The Last Week

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Video games and coffee last week. A good combo, no?

Hey everyone! I’m back with another Last Week entry. I had originally meant to shoot for getting this post in on Sunday, but hey, things come up. Last week I played a bit of Dead Space and I’ve been going on a real PlayStation era retro trip that I’m trying hard to shake off. I’ve also been working on getting Neofeud finished, I’m to a point where I’m so close to the end I can taste it! I’ve also decided to focus on finishing Cyberpunk as a priority over my Elder Scrolls games. I also have to highlight this keto coffee drink I’ve been drinking lately. Let’s take a closer look at last week:

Last Monday I fired up Dead Space for a quick session. Unfortunately, as I feared, I saved it after I accidentally used all of my medpacks. It was purely my mistake, I was using an Xbox 360 gamepad and kept pressing X thinking it was the reload button. I quickly depleted my medpacks and was playing hard mode after that mistake. I also realized that you can smash the green boxes by using your kinesis power. I facepalmed and realized it would probably be best to start over. In my defense, the game shouldn’t allow you to use medpacks if your health is completely maxed. Just a thought. I’m probably going to speed through a new game save up to the point I was at. It sucks but it happens.

Friday night I switched it up from Friday Night Fights and had a Friday Night Flashback! I found a bunch of my PlayStation games recently and decided to play Fear Effect. I had bought the game years ago but never really had the time to play it until I dug it out of the closet. I had a pretty decent gameplay session – I died a few times, beat some bosses, and actually made it to the second disc of the game! I had a pretty good time streaming the game and am pretty excited to continue it for the next Flashback! I might put off Friday night fights for a bit to finish this title, we’ll see! 

I didn’t do any games or streaming over the weekend. My wife and I went on a nice hike through one of our fine State Forests though. We both have been on a mission to get more movement into our routine. The forest was great. We basically just hiked the trails to get a feel for the area and we also saw some deer tracks and trees that appeared to have some beaver gnaw marks on them. The forest floor was a little moist from all of the winter melt and the recent rain, so our shoes were caked with mud when we returned to our vehicle. Other than the mess it was a good time!

As far as keto/low carb goes, I’ve been working on a few products to take a look at but I do have one for this week!  I’ve been on a bit of a caffeine kick lately so unfortunately I’ve been drinking some energy drinks like Red Bull. I’m not really a huge fan of the carbonation and extra ingredients all of the time so I wanted to switch it up a bit. I like coffee and a lot of keto coffees tend to be a bit high in calories, around the 100-200 calorie range. I was looking around at my local grocery store when I eyed these KITU Super Espresso coffee drinks. These were only 35 calories and tasted pretty darn good. It has a modest ingredient list, is sweetened with monk fruit, and is 99.9% lactose free! Give it a shot if you need a low calorie, keto friendly boost! 

That’s it for Last Week! I’ll have another Last week rounded up before you know it! Stay tuned!

The Last (Two) Week(s)

I’m not sure what all happened over the last two weeks. Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Wow. Late again. The last couple of weeks were kind of a blur for me. It seemed like everything was on repeat, kind of like the movie Groundhog Day. I do remember that I said I was going to take it easy from gaming and get some exercise in, and I did! I went on some walks on my break at work and took some photos of some interesting things I found. I’m starting to get back into an exercise routine by walking regularly and I hope to incorporate some weights and some bicycle rides once I get a bit more conditioned.          

Friday, Feb. 26  I played some Greatest Heavyweights for Friday Night Fights and finished the game by defeating all eight of the game’s Greatest Heavyweights. Muhammad Ali was the final boxer I had to fight to win the Greatest Heavyweights title and I was victorious! I thought it was a bit too easy though. I basically used the same two punches against several opponents, a few failed to even cover their face, which I took advantage of quickly. Maybe I should have set the difficulty higher, but then again I never explored the options to even know if the difficulty is adjustable. It was a great game though, probably one of the best boxing games on a 16-bit console. It’d be great if Sega made a modern remake though. 

Saturday the 27th I continued my In Medias Res series with Cyberpunk 2077. I did a couple of side missions and moved forward with a bit of the story during my gameplay session. I finally got the pleasure to meet Panam in the game! We got involved in some crazy caper and I think I actually cut my session in the middle of a mission so the next episode should be fun! 

