Games Beaten in 2019

Well, 2019 turned into a disappointment for me personally, professionally, financially, medically, pretty much all of the ways. Everything I had planned for the year never happened, I played no tabletop games except Strat-O-Matic, and I didn't play nearly as many video games as I wanted. I did purchase some new retro games including games for the Sega CD and NES but never the less I never played any of them. I bought Red Dead Redemption 2 when it came out at the end of 2018 and I still haven't played it. I have hundreds of games that I haven't played for one reason or another and like I've said before I'm hoping to change that for 2020.



Of all the games I played this year everything thing was on either an Xbox or the Nintendo Entertainment System. I can't even remember playing anything on my PC despite buying many new games. The other issue I've got is that I'd like to do more reviews of games that I've played but like everything else this year I never had enough time to do more, or at least I didn't make enough time.




1. Commando (NES)
2. Sky Force Reloaded (XBOX ONE)
3. Sniper Elite 3 (XBOX ONE)
4. The Wolf Among Us (XBOX ONE)
5. Thomas Was Alone (XBOX ONE)
6. Crackdown 3 (XBOX ONE)
7. Game Of Thrones Telltale (XBOX 360)
8. Late Shift (XBOX ONE)
9. Earth Defense Force: IA (XBOX 360)
10 Borderlands 2 (XBOX ONE)
11. Iron Brigade (XBOX 360)
12. The Outer Worlds (XBOX ONE)

Only 12 games finished or one each month is my worst showing yet. And only three games reviewed is also my worst year of reviewing games on this blog. At some point, I'd like to put up reviews of the games listed here that I haven't done yet and if you'd like to see any of there done let me know and I'll see what I can do.

While it does look bad it isn't all that bad. I have a terrible habit of getting distracted with something shiny and new and because of this there are a handful of games that I played, some nearly to completion, but didn't quite finish. Some of those games include Forza 6, Jurassic World Evolution, Assassin's Creed Origins, and Forza Horizon 4. All of those games I spent some time with Forza 6 is nearly finished with 1270/1500 gamerscore, 82 achievements, and 206 hours played. Others like Jurassic World Evolution have game modes that don't have a traditional ending so I spent a lot of time playing that one building dinosaurs and places to hold them.

There are other games that I've played some of but became distracted with a new game and left it to try the new one. This doesn't have anything to do with the quality of the game, one of these being Red Dead Redemption 2, but just me being distracted by something new, I'm very much like a child in that respect. Besides Red Dead, some of the other games include Rage 2, Battlefield V, Ys Origins, Vampyr, Gears 5, Cities: Skylines, Zoo Tycoon, Wolfenstein II, Shenmue, Monster Hunter: World, Tropico 5, Final Fantasy VII, and Crackdown 1. And don't get me wrong, there are plenty of more games that I'm partially through and these are just Xbox games.

As far as 2020 goes there are many things on my radar. Of course, the big thing will be the next generation of consoles including the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5. I currently have two Xbox 360s and neither of these current works. One is overheating, even after cleaning it out. The second, and my main console, the disc drive doesn't read disks anymore so this year I'm planning on replacing the laser on the disc drive to fix it.

As far as retro gaming goes I have a few irons in the fire. First off I'm planning on getting my original NES working again as it won't play games again, and I currently have some new parts in the mail to fix that. I put serious thought into switching over to a NES classic that I can download ROMs onto and play any NES game that I want but I decided that out of all the classic video game systems my favorite is the NES and I think I'd have a lot more fun collecting the old games and playing them on original hardware. My goal would be to collect them all and play them. I've also bought some other NES accessories that I'm currently getting back to working order.

I'd also like to get my original DMG Gameboy working like new. While it does work, the screen is very, very dim so I'm thinking about backlighting the screen and then just cleaning it up. I'm not the biggest fan of mobile games, I like simple, easy to pick up and play games and the Gameboy fits that perfectly.

One of the big areas that I haven't done much gaming lately is my Commodore 64. I love the old 64 but it is a pain keeping these things working. I have three, two family originals and one my brother bought at Goodwill in the early 2000s. All are broken for different reasons, the one power pack I have that works is suspect and I'm not plugging a working or broken C64 into it so I basically need a new power pack, a modern one that I won't have to worry about going bad again and killing, possibly again, any of my C64s.

The other problem with the Commodore 64 is the games. While there are lots of games on cartridges, many games are on disc. Most of my games, including all of my best games, are disc-based. So far only one disc has gone bad but they all could go at any time and there is no guarantee that any disc game I purchase online will work. Plus the disc drive itself can be a handful to keep running although so far mine, which my dad bought brand new in the 80s, still works great.

Because of all this, I've been thinking about getting a Commodore 64 mini but even better is they are releasing a full-sized Commodore 64 mini type console that fully works but can still have ROMs downloaded onto it to play. It comes with a full size fully working keyboard and joystick and looks to be the answer to all my C64 problems. We'll see what happens when it's released in the USA.

Well, that's about all there is about my video gaming in 2019. Some good games and times spent but here's to 2020 and all that the future holds!