Ooooh, thanks for the reminder about board games!
I played a board game for the first time since I left Seattle in 2006/2007. The family all gathered around and played Settlers of Catan yesterday after our Thanksgiving meal, with the 5-6 player expansion so that 6 of us could play. It’s the first time I’ve played with that expansion. It’s well thought out to convert a 4 player game into a 6 player game. We really enjoyed ourselves.
I’m particularly thankful for the wide variety of deck builder games that are such fun for my regular play group. Star Realms, Hero Realms, Legendary, Lord of the Rings, Attack on Titan, Sacred Grove, and many more. Those kind of games just work so well with a group of 5 to 7, where many kinds of card and board games just don’t work well above 4 players.
I didn’t get as much gaming time this year as I would have liked, but my trusty portables ensured I got some gaming done, either on the subway ride to work or in the comfort of my bed before sleepy time.
So thank you 3DS for the fun times with Dragon Quest VIII and 7th Dragon III Code: VFD (loved this JRPG) and thank you Vita for being the TRUE PlayStation Mini with your absurd amount of PSOne games, on top of your own respectable library AND access to a good chunk of PSP titles.
Oh, and thanks to Microsoft and their wonderful efforts with making the ultimate Backward Compatible home console. Great to know that I can always replay one of my old 360 faves or pick up something I’m missing in my library (now including original XBOX titles!). I would buy the PS4 right now if it offered backward compatibility with the PS3 and PS2.
Nice thread!
So this year I am thankful for:
(1) DCS World and all its modules - my biggest joy this year once I got my lazy ass going as it takes WORK. But it’s worth it - this is a childhood dream come true and in VR it’s a true pleasure. It makes me think back to blocky pixels, low res, and how much imagination I needed to have on my old ZX spectrum when playing Microprose F-15. Now I look behind me and I see the sunset glinting off my beautiful Hornet, hills and valleys unwinding below, and it feels like I am THERE. With the F-14 on preorder and still so much to learn, I am excited about simming more than I have been in years. What a pity a HOTAS and Oculus don’t pack up small - I will have to leave DCS behind over the Xmas vac.
(2) XCOM Enemy Unknown on my iPad. It’s a comforting pair of slippers I always come back to. When my 15 month old boy is asleep beside me, I slip on my AirPods and gun down some Chrysalids. Now if only they would bring XCOM 2 to the new iPad. I would be in heaven.
(3) Subnautica - an unexpected delight that I spent many hours in this year. Another triumph of VR. Can’t wait to get a load of the expansion.
(4) Crusader Kings 2 - by any rational measure this game shouldn’t exist. Another one I keep coming back to again and again. A true gem of gaming and absolutely unique. As long as they make good DLC I will buy it.
(5) Rimworld - another gem like CK2. Emergent anarchy!
(6) An honorable mention for Ass Creed Origins. First Ass Creed I played and while fundamentally its an empty shell with repetitive mechanics it’s a fun empty shell with repetitive mechanics for reasons I cannot quite put my finger on. Maybe it’s because I have a little boy and the story talks about a man avenging his son. Cheesy, but that made me sympathetic to the protagonist and eager to deliver meaty vengeance to all responsible. This means I will HAVE to pick up AC Odyssey ;-)
(7) No man’s sky. I was deeply disappointed when I first bought this title but I feel Hello Games have redeemed themselves. It’s still not quite what I hoped for, but I admire their response to the backlash - classy, and both a labour of love and a penance of sorts. This could become a very fine game indeed.
I am thankful for having been gaming when Microprose was putting out new games like MoO and MoM.
I’m grateful for indie game developers who were inspired by those early games that I loved and are producing games that run on my anemic laptop.
I’m thankful for my daughter teaching me how to play Minecraft with her, even though I’m all “Hey look, I crafted a stick!” as she rides circles around me in her fancy armors on her mount. It’s the only computer game we play together and she is so patient with me and I give her loads of amusement.
And I’m thankful for PBEM with other nerdyman wargamers from all over the world and getting to know a bit about them and where they live.
Your post made me curious, and I just grabbed the game, as it seems to be available for 2 bucks today. Really nifty interface, great first contact!
Thanks to you, I noticed this game in the Steam feed, and bought it at the Halloween sale. I’m looking forward to spending some quality time with it.
Thanks to Persona 5 for giving me an escape from my unbearable work last year, and for infecting all my friends with the earworm that is Beneath The Mask: https://youtu.be/gFFOXwniVKw
Thanks to NieR Automata for helping me pass the time during the layoff, also last year, and for the best Best Ending to a game I’ve ever experienced. (Played it on my PS4. I have to do it again on the PC later.)
Thanks to Soul Calibur VI for showing me that I still got my Taki mashing skillz.
Thanks to @rei for selling me his GTX980ti, so I don’t have to shop for another few years.
Thanks to you all at QT3, who are still here being nice while I drift in and out.
Finally, thanks to Nightdive Studios for System Shock Enhanced Edition. Why play the homages, when I can play the real thing again?!?!
Thanks for everyone at Qt3 for all the valuable opinions and insights they share here, and for answering my questions, even though I rarely have something useful to contribute back. Also thanks for tolerating my tendency to drift towards the negative. My mind has a hard time letting go of the things that bother me.
As far as games…
Thank you to Slay the Spire for giving me such an engaging game to play on our laptop since I can’t play anything very demanding. I’m looking forward to fireing up the PC in about a month and a half.
Thank you to Civ IV for still managing to give me more entertainment after all these years. I must have over 2000 hours when it was released. I haven’t even played with mods. I’ve meant to many times and just never have.
Thank you Wolfenstein The New Colossus for giving me a great story. There were some completely off the wall crazy stuff in there and I loved every minute of it.
Oh yes, in a similar vein I’m very thankful to @Chappers for selling me his GTX 980Ti. Five-tier GPU heirarchy upgrade! Woooo!
Kassandra all the way.
Everpresent games I’m thankful for, and still play regularly:
Games I’m particularly thankful for this year:
I’m thankful for Gloomhaven because it’s given me a way to see three friends almost every week for nearly a year.
Genuinely thankful – to the point that it feels kind of silly – that Devil May Cry 5 exists.
Thanks for spotting that. I grabbed it as well.
OMG… Overwatch, over 460 hours logged and I just keep coming back to it, it’s so much fun. They keep supporting it, no p2w, thank you Blizz.
Oh yeah 980ti is the g-spot for QHD gaming…
I’m so thankful that Spelunky 2 is actually a thing being made.
You will not regret that! It’s the best value evah for 2 dollars! I think it works really well on the iPad - a platform I normally don’t game on as I hate touch controls. But XCOM is - in the main - ideally suited for that. There are some glitches when moving soldiers to different levels which are annoying but apart from that it’s a gem.
XCOM 2 and Battletech. Over 1000 hours between them.