Terraria is fantastic. I've put about 30 hours into mine until I got a little bored. I could jump into it at any time though and still enjoy it. I tried out Starbound and wasn't too impressed, but Terraria is certainly great.

I need to get back into that. I only played a few hours, but I've already constructed an underground base of operations so that I can safely prepare to build my above ground fortress. It also doubles as a mine. Does everyone else start with digging into the ground before doing anything else, or is that just me? Seems the most logical course of action before you have the resources to build an actual house.

I do that. But I also begin my underground voyage and the further down I go, I make little camps along the way. Basically I keep going down further, and while I'm doing that, there will be like 5 or 6 camps that I've made so in case I die, I don't have to travel all the way back down.

How far down does it go? I've only gone down as far as the first caverns with enemies.

It goes pretty far until you get to "Hell" basically. There's a boss down there too but it's hard as ****.

I've restarted Terraria a bunch of times cause I've lost my save files so I've gotten pretty good at starting over. The first thing you gotta do is get some iron or gold or platinum and upgrade your pickaxe to dig faster. Then you can upgrade your sword and your armor. At first you don't need to go that deep, what you need to do is explore the surface and look for natural caverns with treasure chest in them and hopefully they'll have a couple of useful accessories in them. Stay away from the jungle and corrupted areas at at first and focus on exploring the normal forest and snow areas. You can get gold or platinum in those areas. After you upgrade your equipment a bit you can start exploring more dangerous areas.

Keep mining for ores until you at least complete a full set of armor of one specific ore because once you have a full set you'll get buff from it. Eventually the 1st monster will appear and come after you. He's a big floating eye so you'll need a bow or a gun or flail, any weapon with a mid range attack. It also helps if you create a wood platform in top of your house to fight him and put some bonfires in them to regenerate HP faster.

It's time to do another one of these, and we'll see how my playtime has changed in terms of games that may exist again on this list.

So...as of 9/1/2016, my most played games are as follows:

Team Fortress 2 with 292 hours
Rocket League with 144 hours
Fallout 4 with 78 hours
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth with 75 hours
DC Universe Online with 74 hours
Fallout 3 with 38 hours
RIFT with 35 hours
Dishonored with 28 hours
Borderlands 2 with 28 hours
Torchlight II with 25 hours
The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited with 24 hours
7 Days to Die with 24 hours
Counter Strike: Global Offensive with 22 hours
Star Wars KOTOR with 22 hours

Anything else is below 20 hours so I won't bother posting it. I guess the big difference is not just the hours, but the amount of games I've put a lot of my time into. And y'know what, I don't regret a single minute of it.

Previous list posted 3/17/2015

There's something so intoxicating and awesome about real time strategy games, which probably is evident through the fact that even games today are attempting their hand at such a genre. While it was hugely popular back in the days of Warcraft and Starcraft, there's no point dismissing the more recent titles because they do a great job. I'm going to talk about a few reasons why I believe this is so:

1. Warcraft: The Frozen Throne has one of the best stories I've ever seen in a video game, and even to this day i'll defend it when people try to rag on it for not being good for its time. For those that only played Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, you should playthrough Frozen Throne as it's a completely different experience altogether. And an unforgettable one at that.
2. Something that has never died down in video games is multiplayer accessibility, and although it's fun to get on Counter Strike or Call of Duty with your friends, nothing will ever fill the void of getting a bunch of friends together for a lan party, and destroying each other through the use of base building and tactics. RTS games really put you to the test in your knowledge of strategic gameplay and if you weren't prepared, you were ****ed.
3. Easy to pick up, but hard to master: With real time strategy games, the trick is in the title; strategy. If you're willing to put some time aside to learn the AI, to learn the different forms of gameplay, and ways to get the battlefield on your side, well RTS games are up your alley. I've put many hours into Warcraft III's custom modes where you can face off against 7 or 8 other computers, and their difficulty can also range. The hardest difficulty is hard as ****, so be careful.
4. The entertainment from a viewer standpoint is also heavily underrated when it comes to real time strategy games. People will often put them into the more boring camp, but I find it especially exciting when you're watching a pro play the game and use strategies you've never seen done before. It helps you learn as a player.
5. The community for real time strategy games in my opinion is still strong, but maybe not as strong as it once was. I remember a year or so ago I was able to get into some multiplayer matches through Warcraft III with no problem. Granted, those people spent hundreds and hundreds of hours to master the game, so it never really ended well for me.
6. Great characters in video games makes the game that much stronger, and as far as Warcraft and Starcraft are concerned, they have some of the best. More specifically, everyone knows about the fall of Arthas through Warcraft lore and a lot of people really like the technical sides of the characters in Starcraft. The fact that you can feel a connection to those that are just simple little sprites just tells you how much of an impact a simple game can have.
7. Graphically, I'd go out on a whim and say that real time strategy games have always been awesome, whether we're talking about the first Warcraft games or the first Starcraft games, or even more recently with the Civilization games to the Age of Empires games. They have their own special charm that makes them feel polished and special in their own way. There was never any lack of creativity thrown into the games graphically or environmentally which allowed you to really feel submerged in the world.
8. Maybe even more so recently, video games need to have replay ability. With how expensive video games are getting, there's really no reason to spend 60 bucks on a game that you're going to get 1 to 2 hours out of tops. From experience, I can safely assume I've gotten into the hundreds in regards to play time with the Warcraft games. I've never dived into the Starcraft games as much as others have, but I completely understand the appeal to them, and I've seen players go at it against each other and I can see how much technical knowledge you need in order to succeed in that game specifically.
9. Everyone loves them. It's true, I don't think I've met someone that enjoys video games that has said they truly hate real time strategy games. There are those that have never really experienced them, but they've admitted that they look like a lot of fun. Then there are the hardcore players that truly enjoy them and will never hate them. They're a lot of fun, and they're very hard to hate because of their intellect and strategic nature.
10. Some people really like to waste time if they're waiting for something to happen, or they have a few hours to kill on a plane or in an airport, and you can easily get through 2 to 3 hours as you get submerged into an rts game, especially if you have a really good custom match going and you're attempting to take out all the other opponents. I don't exaggerate this either, since I've had a 3-4 hour game go on with other people that I had a LAN party with. I don't remember how badly I lost, but I know for a fact that it was a damn good time.

Shout out to Jaedong, Zerg god.

Holy ****! I'm so excited to talk about this game in this journal because there is seriously nothing I can say I hate about this game. I recently picked up Doom for $30 on Steam and I've put about 5 hours into it so far, and I can safely say with just playing the multiplayer alone, this could easily take the spot for game of the year for me. Not only are the graphics and game play so immersive and beautiful, but the adrenaline pumping no bull**** full on murder mode first person shooter style works so ****ing well that it's hard to not express that without swear words. Every single time I've gotten into a match, I'll start off a little slow, but then I'll really get going into a good kill streak, and once that happens, the game rewards for doing so by allowing you to chop people up with a chainsaw. I don't know if that was necessarily because of my kill streak or I picked something up, but it was so rewarding, like WOW!

On top of that, you never really have time to worry about how you did in a round, because you literally have a minute in between matches and you are thrown right back into the madness without losing your adrenaline high. The thing I learned really quick is that you shouldn't judge people so quickly based on their levels, because it's definitely not easy to be good at this game, but it's not necessarily impossible either. Once you get the swing of things through a round or two, you'll be getting insane kill counts in no time. One of the first matches I did, I was so proud of myself because I maneuvered so well and planned accordingly where I wanted to go, and my reflexes were top notch. I've gotten a few #1 games now, and although I don't have the images ready, here's a screencap for a match I did this morning:

http://i.imgur.com/HsuCILP.png

I mean this sincerely and with the most respect I can, if you have the cash and you see this game on sale or if you're willing to give the full 60 bucks for it, do it right ****ing now. I'm so happy I got this game because not only am I starting to get addicted to it, I've been looking for a proper fps game that I can lose many hours into because although I've not played the later Call of Duty games, I'm just not into the whole Call of Duty style, so this is a fantastic alternative. Seriously, I can't wait to play this all night. Get it!