Being a game-oriented entity, most of my time during leisure periods throughout my life is spent on playing games as well as developing a few. Since childhood, I have been immersed in all the major categories (fps, adventure, racing, open/free world, simulation, and especially strategy) with my ‘games-completed’ list possibly including all the game titles you may have ever heard of!
At a younger age, I intended to write a book on games (specific to my interest) covering the general know-how (inclusive of reviews and walkthroughs) and some meaty content (tricks, efficient playstyle guides) for each of the selected ones, but upon realizing how limited time was and the amount of resolution one would require to do so, I decided not to make that part a reality. That set aside, I still tend to live with an incessant quench for gaming, with the same enthusiasm as a kid!
I’ve achieved a fair bit in the realm of online games, with more of an indefatigable focus on MOBAs. A few examples in chronological order:
- Tanki Online
- SLTV broadcasted eSports player, leader of Black Guard.
- Galleries and Links: Clan Album, Personal Album, Forum
- SLTV broadcasted eSports player, leader of Black Guard.
- GGE
- Leader of Global Crusaders, the third-best alliance within Asia (2014-16); plus later on a core member of GoW (#1 during the same era) and WW3 (#3 in the international server).
- Galleries: Personal Profile + Alliances Album
- Leader of Global Crusaders, the third-best alliance within Asia (2014-16); plus later on a core member of GoW (#1 during the same era) and WW3 (#3 in the international server).
- Battle Bay
- Founder of Frostblade, one of the top guilds in the bay (currently led by my friend Jesseck).
- Nightmare League Interceptor, focused on railguns and missiles.
- Galleries and Links: Personal Profile + Guild Album, Forum Profile
- MLBB
- One of the top assassin players in the United States, and among 0.1% globally, among several millions.
- Galleries: Personal Album
- One of the top assassin players in the United States, and among 0.1% globally, among several millions.
I frequent strategical combat and fast-paced action games where I can utilize my fingers simultaneously with my thought-out steps, whilst trying to adapt to situations rapidly.
On rare occassions, I upload rudimentary gameplay from games that I play (random) on YouTube, so as to momentarily have some clips that demonstrate my ̶h̶o̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶b̶i̶l̶i̶t̶i̶e̶s̶ clumsy antics:
Recommendations:
- Inside, an indie from the developers of Limbo (similar: First of the Forgotten). A visual masterpiece.
- Dawn of War: Soulstorm, an expansion of the first of the W40k Dawn of war series with lots of open-source modular contributions from communities like Revora and ModDB. Further sequels to the game have enhanced graphics but lesser variety/factions. DoW II employs micromanagement (fewer structures/units, non-macroscopic gameplay, being rather focused on a particular unit) while DoW III incorporates MOBA-style gameplay (with other stuff to destroy before you can approach the enemy base, like the towers in a typical MOBA game), which makes it less appealing as compared to the OG. (lack of factions, players, and devs are the prime rationale!)
- Command & Conquer series, one of my wartime favourites, which also accounts for my knowledge regarding world history, as it taught me about the cold war in the Red Alert versions. Red Alert 2 is quite fun in itself, but 3 provides a major enhancement in terms of visuals (textures/environments + an upgrade to 3D from 2D, like most strategy game series such as AoE or tycoon games like RCT did for their third iteration), apart from a cluster of new units and equally fun gameplay.
- Anno series, vivid visuals set up with a city-building game-flow combined with economic management and light warfare vessels. (including pirates from 1404 and sci-fi copters from 2070) Recent additions include 2205 (sick futuristic graphics with snow-capped regions; relatively more relaxed and balanced gameplay) and 1800 (a big improvement to Anno 1404, with much more content from every aspect).
- Devil May Cry series, a well-furbished Hack and Slash series with daunting environments, an uncanny storyline, and gruesome bosses that scale for both novices and exponents as per the difficulty chosen. DMC 4 and DmC: Devil May Cry are pretty decent, although ones like Metal Gear: Rising Revengeance compete well against and outshine on certain aspects (cutscenes and meme material for instance). On the other hand, DMC 5 is close to perfection, which includes three playable characters (Dante, V & Nero; Vergil is an extra). Among them, Dante surely takes the cake in terms of weapon variety. I recently completed the game in ‘Dante Must Die’ mode (highest difficulty, unlocked after completing the game for the second time with ‘Son of Sparda’ mode), collecting enough red orbs to unlock all the skills (including the taunts) of each character, plus experience to effectively deal with all bosses (done with the 101 levels in Bloody Palace as well) and chain flashy combos midway - I’ll say it does take a bit of time to master everything (from effective use of basic tricks like jump cancellation to the timely execution of four consecutive judgement cuts!) and be a solid performer, so repeating the same story/levels a couple of times is worth it, even though it sounds monotonous.
- Dark Souls series, in a nutshell is to ‘git gud’. Personal favourites from I, II and III: Knight Artorias, Fume Knight and the Abyss Watchers, in order. Basically any boss with knight specifics (Cavaliere from Dmc5 gives that vibe) and a rapid, heavy-hitting flashy moveset is where I find gratification post triumph. DS does reminds me, I gotta try Elden Ring (cause, Bandai Namco).
- Nier Automata, a great action RPG with a holy, resoundingly beautiful soundtrack.
- RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, one of my favourite tycoon games, for which I got the platinum version (includes Soaked! & Wild! expansion packs). Provides a ton of fun whilst creating your own custom park and rest assured, you’ll definitely come back one day to revisit them (you can upload them here if you’d like to share your creations and find many stunning parks created by others!) or to experience the thrill of your rollercoasters in the first-person view from an NPC. RCT2 was a classic as well (reminds me of Simutrans), and it has an open-source implementation! Planet Coaster and Parkitect would be my next two recommendations in the park-building genre.
- Ori and the Blind Forest, another indie masterpiece with a beautiful soundtrack, enticing visuals, and a flow of emotions passed on through its story. The sequel Ori and the Will of the Wisps is equally good, if not better!
- Forza Horizon 5, a perfectly crafted racing game.
- Need For Speed series, a well-known name in the video-game industry when considering the racing genre, without a doubt. Out of all the titles, I would recommend Payback, Rivals (includes a separate cop mode like in Hot Pursuit 3), The Run, Most Wanted 2 (Criterion), Most Wanted and Porsche Unleashed (which was a classic).
- Grand Theft Auto series, possibly known to the majority of non-gamers as well - being an all-rounder mission-based action cum adventure game based in cities. From Vice City & San Andreas to GTA IV & V, these games sure did provide me with hours of endless entertainment. GTA V features a three-character storyline (Franklin, Michael & Trevor) and is focused on Los Santos (a mix of SC and LA in a fictional San Andreas; note that North Yankton is properly accessible during certain game points only, such as at the beginning or during the ‘Bury the Hatchet’ mission). Its been a long time since I completed the game (including side-quests and missions for strangers and freaks plus property management), but occasionally, I still play it (nope, not the online version) for the sake of certain small enjoyable elements, such as roaming around in my Ventorno or P-996 Lazer, using sticky bombs on anything and everything, and of course, messing with the cops and pedestrians from time to time.
- Age of Empires III, a great RTS which like C&C:RA, transitioned into beautiful 3D graphics in this third sequel, following an upgrade to the 2D-based lineage seen in AoE II and I. Covers faction-wise campaigns (similar to DOW) which are based on actual nations rather than fictional races. (similar to Rise of Nations)
- Simcity Societies, a vivid city-building game with a rich variety of structures to choose from. The similar mobile variant Simcity BuildIt provides a pretty good experience as well, but with limitations on map size, map customizability, 3D build-base, and of course, p2w aspects. The only advantage for the latter is its’ frequent updates. As of 2019, I would recommend Cities: Skylines instead. For android/iOS devices I’d recommend Pocket Build, which has an unlimited resources sandbox building mode with no requirement of game progress or p2w aspects to avail the aforementioned mode. (I’m the creator of Skylark Estates)
- Crazy Machines Series, a physics-based object simulator that often leads to mind-boggling experiments. Contains puzzles to crack and levels to progress through, but my custom experiments were what I recall to be the most fun. Rockets, gears, springs, dominoes (not the pizzas), and thermodynamic equipment were my favourites to casually mess around with.
- Call of Duty Black Ops 2 and Modern Warfare 3, Counter Strike Global Offensive, Metro Exodus, Farcry 3/4, Just cause 3 and Conflict Denied Ops are some arguably good FPS titles I’ve played so far. Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, Rayman 3, Trine 2 and Deadpool are decent ones one can try for the adventure-cum-action genre.
- Pokemon Sword & Shield, X/Y, Black/White 2, HeartGold/SoulSilver, Platinum, OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire - some of the recent and prominent NDS console-based pokemon adventure games; all of them being named after colors except for S&S (I recommend purchasing its extensions: The Crown Tundra and the Isle of Armor). Would have recommended the old, classic ones (from RBGY to Crystal) but dunno if they seem as attractive to the new generation of gamers, as they were in the times back when they were released. Considering old console-based games, the Zelda series was pretty fun back then as well. While I do not particularly recommend Go (for multiple reasons), I admit that I occasionally still play the game from time to time, since its release back in ‘16 (Collection).
- Cyberpunk 2077, a well-known futuristic action-adventure RPG backed up by avant-garde graphics, CD Projekt (makers of The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, which reminds me of Dragon Age: Inquisition), entertaining bugs, and Keanu. It is a rather recent acquisition (writing this in ‘21, having completed the storyline in a day), and it strangely reminded me of Psycho-Pass. Either way, it feels great to rewind the good ol’ free world roaming spirit in a very distinct environment, after what, nearly years of playing a game in that genre. (as far as I remember, my last few takes here were GTA V and Sleeping Dogs).
- Grid series, for the ones who prefer a realistic and (slightly) more difficult control mechanism that mimics that of a professional racecar on the track. Includes night-time and even extremely long races like the 24 hours Le Mans (obviously, it isn’t actually that long in-game!), which with a few laps, is comparable in duration to what you’d get out of the 40-minute sprint race from The Crew 2 (thanks to its massive world size), the first of its kind to transition vehicle types (ground, water, and aerial units) while racing (there have been more of this type recently, such as the switches in between skis to mountain bikes to jetpacks in Riders Republic).
- Satisfactory, living up to its name. (As expected nonetheless, coming from the creators of Goat Simulator)
‘Looking forward to trying out when released’ list:
- Palworld
- DokeV
- Planet of Lana
- Karlson f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶Y̶o̶u̶T̶u̶b̶e̶ ̶=̶)̶
- Wuthering Waves
- GTA VI
If you would like me to help you with a game mentioned on this page, please feel free to drop me a mail with your queries.
will update this section thoroughly later (a lot to cover!)