I think I'm going to call my year here, it's pretty unlikely I'm going to finish another game before the year is through. The final monthly update:
19. Forza Motorsport (PC, 2023) - 33:50 - December 6*
20. Mirror's Edge Catalyst (PC, 2016) - 10:26 - December 10
21. The Crew (PC, 2014) - 11:50 + 5:06 in 2020 - December 23
Forza has an asterisk next to it because I didn't actually finish the career mode. But really, what's going to change? Every event is exactly the same: buy car, race practice lap(s), race against shit AI that doesn't know you're there half the time and hits you a whole bunch, upgrade car, race practice lap(s), race against shit AI, upgrade car, race practice lap(s), race against shit AI, upgrade car, race practice lap(s), race against shit AI, upgrade car, race practice lap(s), race against shit AI, upgrade car, race practice lap(s), race against shit AI, finish the race series and do all of the above again with the next one. What's the point?
The rest of the month was spent clearing some very old games from my backlog. Mirror's Edge Catalyst ends up being a more entertaining game than I gave it credit for in my first two attempts at a playthrough. The trick is to set aside all of the delivery missions, diversions, etc. until after the story is over; you don't get much benefit from them anyways, and until the story is done they're just momentum-killers. AFTER the story is done, they suddenly become way more fun because you don't have anything pressing to do, something I realized as I tried to unlock the remaining achievements I was owed in the game because I unlocked them after the online servers went down (long story short: all Steam and EA achievements are broken now and can only be unlocked in a bizarre and mostly random method).
The Crew is... okay. The story is pure trash, and frankly the game would've been better without it. It also could stand to lose some of the race modes; the takedown events are all uniformly terrible and I hated every single one I did. Actually driving the cars feels okay but never great, a major problem when Forza Horizon is your main competition, and in other ways it feels very much like a game from a decade ago in terms of UX. That said, there are some cool things here; having a shrunken-down map of the United States is kind of neat, and the various activities you do while driving from one city to another are mostly fun and novel.
This has been a bit of a year for me for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with games, but just focusing on video games I also didn't get to finish as many of my long backlog games as I'd hoped. I looked back at what I said at the end of last year, and the games I'd mentioned as wanting to tackle for 2023--Personal 5 Royal, Xenoblade 1 and 3, maybe Skyrim--are still unfinished. I've made some progress on Persona 5 Royal but even that ended pretty early in the year and it's only recently that I've picked it up again. On the other hand, I did manage to finish a second playthrough of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, something I'd feel better about if I didn't feel like I needed two more playthroughs to finally move on to Three Hopes. That's another 200 hours easy, and I'm not looking forward to it.
Total time played: 1073:15 hours, which is about 75 hours less than last year
Top 10 games by playtime:
I think my goal for next year is roughly similar to my goal for this year: try to clear some of those longer games out of my backlog. There's also a secondary goal of finally playing (not even finishing) the games I've bought from previous Steam sales, and it'd be nice to play a few of the games I bought in the 3DS/Wii U eshop shutdown hoarding. But as always, I'm not going to stress too much about any of it. If I can make it to 52, then great; if not, it is what it is. After the shit 2023 has thrown at me, like getting laid off, I'm trying not to have any expectations about what I'll be able to do.
19. Forza Motorsport (PC, 2023) - 33:50 - December 6*
20. Mirror's Edge Catalyst (PC, 2016) - 10:26 - December 10
21. The Crew (PC, 2014) - 11:50 + 5:06 in 2020 - December 23
Forza has an asterisk next to it because I didn't actually finish the career mode. But really, what's going to change? Every event is exactly the same: buy car, race practice lap(s), race against shit AI that doesn't know you're there half the time and hits you a whole bunch, upgrade car, race practice lap(s), race against shit AI, upgrade car, race practice lap(s), race against shit AI, upgrade car, race practice lap(s), race against shit AI, upgrade car, race practice lap(s), race against shit AI, upgrade car, race practice lap(s), race against shit AI, finish the race series and do all of the above again with the next one. What's the point?
The rest of the month was spent clearing some very old games from my backlog. Mirror's Edge Catalyst ends up being a more entertaining game than I gave it credit for in my first two attempts at a playthrough. The trick is to set aside all of the delivery missions, diversions, etc. until after the story is over; you don't get much benefit from them anyways, and until the story is done they're just momentum-killers. AFTER the story is done, they suddenly become way more fun because you don't have anything pressing to do, something I realized as I tried to unlock the remaining achievements I was owed in the game because I unlocked them after the online servers went down (long story short: all Steam and EA achievements are broken now and can only be unlocked in a bizarre and mostly random method).
The Crew is... okay. The story is pure trash, and frankly the game would've been better without it. It also could stand to lose some of the race modes; the takedown events are all uniformly terrible and I hated every single one I did. Actually driving the cars feels okay but never great, a major problem when Forza Horizon is your main competition, and in other ways it feels very much like a game from a decade ago in terms of UX. That said, there are some cool things here; having a shrunken-down map of the United States is kind of neat, and the various activities you do while driving from one city to another are mostly fun and novel.
This has been a bit of a year for me for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with games, but just focusing on video games I also didn't get to finish as many of my long backlog games as I'd hoped. I looked back at what I said at the end of last year, and the games I'd mentioned as wanting to tackle for 2023--Personal 5 Royal, Xenoblade 1 and 3, maybe Skyrim--are still unfinished. I've made some progress on Persona 5 Royal but even that ended pretty early in the year and it's only recently that I've picked it up again. On the other hand, I did manage to finish a second playthrough of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, something I'd feel better about if I didn't feel like I needed two more playthroughs to finally move on to Three Hopes. That's another 200 hours easy, and I'm not looking forward to it.
Total time played: 1073:15 hours, which is about 75 hours less than last year
Top 10 games by playtime:
- Project Sekai: Colorful Stage (Android) - 244:12
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Switch) - 94:37
- Starfield (PC) - 92:43
- Satisfactory (PC) - 85:02
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Switch) - 82:28
- Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End and the Secret Key (PS5) - 65:10
- Fire Emblem Engage (Switch) - 59:12
- Brotato (PC) - 44:19
- Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name (PC) - 34:10
- Forza Motorsport (2023) (PC) - 33:50
I think my goal for next year is roughly similar to my goal for this year: try to clear some of those longer games out of my backlog. There's also a secondary goal of finally playing (not even finishing) the games I've bought from previous Steam sales, and it'd be nice to play a few of the games I bought in the 3DS/Wii U eshop shutdown hoarding. But as always, I'm not going to stress too much about any of it. If I can make it to 52, then great; if not, it is what it is. After the shit 2023 has thrown at me, like getting laid off, I'm trying not to have any expectations about what I'll be able to do.