[ Previous entries: 2016 … 2017 … 2018 … 2019 ]

My Steam record indicates that I finished 2020 with 1,934 hours. Vs. the finishing line of 1,566 hours last year, that means I somehow only accumulated 368 hours of Steam gaming for the past year. Seems like I would have played more, given the state of things in 2020.

I still played too much They Are Billions. There was that whole thing with a virus and being technically required to stay in the house, plus being unemployed for a spell. There were too many days in which I sank into playing endless hours of Billions while listening to audiobooks or podcasts and not leaving the house.

Not a complaint, necessarily.

Over at MobyGames, I managed to contribute a bit more than 600 points’ worth of historical game data, again skewing toward promo art harvested from old magazines, catalogs, and press assets CD-ROMs. I stalled out early in the year, however, because I felt like it was moving too slowly. There is a lot of manual tedium in the processing of each promo image and I started to brainstorm process improvements to help alleviate that tedium. This is still an ongoing project as I am preparing better tools to help with the extraction, processing, and submission of these promo art assets, both for myself and any other contributors who would like to assist. Thus far, I have downloaded more than 7000 computer and video game-related magazines from the Internet Archive, nearly all of which are known to contain some video game advertisements– and I only prioritize the downloading of English-language magazines too! Clearly, some optimizations are called for.

Further, I have finally started taking my MobyGames approval role seriously. I have been an approver for well over a decade. But in the past month, I have actually started approving a few of the backed-up queues, starting with the promo art queue, which doesn’t get much love. During December, I managed to approve more than 2000 pieces of promo art.

I have also finally started uploading some material to the Internet Archive. It’s a bit slowgoing because I have a lot of material, but the physical artifacts still need scanning, and I’m working on those process improvements (see above) so it doesn’t take me so long.

Some details about all the games I touched this past year…

1. Cursed Treasure 2: I managed to stay off of video games entirely until January 24 this year. I started picking up a few cheap games during the Year of the Rat Lunar New Year sale. This is tower defense that reminds me strongly of Kingdom Rush, just not quite as good. The biggest problem I had was getting the game running in full screen, with a visible mouse pointer, and with a reasonably sized UI.
2. Ancient Planet: Another TD game from the Lunar New Year sale. This was a good deal more enjoyable than the previous TD game. It definitely feels like a mobile-first title based on the controls. Indeed, it is available on mobile platforms. But it still hooked me for a little while.
3. They Are Billions: Okay, after 2 TD games, I fell back into Billions. Maybe I’ll just resolve to only play once a week, just to have a go at the weekly community challenge. Eventually, a particular Saturday in March rolled around and I realized it was the one-year anniversary of when I got hooked on this game. My total playtime on this momentous occasion stood at 473 hours. A week later is when the quarantines/lockdowns hit my area and I’m pretty sure I decided to just sit inside my house and play this game for 3 days straight. At 568 hours (April), I finally beat a game at 220%, beating the previous best of 170%. Somewhere along the line, I also completed a game at 270%. As of August 12, I wiped the game from my system yet again after logging 653 hours total. I fell off the wagon in early December (clean for 4 months!) and started playing again. I ended this year with 710 hours in the game; last year’s entry indicates that I had nearly 400 hours. So, about 300 of my 368 Steam hours this year got sunk into this game… I believe the correct internet acronym is smh… By the end of the year, I kept falling into this trap of playing at 350% and not playing at a high-enough level of skill to get very far. It’s roughly the equivalent of bouncing a rubber ball against the wall– something to keep my hands occupied while I’m listening to audiobooks. If I return to this game in the coming year, I hope I just keep it to the weekly Community Challenge, which tends to be manageable. It’s one of those games where I realize I’m already as good at this game as I ever care to be– I’ve watched numerous Twitch streams of really awesomely skilled players cruising through the game at 900% (the highest difficulty) and it’s something I don’t really want to pursue.
4. DOOM (2016): This game made a considerable splash among FPS fans when it came out a few years ago. It was on sale for cheap early in the year and I figured it might give my new GPU (RTX 2070) a run for its money at 4K. Actually, it’s not that stressful– only about 70% utilization on max possible settings for 4K. And unlike with Quake/RTX, I can actually perceive how awesome the graphics look. And it’s fairly fun and doesn’t make me too dizzy. One issue, however, is the 70 GB of HD space it requires when fully downloaded and installed. I have a large conventional HD but also a smaller SSD that is reserved for games I would like to access quickly (as well as an M.2 SSD boot drive). I had to do some juggling between the HD and 120 GB SSD to free up enough space that I could move DOOM over to the SSD. I’m so bad at the game that I frequently have to continue from the previous checkpoint, which incurs an intolerable load time from the HD. With the SSD, I’m back into the action in under 10 seconds.
5. Concrete Jungle: Sounded like a neat concept so I finally gave it a spin. It’s one of those titles that elicited a “GAH! I’m sooooo bored!” reaction a few minutes into the tutorial and I quickly bailed out.
6. Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle: The King of Dragons: I dusted off the Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle, which has 7 classic Capcom arcade brawlers, many of which I never actually saw in the arcade. I gave this one a spin until I couldn’t handle the monotony of the classic arcade style of free play anymore.
7. Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle: Armored Warriors: Another item from the Beat ‘Em Up Bundle that I never actually saw in the arcades back in the day. It definitely has a unique aesthetic with its mech combat.
8. Shadowgate: Trying to get back into this. I’m not sure how much I need to keep the classic Shadowgate in mind as I play this, i.e., how much is just a straight remaster of the original.
9. Castle Crashers: After playing the classic Capcom arcade brawlers, I had a desire to play a similar game with deeper gameplay, and Castle Crashers fits that bill.
10. Zen Pinball (iOS): Prepping for a long plane ride, this is the first game I put on a refreshed iPad.
11. Hitman GO (iOS): Good airplane game to occupy my time while I simultaneously listen to an audiobook. I’ve played this game’s companions (loved Lara Croft GO; couldn’t figure out Deus Ex GO) and this still manages to be unique among them. I’m a sucker for novel aesthetics and I love the commitment to the board game look of this game.
12. Dissembler (iOS): Another fun casual puzzle game for my iPad.
13. Monument Valley (iOS): The Escher-inspired title continues to be a fallback when I need an iPad time-waster.
14. Pocket City: It didn’t make an impression. I think this was the point on my long plane flight that I decided to just read a book on my iPad.
15. F-Zero (SNES Classic Mini): I reorganized my entertainment center which made it easier for me to play my SNES Classic Mini. I’m trying to get somewhere on F-Zero. I’ve never made it past the fourth track (Death Wind).
16. Mahjong Epic (iOS): I wanted a good Mahjong Solitaire game for my iPad. This fit the bill nicely. You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to find a mobile Mahjong game that doesn’t have a subscription for removing ads, but I found one.
17. Party Hard 2: The first game in the series grabbed me hard. Seriously, I couldn’t quit playing until my main gaming computer started to die (main hard drive started to give out). I remember seeing a few screenshots of this sequel while in development. I thought that they were trying to make it look like PS1-era graphics as an evolution to the original entry 8/16-bit type of graphics. Fortunately, the final 3D environments are much better– perhaps the dev screenshots were just early development scaffolding without the polish. Anyway, I want to like this game but it’s just not grabbing me like the original. In this facet, it reminds me of the Dungeon Warfare  franchise– the first one grabbed me and wouldn’t let go until I completed the whole thing, while I’m just not as good at the sequel and can’t bring myself to get more motivated. I have to say, however, that the audio engineering is on-point– as you move in and out of the area where the main party is taking place, the audio level reflects that.
18. Ori and the Blind Forest: This falls into the category of “really beautiful platformer,” like Astal or Seasons After Fall. Amazing watercolor art style. I learned of it from a Penny Arcade comic and it made me curious.
19. Resident Evil 3: Raccoon City Demo: It’s free so I tried it out. First, I had to go through the ritual of letting it mess with my monitors’ resolutions as it tried to spread one continuous game window across 2 (but not all 3) of my desktop monitors. When it started running, it decided to run on my main 4K monitor, which was nice. I gave it a few minutes and mostly spent that time gawking at the Easter eggs / member berries in the game (toy store with the Mega Man doll; “1942” movie poster as a pastiche of the Top Gun movie poster style).
    
