Games you're thankful for (Thanksgiving thread - No negativity allowed)

I also am thankful for the XCOM reboots. XCOM:EU and EW were incredible. How could they beat that? Of course with XCOM 2 and WOTC. Between them I have over 2000 hours of play. And I still play WOTC. Amazingly addictive. Some of my favorite games ever.

Oh and many thanks for an iPhone port of XCOM EU. Playing that as well. A lot.

I’m thankful for Super Mario Odyssey, Magic: The Gathering (which might even end up being relevant to Thanksgiving itself, if my brother pulls through with what he’s supposed to be bringing), and the weird and cool DOS games I’ve been trying this week, including Dune and Vigilance on Talos V.

I bought our family a PS4 for Christmas, and my kids are finally old enough (7 & 11) to be able to really play games. I have also learned that the PS4 version of Goat Simulator has 4-player split screen coop. We’re going to have fun next month.

I am thankful for Stardew Valley. It’s beautiful, rich and touched the past as well as offered something new while bringing to life a genre that had gone stagnant for years.

I am thankful for Don’t Starve Together This is probably the game that really opened indie games to me, gave me cooperative play out of the blue and just really surprised me in a great way.

I am thankful for Pathfinders Adventures because it’s really the first full mobile experience I’ve enjoyed.
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Lastly I am thankful for all the games I don’t like and the players that play them because diversity is good and we keep getting good and sometimes unexpected surprises from that mix.

I’m thankful for DOSBox. I will never have to give up my old favorites.

I’m thankful for diversity too, and to all of you who have persuaded me to go outside of my comfort zone and get into genres I would have avoided in the past.

I’m thankful for RimWorld - I have tried to play Dwarf Fortress over and over again, but have always given up in frustration, knowing I was missing out on a great game. RimWorld opened the door for me, and let me experience what I had been missing out on.

I’m thankful for EverQuest which gave me my first start at a decent run of freelance writing for PC Gamer. when then lead to general tech freelance writing.

I’m thankful for Naughty Dog. Their games alone made my PS4 purchase worth it.

I’m thankful for QT3, which exposed me to dozens of great games I would have never run into. I’m also thankful for the intelligent community, in a sea of idiots that is the internet.

Oh god yes very much so.

I’m thankful for Bayonetta 2, Splatoon, Pikmin 3, Wonderful 101, Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze, and Super Mario Maker for validating my WiiU purchase. Sure, there are tons more games I’ve played on the system that I’ve enjoyed, but these delivered the most consistent enjoyment over time (and haven’t appeared on Switch just yet). Fantastic games all around.

I’m thankful to Hearthstone for being a game my wife loves to play along with me. We’ve been gaming together for years, but this one is on mobile devices too, so we don’t have to go dig out controllers/batteries or move to the office PCs and such. Plus, they’re constantly adding hundreds of new cards a year to help keep things fresh for us. One of those rare games we don’t have to set aside a whole bunch of time to play.

I’m thankful for nude modders everywhere for helping to make Saints Row the Third and Skyrim amazing and hilarious experiences.

I’m thankful for Age of Wonders III for delivering the best fantasy 4x experience I’ve ever had.

I’m thankful to Lords of Magic for giving me a soundtrack I’ve listened to literally hundreds of times over the years. Nearly every time I play some new RPG or Fantasy game I’ll mute its own crappy music and play this instead. My favorite game soundtrack that just keeps delivering.

The Dominions series. It is the reason I am thankful for Sweden. That and Carl von Mannerheim.

I’m thankful for Steam. I had to quit comics years ago due to lack of time and closet space. Steam’s role in making digital common and affordable helped make it possible to keep on gaming without the hassle of physical media storage overhead. Yes, there are other compromises involved but digital and sales transformed my ability to keep a toehold on gaming and the updated classics.

Also thankful for the bundle sites and Amazon for likewise building such comfortable prisons for digital content.

