I have to confess one thing: I really like video games. This then of course means that I have plowed down an ungodly number of hours in various digital adventures over the years, and although the majority of these may have required between ten and thirty game hours on average, there are of course many that have taken significantly longer than that to complete out. Sometimes it’s not about passing a game, but sometimes you just get stuck in these virtual worlds, and you then refuse to let go. I’ve since listed below the titles that have “stolen” the most waking hours from me during my 32 years on this earth, and it’s a blissful mix between pocket monsters for ring worlds and failed freebies, enjoy.
Pokemon Red
The game I’ve most likely spent the most time with in my life is spelled Pokemon Red, and I don’t think any other title even comes close to be honest. Between the years 2000 and 2007 was Nintendo’s portable masterpiece
my so-called “bread and butter” and I plowed down tons of hours from the time I was ten until I was around 17-18 and upgrading to Pokémon Pearl. I kind of don’t know how many save files I had during this period, but the vast majority clocked in at over 255 hours, and since the game couldn’t register any more clocks after that, it’s hard to give an exact end time. Anyway, we’re talking thousands of hours with simplicity, and just thinking about the number of batteries I used to power up my gray original Gameboy (required 4 AA batteries) makes me think I’ve committed more environmental crimes than many corrupt corporate executives. Sure, I upgraded to a slightly more energy-efficient Gameboy Color a little later (which only needed 2 AA batteries), but the damage was probably already done in my eagerness to train my Squirtel into a Blastoise over and over again. It was worth it though. Because sacrifices are required if you want to be the best and catch everyone. Sorry, Mother Earth.
Hello Reach
I arrived at the Halo party relatively late as at the turn of the millennium I mostly played on the Gamecube and thus did not have access to Microsoft’s debut console. In time, of course, I would become familiar with Master Chief and his space rings, but it was only with the 2010 title Halo Reach that I really fell in love with the series in earnest. Because Reach was, and still is in my opinion, the perfect action adventure where everything from the campaign to the addictive multiplayer mode could keep you entertained for thousands of hours all in all. There was a time when my sister and I would play online night after night, and it could easily go past two and three in the morning before we forced ourselves to put the controllers down and wait for tomorrow to play again. Incidentally, the same sister and I restarted the game last year, and it’s almost as fun to play Firefight (rocket launchers and jetpacks all the way) today as it was 13 years ago. Recommended!
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KKND 2: Crossfire
I’ve never been much of a PC gamer, and my experience with pure PC gaming is pretty limited as I’ve mostly stuck to the consoles’ more kid-friendly outlook. However, there were a couple of PC titles that I spent endless hours on growing up, and the biggest time waster among them was undoubtedly KKND 2 Krossfire. My brother had come across the game via an issue of PC Gamer, and when we had to borrow a laptop from one of my mother’s friends, I got caught up in this futuristic war between humans, mutants and machines. Because everything was really cute and cool for a little snotty guy, and you couldn’t start the game without checking out the cinematic intro where everything from giant wasps to hard-firing jets battled each other. Otherwise, voice acting is probably what I remember most from my time on Beam Software’s hard-boiled strategy games, and I can still clearly hear the human foot soldiers sizzling out to this day “What the hell?!” and “I’m listening” when you mark them, and it’s the same with the announcer who announced for a small eternity that you were low on oil and then shocked you as a player that the oil was actually out. “Low oil warning, Low oil warning, Low oil warning, Low oil warning… There goes the oil!”
Fire Emblem 4 Siesen No Keifu
Putting hundreds of hours into a game isn’t the most common thing, and I’d say it’s possibly even more rare when the game in question is entirely in Japanese and you’re twelve years old. However, this was something I did growing up when I had far too much free time to kill. Because via some obscure internet site in the early 2000s, my brother managed to come across a Japanese copy of the fourth Fire Emblem game for the SNES, and even though the adventure was entirely in Japanese, I couldn’t stop playing this captivating strategy game from morning to night . Of course, it took a little forever to learn the controls and how the game worked, but after a while I was able to maneuver my soldiers around the battlefield with quite a bit of success, and the only thing that really hindered my progress was that I refused to let any of my characters die during the journey walk. This then caused the game time to skyrocket as I would save my progress at regular intervals and then restart the game if one of my generals got bitten. Of course, I didn’t understand a single second of the story, but even so, I have to say that Fire Emblem 4: Seisen No Keifu is my favorite in the series, and that’s thanks to the gorgeous pixel graphics and the huge battlefields. Nintendo give us an English speaking remaster for Switch, por favor!
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Monster Hunter World
I put an incredible amount of hours into Monster Hunter Tri for the Nintendo Wii when it launched, and that title is probably the best game for Nintendo’s controller-wielding console alongside the masterpieces The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Super Mario Galaxy 2. Compared to The 2018 title Monster Hunter World though, the play time I had in Tri is nothing. Absolutely nothing. Because here we’re talking hundreds of hours of hunting and killing various monsters, and last time I checked I think I had around 600 hours logged, and I don’t even remember if this was before or after the lovely Iceborne expansion had launched. There is no doubt that Monster Hunter World is an incredibly good and captivating game, and the only reason I don’t want to see a sequel soon is that I’m afraid I won’t sleep more than 3-4 hours a night as I will once again want to curse Diablos and Pukei-pukeis.
Gigantic
This is a sad chapter in my gaming history. Because I basically never play Free-to-play as I rarely find them particularly well-built or engaging, and thus I think it’s stupid to plow countless hours into these when I already have a huge backlog. During the year 2017, however, this principle would change when I stumbled upon the multiplayer party Gigantic. The concept of so-called “hero shooters” was nothing new then, but this was a time when everyone would start copying Overwatch’s success with more or less success. Gigantic was different though, and while it was very much a multiplayer shooter at its core with a focus on colorful characters, it was also more focused on strategy, tactics and co-op compared to Blizzard’s monster hit. Every single hero was different from the next, and the unique design made the game six years ago really stand out from the crowd and stand out in an otherwise overcrowded market. However, developer Motiga had extreme financial problems, and it was ultimately the lack of money that caused the creators to shut down the game barely a year later. This year though, it was among the best I’ve experienced in multiplayer, and I spent an awful lot of hours learning the different heroes and how to improve as a player. The community part was also very nice and inviting, and I still regret today that Gigantic couldn’t find the success the game deserved in my opinion.