    

    Resident Evil 3 – Mega Man doll

    
    
    

    Resident Evil 3 – 1942 Movie Poster

20. TIS-100: I’ve owned this assembly language programming simulator for a long time now and Steam still reports it as one of my most played games, at 10 hours. This is because the first time I booted it up, I clicked the button in game to view the programming manual, which launched an external PDF viewer while the game was still running, and then I went to bed, and accidentally logged 10 hours. Not sure why that matters to me. Anyway, every time I booted up the game, I was just confused about what to do. Finally, I started it up and I understood what I was supposed to do. Now I’m having a great time with the game.
21. Halo: Spartan Strike: I’ve played the preceding game– Spartan Assault. I remember wanting to like it but that it didn’t really grow on me. I knew this would be more of the same. But it was on sale for about a dollar, so why not? I knew it would at least be pretty, and I was right– runs beautifully at 4K. And it actually is growing on me just a bit more than the previous game.
22. Elite Dangerous: I wanted to give this game another honest attempt. So I jumped into the pilot training / combat simulator mode with a keyboard control cheat sheet up on a side monitor. It made me dizzy. Runs great at 4K, though.
23. Halo: Spartan Assault: I was enjoying Spartan Strike so much that I decided to give the predecessor another spin.
24. Kingdom Rush: This old favorite boasted some new content so I decided to fire it up again to enjoy it again, but on a bigger 4K monitor. Regrettably, playing the game in fullscreen hides the mouse pointer so I have to play in a window.
25. Bloons TD6: I remember playing a Bloons game in the very early days of the iOS App Store, where the point was just to pop balloons (until writing this, I completely forgot that I’m the one who submitted the iPhone screenshots to the database). Somewhere along the line, the developer morphed the Bloons brand into a tower defense franchise. Steam had a TD sale in April and, improbably, this is the only game I purchased. This is my first foray into Bloons TD and they have somehow already gotten to volume 6. It’s super-cartoonish, but that doesn’t bother me. What does bother me is the complicated upgrade paths, apparently a holdover from the mobile, IAP-enabled edition. I only played it for a few minutes, getting past the first level. The gameplay experience had me wondering if the game was written in a garbage-collected programming language since the engine seemed to noticeably pause often. That’s not something I ought to be thinking while playing a real-time action game.

And then I arrived at the now-traditional Steam Spring Cleaning event, which attempts to induce players to actually play little-touched games in their libraries. This time, there is a machine learning algorithm surfacing 3 games per day for 7 days. Fortunately (?), I have absolutely every game in my Steam library downloaded, just for laughs, because I installed a larger conventional HD recently, and because my ISP suspended download caps early in the pandemic.

