**If you're just finding this journal, please read here:**
Looking back on it I think I was dealing with a bout of self-loathing when I started this, and my negativity got blown way out of proportion. I apologize if this made anyone worry about me; I'm okay now. This is not a regular thing for me.

But what about when you know that enemy is yourself? Don't think Sun Tzu thought of that when he wrote this line... Then again, just by the way the Art of War was written I don't think 'self-doubt' was in his list of personal traits. But who can know?

This is a slight rant journal - guess I'm just having one of those kinds of nights. Don't worry; I'm sure it'll pass; probably just some social anxiety... But while it's on my mind...

There are times I genuinely feel like I should not be heard... Ever. Especially in stressful situations, where I might say something wrong or, sound defensive/hostile, or if the situation carries on I might get snappish (like at an old job I had in summer of last year, where I unfortunately developed a bit of a negative reputation because of it). I do very much prefer to communicate by writing rather than speaking, for multiple reasons. The aforementioned stress, plus I stammer like Porky Pig, tripping over my own words constantly and sometimes having to settle on a different one because for some reason I just can't freaking say the one I'm trying to say. Yet even despite my preference to communicate by writing, I make a lot of mistakes - can't always blame auto-correct for them, especially if I'm not talking on a portable device, and every time I realize I do I get annoyed with myself.

I very much struggle with stress management as well; as mentioned above I developed a bad rep for it. I can usually push through these stressful situations if I am focused on them hard enough... But when someone talks to me during that situation, it causes me to become even more agitated. Especially if they want me to take my attention off the task I am focused on to look at something else that's happening - whether I need to know it or not; it doesn't matter. If it happens, I grow more frustrated for it - even when I realize that someone is trying to help me, yet I still lose my cool - and they don't deserve that.

I have always felt like I'm better on my own, because there's no one around to hear me so there's no one I can offend, but what worries me most of all about that is my mind's tendency to go to some dark places... Furthermore, I think this makes my introverted tendencies worse - the less often I'm around others, even if it makes me happy, the less able I am to deal with them when the time inevitably comes I have to, and once again this goes back to why I feel like I should not be heard because I fear I'm going to say something wrong.

This is just another in an increasing list of things I want to be better about; I want to be better at communicating, because I could only be a better person for it... But I don't know HOW to do this. The stress management, I could take a class for, but how do I keep my darker thoughts from slipping into my words, and end up saying something that may be unkind? Even if I'm not angry at the moment it happens, sometimes these hurtful words slip through...

I do not consider myself an unkind person... But I fear I have a tendency to be two-faced...

Fallen Kingdoms of Baruun: Broken Pact , the direct sequel to my previous novel Fallen Kingdoms of Baruun: Broken Shackle is now live and available on Amazon!

The Sisterhood of the Broken Shackle's ongoing war with the Prodavian Slaver Corps is put on hold as events take a turn. The Dasonese coalition has disbanded, and Devaki uncovers intelligence from the Prodavians are planning an attack on the last free cities of her people. Khari learns of the whereabouts of her kinfolk, the Amalhe, and that they are being hunted by a dangerous, fanatical group bent on wiping magic from the world, turning upon their peaceful neighbours - the Zebrafolk, to start.
Alliances have been broken, and one-time allies have become enemies. The Sisterhood of the Broken Shackle are caught in the middle, and the outcome may well become theirs to decide.

Hope you all enjoy this suspenseful novel that is my best work yet!

Preview is available! https://www.furaffinity.net/view/54630661/

While looking back on some old chapters of Team Valiant, I realized that I posted a lot of the original ones as PDF files, rather than Word or ODT files as I do now. When I had to redownload a few chapters for review I remembered why I used to do this, and the reason I stopped being because I was forced to switch to Apache OpenOffice, rather than Microsoft Word, and OpenOffice for some reason did not allow me to save files in .pdf format...

Would my readers like me to go back to using the PDF style, or shall I continue uploading as Word documents? I can even go back and reupload previous chapters into PDF form if need be, as I see now it's a little more convenient for my readers, having seen it myself.

Do let me know!

I want to make an advertisement for my book, especially with the sequel coming soon. I understand you're supposed to submit a gif to be used for the ad, but I don't actually know how to do that. Is there a certain software I need to make .gif files and/or can teach me how to do it?

I'd appreciate the help.

So, I've only told a few people about this, but I recently finished writing the sequel to my novel, Fallen Kingdoms of Baruun: Broken Shackle. For a while I was using the working title Sisterhood since it was meant to follow the 'Sisterhood of the Broken Shackle', introduced in the last book. But, now I'm not so sure that fits... This book features a lot of characters, not many of them being protagonists, and it focuses on the changing times the main character faces; the changing of borders and allegiances, and their efforts to cope with it and even prevent it in one case. I'm no longer sure what the title should be since 'Sisterhood' just doesn't sound right, in the context of the story...

I've often struggled with titles for bigger projects like this... Single chapters, easy, but for the whole book, does anybody have any suggestions? I was going to be hiring  Human once more for the title, as they did the one for Broken Shackle (and to this day it is epic https://www.furaffinity.net/view/22917916/ ) but I need to give them a title that befits the context to put on the cover.

I will be uploading a preview soon.

Thanks for any suggestions!

(Update: "Broken Pact" will be the title. Thanks to  Korban for giving me the idea!)

As of today I am now 31 years old! I have no plans for today at present but thank you all for staying with me another year I survive this messed up world we've all been born into!

I completely forgot that I still had one entry left for Volcan's Gaming Discussion; my most nostalgic games. Many of which, I still play to this day - if the opportunity presents itself. So! It's about time I get to it, isn't it? This should be a quick one to do.

To clarify, there are no PC games on this list, or some of them may have PC entries but I will have first enjoyed them on console editions. There may also be a few carry-overs from previous lists.

Let me know what you all think!


Number 1:
Super Mario RPG
-Some of you may not even know this game exists, as it has not seen a re-release except on the virtual console for the Nintendo Wii-U (as far as I'm aware, there are no plans to bring it to the Switch).
(UPDATE: The remake is coming; HYPE!)
This was one of the first games I ever beat, and it's one of the few I continue to come back to when the opportunity presents itself. It's also the only game developed by Square Enix (just known as Square back in the day) I thoroughly enjoyed and have stuck with. Yeah it may surprise some of you to know I am not a fan of Final Fantasy, even if you didn't get that from my previous lists.

The Mario RPG games are a staple of my gaming 'career' for lack of a better term; Paper Mario 1 and 2 are both still favourites of mine but it all began with this masterpiece of the SNES. You play as Mario (of course), two character developed specifically for this game - Mallow and Geno, as well as recruiting Bowser and even Peach (known as Toadstool at this time) as your companions, each of them bringing unique abilities to the table that let you work out various strategies, and take on the Smithy Gang - also introduced for this game and not seen since along with many others who appeared here. The characters are memorable, the story is compelling, and the number of ways you can play through it makes it highly replayable. I've probably played through this game eight times by now, and still would if it ever gets added to the Switch library.

Mario RPG games are amazing, though I admit I am still working my way through Superstar Saga; that will be on my personal list of games to play after I'm done with Tears of the Kingdom.


Number 2:
Super Mario World
-Though the sequel of this game bears the honour of being the first game I ever completed, this classic has the title of being the first game I ever played. I was 4 years old when I first picked this up, and it took me decades to actually beat it - yeah, I'm not a great platformer XP. Yeah, I beat SMW: 2, the harder game, LONG before I ever beat this one. Chew on that XD.

I doubt this game needs much introduction - damn near everyone knows about it, but it follows the classic Mario formula of rescuing Princess Peach/Toadstool from Bowser, and you have to work your way through a challenging and beautifully designed world. There are so many ways to shortcut through this game, I can't even remember them all. The Forest of Illusion was where I always found myself getting stuck until I finally figured out how to get out of it and move on to the rest of the game.
But of course, as many of you may remember, I have a huge soft spot for Yoshi, and this is the game where that all began. Ever since I was a child, Yoshi has been a recurring character in all of my favourite Mario games, and always the one I looked forward to most in every subsequent entry - imagine my disappointment that he wasn't in Super Mario 64, except for the DS Re-Release. But he came in again for the first Smash Bros, as well as Super Mario Sunshine on the Gamecube. He's my main on Mario Kart 8, Mario Party and I'm... Well, not very good with him on Smash Bros but I do use him there too. Point is, he's always been there, ever since I was a kid; if I could have had a life-sized plush of him as Volcan does in this picture in my gallery, I'd probably have been a very happy child.
Which I was not, but I won't get into that.


Number 3:
Kirby Super Star
-I know I said I wouldn't get into my childhood but I can't talk about this game without mentioning the relationship my brother and I had as children. We despised each other when we were kids, for the most part. But there was one thing we did have in common; our love of video games. This title was one that we frequently enjoyed coming back to and playing together; it was the only one we really liked playing together, in all honesty, and one of the few times we could tolerate each other without coming to blows or insults.

This isn't just one game; it's multiple ones, a collection of short but sweet titles featuring Nintendo's little pink planet buster - AND it's even been re-released on the Switch, so I've been playing it again. It was weird too; my brother also enjoyed being second player for this one because he loved the companions Kirby could have, over playing as Kirby himself, especially the Wheelie companion - my GOD we killed it with that combo, where he'd take Wheelie, I'd jump on and we'd tear through the map. Of course, that practice came in handy for the end of Meta Knight's Revenge; we must have completed that one in particular a half a dozen times.
So for being the one game my brother and I enjoyed together, and did not result in us fighting, this game earns a spot on that list.


Number 4:
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
-I've followed the Legend of Zelda series since childhood, and this was my introduction to the franchise. Unfortunately, it's also one of the games I did not actually complete - to this day I still haven't beaten it. Other games of that list also include Majora's Mask, Link's Awakening and Four Swords Adventures, while others like Minish Cap, Spirit Tracks and the original NES titles, I still haven't even played yet.

But since this was the one that introduced me, I give it the spot on this list - with Ocarina of Time having been a very close contender. In this game you play as the hero (back then you had the ability to name him) Link, and make your way through a fairly lengthy game of challenging dungeons and memorable bosses, as ya do, culminating in a final confrontation with Ganon. In later years, after the timeline split created by Ocarina of Time, this game was added to the Downfall Timeline, and it even explains this in the intro - the timeline of this game is set after the Hero of Time failed to defeat Ganondorf, creating a timeline where he won, and though he was ultimately sealed away by the Sages (this being where it's inconsistent as in ALttP they're called seven 'wise men' when 4 of the sages in OoT were women), but Ganondorf instead conquered the realm they sealed him in and came back more powerful than ever. Just the implication that the final boss of this game is the same guy you fight in a later game, only here it's in a timeline where he freaking won is pretty thrilling
It can be confusing to keep up with all of the Legend of Zelda lore, but I happen to own Hyrule Historia so I know a bit about it. I hope one day I'll actually complete this game but for now it's one of my most nostalgic ones.

Number 5:
Star Fox 64
-This is probably one of the games that contributed to me becoming a furry XD. I don't think I need to really explain the story as, if you've played any Star Fox games you pretty much know it; they've all been more or less the same - except Adventures on the Gamecube, but, that one unfortunately is only remembered well for Krystal, and was very badly handled - especially toward the end. But I won't get into that.

Anyway, the gameplay itself is a typical rail shooter but was also one of the first examples of 3D flight shooters at certain points, giving you the ability to fly around certain battlefields unrestricted, mostly boss battles. The Star Fox series has often been linked to when Nintendo tries new concepts and technological advances, and this game was no exception. Which makes it all the more unfortunate we may never see another entry in this series again after the huge flops of Star Fox Adventures and especially Star Fox Zero.
At least I can still play this one since it's on the Switch's N64 library.

Number 6:
Sim City
-Those of you who know me know that I love games that give you lots of customization options, and city builders are among those titles that do that. This was the first one I ever played, included among my sizeable list of SNES games when I was a kid. I probably put hundreds of hours into this game and still would if better games like Cities: Skylines, Banished and so on hadn't come along since then.

Still, this game gave me plenty of enjoyable playtime after school. Heck, among the disasters you can unleash there's even a 'monster attack' where Dr. Wright, your 'council', claims it's Bowser stomping through your city. While the monster itself looks a lot more like Godzilla than Bowser it's still a funny little callout to one of Nintendo's other franchises. Sadly, Sim City has fallen victim to the poor handling and extremely questionable practices of Electronic Arts and will likely never be the same again...


Number 7:
Lego Racers
-I talked a little about this game back in my Top 15 Loved/Liked Video Games. As I mentioned above I love customization and this was the game where I really started to feel like my choices were my own to make and not just picking from a bunch of presets - sure the car sets were preset but I got to decide how they were customized and which one I got to use, so, it fits.

Now, even though I mentioned in the previous list I did have the PC copy - which, it just so happens I found I actually still have it! Located it under some old stuff.- I first enjoyed this title on the Nintendo 64, which unfortunately you couldn't save on it back then without a certain accessory that we never had, so I ended up playing through this game so many times. My brother hated it, but I loved it, and it was the first in my line of arcade racers that would eventually become my favourite games.

Number 8:
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron
There have been MANY Star Wars games but this was the first one I ever played, and was the title that got me into flight simulator games. Unfortunately, even though I still have the sequels on Gamecube, I can't play them very well because the resolution is so dark I can't see a bloody thing -  Korban can confirm that as we tried to play Rogue Squadron III during his last visit and I could not avoid using the Targetting Computer which takes away from your score, because I absolutely could not see the TIE Fighters even with the brightness turned up. Today's televisions just do not agree with older titles like this...

Still, I remember this game fondly. I wasn't great at it, as the level 'escape from Fest' - I think that's what it was called - was always 'that map' for me; the one I could never beat, so whenever my brother and I rented this we had to hope it was a copy that was past that, as he couldn't beat it either.

Number 9:
Pokemon: Blue Version
I've been following Pokemon for a very long time, and even though I fell out of touch with the series by the time Gen 4 came out, as I couldn't get a DS and never did finish Ruby until much later, I was one of those kids who grew up with the original games. I was given Blue Version while my brother received Red Version, and I actually helped him complete his entire Pokedex - something I've never been able to do on any of the games.

