In the last entry of my gaming backlog countdown I went from 45 games to 40, and checked off five games I played on my PS4.
This time, the five games I’m checking off are mostly turn-based games on my computer. A lot of them being games where you control characters on a grid-based map. Which is the reason I used the hexagonical image above.
Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia
This is a is a fantasy turn-based strategy game from 1999 that I used to play at a friend’s house when I was little.
I never owned it myself, so it was fun to get some more time with it this time around.
The music and the visual aesthetic of the game gave me a wonderful nostalgic feeling, that I am looking forward to revisiting again someday.
The Black Watchmen
I really liked this game, to begin with.
The game puts you in the shoes of an intelligence officer in a fictional secret organisation, making you solve mysteries by using Google, Wikipedia and your own mind.
This felt like a really refreshing concept at the start, but I soon felt like I was just doing a bunch of busywork, albeit in an interesting setting.
This is probably the perfect game for someone, so if any of that sounded interesting to you, give it a shot.
Fallout
When Fallout 3 was released back in 2008, I immediately fell in love with the series.
From the first trailer I knew that this was the perfect game for me.
And when Fallout: New Vegas was released two years later, I loved the series even more.
And while Fallout 4 failed to live up the the standard set by those two great games, I still loved it!
With that in mind, it is pretty incredible that it has taken me this long to play the first two games in the series.
This game, like the later games in the series, is best when it makes you feel like a protagonist in a Western film.
I roamed from town to town in the post-nuclear wasteland of New California.
With a handgun at my hip, I dispensed justice whenever I came across thugs, ruffians and mutants.
Fallout 2
This game feels like a massive expansion of the first game.
Everything is bigger and better, but not much different.
And I like that!
The series’ Mad Max inspiration is even more prominent in this game.
You even get to drive around the wasteland this time, instead of footing it!
Sadly, my savegame quit out on me well over half-way through the game. On top of that, I was unable to save any further when starting from one of my previous saves.
As I did not feel like spending time on both fixing this issue and replaying what progress I had lost, I decided to watch a Let’s Play of the rest of the game. This is the risk one takes when playing games from over twenty years ago.
XCOM 2
This last top-down turn-based tactics game is the only game among these five that I did not play on my PC.
I bought this for the PS4 as soon as it was released, as I loved
XCOM: Enemy Unknown.
I barely touched it until now, so I am glad that this backlog countdown has forced me to complete it.
I had a lot of fun building up my crack squad of alien hunters.
Thanks to the DLC add-ons Shen’s Last Gift and Alien Hunters, I soon had an incredibly overpowered team.
My favorite soldier was Jane Kelly, a ranger equipped with an ionic axe that she would run around the battleground with, dispatching several enemy soldiers each turn with her Reaper skill.
She also had a cool blue Serpent Suit that let her freeze enemies in place, and let her quickly traverse the battlefield with an attached grappling hook.
War of The Chosen
This is the largest DLC for XCOM2, so large in fact that I could almost have counted it as a whole separate game.
The DLC introduced a trio of Chosen alien warriors to serve as powerful boss battles. It also introduced the zombie-like Lost, several new powerful enemies, new soldier classes, and new types of missions.
The Chosen and The Lost seemed to randomly show up in different missions to cause havoc. And with the Alien Rulers (from the Alien Hunters DLC) also showing up at random in some missions, this could lead to some truly chaotic scenarios for me to think my way out of.
I now have 35 games left on my gaming backlog list!
Next up: Gaming Backlog Countdown: 30!
I used to play Heroes of Might and Magic decades ago it seems. One of my earliest gaming obsessions.
I remember playing HoMM3 multiplayer at a friend’s house.
We would just switch seats between turns, not looking at the screen while the other player was making his moves.
When I was playing the game earlier this year for this post, I kind of forgot that this was what I enjoyed the most about it. So I only played it single player.
I think I’ll go back to it at some point, to play multiplayer with my girlfriend.
I played myself but tried to outhink my previous move – as hard as beating yourself at chess. I also played the earlier M&M RPG game, Mandate of Heaven – got that on Steam now.
Oh yeah, I’ve done stuff like that before. That can be fun 🙂
HOMM3 is the only game I’ve played in the series.
Mandate any good?
Fun storyline mixing sf and fantasy, but game by its boxy graphics.
Cool, maybe I’ll check it out when my backlog is completed 🙂
Thanks for the info
No problem 😉