26. Anomaly Defenders: I can already tell this is going to be hugely frustrating to boot up a bunch of fresh, never-been-launched games. Each one wants to monkey with my resolution at first start-up. This launched at 1440×809, a bizarre resolution that I’m led to believe is a fractional scaling factor applied to a more sane resolution. Still, everything appears to be in the wrong aspect ratio. I tried to change it via the main menu’s settings but the controls didn’t work. Some of the controls were also covered by the logo. However, upon a relaunch, the game sorted itself out and showed up in proper 4K rez. I’m glad I got to experience the game properly because it’s a reasonably competent tower defense game. It adds something new to the genre that I don’t believe I’ve seen yet– the enemies can hit back at your towers. So you need to be concerned with upkeep. I just wish the game had some keyboard controls. As it stands, all the controls flow through the mouse. Also, the art style isn’t particularly distinctive and the different types of units (both friendly and not) are difficult to distinguish.
27. rymdkapsel: For the second day of Spring Cleaning, Steam surfaced this game as one of my 3 choices. I remember giving this a try a long time ago when I bought it on sale, but it didn’t capture my interest. It feels like it should, however. So I tried again. While it correctly goes fullscreen at full 4K upon launch, the UI is still relatively tiny. Also, there is no mouse cursor, a problem I see more and more these days, in fullscreen modes. If I could get the game out of fullscreen mode, it would probably be playable. I couldn’t find any textual configuration files pertaining to the game. Instead, I radically lowered the resolution on my 4K monitor so that I had a chance of hitting the “Options -> Fullscreen” item with the hidden mouse cursor. I was also able to scale up the UI via the options. I’m glad I stuck with it because once I figured out the game, it turned out to be quite a delightful — if brief — romp about building a base using Tetris pieces that kept me occupied for a few hours. I eventually sunk a few more hours into it in an effort to earn more achievements. It’s always a good sign when a game induces me to do want to do that.
28. Kingdom Rush Origins: The theme of day 3 of the Steam Spring Cleaning event was “old flame”, surfacing 3 games that I have already played a lot. I chose to gave Kingdom Rush Origins a whirl. I still haven’t come close to finishing this game. However, while writing this entry, I realized that the next chapter is called Kingdom Rush Vengeance. It’s only on mobile now but I’m sure I’ll buy it when it makes its way to Steam.
29. Mafia II: Day 4 of the Steam Spring Cleaning event was “Time Machine”, which listed the first 3 games added to my Steam library. That means Just Cause II, Mafia II, and … Mafia II: Definitive Edition. So, really, I only had 2 games to choose from. The Mafia II game already in my library has been renamed to Mafia II (Classic). The Definitive Edition is some kind of HD remaster which was only released the week prior to this Spring Cleaning event. I’m not certain if this is one of those limited-time “free for everyone” things on Steam or if I automatically received it because I owned the classic version. The former seems more likely than the latter. Anyway, since I already had the Classic installed, I launched that. While I finished the main game 8 years ago, I realized that there are a bunch of extra missions (DLC?) that I have access to. I delved into “The Betrayal of Jimmy”. I didn’t play too long, but I did shoot up a few gangsters, including nailing several at once by aiming for the gas tank of a truck that they were using for cover; drove to escape a car full of other gangsters chasing me; eventually bailed on the car and got a $50 ticket for hit & run which I got out of with a $300 bribe (which I just realized doesn’t make much sense); tried to steal another car which earned me a police foot chase which I elected to resolve with my fists this time; successfully jacked a fresh car; then finally finished the tutorial mission of this content. So I feel like I got the quintessential open world crime game experience in this brief whirlwind play session.
30. Terraria: Day 5 of the Steam Spring Cleaning event surfaced games in my library recommended by a friend. Only one game in my library qualified — Terraria — so Steam also recommended Black Skylands Origins (free game) and Trials of Mana Demo (also free). I wonder if Terraria will grab me anymore than it has in my previous combined play sessions, totalling all of 45 minutes? NOPE! I still can’t bear to learn how to play it. I did receive 2 new achievements simply for starting the game.
31. Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle: Day 6 of the Steam Spring Cleaning event revolved around enticing users to try the Steam Remote Play feature. I don’t have a whole lot of Steam friends– gaming has never been a social activity for me. However, I realized that I could just launch the game and exit and still get credit toward the Steam badge.
32. Tropico 6: This had a free weekend in July. As always, I like the idea of simulation games but I just couldn’t get into this. I made an effort to get through the extensive tutorial but didn’t finish before the weekend was over. Still, the graphics are a real treat as is the Latin/Caribbean soundtrack.
33. Devolverland Expo: Due to the shutdown of every convention and expo and other large gathering, eccentric developer Devolver Digital put out this odd little commercial for their upcoming games. It did get me interested in their upcoming Carrion game.
34. Oil Rush: This is a game from Unigine that I have had on my wish list forever, long enough to know that it will never go any cheaper than it already is ($8, $10 with full DLC). Unigine makes some impressive graphical demos that I have been watching since 2011, and this game is roughly the same vintage (2012). It puts a decent amount of stress on my RTX 2070 with maxed out settings on 4K. I’m trying to get into the RTS gameplay. It’s awfully stutter-y, as though it’s constantly reaching out to the HD and loading in more data. I give it credit for the music, though.
35. The Ball: Whenever a publisher has a sale on Steam, I scan through to cherry-pick anything that looks interesting that’s also super-cheap. That’s how I ended up with this mysterious game, which turns out to be a first-person puzzle platformer built on some variation of the Unreal Engine. It reminds me a bit of Portal with its manipulation of the Companion Cube. Actually, it’s sort of like Indiana Jones prowling through the ruins of an ancient temple, except that instead of chasing you, the iconic rolling boulder works for you. Hey, it’s a gameplay twist and it works out pretty well.
36. Factorio: This is supposed to be the ultimate logic/programming game for nerd gamers, like myself. This is the year that it finally exited Early Access status. I played the demo but it just wasn’t grabbing me. Or perhaps I kept it at arm’s length because I was afraid that it would grab me.
37. Armor of Heroes: Free game for Sega’s 60th Anniversary. It strikes me as a clone of Combat for the 2600, reskinned with a Company of Heroes theme.
38. Kingdom Rush Vengeance: Works much better on 4K than previous installments, which I always have to run in windowed mode on my 4K monitor, lest I wind up with an invisible mouse pointer. I’m really enjoying the new angle of managing the traditional villains and attacking putative good guys of the franchise. I did get stuck at one level and I don’t have the persistence to push forward like I once had.
39. Endless Zone: Another freebie for Sega’s 60th; this was is a Defender clone themed on Sega’s Endless Space franchise. It’s really frustrating.
40. Streets of Kamurocho: A Streets of Rage (2?) rendition featuring characters and settings from Sega’s Yakuza franchise. This has been my favorite of the Sega 60th freebies so far. I can’t believe how much I remember the game mechanics of the SoR franchise. There is only one level in this particular freebie game and when you finish, you start over again. Play it through twice and you unlock a special character who, if you actually played the Yakuza franchise, might be familiar to you. Same with the various boss characters. Unfortunately, the characters all play exactly the same. Can’t expect too much from a freebie. It was still a fun 1/2 hour, even if I didn’t know any of the characters, and even if jump-kick was still the key to winning every single boss battle.
41. Golden Axed: A Canceled Prototype: The last of the free games celebrating Sega’s 60th Anniversary. I was a big fan of the Golden Axe brawler back in the arcades of olden times and I was looking forward to this. It is, however, just the first level of the prototype. I still had fun for 10 minutes as I worked out all the possible move and attack combinations that they worked into the game. I played through the level twice since Streets of Kamurocho taught me to expect a bonus if I played it enough (like another character). But alas.
42. SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics: Golden Axe: This is an emulator framework for the SEGA Genesis that features individual games as DLC. During the SEGA 60th Anniversary, the entire bundle of nearly 60 games was very cheap so I took the plunge. After playing Golden Axed, I wanted to see how it stacked up against my memories of the original game. Actually, I don’t think I ever played the Genesis version, only the arcade. This version doesn’t really compare favorably to the arcade.
43. SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics: Streets of Rage: After Golden Axe, I wanted to give the original Streets of Rage a whirl, having played the freebie Yakuza remix. This shaped up to be much more fun than Golden Axe. The most humorous aspect that stood out to me while playing as a grown-up was that the fighters that the player gets to choose from are all ex-cops… who are each between the ages of 21-23. I guess they needed to keep the ages relatively young in order to make them a bit more relatable to the kids who would be playing the games.
44. SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics: Alien Storm: At this point, I’m just starting to work through games I haven’t heard of before, such as Alien Storm. It has it’s charm. I appreciate that the artists didn’t stick to standard humanoid alien forms, rather letting their creativity flow.
45. SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics: Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle: Now I’m just proceeding through the big game collection alphabetically. This is a frustrating platformer where you can only take one hit– my least favorite type of platformer.
46. Super Gridland (iOS): Started auditioning some decent iOS games (with the help of No BS Games) and found this one. It’s surprisingly challenging.
47. Minesweeper Genius (iOS): Another very simple logic/puzzle game in the tradition of the old Minesweeper game.
48. Million Onion Hotel (iOS): Odd, but strangely fun. That’s all I can say about it.

