I’m inspired by a member of the blogosphere once again. This time, it was Mr. Luvva Luvva who wrote about his year in gaming, and it inspired me to copy/paste. 2016 has already been a fantastic year for games, and some of those that I’ve been hyped about since early on have already been purchased and played. Some surprises came out of left field that were immediately purchased and played, and others have been collecting dust in the backlog, and were purchased only because of the discount, or a future feature that is still on the way. I also acquired a Playstation 4 console early on, so there were backlogged games to play there as well, so some of these titles might not be specifically from 2016, but I’m just now getting around to them. I should also note that with Humble Monthly and Playstation Plus memberships, I’m not exactly able to play all these damn games. Some end up being duplicates as well, and some were titles I wasn’t interested in that I gave away. So without further comment, let’s dig into it.

Games Acquired in 2016:

PS4:
Street Fighter V
Uncharted 4
Bloodborne
Destiny: The Taken King
Grand Theft Auto V
SMITE
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3
Star Wars: Battlefront
Stories: The Path of Destinies
Steamworld: Heist
The Witcher 3

PC:
X-COM 2
DOOM
Paper Sorcerer
Eldritch
Mordheim: City of the Damned
Banner Saga 2
Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin
Dragon Age: Inquistion
Pillars of Eternity
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Legendary Edition)
Wolfenstein: The New Order
Crashlands
Final Fantasy IX
Galak-Z
Hyper Light Drifter
Pac-Man 256
REDCON
Shadowrun: Hong Kong
Bloodgate
Cryptark
Dungeon Souls
Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander
Bioshock Trilogy
Enter the Gungeon
Eon Altar

Humble Monthly:
Cthulhu Realms
The Red Solstice
Satelite Reign
Wasted
Hurtworld
Mad Max
Avernum 2: Crystal Souls
Dungeon of the Endless
Planetary Annihilation Titans
Crawl
Rocket League
Kentucky Route Zero

That’s a hell of a list. Despite the fact that I’m frugal most of the time, so I did get super good deals on most of these titles, there were the times when I pre-ordered a game for full price (Street Fighter V) or bought a game the week it came out and maybe got 15-20% off at most. The Humble Monthly games though, are always a big bang for the $12, and there’s always at least a couple games that I had on my to-buy list but never got around to picking them up. It’s really great for indies… AAA games not so much.  So, obviously with a job and school and other social obligations, I couldn’t possibly have time to play all of these games, could I? Well, the answer is a mixture of “yeah kinda” and “hell no.” 

Games Played:

It’s actually a bit easier to put the games that haven’t been played on this list rather than those that I have. I’ve dabbled in nearly all of the games up above, with the exception of Dark Souls 2, Pillars of Eternity, Skyrim, Bioshock Trilogy, Wolfenstein, and a handful of the Humble Monthly titles. I have yet to complete the first Dark Souls, so for that reason I haven’t fired up Dark Souls 2. Pillars of Eternity is a game that I will need to focus on to complete, so I’m leaving it sit in the backlog until I’m ready, I just didn’t want to miss the sale price. Skyrim and Bioshock were both purchased only so I could get the remastered versions when they release later this year. Considering I’ve been itching to play Skyrim again (and on the PC this time) and have never finished a Bioshock game, I look forward to those remasters but have no intention on playing them until that time. Wolfenstein was picked up because DOOM was such a fantastic title so I figured this should be good as well – I just haven’t gotten to it. There are several of those humble titles that I haven’t played at all yet, but they keep coming in anyway. I will get to them all eventually. There are many on that portion on the the list that I didn’t bother adding because I either didn’t like them and uninstalled or gave away duplicate or uninteresting keys.

Games Completed:

This is going to be pretty pathetic. Granted, there are titles on these lists that you can’t really “beat,” like Street Fighter V or Battlefront. I also have spent time playing games like Diablo III, League of Legends and SMITE, all of which are huge time sinks and have no completion metric. With that said, how many games did I complete this year so far? Three. Yeah. That’s it. I completed Stories: The Path of Destinies, The Banner Saga 2, and DOOM, most recently. Yeah, those games that no win conditions certainly take up a lot of time, don’t they? In my defense, I did play a huge amount of games outside of those listed above, that I didn’t complete. I also played several of these titles to the point of being nearly complete, like Uncharted 4. I also finished Fallout 4 and the very beginning of the year, but I have yet to jump into the expansion content. Jesus, I’m a filthy casual now, aren’t I?

Goals:

Uncharted 4 is a game that I’m already more than half of the way done with, so I really just need to finish that one off. I’ve just started a playthrough of Dragon Age Inquisiton for the first time, as I picked up the GOTY for $20 a week or so ago. I plan to see that to its end before playing The Witcher 3, Pillars of Eternity, and some of the other RPGs that are screaming at me from the backlog. All of those tend to take a long time to complete, so I’m likely to also start up another shooter or more action oriented game to play through at the same time. Me and Eri are planning to play some Borderlands The PreSequel together soon, and that one’s been in the backlog for quite some time. Anyway, I think I’ve rambled on long enough.

2016 has already been a great year for gaming, and there are so many more great games on the horizon. Here’s to trying to complete them all before I die!