Here it is, another ten sessions in the books. I’ll be honest, this is taking longer than I expected. I really wanted to bang a lot of these out pretty quick. The reality has turned out quite the opposite. Still, I’m cranking along, making pretty good progress in some games, and not much in others. So let’s do a quick recap of the last ten sessions, 31 through 40.

Session 31 was Nightmares from the Deep 3, and I scratched it off the board pretty quickly. Those games are short and sweet, which is perfect for something like this. Too bad some of these other games aren’t quite as good a fit. The next session was Star Wars Republic Commando, and that one, thankfully, finally, was finished and removed from the board. To say that game was frustrating would be an understatement. To say it was all the game’s fault would also be a bit inaccurate. I don’t think I really understood how the game wanted me to play until I got near the end. To be fair, the game didn’t really make it a point that I not only should be playing a certain way, but that I needed to if I wanted to succeed. Anyways, my gripe’s in the write-up, so if you want to know what I mean, check it out.

Session 43 saw me abandon my first game, The Messenger. I’m not going to go into why. Again, if you’re interested, check out the write-up. I admitted defeat on this one, and I’m not sorry. Next up was Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy. I’ve been grinding away at this one, even offline in “unofficial” sessions, and it just keeps going. This game is much longer than I expected. It’s almost a bit too long. I’m ready for it to be done. After that I got in a session on Tell Me Why, and it was a short one. I get that this game isn’t very long, and maybe I’ll just tough it out for a lengthy play session, but damn these conversation simulators really, really bore me.

The Evil Within II was the next game on the list, and I was able to finally complete this one as well. This was a weird situation, in which I only played it a little at a time, and it was never really a game I was excited for, but in retrospect I really enjoyed it, and the ending was excellent. I’d like to try a New Game + playthrough at some point. The second game I abandoned was Journey to the Savage Planet. I don’t know what it was about this game, but I just couldn’t care less about playing it. It did absolutely nothing for me. Nothing about it is particularly bad, but every time I played it, it was a chore. I just didn’t want to play it. That reason, couple with the fact that it was scheduled to be removed from Game Pass at the end of March, left me with a decision; force myself to play it or call it quits. I called it quits.

I completed SINE MORA on my next playthrough, which was surprisingly close to the end. I didn’t realize how close I was to beating that game the last time I had played it. Perhaps if I did, it wouldn’t have even made it onto the Bingo Board. Then came Nier Automata, which I played for a bit during my 39th session, and even more after that. It’s a great game, but I absolutely despise the upgrade and equipment system. It requires a lot of poking around and fine tuning. So many things need to me adjusted. It’s the one major thing keeping me from really enjoying the game, because everything else is awesome.

Maid of Sker was session 40, and I got through the vast majority of it during the playthrough, then I went back afterward and finished it up. It was a good game. There were a lot of things I liked about it, but there were also quite a few things that bugged the shit out of me. Check out the write-up to know what.

That does it for the 31-40 recap. I’m going to be mixing things up going forward. First, I re-numbered the grid to remove the gaps in the numbers, so every number picked by the RNG will correspond to a game currently still on the board. Also, it helps to mix it up since the random number generator likes to be not-so-random. Also, this is dragging out quite a bit longer than it ever should’ve, so I’m implementing a bit of a twist to get things moving. Now, every tenth session is going to be a “shotgun round.” Whichever number the RNG chooses will be unceremoniously blasted off of the Bingo Board.

I say unceremoniously, but I’ll still do a write-up on it. I just hope it doesn’t happen to a game I actually care about. Only time will tell.