The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind

What a truly remarkable game Morrowind is, still to this day. It's immersion, atmosphere and world building done perfectly. And now I've finished the main story for the first time, after many hours spread over years, I finally dedicated some time to finishing the long main storyline.

Meeting the honorable Dagoth Ur, we had a long and very interesting conversation before our inevitable battle to the death. After beating him and destroying the Heart of Lorkhan as well as the unfinished Anumidium, saving Tamriel from an unknown fate at the hands of the mad god, I went to see Vivec.

We talked at length about what had happened, the future of the Tribunal, Morrowind and the Temple, as well as my own future within it all. I decided to leave the tools of Kagrenac in his care.

Now I'm left to wonder what's next, as I leave Vivecs sanctum I'm presented with this view, promising nearly infinite more hours of adventure in this truly amazing world.

Middle-earth Shadow of Mordor

 
I chose to do Middle-earth Shadow of Mordor next. Really solid game, great combat system if a bit bare-bones, and once you get the timing down, not the most challenging. But taking down a large group of Uruks with higher ranked named ones in the mix feels extremely rewarding.


 And after it was all said and done, the ending is one of the best endings of any game I've ever played. The buildup towards fighting the Hand of Sauron, having to take down the Tower and finally getting back to Mordor to hunt down the hand at the top of the Black Gate where it all began was awe inspiring. Shame the end was a QTE event. Why!? The last fight in the hunter questline where you fight the Legendary White Graug is much better, and a much memorable event. Why couldn't they have done something similar with the Hand of Sauron?

But besides that, Shadow of Mordor is an amazing game, and the ending storyline is one of those that gamers should experience. Definitely glad I finally finished it. Now to figure out what's next...

 

Watch_Dogs

Why start with Watch_Dogs then? Out of all these games, why this one?

 I know that when Watch_Dogs came out, it was in a pretty poor state. The LOD and popin issues were really bad, the performance was uneven at best and unplayable at worst.
And the big graphics downgrade from the previously shown version made the PC crowd completely loathe it. And aside from technical problems the story is pretty moronic and the protagonist is a mess.


 But there's been patches, and Watch_Dogs now is nothing like when it first arrived, it runs smoothly, the popin is almost all gone and the LOD issues are completely fixed. Add to that the excellent "TheWorse Mod" which makes the game look much closer to the originally promised visuals and we have a completely different game now compared to at release.

Image courtesy of deadendthrills

 Graphics aren't everything, obviously. Sure the main story is stupid and Aiden's motivation makes no sense. Kill thousands of people to avenge the death of one person, steal from innocent bystanders and so on. But it's got some really excellent side stories, like the slave market auctions you're trying to shut down. I think that whole story arc is fantastic.

  I also really like the "hacking" and stealth mechanics, scoping out a location via cameras and other means to find your targets, plan your approach and taking them down undetected has the same thrill as in any of the great stealth classics.

 Lastly, I think Watch_Dogs has extremely underrated driving mechanics, which could partially be explained by the poor performance at launch, but with that now sorted it's really pretty good. The physics are good enough that maneuvers like a Scandinavian flick actually works. Cars also handle extremely differently and there are many to chose from.

 So I picked Watch_Dogs as my first game to complete because I really like it, think it's hugely underrated and was more than halfway though the main story when I stopped for whatever reason, so it shouldn't take the rest of the year for me to complete. 
That should hopefully help keep me motivated going forwards with my backlog mission.

The 25 year backlog

I started looking through my long list of unfinished games from 25+ years of gaming and it struck me that many of these games are "the best game ever" type games, really amazing experiences, stories and adventures that I've never experienced fully, despite paying money for the privilege of doing so.

After some thinking and some discussions on the RPS forums I came to the realization that I have to change my approach to gaming in order to experience all these amazing games fully. And so I decided to start a blog that probably no one will ever read, writing about my adventure through some of gaming's greatest moments. 

And I decided to start my journey with... WATCH_DOGS.