And that was it for my game-playing for 2020. Too bad Steam doesn’t allow generating a pie chart of games played so that I could see how Billions dominated all the other games on this list. Billions is supposed to be an RTS and it seems like the many, many other RTS games in my collection should be able to slake the same appetite. To that end, I would like to give another try at completing StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm (Zerg campaign) and also jump into Legacy of the Void (Protoss campaign).

Further, at the end of the year, I finally scrubbed through my big spreadsheet of games and submitted outstanding cover art for games that used to be missing but have since been entered by other users. I think this is the first time I have performed the complete exercise in 2 years. It reminds me of how many fascinating[-sounding] titles I have in my collection that really need to be played and archived via MobyGames, lest the internet at large have no useful record of the game’s existence.

2016, 2017, 2018… now it’s time to discuss 2019.

Okay, let’s see: I went into 2018 with 1,114 hours on Steam — having logged about 200 hours throughout the year — and ended with 1,566 hours, about 450 hours… and nearly 400 of those were attributable to a rather unhealthy obsession with an odd little game called They Are Billions. This blows past my previous #1 Steam game (Defense Grid, which took me many, many years of playtime to reach just 325 hours). When framed that way, the rest of this list seems pretty negligible in terms of total playtime. Billions probably warrants a separate blog post regarding my personal struggle with video gaming addiction.

As I resolved at the start of the year, I did eventually get a 4K monitor in May (long, 6-month upgrade project as I gradually upgraded the PSU, then the GPU, and then finally bought the monitor). It was always a trial to find out which games don’t reliably support 4K, normally in the form of a UI that doesn’t scale.

I also got a Steam Controller near the end of the year since Steam was clearing out the last of their inventory. I still haven’t found a good use for it, but I haven’t given up on it yet. At least it only cost US$5 (plus US$14 S&H).

Over at MobyGames, I managed to finish out the year with exactly 20,000 contribution points. All but one of the 172 points I earned were due to my new hobby of scavenging old promo art for games.

