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It won't be long before I'm writing up my yearly Best Of post, but for now I'd like to go into the games I played this year. I don't think I played much of anything last year, but in 2019 I played some pretty decent games.

Wasteland 2 - About a thousand years ago, I played Wasteland on my Commodore 64. I probably played that game three or four times. This sequel, 30 years later, was one I'd been looking forward to. I enjoyed the references back to the original, Fallout's granddaddy game.

Tower of Time - I installed this, played it a bit, and gave up. It felt like Torchlight, only not as good. I didn't like Torchlight.

Pillars of Eternity - Pillars of Eternity is the spiritual sequel to the Infinity Engine games that I've always been waiting for. I've written an entire article on how Pillars of Eternity's mechanics work, and how much I admire them, so I won't delve back into that.

The game's story involves the main character, a “watcher”, who is able to see and communicate with the souls of the dead, pursuing the mystery of the Hollowborn, newborns who come into the world without souls.

Resident Evil 2 remake - I was a massive fan of Resident Evil 2, which I originally played on my Playstation 1 back in the mid-nineties. I jumped back into this remake early in 2019, and tore my way through the game until I reached the portion with Mr. X, who had always been one of the game's best elements. However, back in the Playstation 1 original, it was part of the game's unwritten rules that enemies would never follow you from room to room. That was all blown away at one point when Mr. X broke those rules by following you. In this remake, he always follows you. This seems an improvement until you consider the additional difficulty. In my 40s, with as little free time as I have, I don't want to spend my time being repeatedly killed and re-playing sections of the game. I put it aside. Maybe I'll go back to it.

Zuma's Revenge - I've played this game to the end probably twice before. It's a great casual game which I can pick up and set down anytime for a ten minute playthrough. I played to the end again. Fun.

Steven Universe: Attack the Light - I played this phone game, which is based on the excellent cartoon Steven Universe, earlier this year during a vacation week. It's a pretty straightforward RPG, with mini-dexterity game components remniscent of Super Mario RPG. I had fun with it.

Splendor - The phone version of Splendor is a straight (and well-made) port of the tabletop board game Splendor. Nuff said.

Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire - After my great experience with Pillars of Eternity, I was totally ready for more of the same. This second game was a bit more technically demanding, meaning I ended up buying a new graphics card, which resulted in a few technical problems. But thanks to Steam's cloud save feature, I didn't lose any progress despite having to reinstall Windows. Also, I can run the game with Citrix installed, and I need that to remote into work. So until I'm done with the game (nearly there!) I have to keep installing and uninstalling Citrix, which is a pain.

Deadfire really is more of the same, except instead of your base of operations being a keep you can upgrade, it's a ship you can upgrade. And the game's terrain is an archipelago, a la Wind Waker. I've had some odd issues with characters dying from minor hits during specific battles, but overall I'm enjoying the game, if not as much as the first one. My progress has slowed now that my characters' levels are maxxed, and I'm considering just rushing for the game's ending rather than trying to finish every last bit. The battles are too difficult.

Clash Royale - I've generally made it a habit to avoid online multiplayer games, be they MMORPGs or shooters. But a friend pitched the phone game Clash Royale to me with the hook: The game only lasts three minutes...

They've got a good operation. They hook you in the beginning, as you'll be winning pretty much non-stop. Even when you get into the upper tiers, you're winning at least half of the time, and you keep making progress. But once you get to the second-to-last named arena, before the arenas get names like "Challenger" or "Champion", it gets harder. You'll win until you're within 3 or 4 games of the next arena, and then go on a losing streak. It became a bit obsessive. I'd find myself playing a couple games in my car once I got to the grocery store before going in, and a couple more after heading home with the groceries. I got frustrated, upset, angry. It got so bad I had to quit, after something like 3 months of playing. Glad I did.

An interesting side note about the game, though. Clash Royale has clans. And my friend who'd got me to join the game had us join a clan run by his brother-in-law. Shortly after joining, I noticed one of the clan leaders had a username often used by my brother, so I typed in the clan chat, “Hey, Dunderhill are you my brother Sean?” - apparently I blew his mind. My phone rang five minutes later and we had a good laugh.

Interesting tidbit number two. Just over a decade ago, I wrote about five of my geek idols, and the least known of them was a guy named Lore Sjoberg. He's never exactly been famous - at the time, he had a Wired Magazine podcast called “Alt Text” which I really enjoyed. Years later, I found and followed him on Twitter. And then just about a month after I'd started playing Clash Royale, he put out a general call for a decent clan, so I invited him to join the one I was in. And he did. Funny how life works. Now if I can only get Wil Wheaton to join my Minecraft server...

Minecraft - Just recently, I got back into Minecraft. Again.

There's been a ton of content added to the game, so I'm seeing dolphins, beetroot, and pillagers for the first time. But temples, villages, and diamonds seem a lot harder to come by. I haven't even yet been able to scrounge enough obsidian to get a portal up.

Hexxagon - Probably the phone game I've put the most time into this year. It's simple, but challenging. I first bumped into Paul Neave's Hexxagon years ago on the PC - it was one of those Flash games. The phone version I'm playing has many difficulty ratings, and I'm now playing at the second to highest, and getting my butt kicked.