Would You Like to Play a Game?

I stalled hard on my 100 days of code challenge. I was saying to my wife I have no idea what happened, but I have my suspicions. Long story short, vacation was not kind to the challenge. Many people are capable of maintaining a sense of schedule while on vacation, I’m not one of them. Once my vacation ended and I returned to work, I had lost the drive.

This does not mean the code challenge is over – I’m still going to stick with it, but in the meantime, I’ve done some housekeeping here that I wanted to talk about.

I have an … ahem … sizable game library. I don’t feel comfortable sharing specific numbers, but let’s just say I can never play all of them in my lifetime. Of course, knowing all this, Baldur’s Gate 3 launched and I just had to have it.

My poor computer finally had enough. “You need to free up some space before you even attempt this”. Yikes, no kidding! 123 gigs of install files to download!? I do need to free up some space. Sadly, my current NVMe drives were woefully undersized for the task, even with some things cleared, so I finally bit the bullet and performed a major upgrade on the system by quadrupling my available storage. There were some snafus, but I finally made it – and with a fresh Windows install to boot. (this was one of the snafus – I’ll likely talk about all of this in a blog post in the future).

As a result of the entire system retooling, I’ve also decided to install all of the games I actually want to play in the near-ish future – the goal is to play these before I buy any new games. Like Baldur’s Gate 3. Which I’ve already purchased – so no new games after Baldur’s Gate 3. Here’s the list of games I have installed currently, and why they’re important to me. Order isn’t important, they’re all equal to me.

Elden Ring: I picked this up at launch. I’d never played a Souls game before. I’ve put in about 10 hours already and it’s as hard as they say (but also as fantastic as promised). I really want to finish this one.
Portal (With RTX): I’ve played and beaten Portal already, but that was a lifetime ago, and this is with RTX.
Portal 2: My exposure to Portal 2 is limited – I’ve played it a bit, but not nearly as much as Portal 1.
Northgard: A great time-waster, multiplayer viking game. A bit of a mix of Civ, Warcraft 3, and Valheim. Sold!
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown: I’ve put some hours in already – it’s not the flightsim I expected, but perhaps the one I needed.
Divinity Original Sin (Enhanced Edition): Larian Studios has nailed the D&D roleplaying genre on PC. I’ve played tons of RPG’s in the past, but nothing comes close to Larian’s work.
Divinty Original Sin 2 (Definitive Edition): See Above.
NieRAutomata: I’m assured I’m going to have an existential crisis with this game, and who doesn’t love a good existential crisis.
Cyberpunk 2077: For a period of time I lived and breathed the Cyberpunk genre (RPG’s, books, movies). I now have a system capable of running 2077, so it had to happen.
V Rising: I don’t normally love vampires (It wasn’t Twilight, I didn’t even like Interview with the Vampire) but damn they nailed this game. So much fun.
Black Mesa: I’ve played halfway through Half Life 1 when it first came out, and never returned to it. I think it’s time.
Baldur’s Gate 3: Larian Studios. Forgotten Realms. D&D. It’s a no-brainer.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (GoTY Edition): I’ve heard nothing but good things about the Witcher Series. I’d start with Witcher 1 but I’ve opted to read the books instead, as I’ve heard the mechanics with 1 aren’t fantastic. I may start with 2. Which I also own. We’ll see.
Death Stranding: I thought this list was done, then saw this in the library. Yeah, I have room for just one more. Death Stranding has been described as “the most beautiful walking simulator you can play”.