My first starter was actually Squirtle and not Charmander, if you can believe it. Though on the many times I played through the game again, I have of course used the other starters. Seriously, Bulbasaur makes this game easy with the first 4 gyms XD. You don't really struggle until you get to Sabrina (5th Gym) or Blaine (7th Gym) if you skip Sabrina to go for the later gyms, which I know a lot of people did because Psychic-types were overpowered as HELL back then.
Either way, my Blastoise was one of the strongest Pokemon I ever had, and sadly though I no longer have it, I fondly remember it carrying me all the way to the Champion title. I really should pay more attention to the Blastoise I have now and train him up...

Number 10:
Mario Kart: Double Dash
Probably the newest title on this list - figuratively speaking, I enjoyed the hell out of this game. My friend Paul and I poured hours into this, playing through it so many times trying all sorts of different combinations of racers. I drove, he used the items - we were the perfect team. Sadly I no longer have this game as when I had to give up my original Gamecube when it broke down, this one left with the other games.

Naturally, this game continued my trend of favouriting Yoshi - whenever I solo played I always used him but when playing with some else, particularly Paul, we always chose characters we thought complimented or countered each other, like I would play as Luigi and he'd pick Waluigi, or we'd pick the two Koopas or even Bowser and DK. All in all though, I loved this game not only for the karts and characters but also many of the race maps, some of which I'm happy to see have made it into Mario Kart 8 as well~


With the end of this list comes the end of Volcan's Gaming Discussion! I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did; this was fun! I'm only sorry it took me so long to get around to this one, so I hope it was not too long coming!

So... I would've just thought it was only a bad day, but this has been happening a lot lately... And it feels wrong to bring this up when I have only one list left for my Gaming Discussion, but I need to get this off my chest.

Very suddenly, I have grown terrible at video games... Even ones I play often, regularly, and I can't stop failing at them. Today, it was Pokemon and later Age of Wonders 3. I keep losing, even against opponents that shouldn't be that hard. Before I went to work, it was Mario Kart 8 - I played it with my friend Paul and his GF, and they BOTH stomped me, frequently, despite Marie not even being that experienced with the game - I got crushed by a freaking noob. At that time, I would've just written it off as a bad day, but today, and yesterday kind of have me wondering.

Last night, I was playing XCOM: Chimera Squad, and even on that game - a game I AM good at, everything went so wrong. On the very first mission, 3/4 of my team got wiped out before I finally completed the mission. That never happens to me, not even on Hard difficult - and I was playing on Normal! But it seemed like every move I made resulted in losing a squad member; shots missing is to be expected on XCOM but getting squad-wiped?

These are video games... Things I'm doing in my free time. Now? They frustrating me more than my job does... That can't be a good sign, but I have absolutely no idea what it means...

This was a fairly easy entry to make for Volcan's Gaming Discussion. I am, unfortunately, the type of guy with whom negative feelings tend to linger, and pretty much every game on this list left a very bad taste in my mouth. I have ordered the entries of this by the ones I dislike the least - a few bad feelings but not games I'd steer others away from, to titles I just outright think were criminally bad, like 'should have been refunded just for how much this game sucked' bad.

I'm going to offend multiple people with this list, of that I am sure... But these are my top ten disliked games.


Number 1:
Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord

A bit of backstory for this entry. I spent most of my teenage years playing Mount & Blade: Warband; it was my favourite game of all time for a long time, long before I discovered XCOM. Taking place in a medieval, fictional realm called Calradia, you take on the role of a freelance adventurer, becoming a thief, a mercenary, a lord, or even a king – or, all of the above. The possibilities were all there.
So, imagine my delight when I heard a sequel was coming! After enjoying the expansion game ‘Viking Conquest’, this was the first game I was ever truly hyped for. Followed by the bitter disappointment, when I found that this game is only a slightly more polished version of its predecessor. All the same possibilities as were in the previous are here, true, but with barely any difference to the original. I purchased the game while it was still early access – already a horrible mistake.
Even as update after update came out, erasing my save files every time and forcing me to start over, I didn’t find anything that really set this game apart from the original. There were new features, like the ability to craft your own weapons – though only for yourself and your companions, but not your army, and you couldn’t forge your own armour. There were also skill trees for each skill you can use, giving some variety of choice to what you choose to master and overall, how to structure your armies, with the addition of a class such as Skirmisher.
The new features are there, but you don’t really get to do anything with them that you couldn’t do in the previous game. Or, maybe I wasn’t able to find them. I don’t know. Either way this, along with the dishonourable mention and several others on this list, are what cemented my firm stance to never… Ever buy an Early Access game on Steam ever again.

Dishonourable Mention:
Baldur’s Gate 3: Shortly before hearing about this game, I had just finished playing through Divinity: Original Sin 2 with  SilverWingCid and it was a fun RPG adventure game at the time, so imagine my delight when I heard the same makers of Divinity, Larian Studios, were bringing back Baldur’s Gate! And then they f***** it up by releasing an unfinished, barely playable game at full price. I can’t even begin to express how crushed I was that I’d let myself get hyped up, for this!
The reason I didn’t put this one on the entry was because I’m hoping it will still make a comeback, eventually, but I’m never going to forget this blatant, scummy ploy of getting their money’s worth for a game they might not ever finish, as at the time of this list it’s still in Early Access. We’ll get to more about Early Access later.


Number 2:
Phasmophobia

Alright, let’s start by chasing the elephant out of the room with this. I actually really loved this game’s concept when I first tried it out. I was iffy at first, but being able to investigate hauntings to identify the spirits and trying to survive when they get antsy, is actually quite brilliant! Something I’d never seen done before.
You identify the ghosts by looking for things like ghostly handprints on walls, chilly air, electromagnetic readings, etc. The types of things you find in the haunted house helps you identify the spirits. This relies a bit on pattern recognition, and when the ghost starts hunting things can get pretty intense! So I say good things about this game despite it being on this list.
But as we mentioned in the previous entry and will come up more on this list, f*** Early Access games, and this was another one. Many times, the game bugs out and the ghosts don’t do anything that help you identify them, and with the most recent updates before I stopped playing, they added more spirit types, without fixing this issue. On top of that, it’s extremely repetitive; it’s the same thing, every round you launch, and I just got really bored with it. Plus, I had trouble enjoying the game if I played in the daytime; there’s a reason most people only watch scary movies at night, as it helps set the mood, so even when I did play the game it went largely untouched because… Well, I work nights; there was just no time for it and I didn't enjoy it if I played in the daylight. Call me picky, but like I said, scary movies and games are better played when it's dark.
Also, as mentioned in the previous list, I kinda have a weird relationship with horror games. I enjoy watching people play them more than I enjoy them myself. See Alien: Isolation.

Honourable Mention:
Note: Not dishonourable, because I considered this game for this entry for the same reasons, but ultimately didn’t choose it because Phasmophobia was just worse overall.

Deep Rock Galactic: On the surface, a pretty interesting-looking game. You take on the role of some space-faring dwarves mining the inside of a bug-infested asteroid for precious minerals. Not a bad game concept but little more than just a novelty in the long run as I found it got repetitive really fast. Was fun for a bit, so it’s one I would not steer others away from; I know plenty of people who get more enjoyment out of it to this day. Just that my enjoyment of it was pretty short.


Number 3:
Sea of Thieves

This is going to be a long entry, so strap in. I originally had this one at Number 9, but I realized I was being unfair, because I don’t think this game is bad. The problem is me, and how I feel about games like this as a concept
Let’s start this off by making one thing clear. I despise multiplayer-only games on principle, especially player-vs-player ones that encourage people to be toxic assholes, ruining it for others, just for the sake of it – others who might be there to unwind from a stressful day. So why did I play this one? Well. Aside from the hope that this might be the exception, I was trying to expand my library of games I could enjoy alongside my friends, but ‘enjoy’ is the last thing I’d associate with this, and it really is a shame because this game has so much potential.
This was one of the few other games I know of besides Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag to give you a taste of being a high seas adventurer; a Pirate, as it were. So much potential, and they f***** it up by not giving the option to host private servers where you don’t need to constantly worry about being hunted down and attacked by other players – even Grand Theft Auto Online did this right! The game also decides for you what size of ship you get to sail in, taking that choice away from you, and the ships were far from balanced and required you to manage multiple stations yourself; you needed people to take the helm, man the cannons, watch for trouble, trim the sails and to repair any damage the ship sustained in battle, while also making sure it didn’t flood from said damage. All in all, there is a lot to do, not enough hands to do it, and everything is critical, meaning you’re putting your life in the hands of someone who just might not be up to the task.
The bigger the ship the more there was to keep track of, which by itself was taxing; the Sloop could only hold up to two players but there was enough work for four, but four players default to the Galleon which is so big it should have a crew of eight at minimum, probably even as many as twelve.
Probably the biggest thing that pissed me off was getting attacked in port – there was no safe haven anywhere. For one example, my friends and I had just come back from a very profitable venture, ready to sell off our haul. These other players sailed up and attacked us, setting our ship’s deck on fire and killing us over and over and over again. They didn’t even try to take our loot; they burned our ship and killed us and, far as I’m aware as I had rage-quit by this time; might have even left the loot there and moved on to go screw over someone else. Prime example of doing something just to be an asshole, and not even the only example I could give.
That constant fear of being attacked was always there, and while I know some people might find that enticing or adding to the excitement, I don’t. I play video games to de-stress about what people around me are doing, not to immerse myself in it, especially where I might become a target of those plots; I was enough of a target in school, thank you very much!
(Sorry, off topic).
I dealt with more than enough annoying players in Grand Theft Auto Online. At least with GTAO, you didn’t have all your effort stolen away from you when another player killed you, and that game had the smart idea of having the option for private servers to avoid those players. See the previous list for more about this one.

Honourable Mentions

Fortnite/PUBG/Apex Legends: All for the same reason as Sea of Thieves, but on a lower scale; these games are designed to be competitive, and yeah, some people are going to be annoying in a competitive game – that’s the nature of it. So, I suppose I’m just not competitive, not to mention I am exceedingly unlucky, and when it comes to finding weapons and items in these games, that is pretty much curtains from the get-go. These are why I only mention the games but don’t put them as an entry nor do I put them as dishonourable; they are not the problem, I am.
Barotrauma: Again, not a bad idea of a game; a 2D submarine exploration game taking you to one of the moons of Jupiter – a moon consisting almost entirely of water and performing deep sea missions in a hostile alien environment. Brilliant, truly, but offset by what is, to me, a clunky design and another game that depends on teamwork just like the entry for this spot. Let me just clarify, I’m not against team games like this existing, but I am not a great team player – I don’t trust easily, and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. So, between my finding this game’s design clunky and my introverted nature, this just was not for me.

Number 4:
Star Fox Zero

Sadly the last entry we’ve had of this franchise, and it did not end on a high note. Star Fox Zero was released on the Wii-U; as much of a problem as Gex being released on the 3DO of all consoles. The Wii-U was not one of Nintendo’s best-received consoles, and this game didn’t help with that, as it was designed with the intent to be played on both your TV screen as well as the gamepad screen you used as a controller… At the same time. At first, I didn’t find this a problem as I was able to go through the entire game without using the gamepad for anything, other than maybe airlifting stuff on that one level with the Gyrocopter. But that was it.
Then I got to the final boss; once again with Andross making a comeback… And it forces you to use the gamepad screen, to see the hazards you fly into while trying to find an opening with which to attack him. Considering I had gone through most of the game without utilizing this combination, I was completely unprepared! I did eventually still manage to win but not without dying a lot first.
Sad thing is, as I mentioned, this is the last we’ve seen of Star Fox, other than three of their characters being playable in Smash Bros. and Andross and Krystal continuing to exist as Assist Trophies. I hope this is not the end of the franchise, to go the way of F-Zero and live on only so long as Smash Bros. continues. There’s still a lot of potential they could explore with the world setting.
And yes! I know the Star Fox team appears in the Wii-U version of Starlink: Battle for Atlas as well… But I really couldn’t grasp that game’s controls worth a damn, and they were only an easter egg so I don’t count it as an official release myself.

Number 5:
Undertale

Yeah, yeah; get it out of your systems. “You hate Undertale; you have no soul!” or whatever else people say now. Yeah, maybe I don’t, but I do have standards that this game failed to meet
Okay, I don’t hate Undertale – that’s why it’s not lower on this list. The concept of it is fairly interesting, of never truly being able to erase your past decisions no matter how many times you play it, at least as far as I understood it. But… This game just… Bored me. So no, I don’t hate it, but it just really was not that fun, nor did I really find the characters in it very interesting, so I couldn’t finish it.
Short entry here but, I don’t find a lot to say about this game, probably because I didn’t get all that far. I’ve heard it talked about to death by multiple people but I feel that it’s just a simple bullet hell with an interesting setup and good character depth, but if the game is not fun to play, well that’s all she wrote.

Number 6:
Octopath Traveller
You know a game is boring when you literally fall asleep playing it, which with this one, I did, multiple times. I have mixed opinions about JRPG’s as it is but I have played ones I’ve liked; Super Mario RPG a prime example (get to that on the next list) and of course, Pokémon is kind of one itself.
The concept of Octopath Traveller is to play through the stories of eight heroes, each with their own directions and paths to follow. Problem is… You need all of them to progress through the game, and you have to play through their stories… Start. To. Finish. Every part of them. You can’t just pick the ones you like and move on – it has to be all of them, and they’re all just… so MEH!
They have so little interaction with each other, it’s like they aren’t even aware of each other’s presence most of the time! I’ll admit, by the time I got to the eighth hero and tried to continue, I couldn’t even remember the story of the character I chose to start with and was just groaning and unable to even keep playing, and kept falling asleep when I tried to play after work. I have since traded in this game at Gamestop, along with the one in the mentions.
This was one of the worst purchases I made on my Nintendo Switch; props to those who like it but, there was no freaking way I was going to do that repetitive process over and over, of playing through each character’s story one after the other, least of all for the characters I didn’t like, and take away from the ones I did.

