Age of Pirates 2: City of Abandoned Ships

Banished by shiningrocksoftware

BlackSpace

Broken Sea

Card Hunter

Caribbean!

Cartel

CLANG

Clockwork Empire

Darkspore

Deep Space Settlement

Distant Worlds

Divinity: Original Sin

Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

Drifter

Drox Operative

East vs. West: A Hearts of Iron Game

Elite: Dangerous

Europa Universalis IV

Evochron Mercenary

Evoland

Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes

Forging Life

Franchise Hockey Manager 13

Horizon

Hyper Light Drifter

Impire

Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos

Infinite Theory

King of Dragon Pass

King's Bounty: Warriors of the North

Knights of Honor

Legends of Dawn

Limit Theory

Miasmata

M.O.R.E.

MVP Baseball 2005

NEO Scavenger

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident

Northstar

Nuclear Union

Outer Wilds

Pro Cycling Manager Season 2009

Project Eternity

Real World Racing

Remember Me

RimWorld

Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War

Rogue Legacy

Romance of the Three Kingdoms X

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI

Rugby Challenge

(or 2: The Lions Edition)

Salvation Prophesy

Space Colony HD

Star Citizen

Star Czar

Star Trek: Bridge Commander

Starbound

StarDrive

Starpoint Gemini 2

The Crew

The Mandate

The Temple of Elemental Evil

TUG - The Untitled Game

Uprising44: The Silent Shadows

Void Destroyer

Wasteland 2

Wizardry 8

Worlds Collide

X3: Rebirth

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing

Dead Space

Crysis 2 Maximum Edition

Dead Space 3

Mirror's Edge

Battlefield 3

Ultima 7 The Complete Edition

Might and Magic® 7: For Blood and Honor

Might and Magic® 8: Day of the Destroyer

Survivor Squad

Aquanox 2:Revelation

Painkiller : Overdose

Driftmoon

Chester

Vessel

Aquanox

Creatures: The Albian Years

Dominions 3:The Awakening

Conquest Of Elysium III

Heroes of Might and Magic 5: Bundle

Eschalon: Book II

UnReal World

Strange Adventures in Infinite Space

Don't Starve!

Tropico 3: Gold Edition

Nox

SimCity 4: Deluxe Edition

Fable: The Lost Chapters

Out of the Park Baseball '11

Peggle

Victoria 2 + A House Divided + Heart of Darkness

FTL: Faster Than Light

Deponia

Inquisitor

Legend of Grimrock

SSV8NC Superstar V8 Next Challenge

Unstoppable Gorg

Ninja Blade

Zombies

Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004)

Realms of Arkania 3

Anomaly Warzone Earth

Trine

GeneForge 1-5

Earth 2160

Warsow

Anachronox

Realms of Arkania 1+2

Dragonsphere

Treasure Adventure Game

Lure of the Temptress

Ultima IV

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Birth of America II

Victoria: Empire under the Sun (incl. Revolutions)

Europa Universalis III Chronicles

Tyrian 2000

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars

Space Empires IV

Space Empires V

Hearts of Iron 2 / Hearts of Iron 2 Doomsday & Armageddon

Hearts of Iron 3

Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods - Enhanced

Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic

Cities in Motion

Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire

Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams

Spellforce Platinum

Divine Divinity

Beyond Divinity

Two weeks into the 2010 NFL season, a few weeks before the start of the NHL season I have played both hockey and football games. As a seasonal player I like playing games that are "in season". Oddly enough I can't put my love for space games into a season. When is it space season? Perhaps during the mushroom harvest, but when is that?

I grew up with Elite for the ZX Spectrum and C64, unfortunately that franchise hasn't produced a new version for quite some time, although X3 comes quite close. As I like to play strategy games as well, I have played my fair share of the 4X games, ranging from Master of Orion to Starlords and Empire at war. This weekend I managed to purchase the entire Galactic Civilization II series for about a tenner. The game is due to be delivered this week. As I don't like to spend more than 30 bucks on a game, deals like these are just perfect. Call me an old fart, but there is not much to distinguish today's games (much like there wasn't back in the 80s and 90s).