The other goal I remember having was to do a couple of posts about keto/low carb products. I didn’t quite make it to two posts, but I did highlight a couple of products that my wife and I tried over the past few weeks. One of them was amazing, the other a huge disappointment. So, one post, half complete. I have a few ideas for the coming weeks, though, so if you’re following a keto/low carb lifestyle, stay tuned for more. 

I found Knockout Kings 2000 in the stash of PlayStation games that I discovered in the closet, so I gave that a good play session for Friday Night Fights last week. I had a pretty good time with the game, it was a lot more technical and challenging than Greatest Heavyweights. One thing I do kind of miss though are the taunts from that game. There was a good amount of bonus content on the disc along with several game modes. I played a quick Classic Fight before I moved on to Career Mode. I had a pretty good time and won a few fights but also lost a few. This game might be a staple for Friday Night Fights in the future. 

 On Saturday I thought about continuing In Medias Res with Cyberpunk, but I wasn’t feeling that type of action. I wanted to sit back and have a chill stream and not have to really actively play too much. I had a good play session into Neofeud about a week back, so I decided to continue playing that. Being a point and click adventure, it was a perfect title to just sit back and chill with. I thoroughly enjoyed my session: the various references in this game gave me a good laugh and the story was pretty engaging if not extremely trippy. I’m looking forward to the conclusion of Neofeud. I’m sure it’ll be great.

That’s it for the last week! I’ll be posting my next last week this weekend! If that makes sense.

Keepin’ it Low Carb

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A couple of low carb (or what we thought were low carb) products.

Wow, where has the week gone? I had meant to post this earlier in the week but it seems my head was elsewhere. Anyways, I have a couple of low carb/keto products, one good one not so good, that I’d like to share my thoughts on. Let’s take a look:

Let’s get the bad out of the way first. My wife and I are pretty familiar with the Smart Sweets line of low carb candies. They’re generally safe for our low carb lifestyle and we’ve tried their fish, gummy bears, and peach rings. All of them were pretty good and when eaten in moderation caused us little or no reaction. Knowing the brand as being compatible with our lifestyle my wife picked up some of their red twist candies. Unfortunately, we kind of ignored the nutrition facts and only after we had eaten some and noticed that we felt bloated and gassy the next day we took a look at the facts. It had 28 grams of net carbs per serving, way too high to be considered compatible with our lifestyle. It was a little sad since we trusted the brand as being generally keto friendly in the past. The candies themselves were decent in flavor and texture but unfortunately the net carbs were way too high for us. We usually try to shoot for under 10 grams net per serving and this product was over double that. Sadly, that means a thumbs down for the Smart Sweets Red Twists. 

Now for the good: My wife and I were shopping one day in search of some low-carb tortillas. I think we were specifically looking for something like the Mission brand since they carry a low carb tortilla that would work with our lifestyle. We didn’t find the Mission brand, but we did find something better: EggLife egg white wraps. They definitely were a game changer. The taste and texture was strikingly close to a real flour tortilla and they would be perfect for anything from wraps to tacos. They come in a few different flavors and to top it off, they’re only around 1 gram net carbs per serving. A definite low carb winner for the week.

That’s all I’ve got to highlight for this week, next week I’ll highlight a couple more keto/low carb products that we’ve tried. Heck, maybe I’ll even get another Low Carb Happy Hour put together, who knows! I’ll be back next week with something new so stay tuned!

The Last Week

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Last week was a pretty stressful week for me but the gaming was pretty good. I tried to pull myself away but I ended up playing a couple of unexpected titles. Here’s what last week looked like:

Sunday I streamed a bit of FrostPunk since I was in the mood. It was still freezing cold outside and there was no way I was going out anymore than necessary. It went okay, I had a few technical difficulties and I also came to the realization that two monitors is almost a minimum requirement nowadays.

Tuesday I decided to play a quick session of Neofeud to get a feel for the game and to basically play the intro. I only played the game for about twenty minutes and felt like I was in for a trip. I’ll be firing up that game again sometime soon.

