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!
stingraz
I own three games. Fifa11, CoD black ops, Gran Turismo 5.
I traded all of my games in for a pretty sum, with which I wasted some of it on F1 2010 (don’t ask why).
I tend to stock up on games, then sell them of one by one when the time is right. I’ll play some more of CoD blops until about january, when I’ll be getting KZ3. Today, I’m getting Dead Rising 2, simply for the co-op fun, and hours of re-playability – those types of games, aren’t easy to sell, so it’s a keeps for me til the next version. Same with Fifa.
UKZ-N3M1515
i dont consider myself to buy masses of games through the year, but for 6 months of the year i have too much games on my hands, such as, i bought Blops, GT5, Killsone 2 and Modnation all within novemeber, killsone and MNR arnt getting a look in. and GT5 isnt getting half the attention it needs, im also looking a assassing creed: BH and the PoP trilogy, as i loved them all, esept the cell shaded ones, they were poor. far too much, then in 6 months, all these but black ops will be collecting dust.
Foxhound_Solid
This article couldnt be more relevant…
I am struggling to get time in with GT5 and NFSHP. I recently completed Vanquish and was bored to tears with Castlevania. I havent had chance to even consider looking at BlOps, MOH, Bioshock 1/2, Motorstorm [any of], RDR, MNR, Assassins Creed: BH or Enslaved
to name a few. However, I plan to have a surge on games and spend a BOMB on those titles I wanna play, what with 2 weeks booked off and Yorkshire been the centre of SNOWMAGEDDON, I think I am gonna have the time to crack all those awesome titles out there. Some Gaming Admin if you like!
Deathbrin
One by one for me. Vanquish, then New Vegas and now GT5. If it wasn’t so many games at once i would have considered Black Ops and/or Hot Pursuit, but i guess they are just out of luck there. It really is too much.
Blayney
I’ve got a bit of a catch 22.
I need a job to buy these games (amongst many many other things)
Yet when I get the job I’ll have no time to play them anyway!
Ha. Gotta love it.
Flexxible
Well i agree that there are way to many games at the moment to play but on the other hand in December there’s almost nothing being released for PS3. so there’s time to play the games lol
I’ve bought Enslaved, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Call of Duty Black Ops, Medal of Honor, Vanquish, Gran Turismo 5, Kane & Lynch 2, Mafia 2, Sly Trilogy, Prince of Persia Trilogy, Splatterhouse, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, H.A.W.X. 2, Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare, The Shoot, Saw 2, F1 2010, Falout: New Vegas, Dead Rising 2 & Castlevania.
But this list is nothing compared to what will come from januari to March
in that period LittleBigPlanet 2, Dead Space 2, Mass Effect 2, Brink, Mortal Kombat, Child of Eden, Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, Killzone 3, Motorstorm: Apocalypse, NFS Shift 2, Max Payne 3, Final Fantasy 14, Gothic 4:Arcania, Dragon Age 2, Driver:San Francisco, Homefront, Splintercell Trilogy, Crysis 2, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Red Faction: Armageddon, Devil’s Third, Dirt 3, Yakuza: Off the End and more are coming. all of these games i want to play. but then i really won’t have enough time to play them all
Darth Newdar
My word, you’ll have to play 23-and-a-half hours a day (you can survive on half an hour of sleep, can’t you?) :)
gazzagb
It bugs me that there’s a massive release of games just before xmas, and by April/May I’m generally looking for something new. That doesn’t mean I’m bored of the other games, I just want something new to get stuck into. I’ve finished the stories for Blops and AC:Brotherhood, so atm, I’m just waiting for GT5 at xmas to keep me interested. I’ll still play Blops online loads, and probably try to platinum AC:B, but I know GT5 will take up a hell of a lot of time too.
Not to mention all the delayed games that I wanted Ghost Recon, TDU2, LBP2 etc.
ratkiller75
I personally feel that there aren’t enough truly groundbreaking games out there and that most people need to redefine their opinion of good. There is also no point in buying multiple games. You buy one and play until you get bored with it. Then the other game that you wanted has got cheaper and so you buy that. I remember I had to balance InFamous and Red Faction: Guerrilla. In buying both I would’ve ruined the gaming experience for myself. Another point I have is that you don’t have to be good at a game to do it justice. CoD 4- I was not good at it (but then again I learnt FPS skills from Unreal Tournament) but enjoyed it. That’s what difficulty settings are for! Online is not everything, particularly not when you kill 0.7 people for every death.
bigdon23
The only games on the list that remotely interest me are LBP2 and Crysis2, I need to look at LBP2 in more depth before i decide, and as for Crysis 2, il only buy if it has a decent map editor built in to the console version (being EA im not expecting too much).
as for quality in games i played the CSI demo and its worse than the ps2 original, its even pants compared to the facebook version
Darth Newdar
I totally agree with the aricle.
I only play one game at a time and, being a bit of a completionist, I tend to play that one game for a long time. I have the Platinum for FIFA 10, and at the moment I’m playing F1 2010 (which will last me ages).
There are piles of other games I’d like to play. But I’d feel unsatisfied if I hadn’t “finished” the current game, so I end up not buying a lot of those games at all!
Darth Newdar
My current wish-list goes something like this: LittleBigPlanet 2, Dirt 3, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit, Gran Turismo 5, The Sly Collection, Flower, Joe Danger, Pac-Man, Need for Speed: Shift 2, and PlayStation Move with Sports Champions.
I ain’t got time for any of them at the moment!