The Sims 4 - Oh boy. What have I gotten myself into.

Next week's newspaper's headline: Gamer goes bankrupt after purchasing all The Sims 4 expansions at once

Jokes apart, I find The Sims to be very enjoyable from time to time. It's a shame there's so much content locked behind paywalls, though. By this point, I'd rather see the game turn into a subscription-based service if this at least meant getting access to all content.

By the way, if they ever released a standalone version of building mode, I'd probably waste a lot of time on it.

For me, 2021 was the year of rediscovering gaming as the fun, stress-relieving, escapist hobby it used to be. I gravitated toward games that were easy to pick up and play, made me feel smart or skillful, didn’t punish me too much for failure, and weren’t too dark or serious. Consequently, I found myself playing a lot of pinball, adventure games, and games with risqué content (which I will admit to because I am an adult, and because those games checked all the aforementioned boxes, regardless of genre).

I also branched out to other genres that I’ve been neglecting in recent years. Starting with the first chapter of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, I began a quest to catch up on some of the JRPGs I’ve missed in the last couple decades. I savored several installments in the Heroes Chronicles series, an offshoot of one of my favorite games of all time, Heroes of Might & Magic III. I spent nearly 190 hours with Planet Coaster, the largest time investment and the biggest learning curve of any game I’ve played since Morrowind. I got back into interactive fiction with the charmingly innovative Counterfeit Monkey. I also beat my first tower defense game (Ancient Planet) and my first roguelite (FTL), and I finished my first kinetic novel (Highway Blossoms).

More than that, I began to reexamine who I am as a gamer. I embraced Steam, participating in seasonal events, curating my profile, making a greater effort to earn Achievements, and creating community content of various kinds. Instead of splurging on sale items that will sit in my backlog for who knows how long, I’m now buying digital games only when I get an itch that no game in my library can scratch. I made a decision to stop wasting time on games I’m not genuinely interested in playing, regardless of how culturally important they are or whether they’re part of a franchise I’ve enjoyed in the past. Despite pouring countless hours into them, I dropped Quest for Glory II, Metroid Dread, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Mass Effect: Andromeda before reaching the end, and I have zero regrets.

Favorite games I beat in 2021: Ancient Planet, Heroes Chronicles: Clash of the Dragons, Sakura Dungeon, Star Wars Pinball: Episode VI, The Blackwell Legacy.

Least-favorite games I beat in 2021: Blackwell Unbound, Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - Director’s Cut, Day of the Tentacle Remastered, Discolored, Gal*Gun: Double Peace, Kirby’s Dream Land 3, Metroid: Samus Returns, Riven: The Sequel to Myst.

Interesting - what do you like about Gal Gun 2 in particular? I don't really know much of anything about the other entries in the series.

Hmm... well from what I've played (the two main routes, plus getting the music tour ending), I would say that Double Peace is not as bad as I was expecting... yet still not something I'd wholeheartedly recommend to anyone, lol. I think the actual shooting mechanics are fun enough - it got a lot more tense when I started going out of my way to catch all the hidden items scattered around each stage. The writing is pretty bad though, lmao. Not that I'd expect much either way... but yeah. It's okay for what it is, I guess.

You're Flashman, I don't need another reason. I love Mega Man! :D

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Hey I checked out your Metroid Dread article and it's quite an interesting read and it offers a different perspective from someone who's obviously a huge Metroid fan who felt rather disappointed by the new entry you've been waiting for.

The first couple of Blackwell games are fairly short as they're developed early into the days of WadjetEye games, so don't be surprised if you get through the second one fairly quickly too. The latter two especially are more fleshed out though. WadjetEye published titles tend to be on the shorter side for the most part, though.

Hope you enjoy them!