Dishonourable mention:
Trials of Mana: Growing up I got to play ‘Secret of Mana’ a few times and I thought it was engaging, though I never did manage to finish it. This one I did, and for the same reason as I put Octopath Traveller on this list… It just felt lifeless. This one had 3D character models instead of sprites, though; there was no reason whatsoever for the characters to have so little interaction as they did. Unlike many of the games on this list though, I did manage to play through this one once, but I couldn’t bring myself to give it a second playthrough after.

Number 7:
Soul Calibur IV

Yeah, here we get into the games I wholly dislike and not only disappointed me. This was, to me, the worst of the Soul Calibur games I ever played; coming off Soul Calibur III, which I mentioned as one of my loved games, I had high expectations for this game. Especially with the character creation.
It took those hopes… And executed them via Firing Squad. At the front we’ve got terrible character stories, all being exactly the same as the other – so alike these front-line troops could be clones except that every single one has been painted with the stupidest makeup just to give the illusion they aren’t all exactly the same. At the flanks, we’ve got the atrocious character customization that introduces stats to the armour pieces and makes only the stupidest-looking pieces give the stats you want.
Finally, the captain of this firing squad, your tormentor who will encourage them to miss on purpose just to cause you more pain, is the inability to select fighting styles except for those of the vanilla characters, ensuring your custom character will never feel like more than a cheap knockoff, and make you suffer through seeing that vanilla character’s mannerisms through their fighting style, mannerisms you would not give your character.
Seriously, my favourite weapon from history, by far, is the Halberd, and making Volcan with the fighting style of Seong Mina - the only character in the game that uses a polearm of any kind was just… Uncomfortable.

I’m not going into detail about that!

Number 8:
Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric

Now we get into a game that I think most people can universally agree is crap.
What can I even say about this one, besides that it’s a pile of garbage? My friend  Korban and I had this game during his time living with me, and we gave it a shot on co-op mode. What I expected myself was a game similar to Sonic Heroes, playing as a team through the usual, linear Sonic the Hedgehog level designs, racing toward the goal and utilizing each character’s skills to clear the level… The latter it kind of did… But it did nothing else right.
Besides being glitchy and dull, the characters were atrocious; making Knuckles into a complete dumbass was already bad enough, but Lyric himself was a terrible villain and Sonic, Amy and especially Tails were all ruined from how I’d come to know them. And yes, that does apply to the Sonic Boom cartoon too; like it if you do, no judging. But I couldn’t even finish the first season of it, it was so stupid.
But I digress. Perhaps a bigger crime in Rise of Lyric, even the music sucked! Even with the bad Sonic games in the past, the music was always good -even Sonic ’06 did that right! But Rise of Lyric couldn’t even pull that off, introducing us to a forgettable, dull soundtrack. I can remember almost every song from Sonic Adventure 2 from the first level to the final boss (referring to the Biolizard; Final Hazard is also the title theme which is impossible to forget) but I cannot name a single song from Rise of Lyric without looking them up. That alone is a disservice to this already struggling franchise.

Number 9:
Battlefield 2

Alright, getting into one of the first, First Person Shooter games I ever played. Let’s see if I can talk about it it without having a f****** grenade land on my head. Or four. Or twenty!
That’s all players did on this game was lob grenades everywhere. Not that there were many players to speak of – by the time I got into this game it was already on its last legs, as by this time Battlefield 3 (also crap) had already come out and most players had navigated to that, save for a few holdouts whose only strategy was just, as I mentioned, lobbing grenades!
It wasn’t even that fun to play on singleplayer or closed server either, because the AI in this game was just… Easy. Even on hard mode I really had no trouble with it, and barely finished most games because I got so bored.
Not much more to say about this dead game, so, moving on.

Dishonourable Mentions:

Call of Duty: Yeah, for a while I got into this series too, and actually liked it more than Battlefield, which is why it only gets a mention. But it’s still lands on this list in general because… They’re all the same game! Hastily developed and released with only mild discernible features from the last one. I also still blame Activision’s merger with Blizzard for intoxicating them and causing them to devolve in the cesspool of a company they are now. F*** Activision.


Number 10:
Starforge

Oh ho, thought I was done slamming Early Access games, eh? Well, my absolute hatred for that concept goes back to this freaking hell-spawned, money-stealing mess pretending to be a computer game. Probably the only title on this whole list I truly hate right down to its rotten core, and that is because the developers made this game and released on Early Access, just so people would buy it… And then never finish it; just take their money and run.
I can’t even say much about the game itself because it was so sparse! It had nothing going for it, and yet I bought it, not realizing this and it’s now a permanent fixture in my Steam Library, hanging like a bad painting on my wall - a painting that some cruel prankster bolted to said wall so thoroughly I can’t be rid of it unless I tear the whole house down. It still appears in my Steam Library, with no way to be rid of it; covering it up (leaving it uninstalled) doesn’t change the fact that it’s there ready to show itself the moment I look at my admittedly oversaturated list of uninstalled games to see if anything catches my fancy to play again, with this one always just waiting for me to notice it still sitting there as a reminderme that I got conned.
To make matters worse, this apparently wasn’t the only time the developers did this, releasing another Early Access game that now I can’t remember the name of, but with the exact same problem; they made it only slightly playable, and then vanished with the money of players who, not onto their scheme yet, purchased it. This isn’t even me just badmouthing the developers; they actually did this. It’s a fact. The fact that Steam even allows this exploitative behavior to this day by allowing Early Access games to still be produced at a price means that someone is going to find a way to do this again, to keep exploiting people for a quick buck!
This, combined with the number one and two entries on this list, are why I feel Early Access as a concept should be banned; if you are going to make a product, take responsibility for it, especially if you have made money off of it. And I say this… Because I am guilty of this too; not intentionally, but it happened nonetheless

For those who don’t know, I am an aspiring author, and I have released a book… One that I am ashamed to say was not in fact, finished, when I released it… I felt like hot garbage for this, and to this day would go back and correct this mistake if I could, but the past can’t be undone. So yeah, I took the crime of Starforge's developers quite personally as a creator myself.
That was a mistake I made, a mistake I can never erase, but the developers of Starforge? They did this on purpose, and that’s not only an affront to video game development, but to everyone else who puts hard work into creating something memorable for others to enjoy… You may not always do it right, as I didn’t with my first book, but it’s your intentions behind it that defines you as a creator.


Next list and the final for Volcan's Gaming Discussion: Top 10 Nostalgic games!

For this list, we will be exploring various video games that at one point or another, were up there with my favourite games - at another time (in some cases), might have even made it as favourites in the previous list. There may be a few titles on here to surprise people, but other will probably find a few of these entries quite predictable.

Now, I have a different set of rules with this one. For one, as mentioned in the title, there are 15 games instead of ten (not counting honourable mentions) because there were just too many for me to narrow it down only to ten, though this list was still pretty challenging to make, as I remembered certain games along the way that were applicable or re-thought their positions in the list itself. I will also stick to only one game per franchise, kind of like a few YouTuber Countdowns do, and I have also arranged them in a specific order, from games I am most likely to play again, all the way down to games I will never play again, nor any like them, with those in between filling a niche area of 'would play but either cannot or don't yet want to'.

So here we are, for Volcan's Gaming Discussion #2: The top 15 liked games.


Number One
XCOM: Chimera Squad

-So here we have the first repeat game - not only taking top spot on the list but also from the same franchise as my most favourite game and first appearing as an honourable mention in the previous list. All of the honourable mentions for these lists will be games that were also considered for the respective spot, and this game is the same, coming behind XCOM 2 only because of being an all-around smaller game, but by no means inferior.
Taking place after the events of XCOM 2, when XCOM and humanity have successfully taken back their world and driven the alien Elders off-world, many of the aliens – no longer bound to their masters, are left behind with an uncertain future, eventually coming to live alongside humanity and helping them rebuild their world. Chimera Squad is a paramilitary special tactics unit, very much like a SWAT team, that seeks to keep the peace in City 31 (don't ask me why it's called that; I don't know) and uncover the truth behind a plot that led to the assassination of the city's mayor.
You command a team of operatives from all walks of life, both human and alien, each with unique abilities tailored to a specific playstyle, with you being the one to determine how to deploy them and when. You experience the dialogue between the characters, showing how their personalities bounce off each other, which makes for entertaining moments between missions, as you develop your team and technology as in the previous game.
While it is still a fun game, it did not make it onto the previous list because it is much shorter than XCOM 2, and does not have all of the features I loved from the other game, but it is still a game I loved enough to give it a spot on this list.


Number Two
Warlord's Battlecry 2

-This game and its prequel and sequel have been in my life since I was a kid. I was first introduced to Warlord's Battlecry when I was 9 years old when we got our first PC. The game and its subsequent sequels – as they were not all that different from each other, are RTS Fantasy titles, set in a world very similar to the Dragonlance or Dungeons and Dragons worlds with many of the same races. The world was known as Etheria, and it's set in the same universe as the Warlords series developed originally by Infinite Interactive and Strategic Studies Group.
The premise of the game is that you create a hero from a variety of races; in the original, there were eight races to make heroes from – Human, Dwarf, Undead, High Elf, Wood Elf, Dark Elf, Minotaur and Orc, though there were nine playable races with the ninth being Barbarian; the ability to create a Barbarian hero wouldn't be introduced until the 2nd game, which also introduced three more playable races; Fey, Dark Dwarf and Daemon. Once you created a hero, you then partake in various battles to raise their level and select a profession (Warrior, Rogue, Wizard, Priest) and Specialty which related to race and class; some races could not take certain professions - like Undead could not take Priest, and Minotaur could not take Rogue for example.
This hero was an elite support unit to your armies, and unlike games like Age of Wonders and WarCraft, where the heroes start at base level in each match, this hero keeps his or her levels and experience in each subsequent battle, becoming more powerful in their chosen profession and specialty as well as their four base stats which offered different bonuses; Strength and Dexterity benefitted your hero, and Intelligence and Charisma benefitted his/her army to summarize. As a bonus, the troops you build in the battle could also gain experience, allowing you to build a retinue of powerful units to take with you from one battle to another.
Truth be told though this game series is grossly outdated. I put it onto the list because I still play it despite its age, and I choose the 2nd game as my favourite of the three, even though there is a third game – released in 2004. I can no longer play the first or second games because even torrented or legal versions of the game from GoG.com will not work no matter what I try – even one of my tech-savvy cousins took a whack at fixing it and got nowhere.
The main reason I still play it is because it seems to be the only one of its kind; there are no other games built with this principle, and considering the franchise has gone the way of the dinosaurs I'm not expecting another anytime soon.
So, while WB2 is my entry for this list it is WB3, the last of the entire Warlords series, and is the one I still play to this day.

Honourable Mentions:

-Warlord's Battlecry: The original title set the foundation of what the following two games would be, and was the only one of the three to have a story mode, which was quite engaging given how minimal the games were as a whole. Unfortunately, in addition to not being able to play this game anymore, the story campaign could only be played with a Human hero and none of the other seven available.
-Warlord's Battlecry 3: Unlike the 2nd game, this game brought back a playable story campaign, whereas 2 had Conquest of Etheria. Unfortunately, the game isn't as good as its predecessors, as it removes the profession/specialty system the previous games were built on, adds 4 new playable races that were rather lackluster and does nothing to improve or polish existing game mechanics, which overall made it a rather poor excuse for a sequel.


Number Three
Armello

-Developed by League of Geeks, I find this to be a nice quick kind of party game where you can just bring your friends together and have at it. The concept is quite simple; take the throne of the Kingdom of Armello for yourself, but it is up to you to decide how you do it.
You choose a hero from one of four playable races – six if you have the DLCs, and they are all anthropomorphic characters with their abilities and talents, some of which are geared toward a specific one of the four victory types, which are Kill the King, Spirit Stone, Rot or Prestige, utilizing cards and combat stats as well as dice rolls to win the game.
While this didn't make it into my favourite games, it was close. The game's downside is that everything is up to chance; you can't get any of the victory types without drawing the right cards or finding the conditions on the map, making it necessary to usually pursue two victory types simultaneously – usually, it's a safe bet to pursue Kingslayer and Prestige at the same time, but you can't pursue Spirit Stone and Rot together.
My favourite part of this game is its surprising depth; while it seems like an electronic board game, all of the characters have their backstories and books that tell them, which you can find for free on the game itself. I could see this becoming a television series too – one I would totally watch.


Number Four
Super Smash Bros Ultimate

-Well, here's a game series I'm sure needs no introduction, but for those who haven't had the chance to check this one out yet, say hello to the biggest Smash Bros game to date, featuring the largest library of playable characters in any fighting game I've ever heard of.
One could argue that perhaps... Too many. The game has variety going for it in spades, without a doubt, offset only by maybe introducing more choices than anyone can make. Just the same, it has all the things players enjoy from the previous games and even brought back a playable story mode, though not a very engaging one. This is one of those types of games you play with your friends, get together on a weekend to blow off some steam.
A new Smash Bros comes out with every new Nintendo Console, but I have no idea how Sakurai and his dev team intend to top this one.

Honourable Mention:
-Pokken Tournament: When considering a fighting game for this list, this was another one that crossed my mind – a Pokémon fighting game featuring a system very similar to the Tekken series, hence the name. However, as I don't play this one very much anymore – nor does anyone I know, it wasn't chosen for the list.


Number Five
Cities: Skylines

-I don't just enjoy Empire Builders, I enjoy city builders too. Cities: Skylines, once more by Paradox Interactive, is a pretty simple game to understand, but a difficult one to master. You build a city, and that's about the long and short of it.
What makes this game stand out is the number of things you can do for building your city; you can grow its industry by taking advantage of the natural resources available to you, and in the many game expansions – in true Paradox fashion, build massive schools/campuses, tourist hubs, natural parks – etc; the possibilities are vast indeed. While this didn't make it onto my favourite games list, this is one I still play whenever I want to wind down or the mood strikes me.
My only issue is that I sometimes find difficulty in managing money, the environment and satisfying my population's needs, as well as managing the city's waste, pollution and traffic. I know the methods for preventing these but sometimes I fail to implement them before they become a problem. Also, I get bored with my city's shockingly fast and regularly start new ones; I can't help it, lol. Still, I will continue to enjoy this game, as well as the first of the honourable mentions here.

