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It’s rare that a topic that’s making the rounds in our Blaugust-centric gaming blog circle applies to this blog, most often I’m an interested bystander who can’t really take part. The “Five Favorite Game Series” (started by Krikket) might be just another one of those.

My first thought was “Favorite Game Series? That’s hard.” Then it was “Five of them? Even harder.” So let’s have a look at some of the commonly nominated ones, the default picks for many people maybe.

• The Elder Scrolls – TESO was cool, but the other one I played I didn’t like. Can never remember if it was Morrowind or Oblivion.
• Civilization – nope, not my cup of tea
• StarCraft – only loved #1, didn’t play #2
• WarCraft – Oh yeah, this might fly. I loved 2, I liked 1+3, I play WoW
• The Witcher – started with 2, it was ok.
• Age of Empires – 1 was fun, didn’t play 2
• Torchlight – 1 was fun, 2 was meh
• Final Fantasy – I only played XIV. It’s good!
• Zelda – the SNES one was ok, not great. That’s when I lost interest
• Pokémon – the one I tried (Red? Ruby? on GBA) was ok, but a little boring
• Guild Wars – I didn’t like 1 at all, 2 was fun
• The Settlers – 2 was awesome, then.. mhm

See how hard this is? Even when I liked or loved it, maybe part 2 took so long to come out that I had lost interest already, but thinking very hard there’s really a few series I actually liked.

• Anno – I played 1602 a lot, 1503 a bit, I recently bought 1404 – yeah.
• Assassin’s Creed – I think I overdid it at some point, but I’m generally a fan
• Quake – I played 1 and 2 for many years and 3 for years, so I guess: yes.
• Super Mario Land (GB) + Bros (NES) + World (SNES) – I actually played 5 of these, yay

So in the loosest of definitions where I could say “I liked at least half of the titles, up to, or from a certain point”, then I can name these 4. Plus WarCraft.

Intermission, one day later:

Awesome, that’s what happens when your brain doesn’t work for a day. I originally wanted to write this post because of the Mass Effect trilogy, because it absolutely needs to be in the top five, although I didn’t play the fourth game, Andromeda. Also I totally forgot Diablo, where I actually played 1, 2, and 3. Also maybe Super Mario should be discounted because I ignored the last 25 years. And finally another series I forgot, was “The Dark Eye Trilogy”, Blade of Destiny, Star Trail, and Shadows over Riva, (Realms of Arkania in English) which came out in 1992, 1994, and 1997 (originally in German). The Dark Eye is the German D&D, there’s no way around it. No idea how the pen & paper landscape looks today, but from the late 80s to at least the 00s, German roleplayers were more likely to play this system over D&D. The games were good and if you liked the world, that’s how you could dive in. So yeah, I blame it on my headache that I kinda forget not one but three of my favorite series. Sometimes you should sleep instead of blog.

Old post resumes here:

And still this kind of misses the point. There are only 5 series I played as a series. And if I didn’t like a game as much, why would I continue to play the series? And is Mario even a series? I know, I’m overcomplicating it, but if you don’t go out to buy games left and right this is really hard.

Finally, the interesting question that came up on Discord is whether 2 games can be a series of there need to be 3 of them 🙂

It’s Blapril and this is post number 16.

Posts about the future are rare on this blog, but there are actually a few things I am looking forward to this year, not necessarily releases:

• WoW Shadowlands
  • I’ve been playing a lot of WoW recently and while I’m happy to take advantage of the XP (and rep) buff to reach my goals, I’m looking forward to a new expansion.
• Horizon: Zero Dawn on PC
  • When I bought my new PC last year I stuck with my 2016 RX470 and told myself I’d upgrade it when HZD came out. I was really looking forward to it. Now I’m already a bit meh again, I really hate stuff being announced more than half a year in advance, I can never keep momentum. But we’ll see, maybe I am lucky and not totally busy with other things. I WANT to play it.
• more of EVE Online
  • Not looking forward to a specific release, but I’m in full swing right now and having a blast.
• Final Fantasy XIV – Shadowlandsbringers
  • The grind of the MSQ got to me and I never reached it. Good job, SE, someone gets converted from a “ah let’s try” to buying all 3 expansions, but then burning out 4 levels shy of the last expansion…
• Cyberpunk 2077
  • Not sure I’ll play it, but I love the fact that it exists and maybe reading and seeing more will tempt me.

Of course there’s also a list of unrealistic expectations:

• Guild Wars 2 – finish Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire
• have a look at TESO again, maybe properly this time

And finally a single player TODO list:

• Finish Forgotten Anne, it’s awesome and should only be a few hours
• Get to Level 50 in Borderlands 3

It’s Blapril and this is post number 14.