I am thankful for Tom Clancy’s The Division. In an age where I am too jaded and thus, my interest level for a game became very shallow, I am surprised that this game manage to hook me hard in the past 4 months when I bought it after a free weekend. The game is beautiful, truly a one of a kind for a open world, much more than GTA V (to me) and the game play, while nothing special, was very enjoyable to me. I didn’t realise I like cover-base shooting, having not played any console game in the past. I am also thankful that there are still players around, so it was still relatively easy to look for a group and start playing some of the more challenging missions.

Here’s hoping that I will like the DLCs when I am done with the base game to extend many more hours.

I am also definitely thankful for Qt3 - great place to discuss games and technical issues…

Feeling a lot to be thankful for these days, and really appreciating the little things in life.

Even though I haven’t yet played them, I’m incredibly thankful that these games exist, which are finally opening up worlds more interesting than even my beloved Ultima series provided (and promised we’d have far before now):

  • Divinity Original Sin 2, and its glorious 21:9 world;
  • Skyrim VR, which allows me to finally explore its amazing world from the immersive perspective that I’d always hoped would be available.

And I have very high hopes for Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, which looks like substantially improved over the original, in a more interesting setting. Between this coming out and Divinity Original Sin 2 already available, it reminds me of when Pool of Radiance came out at the same time as Ultima V - two games similar is some respects, but one more of a world simulator while the other has a deeper RPG development system.

And thankful for kind people, including everyone here. Except Geryk.

This year I’m specially thankful for Breath of the Wild. It brought back feelings of discovery and awe I had not had playing a game in probably decades, and it also helped me go through a pretty nerve wracking period.

I’m also thankful for Blood Bowl 2, for being a great 23 years old game that is still relevant design wise, but mostly for letting me keep in touch with my friends overseas.

qt3 offers a better, deeper gameplay experience than any game I’ve ever played. And it spans decades.

I am thankful to Humble Bundle for the wide array of choices I have for games on my steam list. I am also grateful for all the great updates that Titan Quest keeps getting.

I was very thankful for the Gameshark podcast. It was an awesome companion.
I am thankful for this independant publishing golden age. It was so hard to hunt down the indies and ways to purchase them outside o the country they originated from (often the US) merely 10 years ago. All of this is now so easy.

You broke the chain of the topic :(

Be thankful for levity.

I’m most of all thankful for my mother, who gave me a Gameboy when I was just a little kid, and who never made me think that girls shouldn’t play video games.

The same goes for my cousins and male friends that let me play with them throughout my entire childhood.
Especially two childhood friends who really opened up the gaming world for me: one of who I spent hours and hours and hours playing Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within, Doom and some kind of dungeon fantasy game I can’t remember the name of, and the other who I spent an entire night playing Golden Eye, Leisure Suit Larry and GTA 1.

I’m thankful for The Sims and all the waking hours I spent killing people in various ways in my teens.

I’m thankful for the break I took from gaming when I thought I couldn’t enjoy it anymore.

I’m grateful for my sisters boyfriend who convinced a reluctant me to try Diablo III one weekend I spent with them, that started up my love for gaming again after a long break.

I’m enormously thankful for my friends who all pitched in and gave me a PS4 for my 30th birthday last year.

I’m thankful for my friend who suggested I try The Witcher 3 that just totally blew me away, which also led me to QT3 because I desperately googled “What to play after Witcher 3”.

I’m thankful for a rather awkward one night stand I had some time ago with a guy that I’d rather have as a friend, who showed me Dragon Age: Inquisition the day after, a game that I spent a pretty depressed period of my life with. It just kept me happy and in love when I didn’t have much else to be happy or excited about.

I’m thankful for another friend who lent me his old XBOX 360 when my PS4 broke down and 14 different games, and among them: the Mass Effect trilogy that both mended and broke my heart and took my love for games to an even higher level (plus showed me that I didn’t hate games in outer space after all).

I’m thankful that my sister grew up to love games just like me and that she convinced me to play Borderlands 2 online with her and it is just so much more fun than I imagined.

Wow. This actually made my day. Thanks for making me remember all the good stuff! I mean, I’m pretty much always thankful and happy when it comes to games, but it’s good to really think about how great it is from time to time =)