Honourable Mentions

-Stardew Valley: The decision between putting this game or Cities: Skylines on this entry was a hair's breadth, with my ultimately deciding on the game that is bigger overall, even though I play this one way more, especially when I need a bit of stability in my life. You play the role of a farmer for a small community, and the game also adds the elements of a life simulator game. Like the entry above, this is one of the types of games I go to when I need to wind down.
-Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life: Though I play Stardew Valley now, I used to play this game back in the day, and I had fun with it so I felt it was worth mentioning. Unfortunately, compared to Stardew Valley, despite having 3D graphics this game offered far less overall.
-Sim City (SNES): The very first city builder game I ever played; I loved this game when I was a kid and spent countless hours on it. Right next to some other entries you will see in my nostalgic games list when I make it, this was probably my favourite SNES title at the time.


Number Six
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

-Probably one of the few games not to be ruined by Electronic Art's greedy bull**** for the past decade or so, despite being produced by a company owned by them. Fallen Order is a Souls-like game set in the Star Wars Universe, and just like any Souls-like, it's challenging, but not overwhelming if you play your cards right.
You play the role of Cal Kestis, a former Padawan who was driven into hiding after Order 66 and the Jedi Purge and suffered a traumatic event that caused his connection to the Force to become weakened. You're rescued by a former Jedi Knight, who like you has lost her connection to the Force, and while helping you find your way you're hunted by the Inquisitors, including the Ninth and Second Sisters.
The Inquisitors are a fascinating addition to the Star Wars lore, I've always thought; ever since witnessing the Grand Inquisitor on Star Wars: Rebels, I wanted to see more of them. Not quite Sith, but no longer Jedi, and made just strong enough to be a threat to Jedi survivors, but never to Darth Vader or the Emperor; the Inquisitors are weak in their use of the Force, but display adequate lightsaber duelling skills and even wield custom-made lightsabers to help them in their goal of hunting down surviving Jedi.
I guess my only gripe with this game would be just how hard it is, but that could apply to any Souls-like title, and I am looking forward to the sequel coming out this April.

Honourable Mentions:

-Star Wars: Squadrons: I almost gave this one its own entry, but I'm trying to keep a sort of one-per-franchise rule like the Green Scorpion and Joshscorcher on YouTube do. Squadrons, though also a Star Wars game, is nothing like Fallen Order in that you play as a pilot rather than a Jedi, taking place after the events of Episode VI when the Empire has broken, and the Rebel Alliance has become The New Republic. You can fly for either side using a variety of starfighters.
The reason I didn't end up choosing this game is that while it was tons of fun, the novelty of it wore off for me. It was highly competitive and PvP-focused, and after being away from it so long, even if I picked it up again I'd probably get my arse handed to me.
-Star Wars: Battlefront 2: Despite a disastrous launch marred by EA's terrible business practices, this game – in the end, wound up becoming one of the best shooters I've ever played and even had a Starfighter mode that wouldn't be beaten until the release of Squadrons. But, I didn't put it on the list because it suffers not only from the loot box craze, but also from some serious balance issues and an excessively competitive player base. Still, this – like the other games above this entry, are all titles I would consider going back to with the right incentive.


Number Seven
Soul Calibur III

-I have been told before... That I have an obsession with character customization. Some might say, an unhealthy one; to me, building my own character from the ground up is the most enjoyable part of the experience, both in video games that offer such a thing and in my work as a writer. A story is only as good as its hero, after all.
Well... You can blame this game, as well as the next entry, for that! Soul Calibur III was the third entry in the Soul Blade/Soul Calibur franchise by Namco, a medieval fighting game taking place in the era of the Holy Roman Empire, with the plot centred around a demonic sword known as Soul Edge, and a spirit sword known as Soul Calibur – the namesake of the series from the second game onward.
The third game was the first of the series to introduce the ability to create a custom character, as well as a playable story mode for said custom character(s) known as Chronicles of the Sword. I spent countless hours playing this game, both the regular story and the Chronicles, unlocking every character's ending, every weapon and every piece of armour/clothing you could give to the custom characters. This was my favourite game of all time back in the day... Which begs the question, why is it here and not on the previous list?
There are two reasons for that, which is why it was listed after number five. The first reason is that I can't play it anymore; this game, unlike its prequels and sequels, was exclusive to the PlayStation 2. The second reason has to do with its sequels; the franchise tanked after this game, with the fourth game jumping the shark by introducing Star Wars characters as guest stars, and five centring its story mode on only two – frankly mediocre characters which led to a soft reboot of the franchise just to erase the pit stain left by these two.
I haven't had the chance to play Soul Calibur 6 yet, and I don't have much incentive to do so; the character customization after 3 fell hard, with four adding a stat system that made it hard to make your character look the least bit like you wanted to without them being a total wimp, and worst of all both games made it so that you can only give the character you create a fighting style of the game's current cast, and not even of the guest stars either.
This entry is getting too long, so let's leave it at that by saying, I think this game is where the series peaked, both for the regular game and the character customization...


Number Eight
Lego Racers

-In the previous list, I mentioned Paper Mario as a game that I was at odds about with my brother; we'd go to the video store looking to rent a game for the weekend, and we wouldn't agree on which one to get. He wanted Paper Mario, but I wanted this one.
Eventually, I managed to procure a copy of this game from my school, buying it from one of my teachers, and I was just as obsessed with it then as I was when I was a kid. Like Soul Calibur 3, mentioned before, this was another of the games that got me really into customization, not only of my character but of my car – see Need for Speed: Most Wanted on my previous list, in which the character is never seen but you can customize your car's appearance as well as performance.
As a concept, I loved this game to death, taking on the seven champion racers in a series of racing circuits, unlocking their car sets (if you finished first in each cup) and receiving all kinds of car designs and character pieces to make my Lego cars and characters. There is even at least one character you can race against who's from actual Lego sets; Johnny Thunder, who's sort of like a Lego Indiana Jones if I remember correctly. The others, I don't know if they appeared in sets of their own but they're still a colourful cast all in all.
If I had to say I had any gripes with this game, it's that the developers didn't go further with it; I understand technology was limited back then, but there were only a total of 12 playable tracks that you play through battling the first three champions, and then repeat them against the second three – only mirrored, and only one track against Rocket Racer, the top champion of the game – a long track, but still only one.
Now, only when making this entry did I find out there was a sequel to this game, which I never knew about until then, so I may have to look that up and see if there's still a way to get it, especially when I wore out my disk copy of the game... Doubt it'd work on my modern PC regardless.


Number Nine
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

-Though not part of the canonical lore of the Lord of the Rings (at least as far as I am aware; feel free to correct me) this was a fun game back when I played it. Like Alien Isolation, this is a game that encourages you to play smarter, and while it draws some inspiration from other titles I will mention below, let's start with this one.
You play as a Gondorian Ranger named Talion, who has become a sort of wraith – not like the Naz'gul who probably scared more than a few people in the original movies, but more like the undead in Dark Souls that rise again every time they die, and also host to the spirit of the elven ring-smith, Celebrimbor. While playing through the game, you encounter orc warriors known as Captains or Warlords, who using the wraith-like powers of Talion and Celebrimbor, can take control of them, and build their orc army within the very ranks of Sauron himself.
This game combines the parkour of Assassin's Creed with the combat of the Batman: Arkham games, but stands out by the inclusion of the Nemesis mechanic. All of the Warlords and Captains have rivalries with one another, as well as strengths and weaknesses which you use to build your strategy around for defeating them, either to promote your puppets to take their place or just to mess with the power hierarchy of the Mordor armies. A Captain or Warlord who kills you becomes your nemesis and advances through the ranks for that achievement.
I remember this one Warlord that I could not defeat; he was immune to every kind of attack, with only one weakness; his love of drink – Grog, by name. So I poisoned his drink and he went to a cliff to vomit. I snuck up on him and kicked him off the cliff. This Warlord, having killed me seven times at least, ultimately fell the way of a Disney Villain. I felt very satisfied with this one, and that satisfaction carried me to the end of the game.
This is very likely a game I will play again; I haven't tried the sequel, Shadow of War, yet, but I've considered it.

Honourable Mentions:

-Assassin's Creed: Black Flag: Like many people, I tried out the Assassin's Creed games during their golden years, with the Ezio Trilogy being where I started. Eventually, I worked my way up to Assassin's Creed II/Liberation, but Black Flag was where the series hit its peak, I'd say, playing as Edward Kenway, a Welsh Pirate who isn't actually part of the Assassin Order but wears their robes nonetheless.
I was a little disappointed when I couldn't upgrade my weapons and/or armour to the same degree as I could with Ezio or Conner (AC3), the sailing mechanics and the pirate-like theme more than made up with; I dare say, this is the best pirate-like game ever made, and it's not even meant to be one!
-Batman: Arkham City: The Batman Arkham games are a trip and a half, with the best combat system out of many of the similar titles that came out around this time. But for me, City was the best of the four titles, letting you play as both the titular Batman as well as Catwoman, and in the extras mode, you could even play as Robin (Tim Drake) or Nightwing to achieve high scores in a variety of gauntlet-style missions.
Though I never fully completed City or any of the games; I never finished any of the Riddler Missions because they were little more than glorified collect-athons for my least-favourite Batman villain. Still, despite not making it as the entry for this list, this was the only game I played through to the end more than once.


Number Ten
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

-As with Smash Bros, I don't imagine this game needs any introductions. It's only been twelve bloody years since it was originally released and has since been re-released multiple times, with no sign of the next game in sight.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim takes place two hundred years after the events of the previous game, TES IV Oblivion, and introduces a wide-open world set in the cold home of the Nords. In the time since the previous game, the Tamriellic Empire has fallen into disarray; Skyrim is consumed by a civil war between the Empire and a rebel faction known as the Stormcloaks, named for their leader, Ulfric Stormcloak. As if that weren't enough, around this time, Tamriel sees the return of the dragons, and the game's main villain, Alduin the World Eater.
At one point I might have considered putting this game as one of my favourites. I love the lore of The Elder Scrolls games; first introduced back with the third game, Morrowind, and I even spent a little time playing the MMORPG, The Elder Scrolls Online (more on that later). I find the many diverse races you can play as fascinating and would leave to see more of this world that has been built up over these games.
But Skyrim itself is old by now; there is little to nothing left for it to offer, beyond the ease of messing with it; the modding community still releases all kinds of content for this game but Bethesda Studios and their parent company, Zenimax, now focus all their attention on the MMORPG and Fallout 76 – again, more on those later, and do not seem intent on releasing a new game for this series anytime soon.
Hopefully, with Microsoft now the owner of both companies maybe we'll see a bit more attention to quality if The Elder Scrolls VI is ever released... But I doubt it.

Honourable Mentions:

-The Outer Worlds: Developed by Obsidian Entertainment, when Bethesda refused to let them continue making games for Fallout. Honestly, this was a pretty good game, and I might one day replay it again, but unlike the games listed above I haven't had much incentive to do so; the game was rather sparse on content the last time I played it, so I can't give it a higher spot given the impressions it left me. One thing I loved about it, I was able to complete the game without having to resort to violence; I talked my way through it, having built a character with high charisma. This is something that the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games don't even give you as an option most of the time.
-Fallout 4: This was the first runner-up for my pick on this list. Although I never managed to complete the game before I was growing tired of it, I was quite addicted to this game for a while, with the addition of its settlement-building mechanics – something I spent so much time on; probably 70% of the hours I spent playing this game was spent just building settlements. Unfortunately, although this game is slightly more developed than Skyrim, the characters – including your own, are just... Dull, and despite having so many factions involved in the main story, nothing you do matters in the grand scheme of things, not like in Fallout: New Vegas, which by the way...
-Fallout: New Vegas: Arguably the best game in the series, and it wasn't even developed by Bethesda who owns the right to the franchise now; it was developed once again by Obsidian Entertainment, who succeeded Black Isle Studios – the original developers of the franchise and likely having some of the dev team who worked on the original games – though, don't quote me on that. So, why didn't I score this one above Fallout 4, despite being a better game overall than both Fallout 4 and Skyrim?
...Unfortunately, unlike those games, I can't play them anymore. I originally played the game on my brother's Playstation 3, before I got my copy on PC. For some reason, every time I've installed it after I have run the game for a while, I can no longer load my save files – as soon as I try, the game just crashes to the desktop, without even an error to show and I can't figure out why. So for technical reasons, this one only gets a mention.


Number Eleven
Alien Isolation

-I have a very strange relationship with horror games, in that I don't enjoy playing them that much – I more enjoy watching others play them. A prime example, I've watched Markiplier and Jacksepticeye play games like Five Nights at Freddy's, but never really wanted to try the games myself. Just seeing how they play I feel they'd annoy me more than I'd have any fun with them.
This game, however, proves that with any rule, there are exceptions. Taking place after the events of Ridley Scott's masterpiece, Alien, starring Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley – probably the best strong female lead in movie history, you take the role of the main character's daughter, Amanda Ripley, an engineer with the Weyland-Yutani Corporation whom her mother used to work for. She travels to a decrepit space colony known as Savastapol, seeking answers about her mother's disappearance, and encounters one of the same alien monsters her mother faced – affectionately known as the Xenomorph.
The reason I love this game over other horror games is that you need to play smart. You can't kill the alien, and because it uses two different AIs, it is learning as you fight it – eventually, if you rely on the same tricks too often, it's going to get wise to you and find you. The game gives you a variety of ways to protect yourself, but the terror that the alien brings with its presence is palpable. You never really know where that hissing monstrosity is going to pop out, or when.
Though I ranked it fairly low on the list, this is going to be one of the few horror games I've played that I have many positives to say about.


Number Twelve
Dragon Ball: The Breakers

-Despite the previous entry, I will say that I am the first person who will admit I am not a Dragon Ball fan – or most anime in general, so I am not a big follower of Dragon Ball or its subsequent shows or games. But, over the years, I have owned a couple of the games, and for what they were I didn't dislike them. This game is the most recent one I've acquired, and it breaks away from the norm.
Instead of a fighting game playing as various Dragon Ball characters, which is what I came to know the video games for, you play as an ordinary, earthling survivor, stuck in these time distortions that bring you to face to face with the deadliest villains of the franchise – Frieza, Cell and/or Majin Buu. Your goal? Besides surviving, you must find a way to escape the distortion, either by bringing forth a time machine that will get you out, or defeating the villain – the Raider. Neither of these are easy to accomplish; ultimately, the Raider can win the game either by wiping out you and all the survivors, or by forcing you to escape in an emergency time machine, and they get stronger with every kill they make, becoming that much harder to take down.
Though the game is somewhat repetitive, the challenge of it is still appealing enough that I enjoy it alongside  Korban and so I keep playing it.


