I'm gonna try and keep this shorter than the last post I made. First off, work is going well. This week was a litmus test to determine whether I or my co-worker was the better candidate for a managerial position and I feel like I came out on top, but only time will tell for sure. If I can get this manager position, this will be a huge step forward in my long term plans. I'll spend a few years getting experience in managing people and running a store and then, hopefully, open up a restaurant down the line that combines gaming (both table top and video) and food.
As far as new purchases go, I've got a fair few. For any Xbox 360/One owners who read this and don't know, Microsoft implemented a Free Games with Gold initiative last summer. It's included free downloads of both retail and XBLA titles including Dark Souls, Crackdown, Dust: An Elysian Tale and others. It only came to the One last month, but it's given free access to Halo: Spartan Ops, Max: Curse of the Brotherhood, and the excellent Guacamelee so far. The free games update twice a month on 360 and monthly on the One. I've grabbed all the mentioned titles plus Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes, Fable III and Iron Brigade. Spartan Ops is good but suffers from a lack of local co-op (good memories of Smash TV), Dust is a pretty entertaining Metroidvania style beat-'em up but the voice acting is bad and the art was ripped off of from the NeoPets browser game, Crackdown is as ridiculous and awesome as ever, Dark Souls squanders a great atmosphere with horribly unbalanced gameplay, Max is a great brain teasing platformer with excellent art, Clash of Heroes is a super addicting cross between turn-based strategy and puzzle game, and Guacamelee is hilarious and one of the best Metroidvania style titles in recent years. Only two Xbox games I've purchased, both on the 360: Crimson Alliance and Battleblock Theater. Crimson Alliance is free, but the three playable characters have to be purchased for either $10 a piece or $15 for all three. The story and dialogue aren't much to look at, but the game is a blast to play in co-op thanks to great combat spread across three diverse classes and some really fun puzzles. Battleblock Theater is from the same brains that came up with Castle Crashers and it's absolutely brilliant. Ingeniously wicked level design requires pin-point platforming but never feels unfair or frustrating. If it does get frustrating, you'll be laughing in short order as all your actions are narrated by the hilariously douchey main antagonist.
On my Nintendo systems I got Mario Kart 8 and Wind Waker HD for the Wii U and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 for my 3DS. Mario Kart 8 is simply the best in the series. The visuals are jaw-dropping, the track design is exceptional and the new power ups are awesome. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was a polarizing title on the GameCube, but regardless of all the debate surrounding it it's an excellent entry in the series. The HD rerelease is simply marvelous. The gameplay and story still hold up and it looks gorgeous in high definition. FFTA 2 was a huge favorite of mine when I had my DS Lite and it's still as addicting and deep as it ever was.
One last game related note: my Star Wars table top RPG is going extremely well! We're still in character creation/general pre-planning phase, but the game starts one the 7th of next month. I've got five players and they're all as excited as I am to be part of this. Even better, it looks like it'll be a mixed group of Dark and Light side characters!
Finally, I intend to use the new Stacks functionality of the website to create monthly top 10 lists. I'd love it if you guys would check 'em out!