On to the list…

1. Defense Grid: The Awakening: Starting the year off strong (or lazily?) with a game that has 294 hours invested into it at the start of the year.
2. Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon: This is a retro NES-style game that is strongly inspired by Castlevania. Actually, “inspired” is too generous of a word– this is primarily Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse with the serial numbers filed off. Gameplay characteristics are extremely similar; the music seems to be just a few notes removed from the classics. But I guess that’s okay with me. There are also a fair number of improvements, such as the obvious graphical improvement of parallax backgrounds; heart powerups recovered from lamps actually restore health; lamps that yield new weapons are a different color so it’s harder to screw oneself out of a preferred special weapon; there is a configurable difficulty, which allows me to run through it on an easier sightseeing-tour sort of difficulty; configurable knock-back which alleviates a huge frustration of the traditional Castlevania gameplay.
3. Syder Arcade: Good action game to play while on the exercise bike. I finally finished the main campaign. The boss I was stuck on for a long time turned out to be the final boss. Now I get to play it again and with different difficulty levels. I’m really appreciating this game more thoroughly, just for its graphics and music. I must be really into it because I’ve gotten to the point where I am trying to obtain all of the achievements (the reasonable ones– there are 3 that revolve around being tops in the leaderboards). Later in the year, I upgraded to a 4K setup. Rather than playing games in 4K and 60fps, I often just look on YouTube for captures if the same. I noticed that Syder Arcade had no such captures. So I endeavored to fill the gap. Enjoy.
4. X-Morph Defense: A tower defense game that has been on my wish list for awhile. During a sale, I noticed that it has a demo. So I elected to try that first. It has an interesting inversion of the traditional TD model, in that you play as the invading alien force. But I had trouble adapting to the overall control scheme.
5. Galak-Z: After getting back into Syder Arcade in a big way, I got an itch to play another space action game with awesome graphics and sound. I really want to enjoy this Galak-Z game (possibly because every single character and vehicle reminds me fondly of Robotech/Macross, to the point of making me wonder how the creators avoided a lawsuit by the notably litigious Harmony Gold) but the core gameplay just isn’t grabbing me.
6. The Disney Afternoon Collection: Darkwing Duck: I was enjoying this OCRemix of a Darkwing Duck NES tune and I realized I have never actually played that particular title. I have it easily playable, courtesy of the Steam release of the Disney Afternoon Collection. Just another game that reminds me how bad I am at old NES action games. I can’t get past the first bridge level, and I’m really trying, too!
7. Battletech: This game had a free weekend in February. Ever in search of a turn-based strategy game that will engross me as XCOM once did, I gave it a whirl. I knew that this has a massive pile of lore and I worried that I might have felt locked out of the story, the same way I felt as I played a Halo or Warhammer 40000 game. But this actually has a great, simple intro that quickly brings you up to speed on the overall concept of the Battletech universe. Regrettably, the game crashed after I completed the tutorial. I gave it another try a little later during free weekend, but couldn’t even begin to get into it. Yep, I’m feeling the effect of story lockout– I just don’t understand what all the characters are going on about, and I’m not versed in which giant robots are good for what. And all the giant robot combat just looks incredibly goofy.
8. Kingdom Rush Origins: I only got about 40% through this game last year. I’m supposed to love this series and this genre of game, so I’m pushing back into it.
9. Mortal Kombat X: Free weekend, so why not check it out? I’ll tell you why not– 35 GB download for one thing. And the game is just weird. It makes you pick from among 5 factions (I chose Special Forces) and then walks you through a story mode featuring the most absurd action cinematics I have witnessed in a long time. I keep expecting alternate game modes to break out, and indeed, there are some QTE-laden segments. But eventually, some well-known MK characters show up to square off with series mainstay Johnny Cage who is the character I must play as. I managed to get through Scorpion and Sub-Zero before Jax got the better of me. That’s when I decided I had seen enough. I’ll stick with Mortal Kombat Armageddon on the original Xbox if I need an MK fix.
10. Bad ass Babes: This is a video game art style I never thought I would encounter again– filmed actors performing action, a la (original) Mortal Kombat, Pit Fighter, and Lethal Enforcers. But I guess nothing is too sacred or cheesy that it can’t be revived as retro-kitsch 2 decades after its prime. I have since been informed that there are actually more games which ape this particular retro-aesthetic. I gave this game a whirl (on International Women’s Day, incidentally) and it’s… well, it’s juvenile– let’s just get that out of the way up front. Still, thought went into the game design and the challenge does ramp up. You can’t rely on 1 or 2 moves throughout the game. You keep meeting more enemies that require different strategies. The game technically supports controllers, but it’s hugely frustrating to set it up. Also, it lacks Steam achievements but features “Fake Trophies” internally.
11. Ultra Street Fighter IV: Playing Mortal Kombat just made me want to play Street Fighter instead (much like any other RTS just makes me want to boot up StarCraft II). So I fired this up after a few rounds of MK-X frustration and confusion.
12. Parcel: I sometimes try to get back into this puzzle game but it never quite clicks for me.
13. They Are Billions: I normally eschew early access Steam games. But I have watched a bunch of They Are Billions gameplay via Twitch. I sort of got the impression that it was like the ultimate tower defense game. Truthfully, it’s mechanically a proper RTS (at least if the UI is anything to go by), but I’m still glad I jumped in. The voice acting leaves much to be desired, but I already knew that from the Twitch streams. Progress report: 36 hours in and I just earned my first achievement, finally! 57 hours and I still can’t get enough. I figure out something new about this game every time I play. After 126 hours of play time spread across nearly 2 months, I finally managed to win my first survival game. Granted, it was with a score factor of 22%, but I had to start somewhere. I eventually deleted the game deliberately after about 140 hours because it was too easy to just get sucked back into playing it. I reinstalled it for one more round as soon as I got my 4K monitor, though. After 161 hours, I have finally completed my second game (score factor of 75%). After 185 hours, they finally released v1.0, leaving Early Access. At 208 hours, I won my 3rd survival game (score factor of 95%). At 212 hours, I won my 4th survival game and my first game at 100% score factor. By the end of the year, the best I had done was completing a survival game at 170% score factor. Pertaining to v1.0, the game got a proper release mode with a full campaign story mode. I tried to play this. But since it follows the pattern of “single player campaign as extended tutorial”, it was extremely dull to play since I had more or less mastered all the basics of the game on my own. So I gave up on the campaign pretty quickly.
