Blog: Games of January 2018

I'm pretty happy with what I played in January. If you've been following for a while I suspect you can guess which games are going to show up in my top five. I've been busy with work and pushing on my thesis so I haven't wanted to game for adventure, instead I've been gaming for relaxation and comfort. At the end of the day I've enjoyed another month of games.
My top five games (by play time) for January were:

1. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild  - So I'm moving in on the end of my 100% Master Quest play through. I have most of the shrines finished (I think I'm at 97 right now) and most of the side quests done (no idea how many, but a lot). I'm still loving every minute of it. I think this has been the right game for me at the moment, because it has so much depth I've been able to come back to it again and again, which works well with my plan to stay focused on my thesis as much as I can.
   
   

   

   A fine mountain stroll.

   
   
2. Europa Universalis 4  - History talk enevitably brings me back into EU4, as does spending too much time sitting at my desk and cold weather. So I've been back into EU4 trying to rule the world as the Ottomans (and trying not to get crushed but Poland and Austria).
   
   

   

   A fight for Cairo

   
   


3. Stardew Valley - Again on the deep winter gaming tip, I've been playing more Stardew. It's another great game for that regular returning and short play sessions.
   
   

   

   An event in the night.

   
   


4. Ogre Battle 64 - I am ... almost done. I started this play through in November 2016 and I think I'm going to finish my favourite game for the 2nd time. As I've said before I love this game, even though it has some really significant flaws. I think it ties into my theme for the month, it's a comfortable game and one that's easy to come back to time after time.
   
   

   

   A showdown of friends.



5. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival - Again good Animal Crossing charm and good friends to play it with.
   
   

   

   A plaza of fun (and dry cats).

   
   

Here's my total play time for January:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Blog Post: Books Read in 2018

Wow. Woah. Yikes.

Good Reads

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks - Wrapup

That was fun. I've been really bad about reading over the last few years and I wanted to kick myself to do a little more. And I think I did that, I read 18 books, some were comic volumes or graphic novels and a lot were audio books but I'm happy. I read several books I really enjoyed, particularly The Nameless City and American Gods. The Laundry books also scratch a lot of my nerdy itches even if they do sometimes leave me wanting just a little more.

I'm happy to wrap the project here, although I think I'm going to try to keep a list of my reading updated as I go (like the Lee and Miller's books read list) which will look basically like the project updates did. I've also challenged myself to read 32 books in 2018 in the good reads reading challenge.

Blog: Games of December 2017

I didn't get quite as much time to relax into over the holidays as I'd hoped, but I did still get to play a bit of everything.

My top five games (by play time) for December were:

1. Stardew Valley - Stardrew Valley is still beautiful. I wanted something soothing to play while I spent most of my time marking, this fit the bill. It's also nice that it comes in bitesized chunks. I started a new play-though and now Amri is building a very nice farm.
   
   

   

   Welcome to Old Man's Farm

   
   
2. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Still deep and I haven't even played any of the DLC story missions yet. I'm about 20 shrines short and my plan now is to finish those and power up the armour as much as I can and then tackle the DLCs.
   
   

   

   Always a new vista.



3. Pokémon Go - A pokéstop a day keeps the streak up and the game going.
   
   

   

   It's a new generation, and a new electric rodent.

   
   
4. Ogre Battle 64 - Cold winter nights and a game that plays itself, what else could you need? Whiskey is a good addition actually.
   
   

   

   This is like the second to last battle in the game and the first one that actually feels tactical.

   
   
5. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival - I got this for my friend and I have thoroughly enjoyed Amiibo Fest. If you like Animal Crossing, you might too. It brings a ton of AC charm and is a nice light game, and it has a really nice set of mini-games to play too. (We may have spent a little bit too long dropping cats in to the ocean ... I mean by accident).
   
   

   

   Welcome to Charmingville. Population, however much you're willing to spend on cards.

   
   

Here's my total play time chart for December:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month: