I finished this year as some of them I already did a more detailed post of.

• Wolfenstein 1 and 2: I actually played both of the recent Wolfenstein games this year and I enjoyed both of them for the most part. They both had better story telling than game play but it  was kind of a throwback style of game that we haven't seen much of since the days of Bio-shock and the like were popular. I had a difficult time adjust to the fact that you can not play these games like a Call of Duty, that you have to keep moving.  They are true run and gun style games where constant moving and shooting (circle strafing anyone?) are required for success and even enjoyment in playing. It also would be a better idea to play them on easy mode as it would allow you to get to the good sections faster and more easily.
• Snake Pass: This was a game that caught my attention for looking a whole lot like Viva Pinata and for having a cool original game mechanic. It is a 3D plat former where you can't jump. You play as a snake (duh!) and you slither and wiggle your way up post using your length and gripping ability to climb to platforms. It is a difficult concept to get use to and it takes a while to master it but once you do it is immensely rewarding to complete what would otherwise be the most forgettable part of most 3D plat-formers (that would be the part where you jump from platform to platform, hence the name of the genre).   
• Sonic Mania: It is hard to imagine a good Sonic game coming out in 2017 but that is exactly what happened. It was pretty clear to me for a few years that Sega could not be trusted to make a good game with the blue blur and that some one else with an untainted mind needed to come in and save the day for this much miss used hedgehog. Sonic Mania comes off as the 2D Sonic game for the Sega Saturn that we never had or even knew that we wanted.  The game combines old style levels and new ones in a compelling package that is more than just nostalgia service. Sonic mania shows why 2D platforming still exists and is still a blast to play. I look forward to what ever christian Whitehead (the main developer) has in store for Sonic next.
• Cuphead: My most anticipated game this year by far is also by a greater distance the best. I still cannot believe I got to play this game. To look this good and to control this well and be oozing with so much style and substance is astonishing. This is the game IO show to people who have no knowledge or interest in video games and tell them, "look at how good this looks"  and I explain to them how it is all hand drawn and is inspired from 1930 cartoons and the like. I don't know if it is reasonable to expect a sequel to this game anytime soon, or if ever, but I do very much want one anyway. 
• Yooka-Laylee: At the same time that Snake pass came out, it much more widely know game was came out from a kick starter campaign aimed at recreating the Banjo Kazooie style by the Ex Rare people who made them to begin with. I bought the game on a Black Friday sale for about 8 bucks and played through it late in the year (hence the lack of a dedicated post as I was busy with other things).  I had no expectations going into this game and no nostalgia for the games that inspired it. I enjoyed most of the time I played it and felt it was a reasonably nice game to play at a leisurely pace. The last boss did sour me quite a bit on the whole game as it did reveal just how flawed it is but leading up to that point when only a small number of those problems (camera, collision detection, flying controls, annoying AI patterns, ect.)  presented themselves at time it was easier to ignore them. I felt it was worth playing through but bear in mind that I spent only 8 US dollars to do so.

Oculus Rift 
I spent much of this year not really being able to take advantage of my new PC that I built last year. Most of the things that I throw at it have been too easy for it. As mentioned earlier I had planned to get a VR head set. When I saw the Oculus Rift with the touch controllers on sale for $400 I decided to take the plunge into the virtual world. I can say that I am reasonable impressed with the hardware. Thankfully my set up with my living room where the PC and TV are located is right next to my dining room, which was easily converted into a small room scale space. The games that have impressed me the most are Robo Recall, Super Hot VR, and Rez Infinite. I might go into a more in depth post about my VR experience and set up later down the road, we shall see. 

Project Scorpio
In perhaps what one would consider my most questionable decisions I purchased and Xbox One X, specifically the project Scorpio edition. I finally got tire of playing most of my games at a sub 1080p resolution, which is what my launch model Xbox One was mostly putting out. This was more of a future proofing  buy as I knew I would eventually get a 4K OLED TV. Even with my PC the fact is I do most of my gaming on my Xbox as that is where I have the most games ( I do download every Games with Gold game every month after all).

Sega CD
With the purchase of my Scorpio I was able to trade in my launch Xbox One for a Sega CD. I have been wanting one for a few years now and with a near black Friday sale I was able to execute this trade. there are a few games for the system that I would like to see with my RGB Scart to HDMI upscaler. This was mostly are neat thing to get that ended up not costing any money as the regular trade value that I would have gotten for my Xbone what have barely netted me a game. 

Overall it was a pretty interesting year that I had in gaming in 2017. I manage to play plenty of neat and interesting games, get my hands on some new hardware,  discover a new hobby (or maybe more, one can dream after all) and do so while still doing good on the budget front. I plan on doing a post about what I hope/ expect from 2018 in gaming. Needless to say I very much look forward to the new year in gaming.