Books Read in 2022

Noisey. Fighting. Solutions.

Games of December 2022

Apparently this is was the year of being pretty focused on one game at a time and this time up it was Tactics Ogre.

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

1. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - Given how bad I often am at tactics games and how hard I bounced off Tactics Ogre when it came out on PSP, I'm a bit amazed at how much I'm enjoying it now. I'm not necessarily doing super well, but I'm certainly having fun. There's something about the flexibility of the different units and the customization of weapons and skills that makes the game perpetually interesting.
   
   


2. Tunic - My partner and I agreed to play this together. The exploration element and the mystery of the instruction booklet is really cool. As the person with hands on the controller I ended up getting seriously smacked around by the second boss and that kinda dampened my enjoyment. I think the approach to accessibility, adjustability isn't quite right.
   
   


3. Rune Factory 5 - I figured I should check out at least one farm sims in the year of farm sims.  It's no where near as good as Stardew Valley on any criteria you'd choose to name. It has no internal consistency in design, narrative or game play. It's also not interesting, far to into anime tropes (or maybe memes), no balance of challenge, no fun in the farming or crafting. It also has really frustrating slowdown and jank. Disappointing and it sounds like that's indicative of the year of farm sims.
   
   


4. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - Replaying has been fun, the little I've done. They tied in a lot of things that you don't see until later. I am a little disappointed that there's not too much to do in a new game+, but there's still enough that I'll finish the second play through at some point soon.
   
   


5. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - Vrooom.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for December:

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

2022 in Games

 One of the benefits of tracking what I play is that I get to make a little post at the end of the year talking about what I played and how my year was in video games. While 2022 was not a great year in a lot of ways, it did have a lot of pretty good video games in it.

Time Spent

I played 33 games for 600 hours in 2022. That's about the same amount of time as last year, but with fewer games. It was a pretty tactics / RPG heavy year, so had quite a few games that took a lot of time and then a few games trailing along at the end.

Overall my top 10 games by time played where:

1. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - 158 hours
2. Dragon Quest Builders 2 - 74 hours
3. Triangle Strategy - 64 hours
4. Hollow Knight - 49 hours
5. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - 43 hours
6. Ogre Battle 64 - 35 hours
7. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - 28 hours
8. Loop Hero - 27 hours
9. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 23 hours
10. Eastward - 22 hours

Xenoblade was an absolute joy to look at. Good in a lot of other ways, but Monolithsoft know pretty games.

Finished Games

Last year I started tracking games I finished. The list is pretty short this year, but mostly the games I finished were the ones that took the longest to play.

• Dragon Quest Builders 2
• Triangle Strategy
• Eastward
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Building myself a farmstead.

Favourite Games

I've recorded how I felt about the new games I played this year, but overall my favourites for 2022 were:

• Eastward
• Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Ogre Battle 64
• Super Mario Odyssey
• Tactics Ogre: Reborn
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Nothing really surprising on there. The one game that *maybe* should be included is Dragon Quest Builders 2, but I'm not sure I loved it so much as got obsessed with it.

If you haven't played Eastward I would suggest you look it up and spend some time with it. I think it's an absolute gem of a game and a wonderful example of a really well designed and built game. Especially if you loved 16-bit era games, there's a lot there for to feel nostalgic about but in a new and well thought through way.

The whole game is beautiful and rundown and messy and sharp all at once.

Things about Games in 2022

My PC broke in late 2021 and I spent all year meaning to get it fixed, (or replaced) but never really got around to it. There are a whole mix of factors into why, but the outcome is that I spent all of my game time on the Switch, which worked out well with a number of big RPGs and some really strong tactics games.

I'm utterly in love with Tactics Ogre: Reborn. I'm not quite sure why that series gets to live in my head so deeply, but I love them and Reborn has been a lot of fun. Sparks of Hope is also really good and just below that "Favourite" threshold, but certainly fun to play. I've grumbled a lot about Triangle Strategy, but it is a really strong take on the Tactics Ogre / Final Fantasy Tactics model. Other than my complains about slowness, I think the other reason Tactics Ogre wins for me is that it gives you so much more flexibility in how you want to take down problems.

2022 was a good, stable year over all (as far as games go). Beyond getting a little taken away by Dragon Quest Builders, I was pretty intentional with what I played and I played a lot of good games. 

Eunie's the boss.

New Year Resolutions 2023

I spend more time thinking about what I should do, compared to doing the things I want to do. That’s one of the things I’d like to do better about next year. Still I’ll put together some resolutions for 2023, so I have something to look back on in December. (I do like a good look back at the year, but a year is a big thing to hold in your head.)

A lot of where I’m at this year is also where I was at this time last year, so I think a lot of my resolutions will be similar, but I’ve tried to reframe them to help them be more meaningful for my life.

• Finish Projects: If you’ve been here for any length of time really, you’ll know that finishing things has never been my strength. Overall I’ve been struggling a bit with the meaning of productivity, how it ties into my feelings of self worth and where and how I want to value my time. Still, I’d like to improve the two-part habit, of planning out reasonable sized projects to do and then finishing them.
• Read more Text: I’m generally happy with how much I’ve read the last year and reading more seems like an excellent way to move away from mindless Social Media. Most of my reading has been in the form of audiobooks. That’s been great and allowed me to read regularly, but I have been missing text and after getting a Kobo for Christmas last year, I’ve been glad to read more written word. I also find it’s been good for thinking about how things are written in a way audiobooks don’t do.
• Move: This is the thing I feel like I really fell down on last year. I was fairly fit before the pandemic started, but it’s just been hard to pick up physical activity again. I don’t want to categorize this more, since that always leads to failure, but I do want to feel good in my skin and I’d like to feel like my body can do whatever I ask of it.
• Adventure: This year was pretty stressful and we didn’t do all we could to enjoy it. For the next year I want to join family and friends and do and see things that we haven’t seen, either ever or even just recently.
• Choose Happiness: One thing that came to me this year is that I spend a lot of time trying to clear out stress or obligations or mess to find happiness. I’d like to work on finding ways to feel happy, whatever else is going on and wherever I am in the world and my life. I’m not sure exactly how that works, and sometimes my brain just refuses, but I’d like to learn.
• Sleep Better: I’m tired. It seems like more sleep might help with that. At a minimum, if I’m tired I’d like it to be for a good reason.

Thanks for reading in 2022. I hope 2023 is good and kind to all of you.

“Fireworks” is copyright copyright 2014 Amir Kbah and made available under a
Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license