XCOM: Enemy Unknown (11 hours):

https://youtu.be/zRYruIvgd5w?list=PLEJrELYLxNgVMLzx98YPIGhKdSDiGFjaU

There are many times that The Giant Bombcast or other video game podcasts have led me to discover games I wouldn’t have otherwise considered: Peggle, Saint’s Row the Third, Assassin’s Creed, and The Witcher. But there was one time they did me wrong: XCOM: Enemy Unknown. They made it sound like it was just an exercise in frustration in which you died at every turn and it since it was made by Firaxis, I thought it was just going to look like Civ. Nothing wrong with that, but I already had Civ. But Dan got an extra copy at some point and gifted me this one. It’s been a blast and I’ve loved playing it even as it has started to kick my butt as the difficulty ramps up. If I had more time, I’d be playing this game A LOT.

Team Fortress 2 (33 hours):

https://youtu.be/uF9N-mD_3UY?list=PLEJrELYLxNgWsp76cFb5sqedFrKP9qQLw

I’m a seasonal Team Fortress 2 player. Although I play it here and there at any time of year, I tend to really play a lot during October for the special Halloween missions. This year Valve was busy working on a new mode that was released earlier this week so they released a community-made Halloween mode: Invasion. It’s the first time I’ve spent any money since I spent $2.50 to get a bigger backpack a few years ago. Overall, the new modes were a lot of fun and I’m glad that Valve has gone from what should be the basic level of video game company support- supporting community mods- to allowing the best of the best to make money by sharing in the profits made during community events.

The Witcher (15 hours)

Assassin’s Creed was the first game series Vinnie of Giant Bomb convinced me to try by talking about it endlessly on the Bombcast. The Witcher is the second. (This is why I miss his voice on that podcast so much) It has turned out to be a lot more fun than I thought it would. It’s based on the Bioware engine of the time, so it plays a lot like Mass Effect 1. The story is good so far and full of nice little jokes. You can watch my progress (I’ve been recording it for Extra Life) on this Youtube playlist.

Civilization: Beyond Earth (7 hrs): This game was a great evolution on Civ V. I enjoyed that they continued with the same sense of humor. I also thought they did a good job evolving things so that it felt different enough. It’ll probably take a few games before I get the hang of all the government options.

Super Mario Galaxy (1 hr): Just wanted to get past the opening section on my emulator so I could not have to repeat that silly story section again if I even want to play some SMG. Also wanted to test the USB sensor Dan got me for Christmas.

This year I did not play as many new games as in previous years. I was deep in my graduate degree and most of my free time was during work travel. Since I don’t have a powerful laptop (and Steam on Linux was just taking off early on this year anyway), most of that time was spent reading. Still, I did play some great games and still managed to log in quite a few hours.

Civilization V (1 hr) - Dan, Dave, and I didn’t play too much because life got in the way and then the GMR servers went offline. We hope to play some more in the following month.

Poker Night 2 (30 minutes) - Testing out Steam’s internal streaming from Windows to Linux.

Saint’s Row the Third (14 hrs):  I got a lot of video games for my birthday and Christmas (mostly on Steam).  So I wanted to finish up the last narrative game I had started before playing those games.  I played a few missions in Saint’s Row The Third.  As I had surmised before, the loose narrative based mostly on archetypes and stereotypes made it extremely easy to jump in.  It wasn’t like in Mass Effect or Final Fantasy 10 where I couldn’t remember why I should be caring about these characters.  The missions with the VTOL planes (STAG missions) were pretty hard.

Civ V (11 Hrs) - talk of the expansion pack made me want to play some more Civ.  I played a scenario and then I played a regular game.  I had a blast and I can’t wait to buy the expansion pack.

Peggle Deluxe (5 hrs) - Worked on some of the challenge puzzles

Team Fortress 2 - (3 hrs) - played when the Pyro pack came out.  Really enjoyed the new mode.

Got a little bit of time to play games while waiting to do midnight feeds.  I’ve already spoken about these games a bunch of times, so it’s going to be a short post.

Civilization V (2 hrs)

Team Fortress 2 (2 hrs)

Cities XL (1 hr) - fun, but I can’t wait for Sim City 5 to come out!

Peggle Deluxe (1 hr)

Mass Effect 2 (19 hrs) - I knew my wife was getting close to delivering our first child, so I was rushing as quickly as I could to save the galaxy.  I got to it with one week to spare.  Phew!  I didn’t enjoy the story as much as Mass Effect 1, but the gameplay was orders of magnitude better.  For one thing I didn’t have to worry about having too many guns.  (A frequent problem in the first entry)  I also enjoyed the characters a little more (some of them, anyway).  I ended up doing a lot more side missions and I felt they were well designed.  If too much time doesn’t pass between when I finished the game and when I get free time to blog, I’ll do a writeup on Mass Effect 2 and how I liked it vs the first one.  However, it would mostly be a long-winded version of what I said above and with the baby…. well, don’t hold your breath.