So um I only really finished one major 2018 release, and it was Far Cry 5.  Let’s hear it for the unanimous game of the year winner! Woooooo fictional Montana crazy cult killing simulator!

Honorable mentions: Dark Souls Remastered (PS4) and Dark Souls Remastered (Nintendo Switch).

Other 2018 releases I played: Some Destiny 2 expansions, and a handful of smutty visual novels that mostly started with “Sakura”.  Also a 2-D action game called Icey and a game called “Nostalgic Train”, all about walking around an abandoned Japanese town interacting with the memories of people who used to live there.

I would also like to switch the positions of my top 2 games of 2017.  A year ago, it was Horizon Zero Dawn (#1) and Nioh (#2) and, well… I spent the last couple of weeks of December and the first day of January getting back into Nioh so I could play the DLC expansions, and then wrapping up miscellaneous trophies so I could add the Nioh platinum trophy to my virtual trophy case and in retrospect I think I liked it more than Horizon.

Major gaming accomplishments of the year: I spent a solid month wallowing in Halo lore and now understand just what the heck happened in the latest couple of Halo games.  I replayed the Mass Effect trilogy, this time with all of the DLC.  I got four platinum trophies, though admittedly three of them were for really kinda forgettable Love Live! rhythm games.

Oh, and I finally got over the grudge I’ve held against the Assassin’s Creed series since 2013 and played like four Assassin’s Creed games.

I finished off my backlogs for PS3, Vita, Wii, WiiU, and Xbox 360, so I got to unhook a bunch of systems and stick them in a footlocker.  Sadly I then bought three more Xbox 360 games but they are backwards compatible and are even Xbox One X enhanced so I can pretend they’re really Xbone games.

I played a bunch of 2017 Switch games in 2018.  Most notable was probably Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which could have been maybe a tiny bit shorter and could have explained its combat systems just a little better, but whatever.  It had a lot of heart to it.   I also had a surprising amount of fun with Mario Kart 8 DX.

I also made a blog post almost exactly one year ago where I detailed the eleven games I was going to let myself buy in the new year, and as of last week I had actually played through all eleven of them.  I have mostly stopped buying games that I’m never going to play!

I also stopped buying physical games, which has definitely helped somewhat with the clutter and which also saves me a few minutes at the grocery store each visit since I no longer find myself mysteriously checking out the home entertainment aisle looking for sales.

I played a ton of Overwatch.  From the back of an exercise bike.  And got my blood pressure down from “hey, you know how you have a family history of heart problems? You’re right on track to have your own!” to “wow, you’re actually in a healthy range.  Keep it up!”

And I bought a scooter.

So 2018 was a great year all-in-all.

So, goals for 2019:

Well, honestly, I should probably play fewer games.  Fortunately, I have fewer to play!  There are 64 games in my backlog and many of them are quite short.  Nine of them are Kingdom Hearts games since I got all of the pre-KH3 games by preordering KH3, so some of those may get written off since I played them on the PS2 and PSP.

Instead, I should get back to actually working on my Japanese.  I spent a solid four years of school getting my degree in the language and I’m still… reasonably competent but I have not pushed myself to practice.  So that’s one goal for 2019 that’s a little more noble than playing video games.