For Friday it was another episode of Friday Night Fights! I continued my career as the Purple Pugilist and fought Mike Dixon for the title. The title bout almost seemed too easy as I drove Dixon to the mat. After the title match came several challenge matches against some real-life greatest heavyweights like Joe Louis and Evander Holyfield. Those fights seemed too easy as well as I sent every boxer I fought kissing the canvas. I’d really like to see a modern reboot/remake of this game for something like Steam. The game is really good but the AI just didn’t cut it for me. I shouldn’t have been able to beat everyone with just two punches.

Saturday I continued Cyberpunk 2077 for my In Medias Res series. I did a few missions and died a couple times, but overall I had fun. I can’t keep myself away from side missions in these open world games! Let’s hope I can pull through and focus on the main mission eventually and finish the game!

I realized for a minute after evaluating my week that I intended my blog to include a variety of topics but lately I’ve focused heavily on gaming. I’m going to try to step away from gaming a bit this week to include a couple of posts on some of my other interests. I have a few keto/low carb products that my wife and I have tried that I’d like to share my thoughts on. I also hope I can get outside for some fresh air and exercise as the weather improves. Maybe I’ll even snap a few photos, who knows!

That’s it for now, as always I’ll be back with the games for Friday Night Fights on Friday and In Medias Res on Saturday. Until then, stay healthy and game on!

This Week in Gaming

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I had a pretty exciting week playing some solid titles. Today was a bit of an off day though.

Hey everyone! This week was a pretty exciting week for me! I played some old games, some new games and most importantly I had a lot of fun! Let’s take a look at my week:

First, I’ll just share a bit of gaming news that I’ve been seeing out there. There’s been a lot of games with anniversaries: Super Mario Bros. 3 celebrates 31 years, Zelda celebrates 35 and I’ve been seeing a lot of Super Metroid floating around on the internets (the original Metroid celebrates 35 years as well). In other gaming news, CDPR, the developers of The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077 was hit by a ransomware attack in which the hackers have reportedly sold stolen source code on the dark web. There’s a ton of other news I could go over but these are a couple of things that have stuck with me this week.

What have I been playing this week? Well, I’ve been trying to balance some retro games along with a few modern titles. Sunday I played This War of Mine, a title by 11bit studios from 2014. It’s a wartime survival game that requires strategy and tough decision making. It’s also a very tough game for me to play. 11bit really knows how to pull those emotional strings. Frost Punk is a lot like that too. Both are great games that will punch you right in the feels.

I had to take a break from getting my soul crushed, so for Monday Night Retro I played a game I hadn’t played in a while but knew I could finish: Deja Vu for the NES. I jumped into it and then realized I had forgotten quite a few details in the game. I ended up continuing the game on WedNESday and successfully finished it. Okay, full disclosure, I needed to use a guide to fill in some of those blanks that were missing from my memory. Sometimes you just need that one sentence from a text-based guide to pull you through.

Friday was Friday Night Fights! I played Super Punch Out!! for last week’s FNF and the game was harder than I remembered! For this week’s FNF I continued Greatest Heavyweights for the Sega Genesis/MegaDrive. The last time I played I made it into the top ten rankings and this week I climbed up to number two! Next week I’ll take on the champion, Mike Dixon, for the belt!

Today I tried to start on my new In Medias Res series where I play a game from my library and just load up a save and play. My goal is to complete a couple of games within this year, but today I was having an off day. I fired up some Dead Space to play and something with my gamepad was going wonky. I did some troubleshooting and found out it was my retro gamepad that was plugged in causing issues. I played another session with my XB360 gamepad for a bit and realized I was a bit too fatigued from the night before. Next week I’ll have to wrap up FNF a bit early and rest up for Saturday’s stream.

As for new games I’ve picked up, Neofeud is a title I’ve seen floating around on my twitter for some time. It was on sale, so I decided to give it a shot. It’s a point and click adventure set in a cyberpunk world, both of which piqued my curiosity. I’ll be sure to fire up that game soon and share my thoughts.

That’s it for this week! I’m thinking about making this a weekly post where I recap games I’ve been playing over the week. As for what’s coming up next, I’m going to be taking it easy until next Friday for Friday Night Fights. I’ll probably be working on some other things though so stay tuned!

NES A to Z – Z: Zoda’s Revenge

It’s taken me way too long to play this game. It was pretty fun during my gaming session.

