Release Year: 2010
Reading Year: FA2023
Developer/Publisher: Playdead/Microsoft Game Studios
Time to Beat: 2.5 Hours

Thoughts: Truly one of the OG indie titles that really put indie games on the map. It is tight, atmospheric, and keeps you moving along. Given that 13 years has gone by and that I am trying to get through the game after a few starts over the years, it feels like a bit of a relic. It is linear to a fault. It feels like this game was made to get casual gamers into the indie scene. There is so little room for ambiguity and each mechanic feels tuned to death.

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Release Year: 2007/2021
Reading Year: WI2023
Developer/Publisher: BioWare/Electronic Arts
Time to Beat: 18 Hours

Thoughts: In 2008, I was listening to the Sarcastic Gamer Podcast and was amazed that three adults could talk for hours week-after-week about this game called Mass Effect. I was entranced by how invested they were in their stories, each unique to each person. It was endlessly entertaining, but felt too difficult and mature for me at the time. After a false start in 2014, I dusted off Legendary Edition to give Mass Effect a go to begin clearing out my decades long backlog.

…

I rolled credits on Mass Effect 2 mere minutes ago. The final mission had my heart racing. Not only were the action elements intense and fast-paced, but the pressure placed on Shepard to save each crew member added to every emotion. Surprising myself, I had a bout of nostalgia wave over me as I was asked to pick my final squad to finish the fight.

I chose Tali and Garris.

…

I think this is a deceptively easy question. Wouldn’t you just play what you have? Why not just pick a game from your Steam library at random? Isn’t there something you’ve been wanting to play? Shoot, you could even pull up a top games list and just start from there.

That may work for some people, but I have bad habits and a lot of psychological blocks to clearing my catalog.

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When I look back at my gaming’s past, I don’t see many tactics games. While my earliest memories consist of sitting on a step-stool next to the family’s computer to watch my dad play Commandos on a CRT monitor, I was swept up into Maplestory and Halo and never turned back. At some point I began to associate tactics games, like XCOM, with a specific “type” of gamer. Those that reveled in the nitty-gritty of dice rolls and strict adherence to DnD protocol. It seemed to suck the fun out of turn-based combat. They also looked annoyingly difficult and niche. So, I poured another thousand hours into Diablo II. In late 2023 as I took on The Video Game Backlog (TM), I decided to boot-up XCOM: Enemy Unknown fully expecting to shut it off in frustration and move onto a more familiar genre.

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