Books Read in 2022

Life. Responsibility. War.

2021 in Games

I've now spend 5 years keeping track of the video games I've played and I've found it lets me play more and play more intentionally. Plus it's nice to be able to write a post like this where I can look back over what I played, what I enjoyed and how the year went.

Yes, it was mostly Battle Brothers

Time Spent

I played 49 games for 600 hours in 2021. That's much less time than I've spent on games for the last few years. I guess that makes sense working full time and (slowly) starting to build up my creative career. My PC also broke a little and I think that cut down on some of what I played, and it also forced me to be more intentional with what I play. I also dedicated a lot of my playing time this year to trying out games from the cellar that I hadn't played for one reason or another.

The curve on how long I played games is pretty sharp. I played 150 hours of Battle Brothers and would have played more if the PC hadn't started to fall apart. I feel like I spend a lot of time here writing about I like tactics games but I'm not good at them. Battle Brother's hasn't really changed that for me, but it has been really fun to play.

Everything else topped out at around 50 hours, so overall my top 10 games by time played where:

1. Battle Brothers - 150 hours
2. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - 59 hours
3. Chrono Cross - 47 hours
4. Trials of Mana (Remake) - 41 hours
5. Mario Golf: Super Rush - 40 hours
6. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity - 37 hours
7. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance - 36 hours
8. Trials of Mana (Collection of Mana) - 32 hours
9. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - 24 hours
10. Secret of Mana (Collection of Mana) - 22 hours

After that everything flattens out into pretty small chunks.

I really wanted to *finish* a lot of games this year, and I did, but I think I really want to *experience* a lot of games for 2022 and also focus on having as much fun when I'm playing video games as possible.

I love a good end screen.

Finished Games

I haven't kept track of the games I've finished before, but having spent more time in and around ProtonJon's community I thought it would be interesting to see what I've finished. As I said, I already thing my goal of 2022 isn't to finish as much as it is to play, but it's still interesting to see what I played to the end.

I'm counting finished as reaching the credits at the end of the story, although for practically all of these games there's a lot more to play at that point. More or less in the order I finished them, I played:

• Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity
• Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury
• Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
• Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
• Trials of Mana (Remake)
• Trials of Mana (Collection of Mana)
• Celeste
• Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
• Super Mario Odyssey
• Secret of Mana (Collection of Mana)
• Chrono Cross

The only game I really completed was Bowser's Fury. It was really well designed to make it easy to pick up and play for a few minutes and get a few stars. For the others it was mostly nice to see the end of the story.

If you want a game full of cat's Cat World certainly is. Still not sure why they write it Bowser's Fury.

Favourite Games

Every game

I think the games I liked the most were (listed alphabetically):

• Battle Brothers
• Hades
• Super Mario Odyssey
• XCOM: Chimera Squad

When you do a thing right, Battle Brothers feels pretty good.

Things About Games in 2021

As I said in my Games of 2021 post, everything I played was good, but I don't think 2021 really hit the heights of 2020. I spent a lot of time trying to get really deep with a lot of the games I played and I'm not sure it was really worth while. I'm glad I played the games I did this year, but looking back on what where my favourites out of what I played, the list is weird. I only played a few minutes of Hades and Chimera Squad and not that many hours of Odyssey.

Battle Brothers is great and if I can manage the multi-headed hydra of fixing my PC (or more accurately, figuring out *how* I want to fix my PC) I'll be back to it. I think it's a great game where commitment, to characters and attempts, is really well balanced with interesting outcomes. I *like* Dwarf Fortress, but it always feels like it takes too much commitment for the "things went really sideways" fun to kick in. With Battle Brothers I've screwed something up in an interesting way after a few hours, or if things get boring, it's easy to jump out and start again.

I also like that I get a little better every time I play. I keep an eye on the Battle Brothers Reddit and sometimes I feel like I'm not getting enough from the game, or playing it right, but I'm having fun and that's really all that matters.

I'm trying to "Do" more in 2022 and I think that's going to apply to games as well. I've said it a few times, but I'd like to play more games and play more types of games. 2021 was a little bit stayed and I think I forgot to have as much fun as I can.

I recently read a tweet about how you shouldn't consider games you want to play but haven't a "pile of shame" so much as the video game equivalent of a wine cellar, where you're waiting to find the right moment and mood to open something up and I like the reframing. I think I can add that games don't go off after your start them, so there's no worry about putting stuff down and picking them up again later and you may as well have as many open games in your cellar so you can find everything you enjoy.

Games of December 2021

December was a bit weird, but I feel like trying to expect anything from a month during the pandemic is kinda useless. I ended up mostly focused on Chrono Cross, which was find, but next year I really want to play more and more kinds of games.

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

1. Chrono Cross - Chrono Cross is fine. I decided to play along with the Axe of the Blood God game club and found I enjoyed the minute to minute play, but was pretty underwhelmed by the story telling and most of the mechanics. As a sequel to one of my favourite games, Chrono Trigger, it feels deeply up its own ass in story telling. Chrono Trigger is able to get by, by not spending a lot of time integrating the plot or the time travel, Chrono Cross spends so much talking about time travel that I was just hoping to find a portal to the end of the game.
   
   
   
   The combat system is also underwhelming, partly because they tried to make it so complicated. At the end of the day most of the really fancy things they implemented didn't really work. I think if they'd leaned into the puzzle colour grid and made that a much more intentional system, rather than frustrated by the random AI. I think if they'd mixed this with Final Fantasy X's combat system, it would have worked a lot better.
   I love how colourful Chrono Cross is and I love the island aesthetic. It would have been nice to really get to enjoy the world a little bit more with less of the story sitting on top. A lot of the time it feels like they made a game and only later tried to tie it to Chrono Trigger, and I'd love to play that version that's a little more laid back and embracing the weirdness.
   


2. Secret of Mana (Collection of Mana) - Had a little bit of Secret of Mana left, so started the month by finishing that up. I ended up running out of steam fighting the final boss and ended up with 1 MP left, so had to sit there and wait for the game to knock me out. I ended up doing my old fashioned magic grinding to end the game off. Stupid as it seems standing in an inn and casting magic on myself for a few hours is still kinda fun.
   
   
   
   


3. Super Mario Odyssey - Really didn't pick this up much, but played some Balloon World and really enjoyed it. Odyssey just has a great feeling for movement.
   
   
   
   


4. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - Went back into this a bit, but mostly I'm planning to spend more time in 2022 learning the game and getting good at it.
   
   
   
   


5. Celeste - Played a few minutes just to get the feeling.
   
   
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for December:

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

Blog Post: Books Read in 2021

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