In order to get my head in 4x mode I dug up Empire's Stars! and started playing it, talk about game-play over graphics, however I will take game-play over graphics any day, anyone remember Nethack, goodness that was addictive. I am not saying that I will forget about my new game and keep playing Stars!, but if I'm lucky, I will find all the game-play I want in GCII that Stars! has and hopefully a bit more.

Has the mailman been?

There are some games I keep going back to play. I even have a specific area on my computer desk where I can keep these. The rest of the games just gather dust and are never opened. Then there are games I have a fond memory of, but will very likely never play again. I just love lists, so here's the list.

Games I keep close by:
Civilization IV (including the two expansions)
Madden NFL 06 and 07
NHL 04 and 06
NBA live 05
Oblivion (including the expansion)
Morrowind (including the two expansions)
Pro Cycling Manager 06
X3: Reunion
Pro Evolution Soccer 06
Two Worlds (the game I actually play online the most)
Gangland
East Side Manager 05 and 06
Defcon (almost on the way to the dust gatherers)

Spore has already found its way to the dust section. It was fun for about three weeks, but it gets repetitive. Similarly this happened to Scarface, fun sure, but too repetative for my liking. Mind you, I don't mind having to do the same things over and over again, but when the tasks become annoying to complete and the only way to get something I quickly get fed up.

I got Spore the other week. Something different. I had some memories of Sim Life and Sim Earth. After looking through Gamespot for games I might like, I had whittled the list down to 7 or so. One of which is MVP Baseball 2005, which is neigh on impossible to get, another was Spore. Browsing the shelves of my local game shop, the only title they had was Spore, and that's the game I got. I must say I did play it for a week or two, but after those two weeks I am still not sure if I like the game. Each of the five phases in the game looks appealing. Create a creature, make it grow, conquer the world, conquer the universe, yes I know that makes four, but you end up conquering your world twice. Building a creature of your own and playing with it is fun. But somewhere, somehow it is not enough, I just don't know where, don't know how. Sharing your creations with other people is hardly enough to make the game more exciting. Conquering the galaxy isn't like Master of Orion, conquering the world isn't like Civilization, that leaves making a creature and letting it grow, and that isn't like the Sims. I would have loved having all these games in one single one, Spore is a valiant attempt, but just isn't. I don't think I'll ever see a game like Sim Spore, which makes it quite unique in my collection, well apart from Sim Earth and Sim Life. I really just don't know.

Unbelievable I know, but I do not like playing 1st, 2nd or any kind of person's shooters. I think in all the years I have played computers games, I can count the 1st player shooter games I have played on one hand. Of course I played Wolfenstein, but apart from one in the Star Wars universe that is basically it. My hand only needs 2 fingers. I must say I played both quite a bit, Wolfenstein because it was first of its kind, the Star Wars version because it is, well, Star Wars. I skipped the Halflife series and its clones, didn't really enjoy playing the Xbox version of Farcry so I never even considered investing money to get it to play on my PC.

A few months ago, perhaps even a year, I found Battlefield 1942 anthology in the special sales section, get 2 pay half price kind of deal. I can't remember what the first game was, but the half price one was Battlefield. With all the problems I have had with my DVD player seizing up (twice now in just over a year), it didn't install or play it correctly and so left it to gather dust somewhere in my ever growing pile of CD/DVD boxes. I even forgot about it, when I was browsing through the special offers basket at a new local GameMania shop I saw it again. "I have this game", I thought, "I am sure of it." Convinced I wasn't suffereing from memory issues I went looking and indeed after a day or 2 found it again, covered in dust. Installed it, the computer informed me it was already installed...sigh..., and played it for a weekend.

I still don't like xth-player shooters, but I can see its appeal to some. It is just to monotomous to me, no overall strategy to implement, no advanced tactics as my fellow soldiers sure didn't listen to my cries for help or any intention to listen to my orders. I am sure that will all be different played with other humans online, I just played with bots in a single player enviroment. Perhaps I am missing something, I will be investigating that the coming week before putting the CD box back to gether dust.

Cycling season has started again, so pretty soon I will be playing Cycling Manager '06 again... I know because I have already started. I can still win, I still know which buttons to press.

