July 2010 Gaming Analysis

The results shown below are of course based on the combined data from the Daily Game Log which should provide a clear indication of a game's usage frequency. Bear in mind that even if a game is played twice or more during a particular day, it would still register as 1 in the Day Count column below. In a sense, "merits" are given based on how often a particular game can make me play it again throughout the entire period of the month on a daily basis. A game that makes a gamer play it over and over again or at least spend a lot of time with it... Isn't that what we mostly want from a great game? I don't think it's really fair to count all the way down to the number of hours played since some games only require a short amount of time to properly serve their purposes.

OVERALL BREAKDOWN:

Total Games Played: 63

League of Legends continued to occupy most of my time for the second month in a row. Things are probably going to slow down somewhat for this game in August because of the recent arrival of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty but you never know. I still have several levels to go to reach the end game and hopefully by then, I will amass enough companions to participate in the ranked matches as an organized team. I definitely prefer playing this game compared to playing Heroes of Newerth but that is mainly because of the in-game community. HoN still managed to creep to the third most played game last month and I do miss playing its more diverse and definitely more creative hero selctions.

The X-Box 360 is seeing less and less playtime for sure. Whenever I was on it, I spent a majority of the time playing Deathsmiles. Though not the most complex nor the most difficult of Cave games, it is a lot of fun and is both tailored to beginners and masters of the shoot-'em-up genre. I had a lot of fun climbing up the leaderboards but I still have played the online co-op yet. Looking for random matches is an impossibility because the online lobby is always empty and I visited it several times on each session of play. I found people to play with on gaming message boards and other conspicuous places but after they accepted my friend invite, they always found a reason or two not wanting to play the game with me. Maybe there are co-op related achievements and they have already gotten them? That's usually the case because most console gamers I have met these days play video games only to hunt those things instead of playing just to have fun.

Best New Game of the Month:

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty (Personal Computer)

Unexpectedly Forgotten New Game of the Month:

Disciples III: Renaissance (Personal Computer)

I Missed You I Want You Game of the Month:

Arc Rise Fantasia (Nintendo Wii)