14. Pembrey: How did this game end up in my Steam library? Oh, now I remember: out of those hundreds of trading cards that Steam randomly gives me, I realized that I actually had a complete set for one game (Ball of Wonder). So I got to redeem it for a prize pack that contained, among other items, a copy of this game. I think this is what the kids these days are calling a “visual novel”. It’s not so much a game as it is a piece of 2D, SNES-style machinima, with a mild amount of token interactivity. I keep wondering how it might have gone over in the SNES days, if the audiences would have demanded a bit more gameplay elements and replayability (I haven’t finished the game yet but I suspect that it’s the type of game you can only really play once).
15. Monument Valley (Android): Since Chromebooks can run Android apps, I rediscovered this Escher-inspired puzzle game.
16. Stellaris: A popular 4X game from a few years ago which had a free weekend on Steam in May. Normally, 4X games intimidate me. But I’m feeling a bit more bold after figuring out They Are Billions all on my own (yeah, that’s of the RTS genre, but still complex by my standards). I’ll see if I can work through the entire tutorial before the free weekend is up. I decided to play a metagame of how long I could play it before the siren song of Billions calls me back. I played for about 20 minutes, getting my surveying ship to Alpha Centauri, before the game glitched and froze on me, thus making my decision to go back to Billions much easier.
17. Quake II RTX/Vulkan Edition: I procured an NVIDIA RTX 2070 card recently and am still looking for things to do with it. I heard that there was a newly re-engineered version of Quake II available which takes advantage of the hardware ray-tracing features. If I max out the game’s settings at 1920x1200x60fps (pre-4K monitor acquisition), I can indeed peg my card’s GPU meter, so that’s something, I guess. The experience is lost on me, though. I’m still no good at FPS games. Also, it seems to be impossible to invert the mouse, which is something I require in this type of game. Further, whenever a new 3D tech shows up, one of the Quake games seems to get an upgrade in order to show off the tech. But since I have no memory of how it originally looked, I have no appreciation of the graphical upgrades.
18. Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle: Final Fight: This is the point when I deleted They Are Billions to keep myself from mindlessly drifting back into playing. The Capcom Beat Em Up Bundle has 7 old Capcom arcade brawlers. I was most familiar with Final Fight since I surely pumped $100 in quarters and tokens into that machine circa 1990.
19. Basingstoke: A new game from Puppygames, a developer with a very distinct style. I have put an inordinate number of hours into their Space Invaders clone Titan Attacks and I decided to try this one when it dropped (I had a signifcant coupon). It didn’t grab me. I actually opted to return it to the Steam Store, which is the first time I have exercised that feature after more than 200 games procured through the service.
20. Nights Into Dreams: A classic title from Sega that is on Steam now. I remember this being a big deal for the Sega Saturn. I am also fairly familiar with the soundtrack thanks to numerous remixes/alternate arrangements of the game’s music on OCRemix. My cursory impression of the actual game, however, is that it was designed to be a graphical extravaganza for the Saturn, rather than offering any major gameplay innovations.
21. Iron Marines: A new title from Ironhide studios, who make the various Kingdom Rush tower defense games that I adore. This one has a similar art style but set in a sci-fi universe rather than a fantasy one. Also, it’s trying to be more of an RTS rather than a TD game. I’m learning that the key to really getting into a TD game is to learn the hotkeys. Fortunately, this one has them and they are customizable.
22. Grim Dawn: I played this because it was free for the Memorial Day Weekend Spring Cleaning event on Steam. I have seen this advertised on the store and I always mistook it for being in the Warhammer 40,000 universe (due to the pilgrim hat seen in the cover art for this game, compared to this inquisitor character from 40K). Nope, it’s its own thing. It’s a hack-n-slash RPG affair, much in the vein of Diablo and friends. The only other game of this sort that I have played is Diablo III, which didn’t impress me much. The core gameplay of this type of title seems to just be clicking on enemies until either they fall over, or until you do. If they fall over, scavenge for loot and then sort through it. That presented a new problem that I expect to see more and more frequently with my new 4K monitor: UIs that aren’t aware of 4K resolution and don’t provide appropriate scaling.
23. Kingdom Rush: Played briefly for the Steam Spring Cleaning event. Didn’t get hooked, though; got too many other games that are drawing me in now.
24. Assetto Corsa: Free for the Steam Spring Cleaning Event. Another itty bitty UI for my new 4K monitor to chew on. The download for this was something like 10 GB and I couldn’t figure out how to even start playing. I wish these “serious” racers would have a simple arcade mode for the uninitiated.
25. Master Spy: I think this might be the last of the 7 games I bought during the Steam summer sale nearly 2 years ago (I always remember that since it was the first sale after I started using my wish list feature extensively in order to track games that looked interesting; when the sale came, I just purchased everything on the list that cost less than $5). It turns out to be a novel little puzzle game that reminds me vaguely of Gunpoint (but much simpler).
26. The Final Station: I think I procured this via a Humble Bundle last year. It was this year’s Steam Spring Cleaning event which induced me to give it a try. I knew the game had something to do with conducting a train during the collapse of civilization. The game doesn’t give you much to go on in the beginning, just encouraging you to figure things out as you go along. I found it strangely engrossing as I gave it about an hour before the gameplay got too frustrating for me. Then I looked up the plot synopsis on Wikipedia. I may track down a full-length Let’s Play/Long Play on YouTube sometime to watch it play out. Also, this game is another member of the “screw u and ur new 4k monitor lol!” club. I can set the resolution to 4k but most of the relevant graphics are rendered on the bottom 3rd of the screen. Fortunately, it renders at lower resolutions without switching the video mode.
