45

Total War: Rome II

• Windows PC
• 2013

• Unguessed

A huge turn-based strategy game, with a game-map spanning an area from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indus River, and an uncountable amount of regions to conquer. Contrary to previous games in long-running series, each region has a unique faction, which means no immersion-breaking general "rebel" faction. Obviously, the game centers around the faction of Rome, though the player can choose plenty of others.

Like all games in the series, gameplay revolves around two modes of play' the campaign map where you train and move your armies and build your cities, and the battle maps where you fight your field battles or sieges. These battles are bigger than ever before and portrayed in quite a realistic way.

However, I don't really care for the battle map modes. I always auto-complete my battles. I much rather play the quiet, relaxing campaign map with the soothing music.

44

Pokémon Blue Version

• GameBoy
• 1999

• Guessed by Mnementh

Back in my day this was the talk of the playground. Literally everyone, and I really mean literally everyone, was all about Pokémon during the late 90s and early 2000s. It wasn't like how it is today. It also wasn't like how big thing today are hyped. This was a part of life, and it was everywhere.

In reality it's a simple game, and most of its popularity was probably due to the anime and the ridiculously popular trading card game, of which no-one actually knew how to play, people just collected the cards.

Personally I was no different than any other person in existence at the time, and I played the game and watched the anime and collected the cards religiously. Easily my most played handheld-game of all time, and one with special meaning. I'll leave out the story of how my dog ate the cartridge once this year though.

43

Anno 1800

• Windows PC
2019

• Unguessed

Anno 1800 is a game who's content grows like a weed. The game was already huge at launch, with not one, but two worlds full of islands to colonise. Then, there was a season pass with three expansion packs released over the course of 2019; two of which came with a new game world. So then there were four. But then, there was yet another season pass in 2020 with another three expansion packs, one of which included a fifth world. So now, there's five worlds to sail two with like a hundred islands. The other expansion packs also feature pretty cool stuff by the way.

So now I'm stuck with having to supply my various populations across five game worlds with a couple hundred goods, and fill my zoo, garden and museum with an ever-growing list of items, and expand my ever-growing palace. Still, all this has resulted in being able to build one of the most epic cities I ever made in a city-building game. But then, there were also a couple of cosmetic DLCs, adding yet more stuff. So last weekend I thought screw it, and bought everything.

42

Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds

• Windows PC
• 2001

• Guessed by Ka-pi96

I don't have many friends that actually play video games. Actually, just one. And he only plays on PC. These days less than before, when we were younger, and only when I'm visiting I think. Back in the day he played Warcraft 3 religiously, and wanted to play with me. However he was a thousand times better than me, so I didn't like it. We went to Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, which would remain our go-to competitive game for over a decade to come. Still, we played as allies only.

The game is actually a bit of lazy effort in the Star Wars pantheon of video games. It is literally a reskin of Microsoft's Age of Empires II. In itself a great strategy game, so at least Galactic Battlegrounds has a solid foundation.

41

Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force

• Windows PC
• 2001

• Unguessed

Unlike Star Wars, one can count the video games that are actually good in the Star Trek franchise on just one hand. There seems to be something about this franchise that seems to hinder the creation of great games. There are still some though. The Elite Force series, consisting of two games, is one of them.

The first game follows a sort of special forces team created on the starship Voyager to combat the hazards of the uncivilised parts of space where the ship is stranded, as happened in the tv-show. Some characters from the show also return and are mostly voiced by their real-life actors.

The sequel to this game released a few years later also deserves a mention, where the team gets reassigned to captain Picard's Enterprise after Voyager has returned home in the tv-show. Sadly the sequel was the last great Star Trek game to be made up to this day. I still hope something good will come of it at some point in the future.