With the new year upon us, I thought I'd take a look at my Steam library. I wondered: going into 2017, what are the games that I've spent the most time playing? This is kind of easy to figure out, as I have been PC-only for years. But the tricky part is non-Steam games. I don't know about those as much. Though in fairness, the only ones that would end up here are Heroes Of The Storm and Hearthstone most likely.

So let's take a look at what I've played the most, according to Steam's hours logged anyway. And let's try to make some sense of me as a gamer. Maybe.







Well, I do love Talisman but I am a bit surprised it cracked the Top 10. This is a digital board game and the reason I've played it so much is that it's very versatile. It makes for a fine single-player experience, and even works well on my Windows tablet. It can be played hot-seat style with my wife. Even better is the online multiplayer with friends. Plus all the expansions are shareable. So if one buddy owns an expansion, we can all play a game with that DLC even if we don't own it. Brilliant. So maybe I'm actually not that surprised to see this one in the Top 10 after all. I mean, I am kind of fascinated by board games but don't have a big group of local friends to play them with in real life. Plus, the digital version means no setup time!



For my money, Borderlands 2 is one of the best multiplayer co-op FPS games out there. And really I'm actually surprised I didn't log more than 31 hours on this one. Those hours were entirely spent playing with buddies online over the course of several months. We beat the game and explored much of the extra DLC expansion, and yet I feel like Borderlands 2 is the kind of game I could easily go back to and kill some time with at the drop of a hat.




A newer game, Duelyst was just released this past year. And I attributed it to finally curing me of Hearthstone (mostly). Duelyst is a brilliant PvP card/board game-thing. It's a little bit Hearthstone, a little bit chess, and a lot bit awesome. That 33 hours spent playing it this past year isn't exactly precise, either. See, I actually was playing the beta version, which was a standalone release for months before it was officially released on Steam. So there's that. Like Talisman, I seem to really like turn-based stuff...



Oh hey, an RPG! Well that makes sense, right? RPG's are time consuming. And I didn't even beat this one. I got really close to beating the main campaign actually and then I just... stopped. I think other games had come out that distracted me. I always meant to go back to it. Plus there were expansions. Ugh. But now there's even more other games to play! Including other RPG's by Obsidian. So I don't know. But seriously, I did love this game hard for the 35 hours I spent playing it. And that actually speaks volumes, as this is the only RPG in my Top 10 here.



Alright this one is just embarrassing. I honestly can't believe how much time I spent playing this mediocre game. It is a shameless XCOM rip-off and it's really not good. But I played it for 37 hours. What's wrong with me? I guess the sad truth is that I fell right into their trap. This came out while we were waiting for XCOM 2 to appear. I really wish I had more to say, but I don't. I can only hope to play at least another five games for 38 hours just to knock this thing off my Top 10 next year. Seriously. Embarrassing.



Another FPS, and it's another Borderlands game! And sorry to ruin it for you, but those are actually the only FPS games to rank here. Which is surprising to me given that I do actually enjoy the genre quite a bit. This is another one that I beat and played through expansions with buddies online, but the play-clock is higher on this one that Borderlands 2 because I had actually spent quite a few hours playing this one solo when it first came out as well. In fairness, I think Borderlands 2 is the better game. But I obviously really enjoyed The Pre-Sequel as well.



Okay here's where things start to get really obvious. I mean XCOM 2 was my favorite game of 2016. I've written plenty about it over the course of the past twelve months. And really the 40 hours listed won't be accurate anymore as the Long War 2 mod has just been released giving the game an entirely new life and NG+ style campaign to punish myself with. So again, I guess I really do love turn-based stuff huh?



Ah, Spelunky! This one is no great surprise. And really it's a pretty big jump from XCOM 2's 40 hours to this one's 55. And that 55 hours does not include the time I've spent reading strategies, looking up videos, reading Derek Yu's book on the making of the game, nor the many hours I sunk into the original freeware version of the game long before I even started playing the full remake that appeared on Steam. Spelunky is easily one of my favorite games of the past decade and is still a game that I find great pleasure in reading about and talking about. Oh, and of course doing random Daily Challenge runs from time to time.



And another big jump from 55 hours to 89. Rocket League is... I don't even know where to start. "Soccer with cars" doesn't do it justice. I have no interest in soccer. I use a car to get to work. But I mean Rocket League is just incredible. It takes a few minutes to learn and far more than 89 hours to master. That's for sure. For months it was my every night game. "One more" match turned into another hour. I've ranked myself up to level 30 (Veteran) and still feel that I'm just yet learning so many things. It's one of those rare perfect games. And yet it sticks out like a sore thumb on this list, doesn't it? Apparently I need some kind of quick action-type game from time to time.



The big one: clocking in at 168 hours which doesn't count the many hours I played this on console first. Wow. I can attribute all this time spent really to it being like three games: XCOM: Enemy Unknown, then the Enemy Within expansion and then the Long War mod. But also because it is just one of the greatest games of all time. Though I think it's now safe to say that it'll retire around this hour-count, considering XCOM 2 exists and there's new content there for me to continue on with. But again; I guess I really like turn-based games.

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