hello again! surprisingly small update this month, though that is not for lack of gaming - i pushed through a little dip in motivation and spent the majority of the month playing 60+ hours of octopath traveler ii. i tried very hard to finish it before the end of the month but i had only just hit the final chapter at 10pm the night of the 31st (and now know that would take an additional 5 hours to complete) it's very good but more on that in a future post!
New Games for this Month:
Burnout Paradise Remastered (2018)
Jet Set Radio (2000)
Halo: Reach (2010)
Burnout Paradise Remastered (2018)
a classic of the 360 era, one i loved at the time and still enjoyed a lot on a replay! i still like the open world and the way it asks you to engage with the map and learn it in order to both move between events and complete them efficiently. i used to spend hours just in that stunt park in the mountains but i was focused on simply acquiring my burnout license and however many collectables i found along the way this time, i'd love to go back and check out big surf island at some point since i never had the dlc on the xbox! also the soundtrack is still very fun
Jet Set Radio (2000)
jet set radio!!! a timeless classic for its incredible vibes, aesthetic, and soundtrack - not so much its gameplay. i played the first few hours of this in april and put it down but i'm really glad i came back to it and saw it through til the end! i was definitely fighting against the game's directions and controls for an unfortunate amount of my time with it but i believe i was wrapping my head around it by the end (it's not a long game i beat the story in five and a half hours) but despite all that i immediately began to warm up on it on reflection after finishing it. its charm is undeniable, how can you not smile at a surprise dragula remix drop in this iconic skating graffiti game
Halo: Reach (2010)
the halo quest continues, reach is the first of the three campaigns on here that i had actually played before (my xbox live days began around '08 with halo 3) and also the only one this year i got to chance to play co-op with a friend! which immediately puts it up a notch from my experience with ce and 2, halo is truly just so much more enjoyable when played co-op. alongside that smoother experience though i think i just enjoyed the story and gameplay a little more, i didn't know (or had forgotten) that you get to see your custom spartan's appearance and gender in the campaign which i really liked! fun to play a female avatar in something like this, reach this time around was just a clean short and sweet experience shoutout to @lobotanist
i'm hoping to continue adding 2023 releases to my list in the last part of this year (soo many big games (in scope and length) are releasing this year though) and we've already got one more with octopath ii down now! the call of older games is simply too alluring a lot of the time as there are just So many video games and so much to catch up on. never been more video games than there are now 😭