Once again, it’s time for the long awaited analysis of my game-buying and playing habits of the past year.
All told the year was slightly down on 2015, and the number of systems I bought games for continued to be small. In total I purchased 65 games for 4 systems, to a total of $1836, or $28/game. Notably, 2016 was the first year since I started keeping records (way back in 1993) that I didn’t buy any new hardware, which meant I was not swayed by Sony and Microsoft releasing iterative updates of both their consoles. While the numbers weren’t much different from 2015, looking back at 2016 as I am now gives me pause for the console gaming future.
Here are the games purchased per system in percentage format:
And the dollars spent per system, again by percentage:
As you can see my gaming was more or less split between the PS4, Vita and 3DS with the Wii U an almost forgotten fourth entry. As far as I can surmise the Wii U may already be a dead console for me, unless the Nintendo Switch is dead-in-the-water and I buy the upcoming Zelda game on Wii U as it’s last hurrah.
Vita sales continued to be strong but I believe they have passed the peak and the system will decline sharply in 2017 (not a risky prediction since it’s already effectively ‘retired’ by Sony). I expect the PS4 will continue to be strong for a while, especially in this house as it’s difficult to resist the allure of deeply discounted games (such as Far Cry Primal for $5), but it remains to be seen how much the 4K updates will eat into the lifetime of my version of the console. The 3DS is a bit of a wild card at the moment; it hardly seems the Switch is a replacement (and Nintendo says it isn’t) but at the same time there’s not a lot on the horizon for it at present. 2017 could be a difficult year for the venerable handheld.
Before I get to my favourites from this past year, a few comments on specific games:
Puzzle And Dragons relaxed it’s hold on me somewhat this year. I still play it every day – as I have for nearly four years! – but it’d best days are behind it and I have little patience for the forced difficulty of some of the more recent dungeons. Mostly my logins these days are 5-10 minute bursts spending stamina in trivial dungeons. I have almost all the gods and many ‘broken’ teams and can beat almost anything the game throws at me. I think the game would benefit from a big round of powercreep to bring the fun back.
Egg, Inc. is a crazy ‘chicken hatching’ game for iOS that has stolen my soul these past two months. It’s the first mobile game in years that I have spent money on, and has the notable honor of being the game that broke P&D’s hold on my in the mobile sphere. It’s little more than a crazy ‘tapper’ (although you can quickly research away the need to tap) but it has a good sense of progression, is generous with rewards and is fiendishly addictive. Highly recommended.
Bubble Bobble for ZX-Spectrum cost me £5 in a UK retro games store and is not included in the above charts due to it’s uniqueness. At present it’s my only Spectrum game (on cassette!) and I can’t play it since I don’t own the machine. Waste of money? You be the judge 🙂
This year to mix things up a bit I’ll list my favourite games from each of the main three systems I played on. In no particular order (well…) they are:
Stranger Of Sword City (Vita)
This is a monstrously long and difficult Wizardry clone that dominated my time for about 150 hours during the late summer. The story, graphics and atmosphere of the game are superb, but what made it really shine was the way it took liberties with the genre (no resurrection spells, permadeath, forced character restarts) in a way that could have been disastrous but instead ended up being revitalizing. Dungeon crawls are popular right now, but too many of them are needlessly complicated with labyrinthine and un-fun dungeons. It takes a careful hand to avoid such pitfalls in design, and the makers of SoSC walked that path well. While I wouldn’t actually recommend this due to it’s difficulty, it was just the right game for me at the time and beating it was very satisfying.
Odin Sphere Leifthrasir (PS4)
Vanillaware took their PS2 classic and ran it through the Dragon’s Crown machine to make it a much better game for PS4. This is quite simply one of the best 2D beat-em-ups I have ever played and I would have loved it even were it not for the fact it happens to be one of the prettiest games I’ve ever played as well. Multiple characters, numerous endings, breathtaking art and wonderful music make this a close contender for my game of the year. In fact I loved it so much I beat every inch of it to get the platinum trophy (which took over 100 hours). Highly recommended.
Monster Hunter Generations (3DS)
Not just the latest installment in my favourite game series of all time – the best version yet. This owned me as all the others have, and I played it like a fiend for months. Easily my game of the year, and I can’t wait for the upcoming sequel due some time this year. You can read about it on next year’s post 😉