Number Thirteen
Killing Floor 2

-From the overblown genre of 'zombie shooter' games, comes this surprisingly challenging and enjoyable first-person shooter that pits you against these genetically modified clones known as ZEDs, which are not 'technically' zombies in the sense that they are not actually dead, but they behave much like them.
The story of the game follows a post-apocalyptic event in London, England, centred around a crisis originating from the genetics labs of Horzine Biotech, which it seems was developing these creatures as a military-commissioned project. As is usually the case in these kinds of plots, something goes horribly wrong; the ZEDs, seemingly infinite in number, escape their containment, overrun the internal security forces of Horzine and reach the city streets, consuming everything in their path, and more clones continue to stream out from the laboratory, and the London Police are powerless to contain them.
You take on the role of either a British Army soldier or a Special Police Officer, and join a ragtag team to combat the crisis, surviving wave after wave of the unending ZED horde until you eventually come face to face with the boss monster; in the original game, there was only one boss, known as the Patriarch – who is none other than the creator of the ZEDs, Dr. Kevin Clamely, but in Killing Floor 2, additional boss monsters are added with a random chance to encounter each one at the end, and each of them is as dangerous as the other.
While I enjoyed this game at the time, I kind of fell out of touch with zombie shooters as I got older, and Tripwire Interactive, the developers of this game, started taking up some sketchy practices. So that's why I couldn't put this game higher on the list, but it is still a great game if you like wave survival horror. Hell, I even made fanfiction based on it, which I think may still be in the scraps second on my FurAffinity account. It's grossly dated by now, but I still look back on it fondly for the time.

Honourable Mentions:
-Left 4 Dead 2: Before I fell out with zombie shooters, I played this game right alongside Killing Floor 2, and the latter made it onto the list as just being the more interesting and engaging game; neither game gives much backstory on the playable characters, but the lore of Killing Floor 2 has a bit more depth than this game.
-Divinity: Original Sin 2: While this game is in no way similar to the titles above, I put it here because this was going to be my original Number Thirteen. However, I found that I could not remember very much of the game, let alone enough to give it a proper entry, so I changed my decision to a different game and genre entirely.


Number Fourteen
The Sims

-As some of you may have noticed, character customization matters a lot to me, and in this game, there are more possibilities than probably any other title that will make it onto these lists. For here, I'm going with the first game, since it introduced me to the franchise – specifically, the Sims on the Nintendo Gamecube, which while much more limited than the titles on other consoles and especially PC, was still a lot of fun for me and my favourite game to play after school.
The premise is pretty simple – it is a life-simulator game, hence the name, where you play as a simulated character that you build from scratch. Build a house, get a career, start a family – the whole nine yards. When I got around to trying the PC games, it was well after the Sims 3 came out; the games are so different between platforms it's crazy. Unfortunately, Electronic Arts – as they are so prone to doing, killed the original developers – Maxis, and took the reins of the franchise for themselves... And proceeded to butcher it like they do everything with their greedy practices.
Unfortunately, this game is not on the favourites list, because the first Sims is just too outdated by now, and Sims 3 – the last one I played- gave me plenty of trouble. I got the game originally on Nintendo Wii, and it was glitchy as hell, so I tried PC instead; I had to get a pirated version to unlock all of the content as there are just too many freaking expansions, but it was extremely unstable – which is not unheard of for pirated games, especially ones this big.
Sad to say, my days with this franchise may be over, but if EA gets their **** together, I would still pick these games up again. I'm just not going to hold my breath.


Number Fifteen
Champions Online

-When it comes to MMORPGs... I am probably the hardest critic of them that anyone will ever find. I find them overrated, exceedingly boring and extremely repetitive with no real replayability. But, as with my entry about horror games, there are some exceptions.
Champions Online was a game with more customization than probably any other game I have played in my life. The possibilities were damn near endless, with how you could customize your custom-made superhero character. I was even able to make a fairly accurate depiction of many of my own original characters, especially my feathersona, Volcan MacAingeal. You cannot name any other game, by anyone else, that let me do that – they simply don't exist.
And if that wasn't enough, later in the game I was even able to create my own nemesis, and there was nobody better for that role than Volcan's own nemesis, Calhoun Demonfire. Sadly, I only got to face off against him the one time in his introductory missions – it seems like he never appeared again after that. I also started to find the game somewhat repetitive, as I do with MMOs in general; the character creation options kept me hooked for a while, but even that wore out with me eventually.
I doubt there will ever be another title like Champions; the company that made it, Cryptic, is still around, but they don't seem interested in continuing with this idea. Still, if another Champions Online ever came along, that might be the one thing that could get me interested in MMOs again.

Honourable Mentions:

-Star Wars: The Old Republic: Only left out because of my one-per-franchise rule, this was the MMORPG that kept me hooked for the longest time. Taking place in the same timeline as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic one and two, there was a vastly more expansive world to play around in than we get with the modern games today. You could play a variety of character races and classes, the latter each having their own unique story, and you could fight for either the Republic or the Sith Empire; there was even a Galactic Starfighter game mode. All in all, this was the first and one of only a few MMORPGs I truly loved.
-The Elder Scrolls: Online: Once again missed out due to the one-per-franchise rule, but also because this is the last of what we have received relating to this franchise, not counting a few lacklustre books. All of Bethesda and Zenimax's attention seems to be on this, or their other MMO, Fallout 76, which I never even bothered trying because I knew they'd screw it up. This game kept me hooked for a little while – enough that like with The Old Republic, I played through the story mode to the end, something few other MMO titles manage to get out of me. but eventually continued to suffer that same drawl that all other MMORPG's give me; just the same game, endlessly. Forever grinding, forever doing the same things, and finding out in your first PvP game, that your stats that served you well in the vanilla game, are completely f****** useless, and it's too late for a do-over.
-Final Fantasy XIV: I have never been big on Final Fantasy games, but I did give this one a fair shot. I'll admit, the 'Realm Reborn' base game is one of the stupidest messes I've ever played, BUT! It did redeem itself with the Heavensward expansion, introducing a much more compelling story, better pacing, and an expanded world to enjoy. As such, I actually played through to the end of both the base game and the expansion, but this was another game I felt no replayability and just got repetitive all over again.
-Warframe: It can be debated if this counts as an MMO or not, but when you visit planets, you can encounter other players, and the worlds are big with daily missions and crap to do – like every other title of that genre, so, I count it as one. I only played this a few times with a friend, and I did enjoy it somewhat... But it suffers from that same endless grind, endless drawl, and same-y-ness I feel from every other MMORPG. Even if it isn’t technically supposed to be one, it feels like one, so I put it here.

In this section for Volcan's Gaming DIscussion, I will be starting out with my top ten current favourite games. I'll also be including entries that could have made the lists, as sort of honourable mentions, though I will also go into brief detail as to why they did not make the cut. For this list, I will keep it simple by going in order of my most favourite game to the least favourite among them, and some of the honourable mentions you may see in the later lists but I will be making an effort to avoid that as I want to get as many games as possible onto this list. I will attempt to avoid spoilers if possible but I encourage you all to try these games yourself if you get a chance.
Some of you may notice a certain consistency with the games you see here - one or more traits shared by some of these titles. Even you don't notice it right away, there will be a footnote at the end of the list going into detail about what I mean. Do let me know if this discussion intrigues you to any of these games yourself, or if you see a title here you recognize and/or have tried out yourself and your thoughts on it.
I want to add, I am not particularly great at any of these games though that does not affect my feelings for them. I enjoy playing them regardless, for reasons I will go into detail for each entry.


Number One
XCOM 2: War of the Chosen

-This masterpiece by Firaxis is, without question, my favourite game of all time. I've done multiple playthroughs of it, both the vanilla game and the expansion packs. XCOM 2 is a turn-based strategy game leans heavily on squad-building and customization, with squad-based tactics as the main focus.
You lead a group of 4-6 operatives on missions against an alien occupation, developing your squad members, technology, and tactics as you play through the game, racing against the clock and facing overwhelming odds.
My love for this game comes from the squad-focused build and strategy of the game; outnumbered and outgunned, this game proves that an elite few can match the accomplishments of and entire army. Losses are permanent, making it necessary to plan your moves carefully (though, save-scummers will say otherwise; I'm not above using that tactic, I will admit, so this is not a call-out to people who do). Though my love for this game is unconditional, there are two drawbacks to it to be aware of.
The first is the rather schizophrenic 'chance to hit' whenever one of your operatives attack; you are shown a percentage of 0-100 showing the likelihood your operative has of making that shot. Sometimes, even at 90%+, you will still miss, and this is admittedly the biggest frustration of this game. While you can improve your odds with modifications - such as scopes or combat stims - to improve your operative's aim, they may still miss the target, and many times it will feel like absolute BS when it happens - seriously, some of the alien forces are the size of delivery trucks and yet you can still miss them.
The second drawback is that the game is somewhat poorly optimized. You will occasionally encounter freezes and lag-spikes that should not be happening in an offline, single-player game. This often causes weird bugs and even crashes, but most of the time these are uncommon, especially in the early game.

In summary, XCOM 2 is a masterpiece and I always look forward to playing it when the mood strikes me. Watch out, aliens; my sniper's got you in his sights. Time to die!

Honourable mentions:
-XCOM: Enemy Within/Enemy Unknown: The prequel for XCOM 2 was an obvious choice for a contender when making this entry. Much of the gameplay for XCOM: EU and XCOM 2 are very similar. Before this game, XCOM as a franchise was very different, but this was the game that moved it into turn-based strategy genre. XCOM: Enemy Unknown takes place before the events of XCOM 2, with 2 being the result in case you lose in Enemy Within; this is where you would be stopping the events of 2 from happening, and there are some enemies you face here that do not make it into the sequel game - or, have taken on completely different forms.
I recommend, on this game or the sequel, always have a sniper and a medic. Your team's survival may well depend on them.

-XCOM: Chimera Squad: The Sequel/Spinoff to XCOM 2 was another easy contender for this entry, having all the polish of XCOM 2 but with few optimization issues. However, it didn't make the cut because while it maintains the squad-based mechanics of XCOM 2, it removes the customization in favour of using pre-made characters, and though I love some of these characters I'm partial to being able to build my team up as I choose.
That being said, I love some of the characters; the tsundere Viper, Torque, the cheery ADVENT clone, Cherub, the veteran ex-cop, Blueblood and the dry-humour of Verge all make them memorable characters, and that's just to name a few of them, but it deserves the mention for these guys alone.

-Marvel Midnight Suns: Though not an XCOM game, it was made by the same developers as the other entries above. This is probably the newest game anyone will see on this whole list. But as it is new and still has some content to come, I couldn't put it at the top spot - also, my PC can barely even run it, suffering even more optimization issues and lag spikes while the processor constantly runs hot. That being said, this game comes with a viable option for creating a character of your own, known as the Hunter, who you can set on the path of Light or Darkness, or somewhere in between, while battling alongside Marvel's top heroes from the Avengers, the X-Men and of course, the titular Midnight Suns.
If you are a fan of XCOM and Marvel, this is the perfect game for you; just be mindful, the card-based system takes some getting used to, and you only get 3 plays; choose wisely.

Number Two
Stellaris

-The galaxy-sized grand strategy game by Paradox Interactive is one of the games I have sunk the most hours into in total, exceeded only by the next entry on this list.
After laying the foundations of your own interstellar empire, you are set out into a galaxy of unknown dangers; you never know what you will encounter out there, and no matter how many games you play, you will never have exact the same game twice, which in my opinion gives this game endless replayability. Also, building empires is not limited only to the one you will play as - you can also build the ones you will fight, from prosperous, unified democracies to evil, despotic monarchies to savage, fanatical purifiers, ravenous hive minds or machine assimilators - all of whom will be out only to destroy you... Or, if you pick one of these yourself, you will be out to destroy them.
Your methods of victory will vary. Pursue the path of diplomacy by becoming the leader of the galactic community, or strive for galactic supremacy by conquering everyone who opposes you. Customize and build your ships, raise your mighty armies, defend your borders and allies; build a mighty federation or stand against the entire galaxy on your own. There is no limit whatsoever to how you can play this game.
Unfortunately, there are - as with the previous entry, two drawbacks I must point out to this game. The first has to do with Paradox themselves; this game is constantly receiving updates and expansions, some of which can change the game so drastically, you feel like you need to relearn it all over again. The second is a sort of unknown factor; while you can see if your relative power to your rivals is comparable, you can't know for sure if you are actually stronger than them, and the AI in particular has a tendency to doomstack their fleets and concentrate their attacks in one place. This makes it difficult to know where to focus your defenses as you can't always know where they are going to come from or respond in time, which can be frustrating - albeit not game-breaking if you're able to persevere.
There is too much to this game to go over without making this entry a wall of text, so I will conclude it with this. There are no honourable mentions to follow up this game, as it was my first venture into grand strategy and of the few other titles fitting that bill I've played, none of them can compare so this is the only entry that has no Honourable Mentions


Number Three
Sid Meier's Civilization VI

-Currently holding the spot as the game I have put the most hours into playing, I have a complicated relationship with Civ 6. To be honest, this falls into the category of games I enjoy playing... But I am not actually that good at.
In this large, turn-based strategy game also developed by Firaxis, you play as a historical nation and as one of their leaders. There are many to choose from, including archaic civilizations such as the Babylonians or Sumerians, to modern powerhouses such as the United States of America or Canada, led by the most famous leaders of these great nations. This game is historically educational, not only teaching you about these leaders but also containing entire encyclopedias (Or, Civlopedia as it is called) of the leaders, the unique units, the nations themselves and the crown achievements of each. This is one of the reasons I became fascinated with history, and this game has taught me about many people and nations alike I never even knew existed! Between that, and the random chance of encountering different leaders and city states and natural wonders with every game you play, this game has a lot of replayability as with the previous entry, and if you love history, can also tickle that fancy too.
You have 5 victory types to choose from; Score, Science, Culture, Faith or Diplomacy. You must build your empire and its economy to stand the test of time, and each civilization and/or leader is built with one of these in mind. For example, Gilgamesh - introduced at game release, leads Sumer and is slightly focused on Science and Culture, as well as having a bias to settling on rivers, but there is also Menelik II, leading Ethiopia, who is heavily focused on Faith and only slightly focused on Science and Culture. Depending on how you play, you can fall far behind the other players (human or AI) or skyrocket ahead of them.
Of course, I must mention this game has a concerns worth mentioning. The first is with its optimization; the game suffers multiple crashes, especially when you play on large maps, and learning to play as the different civilizations involves a lot of trial an error - you can play for a hundred hours, and still maybe not find your best playstyle. In my case, I try playing as Canada - because I AM Canadian - and it is one of my worst civilizations because I'm really not good at Cultural endeavours, lol.
I have put a lot of time in this game alongside my buddy  Avogadro LoApostropheRaven, to whom this is probably his favourite game of all time... At least until the next one comes out, hehe.
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Honourable Mentions:
-Humankind: Developed by Amplitude Studios and built with a similar principle in mind, being turn-based and historical by design, Humankind VERY NEARLY took this spot from Civilization VI, as it has a simpler meta game; easier overall to understand... Until a recent update added new features I am still struggling to understand, including a World Congress system which was one of the things that made me actually like this game more than Civ, as I find the World Congress distracting and has a tendency to break the game's flow.
Still, I would recommend this game for the same reasons I'd recommend Civ, but remember; the AI in this game is a lot more aggressive than its Firaxis counterpart; if they see an opportunity to do so, they will attack.

