It’s the time of year when our wallets get a little lighter than normal and when we need to create a bit more room on the games shelf, along with creating some HDD space by deleting a few old demos or installs. This pre-Christmas period the releases have certainly come just as thick and fast as normal, but there is the impression that the quality of some of the must-buy games has risen this year making decisions that much harder.
In the past couple of months alone your wallets might have already been drained by FIFA11, PES20011, Halo: Reach, Fable 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, Rock Band 3, Call Of Duty: Black Ops, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit and Gran Turismo 5 and that’s not taking into account splashing out on PlayStation Move or Kinect and an assortment of games to make them worth your while. On top of this, you may have earmarked excellent titles like Vanquish, Enslaved, Star Wars The Force Unleashed 2, Medal Of Honor or whatever else you may have missed for a later purchase once things quieten down.
You’d be hard-pushed to argue against it being a boom-time for gamers, but affording all the games you want is only a small part of the problem. The real problem is finding the time to cram all the action in.
I haven’t had the funds to secure many of the previously mentioned titles, in fact I’m having a tough enough job just balancing two purchases; Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit and Call Of Duty: Black Ops. You see, the biggest problem with modern blockbuster games is that they aren’t the 15 minute distractions of days gone by, something you’d kill a bit of time with whilst your waiting for your dinner to cook or a bus to arrive. You have to commit to them to do them justice and – importantly – to be good at them.
After loving Black Ops, I picked up Hot Pursuit which has consumed every single minute of my gaming time ever since. I had a go on BlOps and I was rubbish, barely registering a kill for every ten deaths. Then came my daughter’s birthday weekend when all I played was Singstar Dance, Singstar+Guitar, Singstar Take That… in fact if it had the word Singstar in it, I played it. Finally got some alone time to fire up Hot Pursuit only to find my Speedwall times have been trashed and I’ve got to sink some more time into perfecting every single overtaking manoeuvre, bend and shortcut to give myself a chance of climbing back up the ladder in my Autolog. I understand my GT5-loving friends are having a similar problem.
If someone was to ask me how many games is too many? I’d reply that two great ones is too many. If you try and play them both, its impossible to give either the attention they deserve or indeed need if you want to be good at them, particularly in the multi-player arena.
It’s not the end of the world though, I can pick up Enslaved and Vanquish just after Christmas when things quieten down… What do you mean there’s Killzone 3, Motorstorm Apocalypse, LittleBigPlanet 2, Dead Space 2, Marvel Vs Capcom 3, Bulletstorm, Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, Yakuza 4, Brink, Portal 2, Crysis 2, F.E.A.R. 3, Deus Ex and Need For Speed Shift 2 all due out before Easter? Damn!
cam the man
At the moment I’m trying to get the licence tests in GT5 finished and also find time to get some practise in for the TSA F1 Championship, therefore I wouldn’t have the time to play the other games I would have bought like Hawx2, WRC Rally and maybe even NFS:HP if it was a quiet time of year.
DrNate86
I am already massively behind. I’m still getting through Red Dead, not to mention RUSE, Castlevania, Bioshock 2, Fallout, Dragon Age, Blops, Dead Space, Ultimate Alliance 2, Prototype, Saints Row 2, Tools of Destruction and I’m sure countless others sitting on my shelf or on my HDD. Hell I haven’t even played Folklore yet and I’ve had that years!
cc_star
Folklore was one of my first rentals, pretty damned good and shamefully still the best use of SixAxis motion in a game
DrNate86
Yeah I played the demo and loved it, the ripping mechanic works really well! Never opened the full game though, its probably still in its plastic if my brother hasn’t got into it!
DR-DAVROS
Im split between COD Black OPS, GT5 and the WIFE since GT5 release I’ve had 1 evening of Black OPS and the rest with GT5 my Wife understandable so is not in the best of moods when I say im just going to have a quick game. I have a shelf full of games some of which were great but I get easily bored I think – Take for example Bad Company 2 – Great MP but after time it gets tiresome and when returning it never feels as good as before, its now got 4 new maps apparently again I just have no time with the other newer games taking up the time. I do think I waste money on games that I play for say 2 months endlessly which then gather dust. Maybe renting is the way forward but I don’t think i’ll follow that path.
DR-DAVROS
cc_star
Renting isn’t really viable if you want to play something for more than week or two, it’s good for ‘filler’ titles or purely for single player affairs you’ll doubt you’ll go back to
Charmed_Fanatic
I always have too many games to play :(
T-82
Too many? not enough more like, the only games (that were mentioned) I’m vaguely interested in are Star Wars TFU II and MvC3.
Rabid-Coot
Unless it’s something I really want like LBP 2 I just wait a few months for a big price drop. I just got Castlevania LOS for 18 quid less than 2 months after release and will be doing the same for AC:B and Dead Space 2 etc.
There’s plenty of great games on my shelf that are well worth replaying if I’m waiting for a bargain.
haz360
I often find it quite difficult to find the time to play everything I want to. Right now I’m split between Black Ops (which I bought at release) and Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions, which I’m currently renting. I find what works for me is to buy only “the big” titles that I really want and am going to play for a while (Black Ops for example) and then rent other titles that I otherwise would miss (preferably single player only, such as Spider-Man), and then alternate between the two.
The problem with this though, seems to be that there are a lot of “big” titles out/coming out that I would really like to own, like Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Infamous 2, Killzone 3 etc, plus lots of smaller titles that I’ll be renting like The Sly Collection, Vanquish, Enslaved etc.
So to sum up, yeah, there are too many games and not enough time to play them!
cc_star
Yeah, the number of ‘big’ must-buy titles in the space of 2 months is overwhelming, its a situation that isn’t going to ease early next year either. looking at the release schedule.
haz360
It just seems that there’s a constant stream of “big” titles now. Batman: Arkham City coming towards the end of next year, plus quite likely a host of unannounced games, then in 2012 you’ve got Bioshock: Infinite etc
And don’t even get me started on PSN/XBLA games. PixelJunk Shooter 2, Under Siege, Dead Nation etc etc
hol
It’s not easy to keep up! I’ve got gt5, black ops & now, rock band3! Plus a shelf full of half played games, not to mention all those great psn titles on my hdd! :(
Kronik76
Good article.
I’m currently playing GT5, AC Brotherhood and Black Ops. Since the release of GT5 the others haven’t had any attention at all! I also bought F1 as a stop gap until the release of GT5 when the delay was announced, but I have absolutely no idea when I’ll get back on it.
You can indeed have too many games, I have to literally stop myself from buying the POP trilogy. I really want it but can’t see when I’ll get to play it. No doubt it will have been reduced in price by the time I’ll get to give it some attention, so I’d have to be a complete idiot to buy it now. That won’t necessarily stop me though…
AJ
I made the mistake of buying Black Ops, GT5, Brotherhood & Hot Pursuit. And while I did get Black ops at release, I haven’t really gotten into the zombie mode, which is primarily what I bought the game for. I’ve only done the first sequence from Brotherhood and haven’t touched it since the day I bought it. Ive only done about 6 offline races (and played a whole day doing the online Hot Pursuit mode, which is ace) and I almost feel like I’ve completed the game since I’ve won so many cars already. And I think that the game I’ve poured the most of my time into has been Gran Turismo 5, with it’s bajillion different things to do, of which the photo mode is my favourite.
And to think I’ve gone out and bought all of those wonderful games when I’ve got a 5k bill in repairs for my car… Heed my warning when I say don’t ever let your friends drive your car unless you’re absolutely are they know how to drive stick… :'(