As usual, when I find games to play, they aren't always the newest games. After all, I have over eight hundred games in my collection to choose from, and even then, I sometimes find other games to play, which you will find in this year's list. The following are my favorite games that I've played this year that came out sometime before 2018.
This list is unordered.
Battle Chasers: Nightwar actually came out in late 2017, but this got into my purview due to my father. He reached out to me early this year and said, "Hey, I know how much you like old school Final Fantasy games. I found a game that really hearkens back to that and I like it, and I think you will too." He was right. If you like turn-based, comic-book aesthetic, at some times grinding for levels gameplay, this is the game for you. I enjoyed every bit of it that I played, and although I never got around to finishing it, I put at least 50 hours into it already without finishing the story line. It isn't terribly complicated, doesn't have a huge map, but everything in it feels good and right and reminds me of the role playing games that I used to play and enjoyed so much.
Last year, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds almost made it as my game of the year. This year, I can't say that I played any less of it because I played literally almost exactly the same amount of hours as I did in 2017. PUBG has had its issues at times, but they've released enough new content and updated it enough to the point where I still keep coming back to it. Instead of talking about how many hours I've played PUBG, my stat this year will be the amount of space my NVIDIA Instant Replay highlights take up on my hard drive now: 60 GB.
On a whim, I recently decided to try playing Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, and I found that I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Toxic fanbase aside (you'll find that in any competitive multiplayer game so good luck finding one that doesn't have that), this game scratches an itch that I hadn't known that I had since I stopped regularly playing another five versus five video game. The strategy part is what really brought me in, as I am not a fan of most straight up shooters if there isn't something else to keep me hooked and coming back. I still haven't spent any money to unlock many of the operators, but I think I might keep playing it a bit more in 2019.
I'm not really sure how I got back in to Sid Meier's Civilization VI again, but I've played a handful more hours, sometimes with a few friends, and sometimes just alone. Strategy games are really my jam, and while I still haven't bought any of the expansions yet, I am excited for the upcoming Gathering Storm content. It seems just interesting enough to make me want to come back and try to not destroy the world (while still maybe trying to destroy everyone else ON the world).
Stellaris hits my most played old games for the second year straight and I'm happy about that. The expansions for Stellaris went on sale a lot this year, so I got the chance to be able to play a lot of new content with new things to discover this year. The soundtracks for this game is also in my ambient playlist that I listen to outside of my video gaming time. All that I have to say about this for this year is that if you ever get the chance to repair the L-Gates, you should do it (I'm not sorry).
After some major life events hit me this year, I needed a way to get some of my friends involved in events with me from afar, and I was lucky enough to convince some people to do a monthly tabletop meetup with me. We played a bunch of different games throughout their catalog, including one of my favorite board games of all time (Survive: Escape from Atlantis!), so that is why Tabletop Simulator gets a spot on the list this year.
Another game that has seen a second showing on my list is Guild Wars 2. Due to wanting to play something that I was comfortable with, but also wanting to see new content, I made a new character recently using a new class and new race that I hadn't played before, so I've been exploring "brand new" old content that I haven't seen before, and I'm enjoying it. I had a bit of an issue and stopped playing earlier this year due to drama with ArenaNet, the developer of Guild Wars 2, and while I am still not exactly happy about that, I haven't spent any additional money on the game recently due to the fact that there aren't any monthly fees. For the time being, I feel comfortable playing the game like this and may continue to play some more into the new year.
For some reason, when the ArenaNet drama happened earlier this year, I thought that I needed to add another MMO into my life, and when I found that there was a free trial for Final Fantasy XIV, I took advantage of that. Within the course of this year, I played a handful of hours of the game, bought all of the expansions, bought a monthly subscription, and canceled said monthly subscription. Unfortunately, I haven't been back since as I've come to realize that maybe I don't exactly like MMO's that have a thousand skills that you can always have access to, but for the time that I did put in to it, I enjoyed it. The game is fun to play for the most part, has an excellent soundtrack, looks beautiful, and quite frankly, it's Final Fantasy, something of which holds a special place in my heart.
Sigh.
