Dad vs Videogames 🎮

I waited for Forza Motorsport to come out on Xbox Gamepass. I resisted the urge to pay for early access and I'm glad I did. I have mixed feelings about this game. Anyway, I'll talk about those in a separate game log post. For now, here are some screenshots from the game.

You are given three cars to pick from at the start of the game. I chose to go with the Subaru STI S209.

Note: This game log is a few weeks behind. What I have written below were my early thoughts on the game. It's more of a first impressions post than a game log, but it is what I've written down on my journal. I emphasize the word early because it would seem, from what I've written below, that I hate the game, or that it's no good. But my viewpoint changed as I kept playing and kept leveling up. Just to note that at the time of this writing, I've actually already finished the game. Anyone that's a fan of single player RPGs will enjoy this game.

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Character Name: Edgewater Playthrough: 1st

Still playing Starfield and the initial excitement I think has worn off a little. Below are a couple of my thoughts on the game.

Persuasion System/Minigame

The dialogue Persuasion system/minigame seems unfinished, or clunky, or at times broken. Some of the conversations end up with unrealistic results. At one point the person you're talking to is adamant about pushing their point of view, then you say something very minor, then all of a sudden they have a huge change of heart and now they're agreeing with you. It seems very unrealistic to me.

I had one such conversation with a gang leader, whose gang was holding up a bank and had hostages. I used the Persuasion system to try to get them to back down and release the hostages. My initial dialogue choice was a hard stance, basically saying something to the effect of, “Hey man, no one is going to bail you out, you might as well release the hostages because the Marshal is not going to agree with your demands.” To this statement the gang leader responded with something like, “You want to be a hardass? I can be a hardass too. You either cater to our demands or we'll kill the hostages.” At this point, I was convinced there was no way to persuade the gang leader to release the hostages.

First ever playthrough of Starfield. Here's some backstory on my character to help set the tone for the rest of my playthrough. Note that this is mainly for my reference as I continue playing the game.

My character's name is Edgewater. He used to be a Soldier before deciding he wanted to try living life as a regular citizen. He heard of a mining expedition in the planet Vectera and decided to join the crew. And this is where the game starts...

One of the earliest scenes in the game. My character was about to head out into a mine with Supervisor Lin and Heller.

Headed down into the mines. You can play Starfield in first person view or third person view.

This is an interesting take on the Forza Horizon series of games. While I don't agree with everything the presenter said, I do agree that the Forza Horizon 5 game became boring to me after a few hours. A lot of what was said in this video is true. In Forza Horizon 5, you start off with great cars and that kind of makes attaining other cars meaningless. Why spend time earning money to buy other cars, when after just a few hours of gameplay, you've already got multiple supercars in your garage to choose from.

Like what did I even do to earn that new Corvette Stingray, or that new Lamborghini, or even that Lexus LFA? Nothing, I did nothing. These are the kind of cars that I feel like you should only get later in the game, after you've done your fair share of racing, after you've earned the money to purchase them. But not in Forza Horizon 5. You just get new cars every 30 minutes or so. It's kinda crazy. The game just sort of hands you cars left and right. And because of that, after a few races, I pretty much lost interest.

I got only a few hours left before I take my annual break on blogging. Before I run out of time, I want to talk to you about this awesome game.

I bought Hogwarts Legacy for my wife on the Xbox. I myself wasn't actually interested in this game. I thought the game was a bit over-hyped, plus it came with a lot of controversy surrounding its development. So yeah, I didn't really care for the game early on. But after seeing my wife play it and seeing her go through the sorting hat ceremony, I was intrigued.

So I eventually gave it a try. What I found was a really compelling game. The game developers did a great job of bringing the Wizarding world from the Harry Potter books to life. My wife is really addicted to the game now. And if I'm being honest with myself, so am I.

Been awhile since I played Minecraft with my kids. A few days ago, my son found his Minecraft “Guide to Farming” book once again and he wanted to try out the ideas in the book. So we fired up the game and built some small farms in Creative Mode. We got to enjoy the sunrise in the game as well. (Note that I'm using a texture pack here, I think it was called “Full Of Life”, or something like that.)