gaming list.

In 2020, I started keeping track of the games I enjoyed playing the most each year. Here they are, with a few words about each game.

2024.

• Diablo and Diablo II: Resurrected (PC): I went back to the Diablo series roots and played the original Diablo and its sequel, Diablo II. Playing both reaffirmed my love of the series and the ARPG genre, although I have yet to actually complete Diablo II. The first is a bite-sized, gritty game that took me around 8 or 9 hours to finish the first time. Fighting skeletons in the crypts is crunchy, and the loot and dungeon randomization keeps me coming back to replay it. The second has a more fleshed out story and setting, but feels a lot more grindy than the first. I wrote more about my experience with Diablo here and here. Here's my ranking of the series:

  1. Diablo III.
  2. Diablo.
  3. Diablo II: Resurrected.
  4. Diablo IV.

• Forza Horizon 4 (PC): I snagged a copy of this game's "Ultimate Edition" on sale on Steam for $20 and it's been the best bang-for-the-buck game I've bought in a long time. It's got deep roots in racing simulation, but has a pleasant arcade-like adventurousness to it that just makes me fall head over heels for the gameplay loop. Drive around, find a neat race, race & retry the races you make mistakes in. When you start winning too much, the game prompts you to bump up the difficulty by way of making your opponent AI drivers more skilled. What a surprise of a game I found in the proverbial Steam bargain bin! It puts a smile on my face every time I play it.

• NHL '94 (SNES/Genesis/Sega CD): After I snagged a little emulation handheld, I started digging into the libraries of a bunch of older consoles. NHL '94 is one of those games that kept coming up in a bunch of the "best of" lists for both the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. Now that I've spent some time with it, I can understand why! This game is basically the Tecmo Bowl of ice hockey— it distills the game to its essence. Once you get the controls under your fingers, you sorta enter a zen-like state where you feel like you're playing a game of hockey and not a video game. It's pretty rad. Of the three versions I've played, I think I prefer the Sega Genesis version the most. The Sega CD version does have a better framerate and sounds, but there's additional bugs that sometimes freeze the game.

• Vampire Survivors (PC/Switch): "Be the bullet hell." This is a one-stick schmup made by a former slot machine dev and my goodness does it scratch the dopamine itch. You start off fending off a few measly baddies with a dinky lil weapon and collect gems to upgrade your gear and procure new weapons. You find chest after chest that elicit feelings of hitting the jackpot and before you know it you're automatically shooting enough projectiles to fill the screen and mow down hundreds of enemies per second. It's pretty rad. Got my wife into it, too, and now we're both hooked. :^)

2023.

• Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp (Switch): I've played both of the original games on the Game Boy Advance a lot. They were staples of my young adulthood. I had many a business trip where Advance Wars kept me busy on a flight or layover, so this series will always hold a special place in my heart. Re-Boot Camp brings back the gameplay almost exactly as I remember it, but with a fresh coat of paint and on a modern portable system. It's good, but a slow burn that I'm not necessarily obsessing over. I wrote more about Re-Boot Camp here.

• American Truck Simulator (PC): I started playing this game's predecessor, Euro Truck Simulator 2 some number of years ago. Had about 30 hours in ETS2, but never really touched its American roads sequel. Well, I've nearly doubled that playtime on ATS and I'm really enjoying it quite a lot! It's one of those zen kinda games— just listen to some classic country music on the radio and log some miles. Funnily enough, this game caused me to get a hula girl dashboard ornament for my actual car.

• Baldur's Gate 3 (PC): BG3 is one of the few games in recent memory to make me lose track of time, which is a huge compliment due to just how darned engrossing this CRPG is. Larian Studios really knocked this game out of the park— it's one of the few games to really make me feel like I'm playing a D&D session. The physical dice rolls for ability checks and savings throws really sell the experience. I'm continuously amazed at how deep the gameplay is.

• Castlevania (NES): I stumbled upon a physical copy of the original Castlevania at a local second-hand gaming shop and snagged it fast as I could. I haven't been able to stop playing! Man— this game is frustratingly hard, though! I used the Game Genie code for infinite lives so that I didn't have to keep resetting all the way back to the last continue checkpoint, but I still died. A lot. I finally beat it after getting slain by Dracula and his second form like a hundred times. My fingers got blistered, but wow! this is the most fun I've had gaming in some time!

• Diablo IV (PC): Oh wow. What an amazing follow-up to my favorite hack-n-slash game, Diablo III (see below). Not a fan of the cosmetic add-ons and 'seasonal passes,' but wow— did they ever step up their game of a tried-and-true formula! The game feels gritty and dark, like Diablo II, but with a lot of the quality-of-life improvements that Diablo III brought to the table. It makes you move more often to collect health potion refills, and the graphics are really good. Not necessarily because of a high polygon count, but they did some real neat stuff making mud feel muddy and fields of grain wave in the wind. I could keep gushing, but this game is 100% worth playing.
  
  Update: Upon further reflection, Diablo IV just ain't that great. The graphics wow'd me when I first started playing but after beating the game once, I haven't really played much since. The gameplay loop feels like a slog and there's nothing compelling about the post-game content. It was decent for one play-through, but not captivating like the other games in the series. See above for my rankings of the games of the Diablo series.