After playing with GTA Vice City for a couple of days, I have found myself looking what else I could pick up again. Checking with my rotation schedule, I noticed that I still had an unplayed game on the shelves above my screen. Wild West Tycoon, or as the game was sold as: Far West. Installed it (thankfully it was on a CD-Rom) and started playing.

First of all no manual, neither in the box or on my harddrive. I'll have to remember to check the CD itself. Therefore I started with the tutorial to see what did what and how I should procede to play the game. An hour or so later I had a grasp of the game... get some cows, make them breed and sell for profit. That's basically it, you can get annoying attacks from wolves, cow thieves and competitors, but other than that you are pretty safe. Going through the first 6 scenarios wasn't that challenging (I am sure there are more, but it all comes down to the same process of cows making more cows) I went to look for an open ended game. Something like, just play and do what you want and we'll see what happens.

Never thought I'd say this, but for a game produced by JoWood, it is quite enjoyable in its simplicity. The graphics aren't too bad and the game itself doesn't come up with strange surprises. Some things should have been automated or made more easily accessible, but there you go.

I couldn't help myself and had a look through the memory files of the game to give myself an edge of say, 500K. Makes the whole aspect of breeding cows rather useless, but makes my gaming life so much easier.

As my job has changed in the meantime, so has my time to write about my favourite pastime. Fickle as I am, I haven't played Civilisation IV in months. Instead I have spend my free time on (in no specific order and ommitting a few titles)

Eastside Hockey Manager
Battlecruiser 3000AD Millennium
Pro Cycling Manager 2006
UFO Aftermath

Pretty soon I will be reporting how I started playing Civ IV again, I do play games in cycles.

Yesterday tried my luck at playing the X-box title GTA IV. I really cannot get used to those controllers, somehow I can't get my fingers to press the right button, something I never have a problem with with a keyboard or a mouse or evena joystick. Odd, very odd. After enjoying myself in the GTA world (even if it was on an X-box) I might just go back to my own Vice City game. Somehow my DVD player seized working..again..so I can't play the San Andreas version.

With the Tour de France coming up and the Giro d'Italia going on right now, I am not surprised I went back to playing the old PCM06 game, I call it subliminal messaging, although I just like to play games in season I suppose. As the hockey season draws to its conclusion, I doubt I will be playing hockey games any time soon.

It is now week 4 in the NFL and the novelty has worn off a bit. So has my Madden frenzy. Although I really want to play a franchise longer than just 2 years, I somehow lose interest. You may have guessed it, I have gone back to playing Civilization IV again. Dowloaded the latest installment of my favourite MOD and started reading up on how to best play the game.

It is quite remarkable to see how people play this game so diferently from me. Quite a revelation even, I have missed out on quite a number of game features with the way I am playing. I just love to turtle, hide myself from the rest of the world and then strike when they least expect it. Surprisingly I don't play the Spaniards...

So with the weekend fast approaching I am now trying to create a random world that fits my favourite style of play, but I really should accept the world as it is and learn from each session. I should, but knowing myself a bit I won't. I want it just the way I like it.

I don't know what it is. As a convinced European, I ought to like football as in soccer. In fact I don't like the game at all. 22 men on a field falling over when there is a gust of wind. Then screaming and asking for all kind of retribution from the referee. Perhaps that is the reason I like icehockey and NFL football so much. They still ask for flags and complain about decisions, but somehow it isn't as intrusive on my viewing pleasure as during a soccer game.

I have been investing some time and effort in Madden '07. Almost the same game as Madden '06 and yet it isn't. Strange really, I usually don't like to play games that are so similar. Must be a good game then. With some help of other players I managed to come up with the settings that allow me to have fun. It is not too difficult, but nice and enjoyable to play. Now I just can't stop playing anymore. Naturally that will end in a week or so, as my fickleness is and always will be a part of my genetic make up.

I created a player in the Superstar mode (c) , watched which team picked them, switched to Franchise mode (c) and made sure the superstar was on the same team. This allows me to play more or less with the player and still have a decent view of the playing field. I still want to go back and play the superstar myself, but most likely I'll get bored with the lack of influence I can have on the rest of the team and go back to the franchise anyway.