2019 Year-In-Review: Video Games I Played
Jan. 2nd, 2020 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroI officially logged 35 games this year, though that’s increasingly a bullshit number. It includes 8 games that I bought for “real” money but didn’t finish; it excludes 3 cheap games I didn’t finish but played several hours of; it excludes the 6 games I replayed; and it excludes anything I could finish in three hours or less (which is a higher bar than previous years). 122 other games were tried, tested and/or culled. I cleared off another dozen Fanatical and Humble bundles of PC games.
The genre breakdown this year was mostly rpgs of various flavors—classic rpgs, action rpgs, simulation rpgs; plus a few platformers and Zelda-likes. The shorter point-and-click/hidden-object puzzle games got downgraded to the “too short” list starting this year. I only logged 3 puzzle/casual games, though I played some uncountable number of hours of Gems of War (going through multiple guilds, multiple game upgrades, and multiple rounds of, “Well, I’ll probably stop once I’ve finish upgrading these things” but not stopping).
I played 30+ hours of six games, every one of which was solid and recommended: The Alliance Alive (3DS); Dragon Quest Heroes II, Dragon Quest Builders, Dragon Quest Builders 2 (PS4); Marenian Tavern Story (Android); and yet another Stardew Valley replay, this time with the v1.3 enhancements and a bundle randomizer mod.
I also got around 20 hours each out of Prime World: Defenders, Last Dream, Ys: Memories of Celceta, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, NieR: Automata and my replay of Golden Sun. My PS4 really earned its keep this year and I made good use of my new emulator handheld; Steam provided a few winners and a lot of dross; my tablet was mostly a Gems of War machine (I’ve exhausted most of the KEMCO games that interest me). The fact that I got my Wii for cheap mitigates the general disappointment it has been.
Jethrien and I spent less timing gaming together this past year; we finished a bunch of sidequests in Lego Lord of the Rings and did the first few chapters of Warriors Orochi 4 (which was disappointing). ARR played a lot of Minecraft on his tablet, and when he got into Pokemon over the summer, I set him up with Pokemon FireRed on a GBA emulator and he played 50+ hours of it to beat the whole thing. He’s also started Pokemon Emerald on GBA emulator and Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu on the Switch. (ARR is also generally happy to hang out and watch me play Dragon Quest games and to steal my tablet for easy battles of Gems of War; but he isn’t the best with controllers yet.)
I was hoping to actually engage my collection of longer games that I paid real money for this year, and I think I made real headway on that. It would be nice to clear a few older rpgs off my list in the coming year, but I suspect I’m going to spend a lot of time on Switch games now that I own one. And that ARR’s tastes will increasingly drive my gaming time.
By genre, the games that I would say, “This is genuinely good, you should try it if you like the genre,” are:
• RPG/Simulation: Dragon Quest Builders and Dragon Quest Builders II (PS4)
• JRPG: The Alliance Alive (3DS), Last Dream (PC)
• Action RPG: Ys: Memories of Celceta (PC)
• Metroidvania: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (PS4)
• Beat-Em-Up: Dragon Quest Heroes II (PS4)
• Visual Novel: Ladykiller in a Bind (PC)
• Puzzle: Baba Is You (PC)
The genre breakdown this year was mostly rpgs of various flavors—classic rpgs, action rpgs, simulation rpgs; plus a few platformers and Zelda-likes. The shorter point-and-click/hidden-object puzzle games got downgraded to the “too short” list starting this year. I only logged 3 puzzle/casual games, though I played some uncountable number of hours of Gems of War (going through multiple guilds, multiple game upgrades, and multiple rounds of, “Well, I’ll probably stop once I’ve finish upgrading these things” but not stopping).
I played 30+ hours of six games, every one of which was solid and recommended: The Alliance Alive (3DS); Dragon Quest Heroes II, Dragon Quest Builders, Dragon Quest Builders 2 (PS4); Marenian Tavern Story (Android); and yet another Stardew Valley replay, this time with the v1.3 enhancements and a bundle randomizer mod.
I also got around 20 hours each out of Prime World: Defenders, Last Dream, Ys: Memories of Celceta, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, NieR: Automata and my replay of Golden Sun. My PS4 really earned its keep this year and I made good use of my new emulator handheld; Steam provided a few winners and a lot of dross; my tablet was mostly a Gems of War machine (I’ve exhausted most of the KEMCO games that interest me). The fact that I got my Wii for cheap mitigates the general disappointment it has been.
Jethrien and I spent less timing gaming together this past year; we finished a bunch of sidequests in Lego Lord of the Rings and did the first few chapters of Warriors Orochi 4 (which was disappointing). ARR played a lot of Minecraft on his tablet, and when he got into Pokemon over the summer, I set him up with Pokemon FireRed on a GBA emulator and he played 50+ hours of it to beat the whole thing. He’s also started Pokemon Emerald on GBA emulator and Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu on the Switch. (ARR is also generally happy to hang out and watch me play Dragon Quest games and to steal my tablet for easy battles of Gems of War; but he isn’t the best with controllers yet.)
I was hoping to actually engage my collection of longer games that I paid real money for this year, and I think I made real headway on that. It would be nice to clear a few older rpgs off my list in the coming year, but I suspect I’m going to spend a lot of time on Switch games now that I own one. And that ARR’s tastes will increasingly drive my gaming time.
By genre, the games that I would say, “This is genuinely good, you should try it if you like the genre,” are:
• RPG/Simulation: Dragon Quest Builders and Dragon Quest Builders II (PS4)
• JRPG: The Alliance Alive (3DS), Last Dream (PC)
• Action RPG: Ys: Memories of Celceta (PC)
• Metroidvania: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (PS4)
• Beat-Em-Up: Dragon Quest Heroes II (PS4)
• Visual Novel: Ladykiller in a Bind (PC)
• Puzzle: Baba Is You (PC)