27. Endless Space 2: Another 4X game, and space-based, to boot! It was free to play on Memorial Day weekend for the Steam Spring Cleaning event and I was induced to try it because the system was rewarding playtime with digital Tchotchkes. This was the last of the 7 free-weekend games that looked interesting to me. It’s almost like I’m hoping that if I try enough 4X games that one will finally click for me. Out of all the 4X games I have tried, I think this one actually might have the potential to get me interested in the genre. The interface seems a bit friendlier, at least in comparison to Stellaris, the free-weekend, space-based 4X from a few weeks ago. And it renders beautifully at 4K resolution.
28. Frostpunk: This is another post-apocalyptic city-building game. I figured it might speak to me the same way that They Are Billions does. It was a little tough for me to figure out at first but I eventually started climbing that tech tree and progressing in the game. This thing is bleak in a way that Billions could only dream. I’m trying to figure out the difference. I suppose it’s because in Billions, you’re fighting an opponent you can actually beat. In Frostpunk, it’s the oppressive force of the unrelenting cold weather. It’s also rather pretty, art-wise, and pegs my GPU meter at 100% using my new 4K monitor.
29. Anomaly: Warzone Earth: After playing Frostpunk for a few hours, I browsed what other games were developed or published by 11 bit Studios. They have put out a whole series of Anomaly titles which are tagged as “tower defense”. There is a bundle of 5 items in the whole series which was deeply discounted for the Steam Summer Sale. First off, this first title messes with the video mode in a really strange way. Also, the highest video mode in offered me was 1920×1209 (?!). All of the video modes listed really strange resolutions. The gameplay didn’t do much for me as it’s supposed to be some kind of reverse TD (you’re attacking the tower defense’d position). I finished the first mission but don’t have a strong desire to see what comes next. The control scheme seemed wonky and limited, but maybe that’s because I was using a mouse and keyboard. I could tell from the UI that a game controller must be supported and this turns out to be correct. Perhaps it’s more comfortable to play that way.
30. Dungeon Warfare 2: I heard about this game a full year after its Steam release date, and I learned of its existence thanks to an iOS games forum. This strikes me as a stunning failure of Steam’s recommendation system since the original Dungeon Warfare is my 5th most played game on the Steam platform (#4 before They Are Billions got its hooks into me recently). When I played it, I decided that either it’s much tougher than the original game, or I am losing my touch at TD games.
31. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II: Retribution: I wish I could understand why I keep coming back to this game and trying to make a go of it. Maybe it’s sentimentality due to it being one of the first games I ever added to my Steam library (I bought a boxed copy of the game during a Christmas auction in 2011, a few months after I got on Steam and well before I got into the Steam collector’s mindset). I decided that perhaps my mistake was trying to digest the tutorial. Tutorials are a delicate thing and can easily bore the player to tears (especially if that player is me) if they are too slow and hand-holdy. Instead, I decided to devour the proper manual and jump right into the campaign, especially since I am well familiar with this type of game’s controls. Being an older game, it still runs fine on my new 4K setup at maxed out graphical settings. Unfortunately, it’s another member of the itty bitty UI club. And it still didn’t grab me.
32. Street Fighter V: This game was free for a week in August, which is significantly longer than the normal free weekend that a lot of games will offer. The experience of trying the game turned into an “everything wrong with video games today”-type of ordeal. First, it was nearly 30 GB to download (perhaps that’s why they made the trial period so long?). When I finally get to launch it, of course it messes with my video resolution, messing up all my desktop windows across 3 monitors (happens with a lot of games). I was eager to jump straight to the configuration and drive the resolution up to 4K, but the game first wants to hold my hand through a basic tutorial on gameplay featuring Ryu and Ken. It’s a Street Fighter game! Everyone already knows their way around a basic fight. When I finally skip past all the tutorial battles, I get a EULA and a privacy policy agreement that I have to scroll through using a controller. Then I have to select a country and register a user ID. Urrgh… I just want to play a little Street Fighter! When I finally get to the menu, I am bombarded by about 23 different dialogs about different things happening in the game, from different objectives and events to DLC and trinkets to purchase. At long last, I can access the configuration settings and change the resolution. However, the only way to change the rez is to use the controller to cycle through other resolutions, and the game thinks it’s a good idea to immediately switch to each candidate rez, forcing the process to take much longer than necessary. Anyway, I finally got 4K set and maxed out all the settings. And it actually was worth it because the game is breathtakingly beautiful and runs smoothly at 4K with maxed out settings on my new RTX 2070. Indeed, I would often rather watch the action in the background setpieces rather than focus on the fights.
33. Deus Ex GO (Android): I loaded this back onto my phone in preparation for a long plane trip. On the ride, I eventually arrived at a point where I just wanted to chill with a game so I gave this another spin. I got stuck pretty early on, just like the last time I tried it.
34. Human Resource Machine (Android): I loaded this onto my phone for the same plane trip. Both games came from a Humble Bundle pack of Android puzzle games a long time ago. I’m glad I finally got around to playing this game. I thought it was supposed to be some sort of tower defense game. Instead, it’s a straight-up programming game, though in disguise. I immediately recognized it as a simulation of programming assembly language. And I love it. I wish I had gotten to play it ~30 years ago when I was first trying to comprehend ASM programming. I eventually bought the game on Steam when it went on sale so that I could enjoy it in 4K and harvest Steam achievements.
35. Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2: Another Warhammer 40K game, this time a space RTS, and was free for a weekend (and another monster download). The tutorial didn’t grab me at all. Still, I’m always impressed by the diversity of game types which occur in the WH40K universe.
36. 198X: I’m getting rather bored of all the nostalgia pandering of the past few years, but the screenshots on this one still tempted me. This is kind of a “Nothing But Hits” cover of late 1980s/early 1990s arcade games (sort of the Stranger Things of video games) against the backdrop of a brooding teenager contemplating the meaninglessness of being a teenager. The games are quite polished retro affairs– a Final Fight homage, a Gradius/R-type clone, an OutRun tribute, and a game I couldn’t quite peg– I think maybe it was a cross between Shinobi and Strider. The cutscenes between arcade games depicting “Kid’s” melancholy were painfully slow, but perhaps the creators wanted us to share in her pain. I could do without the schmaltzy romanticization of arcade denizens as “the coolest uncool outsiders, rebels, and misfits.” Hey, I was there. But there are many tiny details to admire and appreciate in this game, and the tiniest detail I appreciated was that the racing game had a speedometer that topped out at 255 distance units/hour, just as I noted 12 years ago when I was playing a bunch of old NES racing games.
37. Steampunk Tower 2: It’s a tower defense game and it came up cheap during a Steam sale, so you know I can’t resist. It’s a curious game that boasts a unique art style and a slight variation on the TD mechanic. It also has a small base-building mechanic. The music is rather incongruous with a lazy jazz theme for base-building portion, while something considerably more orchestral plays for the main battle. The upgrade paths are bonkers which makes this feel like it started life as a freemium mobile game, though I can’t find any evidence of that.
38. Prime Mover: Another science-type game (I have been trying to get more into these, probably for the cover of being able to say I’m sharpening some skill or another). I understand how pixel art is a popular aesthetic but I feel that this game takes it way too far.
39. Sine Mora EX: Sine Mora is Latin for “without delay” (recording this here for my own benefit because I can never remember). This shmup was on sale and it looked pretty. So, due to my fondness for the experience of playing Syder Arcade for its graphical glory, I picked this up as well. I’m becoming very appreciative of games that know how to launch at fullscreen 4K without ever touching the video resolution, and that have a UI which scales appropriately (and runs great at 4K, Ultra settings on my RTX 2070). It is indeed a graphical feast, but a little difficult to place– it reminds me of the “World War II-era futuristic” technology on display in Wolfenstein: The New Order (I have since learned that this aesthetic is called Diesel Punk). Oh, and with anthropomorphised animals. Trying to follow the story and decode the jargon and proper nouns in the game makes me feel like I’m missing some language skills. And it’s the first shmup I have played which boasts some type of bullet-time mechanic (called time capsules in this game). Also, there is a timer that gets replenished by destroying enemies. So I guess a pacifist run is out of the question.
40. Seasons After Fall: Look, it’s beautiful. What else needs to be said about it? It runs spectacularly on my new 4K setup, which makes it a graphical treat. It reminds me fondly of Astal. Not sure how deep of a game it is.
41. Super Impossible Road (iOS): This frenetic racer was my first foray into using Apple Arcade.
42. Grindstone (iOS): Another Apple Arcade item– I was searching for some decent puzzle games and this has an interesting angle.
43. Patterned (iOS): Apple Arcade game that didn’t really make a good impression on me. Manually pattern-matching 2-dimensional image blocks turned out to be not my cup of tea.
44. Word Laces (iOS): An Apple Arcade title that has a tiny amount of educational value.
45. Tint (iOS): This is the point when I got a little bored of the Apple Arcade offerings.
46. Rise To Ruins: This is another of those games that I really, really want to like and that I keep on trying repeatedly, but it simply never clicks for me. It reminds me of trying to jump into a complicated software programming IDE and I just can’t make heads or tails of the myriad tools laid before me.
47. Devil May Cry (From the HD Collection on Steam): This is my first exposure to the franchise. The game won’t let me use my keyboard’s volume control buttons in game, which is weird. Also, its max resolution is 1080p, but I guess it’s upscaling to fill 4K since it doesn’t reset the monitor settings, which I appreciate. I suppose there is only so much “HD remastering” you can do for a game like this. I’m just glad that it is widescreen since some of the earlier screens in the game implied a 4:3 aspect ratio. There is something distinctly Resident Evil-ish about the game, which makes sense since it’s my understanding that this was a revamp of an abortive attempt at producing Resident Evil 4. Frustratingly, my internet was down while I played this game. Even though the game still played fine, it still annoys me slightly that I didn’t get “credit” in Steam’s time tracking for the hour or so that I put into it.
48. Mark of the Ninja Remastered: This game was a key title that made me want to upgrade to 4K last year. Towards the end of the year, I realized that I hadn’t touched this 4K Remastered upgrade yet.
49. Banished: I’ve had this for awhile but finally got around to playing it near the end of the year. Unfortunately, I got bored about 3 minutes into the tutorial. I appreciated that it had UI scaling for 4K. However, it didn’t seem to work everywhere. I.e., some menus were upscaled, but the in-game control icons and tooltips remained tiny.
50. Phantom Doctrine: Yet another turn-based strategy game. I keep buying these in the hope that one of them will grab me in the same way that XCOM did. This one is a cold war, stealth-themed affair which is a setting that I tend to enjoy. I can’t help but notice that all of these turn-based strategy games feel like re-skins of XCOM (I can’t wait to learn that there are earlier examples of the same type of interface), but this is a good deal more complicated than XCOM, based on my cursory gameplay. Still, the commonalities of the different games’ interfaces make me wonder if there is a Unity template.
51. Planet X3 (MS-DOS): This is a full DOS game created in 2018 by YouTuber The 8-Bit Guy. I supported the effort via Kickstarter and the game came out on Christmas Eve 2018. I figured I should give it a whirl some time during this calendar year.

Resolution for next year: play less Billions! I’ve also gotten a good start with MobyGames contributions. I’m hoping this will be the year that I finally learn to properly upload items to The Internet Archive. I’m finally going through storage boxes, trying to organize a lot of random optical discs that I’ve accumulated over the years.