-Sid Meier's Civilization V: The prequel to Civ 6 was an easy choice as an honourable mention but didn't really have a chance to beat its successor on this list. Not to say the fifth entry in this franchise is a bad game; it uses the same principle of bringing historical nations and their leaders into a turn-baxed strategy game, but is a little clunkier than the sequel.
It was ironically through this game how I first met  Avogadro LoApostropheRaven, and I enjoyed many hours of it with both him and  SilverWingCid, earning it a spot here.

-Age of Wonders 3: In stark contrast to the aforementioned games, AoW3 is actually a fantasy game, using the same hexagonal, turn-based setup but set in a fictional world with less focus on empire-building. Create a hero from a variety of playable races and classes, each bringing their own strengths and weaknesses to bear on the battlefield. There is a great deal of variety to explore with this game, both for your strategies and ways to play. Choose from the simple Warlord class, the powerful Sorcerer or Juggernaut, the holy Theocrat, Arch Druid, Necromancy or Rogue - all of which can be played by any hero of any one of multiple playable races, giving the game an admirable amount of replayability.
With that being said, I couldn't give this spot to AoW3, because of 3 major flaws. It is grossly unbalanced IMHO, with some hero classes and races not mixing well together or mixing too well, resulting in overpowered builds. The imbalance also continues with the AI difficulty setting as the higher the difficulty level, the more aggressive the AI plays and the greater the bonus it receives, including being able to produce units with terrifying speed, but this bias is seen most of all in the random chance mechanics of the magic your heroes can use; the AI seems to always have a better chance of succeeding with its spells, and inexplicably manages to build a high resistance in its own soldiers making your own magic far less effective. The last drawback goes again to the unbalance, but this time with units, as some units - such as the Shadow Stalker, are grossly overpowered, being very difficult to injure and capable of massacring your troops with ease; fortunately there are a lot of mods to fix some of these flaws, but I'm of the mind that if you need to mod a game to make it enjoyable, it was a mediocre game to begin with. Still, I get some joy out of playing this with my friend  SilverWingCid, but if I was forced to choose between them, I would have to pick Civ 6 or Humankind over AoW3.


Number Four
Company of Heroes 2

-In addition to also tickling the fancy of the history nut in me, this is also one of the most exhilerating games on this list and a good way to blow off steam, which I frequently enjoy with  SilverWingCid
Set in World War 2, I was at first skeptical of playing this game as, at the time, I was sick of studying WW2 - my school kinda kept forcing it down our throat, but never really covered the parts most people would find interesting - I'll save that as a discussion for another time. CoH2 allows you to play a choice of five factions; the German Wehrmacht and Russian Soviet Union, both of which were playable when the game was released, along with the United States Forces, the United Kingdom Forces and the Oberkommando West - who I had never even heard of before playing this game. Each faction has a particular strength over the others; my personal favourite is the UKF, who focus mainly on defense with various emplacements, highly effective team weapons (Mortars, Anti-tank Guns, Vickers machine gun) and a combat bonus to infantry when fighting from cover. I've always been a bit of a turtle.
The game's only real drawback is that it suffers a bit of a bias toward its AI. Enemy computer players will be able to kill your units with anti-tank guns, which would normally not be effective against infantry, and seems to have laser-guided indirect weapons (like mortar teams) that can wipe out the whole squad it strikes under certain conditions. This is only made worse by playing on higher difficulties - on expert, the AI outright cheats in additional units, confronting you with a seemingly endless sea of infantry, armour and weapons - the main reason I enjoy the UKF as they can stand against this flood.
This a minor drawback in an otherwise great game, and I have high expectations for its sequel set to come out this month.

Honourable Mentions:
-Age of Empires 2: Developed by Ensemble Studies in 1999. While also being a real-time strategy game, it does not give me the same kind of excitement and tension as I get from CoH2. While it is also something that tickles my fancy as a history nut, the AI is far less tactical and the resources less simplistic. Not to say I would ever look down on this classic, which I still enjoy playing from time to time, but it is unfortunately a product of its time and has been surpassed. Still, it is worth mentioning as not only has this game had several remasters that have improved it over the years, it is also STILL receiving content! If you like history and RTS, this is always a good game to start with.

-Age of Mythology: Also developed by Ensemble Studios, but in 2002. As with AoE2, this is another RTS title I put a lot of thought into for picking entries for this list, but also like AoE2 it is a product of its time and does not have a simplified resource system, as well as being somewhat unbalanced with the Titans expansion. Still, this game covers both a love of history as well as mythology, so it is still a title worth considering if you love RTS titles.

-Stronghold Crusader: Developed by Firefly Studies in 2002, this game was once my favourite RTS castle sim of all time. Unfortunately, it suffers multiple drawbacks such as heavily confined maps and un-challenging AI opponents - even the hardest of them don't provide much of a challenge once you master the game. There was sequel to this game that came out in 2014, but it is an honestly mediocre game despite being 12 years newer, which is why I mention the original Crusader over its sequel. Despite its dated mechanics, the Stronghold franchise has a large library of games to choose from, and Crusader is still a fun game overall, just a short-lived one.

-Heroes of Might and Magic III: While not an RTS title, being turn-based instead, this game was released in 1999 by New World Computing, who sadly no longer owns the rights to the franchise. I could not give this spot to HoMaM 3 because it is, sadly, I highly dated game and lacks the polish of the other titles mentioned here. That being said, it introduces far more variety in terms of playable races, heroes and magical spells to employ, giving the game tons of replayability, albeit offset by a somewhat imbalanced game meta that sadly never got the chance to be polished. While this franchise is still around - now simply called Might and Magic, it has gone through multiple developers - none of whom can capture the same thing that made this game enjoyable, I could not give it this spot over CoH2 or the above games.

Number Five
StarCraft 2

-Developed by Blizzard Entertainment and released 2010, before the buyout by Activision and the controversy surrounding the company today, StarCraft 2 is the long-awaited sequel to the original StarCraft released in 1998 - which I played obsessively back in the day, and was overjoyed when I learned of the sequel game, which remains one of my favourite RTS games of all time.
As with the original, you play from one of 3 playable races - Terrans (humans), Zerg, and Protoss, each with their own strengths and weaknesses and characteristics unique to them, leaving a variety of playstyles available to players and letting you change your strategy on the fly. This is one of the only games I actually tried to play competitively, and I actually did fairly good for a while, but it is not the competitive play I loved most. The most compelling portion of both this game and its predecessor have to be in their story modes, with a variety of characters and plots that are too engaging not to love. James Raynor remains one of my favourite sci-fi characters to date, and is further explored in published books that I have read, taking a center-point in both the Terran and Protoss stories in the original game, as well as all 3 stories in StarCraft 2 and its expansions, all of which made the game just THAT much more enjoyable, as the ability to develop the Zerg or Protess in a matter of your choosing adds freedom of choice and great replayability value to the campaign/story mode.
This is one game I dare say is pretty close to perfect, as there are no drawbacks to it that I can think of... In the game itself, I mean. Unfortunately, the company developing it has gone completely down the tank, though that is a discussion that I will not have on this list as we are here to discuss the games. I had to put SC2 here as with the uncertain future of Blizzard Entertainment itself, I am uncertain to the future of this franchise either. At least, if the Legacy of the Void expansion is to be the last entry to this franchise, it is an excellent place to end the legacy of StarCraft itself.

Honourable Mentions:

-WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos/Frozen Throne: You can't mention StarCraft without talking about the successful RTS titles that ran parallel to them, utilizing very similar game mechanics but taking on a fantasy spin over science fiction; choosing between the games boiled down to taste rather than function as at their core I find these games were virtually the same. Just like StarCraft 1 and 2, WarCraft 3 introduces multiple playable races - four instead of three, with compelling storylines centered around each one, and unforgettable characters. Unfortunately, as WarCraft - as a franchise - went in a completely different direction after this game, StarCraft 2 is the better title in terms of function and polish, and we'll discuss my thoughts about the 'new direction' in detail...


Number Six
Pokémon: Sun & Moon

-It is extremely difficult to narrow down a single pick to what is one of the longest running, not to mention the best-selling video game franchise in the entire world. I had to think, long and hard, considering favourite mechanics over favourite Pokemon or favourite storylines, to find which one struck the best chord with me. In general, I enjoy Pokemon for the worlds it gives us to explore, and the experiences along the way, while consistently maintaining the mechanics that it was built on, including a team-building focus that can be decided by your preferences and strategies - much like XCOM 2; build the team you want, with absolute freedom of choice.
In the end, Sun and Moon, the Generation 7 titles, won out, and I'm talking about the originals, not the spinoff/sequel games, though they did add a teensy bit more to the game at their core they were pretty much exactly the same game. Sun & Moon (Moon for me) was where the franchise took a step in a new direction, while keeping mechanics from previous generations players grew to love such as Mega Evolution, and adding a few of its own such as the Island Challenge - rather than the standard Gym Challenge, and the introduction of Z-moves; love or hate them, they were still pretty cool. On a personal note, this is also where my favourite Rock-type Pokemon, second to none, was introduced; Lycanroc, in all of its forms, and I still use it in my battle teams - which form depends on the strategy each team is focused on.
So why is it more than halfway down the list? This is in large part due to the successor games. Sword & Shield, while adding new mechanics of its own and taking the franchise into open world - something it really has benefitted from, it cut the mechanics from Sun & Moon that makes it my favourite in the franchise - the aforementioned Mega Evolution and Z-moves in favour of Dynamax, and the ability to challenge the Battle Tree (or similar locations) alongside a friend, and the Battle Royale matches - a nice one-off that I know not everyone enjoyed by I loved them. The Battle Tree being removed bothered me most of all; sure, we got the Battle Tower in Sword & Shield, but you can only challenge it single-player - you can't bring a buddy, and in the recent games, Scarlet & Violet, you don't even have that either, as well as Dynamax being cut now for a rather... Odd gimmick taking its place.
Sun & Moon struck the balance between new and old, introduced us to a surprisingly relatable villain team and some of the best designs for Pokemon we have seen to date. With 1008 Pokemon now to choose from, there is pretty much something for everyone; even if you don't play the games you will find a favourite Pokemon if you look, but for me - as someone who does play them, this has to be the one I pick as my favourite game.

Honourable Mentions:
Side note: Sorry that a Mystery Dungeon game didn't make it onto here; I've only played 2 of them and neither one was one I'd have considered to be a favourite game.

-Pokemon: Scarlet/Violent: Despite my above mentioned issues with the games that came after Sun & Moon, Scarlet & Violet are still worth mentioning, because the Gen 9 games have the most compelling story the franchise has seen since Gen 5. While the main focus is around the Academy that is the center point of the game, there are 3 different sub-stories to pursue, such as the classic gym challenge, the Team Star missions (operation Starfall) and seeking out the medical herbs to save the partner Pokemon of one of your classmates, culminating in a truly epic finale. Story-wise, this game beats all the others in my opinion, but the removed mechanics, the DLC still to come and the multiple reported bugs this game still suffers from, I couldn't pick it as a favourite.

-Pokemon: Sword & Shield: This was the game that brought the franchise into the open world aspect for the first time. While I will admit there are a lot of things it could have improved, such as filling said open world with more features, I like to think they were playing it safe since this was a first time for them, and they did a lot better when the next game came out; Pokemon Legends: Arceus also utilized and open world, but more on that in a second. Sword & Shield also introduced many new Pokemon that have become some of my favourites, such as Cinderace rising to be second to Blaziken as my favourite Fire-type, and Inteleon my favourite Water-type. Furthermore, this game also introduced the most terrifying Legendary Pokemon opponent the franchise has ever seen, and has still yet to be surpassed; Eternatus, especially in his alternate form, which even by the fandom is considered way too powerful to be used.

-Pokemon Legends: Arceus: As mentioned with Sword & Shield, this game continued to utilize the open-world aspect, while also showing us the history of one of the game's regions, a variety of amazing regional forms - such as the scary and rather deadly Hisuian Zoroark, one of the few Pokemon in the whole series to have only one weakness, as well as an engaging and intriguing story to follow. Though this was the first time I came close to actually completing the in-game Pokedex, which you need to do to unlock the true final boss, I never quite managed to do it, and I find this game is not as replayable as the other games, which is why I only give it a mention.
That being said, as an add-on, the concept of this game has HUGE potential; stories set in the distant past of each region, given the variety of places the series has built up. We could have places like an Old American West (old Unova), Victorian-era Galar (Victorian UK) and edo-period Japan (the first 4 regions of the franchise are all based on areas of Japan; this is a no-brainer!). So I for one look forward to seeing what else they do with this.

-Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Links/Master Duels: I put this game here because, between Generations 2 and 6, I fell out of Pokemon for a while and didn't get back into the games until  Korban gave me a 3DS and a copy of Alpha Sapphire, which was when I got back into it. But during that time I was away from the franchise, barring getting an emulator of Pokemon Ruby for old-time's sake, I was more into Yu-Gi-Oh; I watched every episode of the original anime, GX and 5D's, as well as some of Zexal - which I couldn't sit through because I thought Yuma was a complete tool. I played many of the games that came out during that time, and still play Master Duels with :lampshadeheadman: from time to time. But come on, as a franchise, Pokemon is just better, with Yu-Gi-Oh plagued by a constantly changing meta where even beginner decks don't stand a chance against even a mildly viable deck, which is why I couldn't pick it over Pokemon nor give it a spot on the list outside a mention.

Number Seven
Mario Kart 8

-The Mario Kart franchise has been running since the SNES/Super Nintendo days, all the way back to when I was just a wee lad. Mario Kart 8 - specifically the Deluxe Edition, is the peak of the franchise, keeping everything that made the previous games good and adding so much more - so much variety in characters and karts alike, being able to customize what you take into the race - lots of trial & error means lots of replayability.
The game is beautiful, and so much fun - it brings out a silly side of me you will never see anywhere else, where I spout shit like "Beware! I'm armed with a turtle shell and a history of poor life choices!" - the first time I said that, my friend Paul exploded into laughter. This is probably the only game ever that I actually enjoy playing with a full group. I normally prefer not to play with too many other people - one, maybe two, but this is one I think can be best enjoyed with more people, which makes this the perfect game to have at parties and get-togethers - if you're into the sort of thing, lol.
I can't really say there are any drawbacks to this game, beyond the trial and error - once you have your favourite kind of build all you can do is experiment! Every race and every grand prix is an adventure in and of itself.

Honourable Mentions:

-Mario Party 2: Yeah, we've all heard of this game franchise ruining friendships, but as I was talking about party games I have to mention the game that literally has 'party' in its title. This game introduces a board game style of play and various mini games to play that only got better with each entry to the franchise, but I chose Mario Party 2 because it was my first one and it is the only one I still get to play, since it's out on the Nintendo Switch virtual console. No online multiplayer though, so if you wanna play this with friends you have to do it the old fashioned way of inviting them over to your place, or bringing the Switch to them - after all, it's quite portable.

-Mario Kart: Double Dash: I had to mention this game, since it was my favourite in the Mario Kart franchise until 8 came along, and - believe it or not, it was the last one I played until 8 was released on the Wii U. I never played any of the other Mario Karts between this and 8, never having the opportunity to do so. I do fondly remember playing this game many times with my friend Paul, with me as the driver and him throwing the items; we made the perfect team. I do hope this game gets a remaster someday...

Sonic Riders: Less of a party game, but I had to mention it since we were talking about a racing game. Sonic Riders was fun for its time, combining some high octane action with a fun variety of characters, ways to play and a surprisingly interesting story, which carried over into its sequel, Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity. Unfortunately, the third entry, Sonic Free Riders, I never got to play - and from what I've heard, I'm not missing much, so I could only give this game a mention, though I hope it sees a remaster or even a new entry sometime - but given Sonic Team's kinda schizo method of developing games, I'm not holding my breath.

Number Eight
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

-When it comes to the Mario RPG games, this one is the peak of them all to me. I only played a bit of the Superstar Saga, but not many of the other games. I was first introduced to Paper Mario when I was a kid, and my brother was obsessed with it. I however, didn't like it; at the time, when video game rentals were still a thing, I was fixated on two other games that my bro was not fond of.
Overtime though, Paper Mario grew on me; I started to like it, to the point I actually beat it! Something I didn't really do back then - I never finished most of the games I played as a kid. But this one I did, and when we got our Gamecube, this game was on both our lists when we heard about it coming out, and it was worth the wait - this game is a masterpiece! Surprisingly, it doesn't have the elements I usually look for in 'favourite games', but this one still manages to win me over with its compelling story, colourful characters, and having a multi-dimensional plot in what is literally a one-or-two dimensional world.
The reason the Mario RPG games are so successful, right alongside the regular Mario games, is because they break away from the established norm while still capturing what made the original games great - this game came out on the same console as Super Mario Sunshine, but outperformed it even though both games stepped out of the norm. Sure, Princess Peach is still taken captive in both games, but in Paper Mario: TTYD, it's not Bowser who does it, and when you get to the ending... Well, you will see exactly why this game did it better, but do not wish to spoil it because it is just too good~. Play it for yourself or watch a Let's Play; either way, you won't be disappointed.

Honourable Mentions:

-Super Mario RPG: You can't talk about Mario RPG's without talking about the very first one - unless you were born after it was released, then it's understandable. Developed by Square Enix, when they were still just called Square, Super Mario RPG utilized a similar combat system to Final Fantasy (we'll discuss that on a later list), Square's crown glory, and actually did it pretty well. The story is engaging, even if the variety is lacking, and the characters Geno and Mallow, who have yet to reappear in any other game (spirits in Smash Bros Ultimate don't count!) are STILL wanted by fans to make a comeback. The main villain of the game, Smithy, is also a much more intimidating villain than Bowser if you ask me, so much so that Bowser actually HELPS you fight him, and this was the first game we see a team-up between him and Mario ever occur.

-Paper Mario: Have to mention the original game, of course. As I detailed above, I was not willing to give this game a chance at first, but overtime it grew on me, and is a game I still enjoy revisiting from time to time - hell, I JUST beat it again on Switch, since it came out for the N64 virtual console library, and it still has a compelling story and colourful cast just like The Thousand Year Door; the sequel, to me, just ended up doing it much better. Still, I would go so far as to declare this game a classic, and a staple for anyone who enjoys games from older console generations.

The REAL One
Number Nine
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

-Though it has been a while since I had a chance to play this one in particular, like any other Nintendo-dork, I grew up with this franchise right alongside the Super Mario Brothers. I have played nearly every game that has been released under this name, save for the original NES games and the Oracle games for the Game Boy. The first one I played was A Link to the Past, and the most recent one I played was of course Breath of the Wild, the sequel of which I'm eager to play next~.
As for why I picked Twilight Princess over many other possible titles, well, I am an avid reader and writer of Dark Fantasy; it is undoubtedly my favourite genre in recent years, and I think that started with this game. Sure, you could say Majora's Mask was the first venture into 'dark' fantasy that the franchise took, and I'd agree with you, buuuuut I never got very far into Majora's Mask back then. We could only find it as a rental, and it was always out of stock no matter what store we went to; on the rare occasions we did get it my brother would never let me near it, so though I have played Majora's Mask since then, I still haven't completed it.
Twilight Princess was a beautiful game on release, and would probably be one I'd choose to replay if you placed all of the games before me and asked me to pick one. While it does have a lot of cut content and suffers from having an inventory full of items you will rarely ever use again... Let's be honest, which Zelda game doesn't do that XD? Maybe Breath of the Wild, but there are plenty of items to find there that you could say are pretty darn useless. This game introduced Wolf Link, who is fun to play as, and the ability to switch between this form and Link's regular form is just lots of fun. There's also the Hero's Shade, who - for the sake of avoiding spoilers, is a much bigger figure than players will realize at first, and it gives you the BEST final boss battle against Ganondorf of any other game in the franchise; four rounds with the King of Evil in four different forms (again, spoiler, so I won't detail them) that just cements the reason why Ganon is such a tremendous threat to this world, and doesn't hold back in showing it.

Honourable Mentions:

-Breath of the Wild: At the time of making this list, list is the most recent entry to the main line of games- with Tears of the Kingdom well on its way (although there is also the Link's Awakening remake to consider but, I haven't played it yet). While still capturing the essence of Legend of Zelda, this game also expands by adding survival elements, making it necessary to craft your own food for healing and bonuses, as well as being aware of the elements which can still harm you. It also introduced voice acting, a first for this whole franchise, and built a HUGE world with so much to explore, so many people and creatures to see, and an epic quest to undergo.
But as for why I didn't pick it over Twilight Princess, three reasons. The Shrine Quests; they get really freaking same-y overtime - you can only do so many of them before it starts to drawl and you're on auto-pilot. Some of them are pretty fun and a nice challenge but there's just way too many. The second, equipment - not just the brittle weapons you get but also the very limited space which you keep them, adding a second same-y and rather time-consuming quest to find Korok seeds and locating the maracca guy to expand your inventory, and only one inventory at a time; weapons, bows or shields, not all 3 at once, adding a really annoying fetch quest.
But third, definitely because of the bosses; the Blight Ganons. While somewhat challenging, I find really they lack the imagination of the previous games; Calamity Ganon is a terrifying opponent but if you take the time to beat the Blight Ganons, you already know how to beat him, not to mention you make the fight much easier by doing so. But that is without mentioning the two biggest disappointments of all; Master Kohga, the only boss who isn't a 'Ganon' (until Monk Maz Khoshia was introduced), but rather than being a deadly ninja master, he's a complete, bumbling imbecile who isn't that hard to beat, and don't even get me started on Dark Beast Ganon. That had to be the worst final boss the entire franchise has ever had.
All in all, BotW is a beautiful game, and despite my issues with it I have replayed it once before. But I can't make it a favourite because of the flaws.

-Ocarina of Time: I already committed blasphemy by forgetting to put a Legend of Zelda game on this list originally, I'm not going to commit it again by not mentioning this game, lol.
I think we can all agree this was a turning point for the franchise, introducing not only separate timelines that connected all of the games (too long a discussion to have on this list) but giving the games their first push into the realm of 3D. This was definitely Link's most epic adventure to this point and this game remains a favourite to many fans of the Legend of Zelda. It also has the best boss monsters of all the games aside from Twilight Princess; that was the main reason I picked TP over this one. Twilight Princess keeps the core mechanics introduced by Ocarina of Time, but it was TP that first let me fight from horseback with bow as well as sword, and again, Twilight Princess just has a better final boss fight than this or especially Breath of the Wild.

-Wind Waker: Though this was introduced long after Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask, this was actually the first Legend of Zelda game I ever completed; I never beat Ocarina of Time all the way through until well after I beat WInd Waker, and I still haven't beat Majora's Mask or Link to the Past (the latter being my introduction to the franchise). This game took away the element of horseback riding introduced in Ocarina of Time and perfected in Twilight Princess and replaced it with travelling by a sail boat instead. Not a bad concept, mind you - I enjoyed it, but I've always loved horseback riding in and out of video games. That however isn't the reason I didn't choose Wind Waker for this entry.
Wind Waker has a very large library of cut content, as most of these games do, but the sheer volume I think is at its highest in this one, especially in the late game; all in all, Wind Waker was poised to be so vast, it wouldn't be surpassed until Breath of the Wild came out YEARS later. But, it didn't end up like that, and I've always felt robbed because of it. Nevertheless, this game is still a masterpiece of its own. and brought us not only Toon Link, but the Rito and a satisfying adventure overall.
.......The Ghost Ship still scares me a bit >.>


Number Ten
Need for Speed: Most Wanted

-I want to start by clarifying, I am referring to the game released in 2005 for the Playstation 2, Xbox and Gamecube, now the game of the same name that came out in 2012 - that game is vastly inferior in my honest opinion, its only upside being that it's free to play. Which knowing EA, probably means there's a catch - correct me if I'm wrong.
This was the first Need for Speed game I ever played, and while I am not an avid follower of the franchise, I must have played through this game four times! I had so much fun with it when I was younger that it made me a minor automotive enthusiast and even led to me developing a street racer character here on FA, though I don't use him anymore. The challenge of beating fifteen boss racers and evading the police, working your way up to becoming the 'most wanted' racer in the fictional city of Rockport. Pick your favourite car, power it up, customize it to your liking and race through the streets to be the top dog on the blacklist. It really brought out the bad boy in me.
As for why I picked this game and not subsequent titles, some I'll mention in honourable mentions below, this would be my first pick if I had the chance to play any of the ones I've checked out again. Some games just leave a much better impression than their successors.

Honourable Mentions:

-Need for Speed: Payback: This is the most recent game of the franchise I've played, and for a while I was really enjoying it. It had all the same features I loved in NFS: Most Wanted, with greater variety and a much bigger world to race across, utilizing a card system instead of the simplified method of upgrading the engine to different tiers. But I couldn't pick it for the list, because of EA; this game is still corrupted by microtransactions, trying to nickel and dime players, and while you can get through most of the game without them, when you get to a certain point the difficulty of the game spikes to the point that now, you NEED to get better cards to win, which comes down to luck, and in typical EA fashion, being 'lucky' means spending tooooons of money on random chance. I.E, their controversial 'surprise mechanics' that we know is just gambling.

-Need for Speed: Carbon: A direct sequel to Need for Speed: Most Wanted, this game brings in all the same features as was in Most Wanted, but introduces a new feature, differentiating between Muscle, Exotic and Tuner-type cars, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. It was a close pick between this game and its prequel, which I only chose the latter because of some lazy development between the games - such as police dialogue clearly having been brought over to cut corners; they mention one of the Blacklist racers you beat in the prequel by name, even though he never appears in it, and the game is also in a perpetual night scape which could get somewhat hard on the eyes with prolonged playing. If those two things don't bother you, then if you like Most Wanted, you will like Carbon too.

-Grand Theft Auto: Online: This one, going to a completely different franchise, but I got into it for the same reason as I liked the above-mentioned games. Your character was of course a criminal, but you had the freedom to choose what kind of criminal; from petty theft, to street racing, to a deadly killer to even taking part in big, glorious heists. However, this game suffered from a very stunted progression system - you had to level up before you could enjoy certain features, which would normally be fine, if you didn't level up so freaking slowly, and the servers had a big, big, big big big BIG problem with hackers, constantly breaking the game and making you wonder whenever you landed in a non-private server how long you had before you got blown up by a jet fighter, or attacked by an asshole with aimbot and invulnerability, which Rockstar refused to fix.
I have more I could say about this game, but I'll save it for another list. To summarize, I got into this game for more street racing, I stayed with it for everything else it allowed you to do, which is why I put it as a mention.