• Full Quiet (NES): Five years in the making and Retrotainment Games has delivered a masterpiece. I received my cart, box, and manual in January and it's a real treat to hold a newly-developed, physical NES release in my hands and play it on my retroUSB AVS. Full Quiet is an adventure game rife with exploration. Mechanics combine Contra-style gunplay with puzzles and some killer parallax scrolling that make the world come alive.

• Quake II (PC): This is one of the coming-of-age boomer shooters I got to experience new back when I was a teenager. Back then, I didn't really play the single-player game. My dialup ISP cohosted a Quake II server and I played the snot out of some deathmatch, instagib railgun and everything. Nightdive Studios released a remaster and it is phenomenal. This is the first time I've really played through the single player campaign and I can't believe I skipped this when I was a wee gamer. The soundtrack, which was stored in redbook audio format on the game disc and could be played on any regular CD player, is just as amazing as I remembered, too!

• SimCity 4 (PC): I actually had this game on CD back in the day, but decided to revisit it after getting involved with my local city government. I've delved into Cities: Skylines a bit, but this one does a better job of modeling all of the levers of city management. Where Cities: Skylines is more of a city painting game with traffic systems attached, SimCity 4 is an exhaustive simulation of the whole enchilada. Installing the Network Addon Mod (NAM) adds all sorts of lovely goodies to SimCity 4's traffic management bits. One of the few games where I lose track of time on a regular basis, realizing it's far past my bedtime with bleary eyes. Super good game. :)

2022.

• Deep Rock Galactic (PC): "Rock and stone!" This is a co-op looter-shooter where you play one of four playable classes of space dwarves and work together to complete missions. My partner and I have been enjoying this one lately. It's pretty relaxing for being an FPS. You slowly work your way through unlocking upgrades and cosmetics and exploring the depths of a procedurally generated planet.

• Last Call BBS (PC): Zachtronics' swan song is a grab bag of puzzle games that are straight up my alley, wrapped in the trappings of a fantasy computer from the 1990s dialing into a BBS to download cracked games. It's part nostalgia, part zen computing, and a whole lot of fun to play the different, very engrossing puzzle games.

• Monster Train (PC): Oh hey, another roguelike deck-building card game! I'm here for it. This one feels a little less random than Slay the Spire and building synergies and getting big combos is so gosh-darn fun.

• Nox Archaist (PC): A recently-developed Apple // CRPG with the feel of a modernized Ultima. I never did play the original Ultima games, having started around Ultima VI on the Super Nintendo, but I am really digging this one. Bonus points for being coded in 6502 assembly language, of course, but also: this game is fun. Climbing to the rafters of a castle has a three-dimensional feel to it, which is really hard to pull off with such low-res 2D graphics. I guess imagination is really the best rendering engine, after all.

• Raft (PC): Survival / crafting games aren't ordinarily my thing, but my partner and I have been playing the heck out of this game and I've really been enjoying it. The game's progression is at a good pace and it has a very peaceful quality to it. I'm glad I followed the recommendation to set the difficulty to "easy"— I've heard that the need to collect food and water is a bit overwhelming at higher difficulties.

2021.

• Brigador: Up-Armored Edition (PC): Delightful mech fights with tank-based controls that take a little while to get used to. Incredibly gratifying to play. Neon tracers and synthwave cyberpunk.

• Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (NES): This 2D platformer game is Nintendo hard. I really enjoy the precision mechanics and the music is phenomenal.

• Final Fantasy VII Remake (PS4): A walk down memory lane. Square Enix finally figured out how to make real-time combat work in a Final Fantasy game and did such a great job fleshing out the settings of Midgar.

• Panzer Corps Gold (PC): Hex-based, beer-and-pretzel wargaming. Fairly simplistic as far as grognard fare goes, but that's what makes it fun for me. Easy like solitaire. I tried the sequel out, but I think I enjoy the first game more. The 2D graphics feel cozy and the Gold edition is packed with campaigns.

• Yakuza 0 (PC): Just the right mix of serious and goofy, set in Japan in the '80s. Reminds me of playing Shenmue on the Sega Dreamcast many years ago. The game mechanics are okay, but the story is gripping and the setting is an absolute treat to explore.

2020.

• Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch): I've been a long-time fan of the Animal Crossing series since the Gamecube days. This one came out during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic and it's hard to convey just how nice it was to be able to play something so cheerful when we were stuck at home.

• Diablo III: Eternal Collection (Switch): The penultimate brain-on-autopilot chill game. Hack, slash, get loot. Rinse and repeat. Put together a class set of armor, unlock some crazy synergies, and enjoy the post-game Greater Rift runs. Seasonal characters keep it fresh.

• Persona 5 Royal (PS4): Persona 5 might actually be my favorite RPG. Tough competition, but the gameplay mixes Pokémon-esque collecting with a relationship simulator. The setting and story are fantastic and the game oozes style with its jazzy soundtrack and UI elements out of a comic book.

• Sid Meier's Civilization VI (Switch/PC/Phone): I've put hundreds of hours into the Civilization series since Civilization IV. It's hard to put a thumb on what it is about the series that grabs me, but "one more turn" is definitely a thing.

• Slay the Spire (Switch/PC/Phone): A roguelike deck-building card game? Sign me up! Elicits the same feeling that playing Magic: the Gathering did when I was growing up. No extra purchases required. Every game is a new draft and it's playable in bite-sized chunks.