I remember way back in the day I had been given a Nintendo Power subscription for Christmas. I remember there was an issue with guides for both StarTropics and its sequel, Zoda’s Revenge when it was released back in 1994. These games looked and sounded great but they were a couple more titles that eluded me back in those days. By a stroke of luck, the randomizer chose Zoda’s Revenge for the letter Z. The game was a great Action/Adventure game where you play as Mike Jones, a young man who acts as the hero and main protagonist of the game. It had a few RPG style elements as well. I remember playing the original Star Tropics briefly at one point, but I never got very far and never beat the game (another game I may need to explore again sometime.) The graphics and sound were good, controls were solid, and most of all I had a lot of fun playing the game during my session. It’s another game I would definitely return to for some extended play sessions in the future.

What’s Next?

With so many titles from then and now, what do I play next?

Hey there gaming fans! I just finished my A to Z NES series last Saturday (well, I have one blog post to go) and I’m ready to start a new project! My new series will be called “In Medias Res” which, from Latin, translates to “into the middle of things.” I studied English (Creative Writing) for my undergrad and for me this referred to a story that would toss you right into the action while filling in bits and pieces of the story along the way. My series will be somewhat similar: I’ll take a game from my library and start from my last save, starting right in the middle of things. I’ll take my time to get my bearings and continue on with the game, with the end goal of completing the chosen title. I have quite a few titles in mind, and my current Twitter poll I put out got locked in a 3-way tie between Cyberpunk, Dead Space and We Happy Few. I’m thinking of alternating games every other Saturday to mix it up a bit. I probably will focus on Dead Space since I really would like to finish that title and then move onto Cyberpunk with We Happy Few on the side. I’ll finish up the series with one of the Elder Scrolls titles I have, either Oblivion or Skyrim. It’s going to be an exciting road coming up ahead so keep it locked in for more in the coming weeks!

NES A to Z – Y: Yoshi

Yoshi was a puzzler in the same vein as Tetris and Dr. Mario. It wasn’t as good as either of those games though.

This game’s title was a bit misleading: there was hardly any Yoshi in the game! This game was a puzzle game where you sandwich various SMB enemies in between two halves of a Yoshi egg. You can also match three to make them disappear. Mario rotates plates at the bottom of the screen as the enemies drop from the top. This game wasn’t really my cup of tea. I like puzzle games but this one just didn’t do it right for me. I’d much rather sit down with a game like Tetris or Dr. Mario than Yoshi. It’s not terrible or unplayable by any means, it just didn’t have strong enough gameplay to keep me hooked. This game hasn’t aged well by the looks of it and with that being said I would put it in the lower tier of puzzlers for the NES. It just didn’t scratch that puzzler itch for me.

NES A to Z – X: Xexyz

Xexyz was a great blend of platformer and side scrolling shooter. Guess how to pronounce it.

Wow, another solid title, and one that’s hard to pronounce no less! This game was a combination of an action platformer and a side scrolling shoot em up. It was pretty fun and the gameplay was solid. The graphics and sound were on point as well. The platformer stages had many doors to enter. Some had stores, some had treasure boxes, some had minibosses to defeat to advance to the next area. There was also a simple puzzle I had to solve during my gaming session to advance to the next stage. The nice part was that an in game hint tipped me off on how to progress. While the platformer section was fun by itself, I was really impressed when the game  transitioned to the side scrolling shoot em up. Your character hops into a flying mech suit and you blast enemies side scrolling shmup style for a bit! It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed it during my session. Overall I thought this game was an exciting blend of the two genres and is another one of those games I think would make a great retro reboot.

NES A to Z – W: Willow

This game is what I needed. Willow made for an enjoyable gaming session.

This game was one of those titles I remember hearing/reading that was good but just never really thought much about playing it. I was a little excited to see what the game had in store since I remember the movie (which I haven’t watched in years now) being enjoyable. This game was just as enjoyable as I remember the movie being. It was an adventure game in the same style as the Zelda games for the NES. The graphics, sound, and gameplay were all solid during my hour-long session and the game controls were intuitive. Some of the visual effects, like the wind blowing the trees/foliage during the battle sequences, I thought looked pretty impressive for the NES. When my hour came up, I really didn’t want to switch games, but it was time. This is definitely a game I will be revisiting in the future. It’s a title I would definitely recommend to play.