SO! That's my list for my favourite games of all time. Are there any here you recognize? Feel free to comment about them and share your thoughts!

Now, did you all notice the common feature across most of these games? If you determined that a big part of choosing games I like was replayability and freedom of choice... Well, you got it! That pretty much sums up how I decide which games I love, and every one of these games emphasizes both of these to some degree - even if only slightly, but if it doesn't have any of these it likely won't land as a favourite title. Another element I enjoy is customization, which is also an element of 'freedom of choice' I suppose.

Next list: Top 15 Loved Video Games

So while I was driving home today, back from my latest rotation at work, my mind conjured up an idea I wanted to explore. Make a sort of blog of video games I have history with (blog, lacking a better term) exploring the various games I like, dislike, and the reasons why. So, while I was driving with music blasting, I left my mind conjure up ideas for topics; I say 'topics' because I couldn't settle on just a single one. But, I really wanted to do this; video games today are a big part of people's lives, as a means of coping, killing time and/or meeting new people, or other reasons I can't name - those are just mine.

So, since I've made some pretty good progress on writing and edits this month, I'm going to take a short reprieve to discuss what games are important to me on countdown-style lists - as well as people I share them with, or which ones have been the most impactful, with a set of rules on each one, such as why they make it onto these lists. Normally, this is something you might find more commonly on YouTube but as I lack the means, audience or knowledge of making YouTube videos beyond the basics, I'll play to my strengths and put them in writing. I will submit them on FurAffinity, SoFurry, DeviantArt, Ko-Fi and put links to them on my Twitter as well - some may be slightly delayed, but they will get there.

I invite anyone to share their thoughts when these lists are made; I want to know what you think of the choices, what games you might like as well or why you do not; let's just keep it a polite discussion.

Here are the topics I will discuss, in order (WIll add direct links as each one is completed):

Top 10 Favourite Video Games (These are the games and/or franchises that I adore the most and always come back to)
Top 15 Loved Video Games (Games and/or franchises I love, but are not quite my favourites)
Top 10 Disliked Video Games (Self explanatory, but also including games that really disappointed me)
Top 10 Nostalgic Video Games (Also self explanatory. Note; there will be no PC games on this list)

Again, as these lists come out I invite everyone to share their thoughts on the selections, and maybe make your own lists - I'd love to see them ^_^.
So, let's talk video games~
Come join us in my Library-themed Discord server for the discussion or just leave a comment on the journals if you do not have Discord.
Server link: https://discord.gg/35xk6J8k

Still an hour away in my timezone but I'm going to be asleep by the time the clock hits it so I'm just saying it now.

Hope everyone has a good day!

Happy Halloween, everyone! Life update coming here.

So, I'm starting yet another new job; seriously, I've changed employers more times this year than I have the past 12 years of my life . *Ahem*, but anyway, I'm going back into Security for a job in the next province over from where I live. It's a camp job, like I did about a decade ago; two weeks on, two weeks off, plus a very long drive to get there; about 10 hours away total. I'll be put up in a hotel the night before, then I continue on to the camp and I'm there for the next 14 days.

As always I'm a little nervous, starting a new job and all. But, it's something I've done before so I'm positive I'll get the hang of it~! Of course this job is taking me up into the mountains, so I don't know what kind of connectivity I'll have out there. They say the TV's in camp can get Netflix so there's got to be something, but I also don't have a good writing utility; I was planning on getting a refurbished laptop for that purpose but I can't afford it right now, so all I've got is my phone and my crappy Galaxy Tab A that barely works XP. Still, it's something.

I'll see you all when I get home on the 16th/17th! (Overnight job so chances are my shift ends on the 17th, and then I'll need to stay somewhere on the way home.)

Calhoun: "Well, since it seems we're venturing into my favourite month of the year, it's about time I step out of the shadows!"

Calhoun has appeared!

So, some of you might know that I started a new job about 5 weeks ago (August 2nd to be specific).
Well... It's not going all that well, truthfully.

From day one, I unfortunately have been getting very easily stressed out. At times, overly emotional, to the point I couldn't keep my temper in check. Well, today, that seemed to all come to a head. You see, for the last two days in particular, I promised myself I'd let go, and have no problems with my anger. And, I've actually been able to keep that. I've not gotten angry, had no blowup episodes or nothing. But... It may be too late. You see, we were having a company barbeque at work, and of course I was invited, so I went. Decided it's time I try to finally come out of my shell. I tried to strike up conversations with a few people, but no one would talk to me. I couldn't get more than short answers, and practically nothing from the people who work in the same department as myself.

I think I have already tarnished my reputation too far. So, even if the place isn't going to fire me, I'm certainly not making friends.
But the issue doesn't end there.

In addition to not losing my temper, I also have been keeping a close watch on my progress. While I certainly do sometimes still feel pressured, often feeling like I need to be in two places at once or have eyes in the back of my head because something is always going on or needing to get done where I'm not looking, because I'm focused on other tasks, I think I did pretty well.

For context, my workspace puts me beside two conveyor belts - one delivers the product that I package, the other carries my packages to the labelling machine (Which I shit you not, has probably broken down more times in the month I've been here than years I've been alive) But I'm also responsible for delivering box lids to the labellers, to cover the products with. The chute for those lids being right above my head. They go through those lids faster than I load product, and stuff never stop coming during the morning - there is constant product coming down the conveyor I have to package, and if I don't grab the cuts I'm responsbile for (usually the unlabelled stuff) they get carried down the conveyor and to the next worker who is usually handling the import items (labelled items go to Europe) so they have to carry those back to me. Plus, shit falls off the conveyor a lot if I'm not standing there, like when I am bringing the box lids over to the labellers or going to retrieve an item that go past me, and if a packaged item falls on the floor it has to go back on a different conveyor, one that sits on the other side of my department and can take me at least 5 seconds to reach and come back from (May not sound like much but a lot can happen in 5 seconds).

So yeah, two places at once, eye in back of head. Easily the hardest part of the job, BUT, today, I was managing. I had no blowups, and my only incident was a misunderstood bit of instructions, but otherwise, I think I overall did quite well. I kept up, I kept my emotions in check, product kept moving, all in all a good day. Yanno what I felt?

Absolute. Apathy.
No pride, no confidence, no accomplishment, not even a tinge of joy... I literally did not care. After putting in all that effort, I just did not care, even though I had done so well.
So what does this mean, when that even after doing a good job you just don't give a damn? All that effort, just for a hollow sensation? What's the fucking point?

So yeah... After all this, plus the awkwardness of that barbeque... Perhaps this job was a mistake. Leaving the hotel where I was before was necessary - I needed to get out, but this may have just not been the right way to go.

So, woke up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. Gonna be a loooong day at work, methinks.

So, I updated my FA Page - something I've been neglecting for quite a while.

As of 20 minutes before I posted this journal I am now 30 years old.

Here's to another year of surviving in this mad mad world I've been born into. :cheers:

https://london.ctvnews.ca/london-ma.....tion-1.5844492

The 59 year old man mentioned in this article... That's my uncle.
I'm damn glad the cops found the son of a bitch who tried to kill him.

I'm doing the finishing touches for my move to my new place. Today I'm going to be disassembling my desk, and hopefully moving it too, so that'll require me unhooking my PC.

Find me over on Discord if you need me- likely I'll still be using it on my tablet or phone. I'm going to try to get my desk into the car but I'm fairly sure that even in pieces it'll be too big. I'm getting everything I possibly can over to the new place today - I want to get this move over with. The big stuff will be moved on Saturday.

In addition to the news in this journal's title, I am also proud to report, that  Korban and I succeeded in completing the resolution I made earlier this year. The completion of Pokemon: Team Valiant! Though I'm only in the process of editing the 7th arc, a secondary arc (7.5) and two additional arcs have also been completed. So while the project isn't 'done' per se, the main story itself has reached its conclusion, with the possibility of additional content being added as time allows and ideas flow!

I will continue to edit the chapters we've completed. I'm not sure I can finish them before this year is over, but I will give it a try.

For now, for all of you who have followed the Team Valiant series so far, thank you for your interest and I hope you continued to enjoy the story as more chapters are released!

Next year, it's back to form, as Volcan MacAingeal - both the Earth and Prime versions of him, will return to the spotlight!

Okay, so, I've been to see the eye doctor. There's not much they could tell me - as I came up to the mall where the office is, they called me and suggested I phone the specialist I saw before, which I did. After answering a few questions, the specialist's office told me to carry on with my appointment, and see if they could find anything - like, preliminary tests, I'm guessing. But they couldn't find anything. The pupils in both my eyes still recede, no signs of damage or inflammation, and I can still see fine out of my left eye but my right is blurry. I can still perceive distance and colour, but can't make out shapes or read anything with my right eye. I even tried holding up my driver's license to my eye, like RIGHT in front of it. I couldn't read a single word on the license, or anything they tested me on.

So, for now, they're trying to get me back to the specialist, and if that one won't see me, they'll find me another one. Hopefully within a day or two, since this is clearly a greater concern than when I saw them a few months back -they didn't even charge me for the appointment, for which I was very thankful. So, all I can do now is shut up and wait...

This journal may have a few spelling errors as at this moment I can barely see out my right eye. The last two months have not been kind to my health...

This has been going on for a few days but whatever is going on with my eye has been carrying on for a couple of months now. It just started as my eye aching, and when my eye started to lose focus I went to the optician. He believed the cause tobe Optic Nerve Edema, because the optic nerve in my right eye showed some signs of inflammation. So, he referred me to a specialist, for which I had to wait six weeks.

Before I even got in to see this specialist I went through about a week suffering from vertigo, which I thought might have been connected to my eye in some way but the neurologist who saw me at the hospital didn't think that the case nor did the tests point to that connection.

So once i was past this vertigo I still wasn't back to normal as I was still having issues with my eye, not to mention my balance seems to be off. I can no longer walk in a straight line, and my hands keep slipping even while holding this tablet, yet apparently my grip is still strong so this isn't a nerve issue, and I've mercifully managed to avoid dropping anything breakable.

When I went to the specialist, I feel his process was rushed. After his nurses dilated my pupils, he examined the eye... and found nothing wrong. The optic nerve no longer had any signs of inflammation but my vision has worsened instead of improved. It has been almost a month since I saw this specialist so it's been about 3 months since this all started. Then off I went, without much else besides my eyes being dilated and practically blind - don't worry, I took a taxi. I didn't try driving XD

Coming to now, my vision in my right eye is worse than ever. The eye is blurry, even with my glasses on, and won't focus. Likely, this means a prescription update... Which I cannot afford right now. The aforementioned Vertigo episode caused me to miss 3 days of work, and before that I had to fix an issue with my car - the gauge cluster needed to be replaced. These combined losses are still hitting me even now, as I fell behind on my rent, bills, insurance and was running very low on groceries, all of which I resolved last week but was left with next to nothing after the fact.

Payday isn't until next week - October 22nd... Likely I'm going to fall behind again. I may need to ask my mom or brother for an assist but until this vision issue is fixed, even my writing is affected.

Wish me luck

So, I'm writing this journal from the hospital. The last few days, I've been a bit sick. While at work Wednesday night, I was suffering dizziness. When I got home after work, I started vomitting endlessly. I couldn't stop... It seemed like I had caught a flu, but today (Saturday) the dizziness was back, and worse than before.

So, after spending 10 hours in hospital, with multiple tests of my blood pressure, one IV bag, and a CT scan, i find I'm now waiting on a Neurologist because, so far, everything seems normal with me besides the fact I can't walk straight.

I don't know what to make of this... But it is worrying. Let's hope this isn't a sign of anything permanent...

So, for those who don't know. I work in a hotel. I work the overnight - while everyone else sleeps, I crunch numbers, and watch cameras. It's an easy job but the novelty of ease kinda wears out when you've been doing similar work for ten years.

So I've been trying to branch out. I've been applying for jobs that aren't too similar to my current one. Yesterday, I got an interview at one such job, for the position of a wash bay attendant. The short of it is that they clean trailers, particularly farm trailers for transporting animals, farming equipment like tractors, and sometimes RV's. It's a simple job, probably also a bit monotonous but they say the work helps pass the time. It's just very... wet. Lots of hosing, lots of spraying.

It seems like my chances of getting the job are pretty good. It pays less than I make now, but I'd escape the slog of this hotel. I've been here for 4 years - as of tomorrow it will be my fourth anniversary here. Before that I was a security guard which was also very monotonous at the site I was at, a site that my boss wouldn't let me transfer out of - because, he could deny it all he wanted but NOBODY wanted to work there. To clarify, this was a regional airport, and no, I was not a screening officer. I opened doors, and I sat around waiting for flights. Flights that were hours apart and very often delayed.
Oh, and it was a split shift. That part had people quitting before they even really started. I trained 9 other guards there and then never saw them again. Like I said, NO ONE wanted to work that position - it was so undesirable they'd rather be unemployed.

But I digress. Now we come to the root of the problem. Again, I think my chances of getting this job are good. It pays a little bit less than I make now, but it's something new. Something that isn't this...

And I'm second guessing it.

Just... Why? I have wanted away from this job for almost two years now, and only this year did I even start getting interviews. I still haven't been able to find a new job, and got depressed when I was turned down for two jobs in particular. Now, I'm finally given the opportunity and I don't know if I want it.

It's bad enough that I am not inspired or motivated I become fundamentally lazy. Now it seems I can't make up my mind on what I actually want! I have jumped between job ideas this past year - Fire Watch - one of the ones I applied for but was rejected - forest technician, historian, going back to Security - failed repeatedly - upgrading my license to private investigation, and most recently heavy equipment operator because it's easy to get into and the schooling is cheaper than any trade or academic course.

Most of these have faded to 'nah forget it', while some are still percolating through my head. This next job is just meant to be something to pay my bills until I get to a better place - something that my current job already does and would do better because it pays better but I HATE MY JOB!!

Why. Can't. I. Figure out. What. I WANT??! Why can't I make up my fucking mind?! Why can't I find motive or inspiration anymore???!!!

........I'm becoming depressed again.......