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!
4lf13
I’m just a teen, so I find that for me it’s more about problems with money than a lack of time. I just forked out for Hot Pursuit, GT5 and Move (Sports Champions and Heavy Rain), so now I’m basically skint. I haven’t really had the time to play any yet, but at least I get plenty of Xmas hols to really sink my teeth into them. Hopefully, I can scrape enough money freelancing to afford the next wave of pre-Easter games.
ElGuason
i think that you should have a good list of games that YOU like and those can be great games, and the list i’d say would be 12 because i had just about that amount and i’d play a little of each here and there because beleive it or not we do get tired of shooting, driving, fighting, etc… so having a good list of games with different genres, different styles it all goes down to enjoying the time you play each and one of them. I want to go back to playing Battlefield BC2, GT5, Batman, enslaved, medal of honor, street fighter (super), etc…
Roynaldo
Pissed off with myself for not even getting the time to so much as try MoH online. I completed it on Hard then never touched it after that due to Star Wars, then did that on Hard then Blops, then completed that and GT5 came and im hooked on that now.
Ive not got the most out of my games but at least ive given it a bloody good shot and i can backtrack if ever there comes to be a downtime.
My next purchase as far as i can tell is gonna be Dead Space 2 which gives me a little while to get on with things. My other problem is that I have a whole host of back catalogue to go through like Heavy Rain (Move), RDR, Borderlands DLC and Dragon Age which i got about half way through before YLOD.
This gaming shit isnt always fun is it?
A--PSYCO
I’m loving nfs:hp at the moment got gt5 on day 1 but it didn’t live up to my expectations so traded it in on day 2 for nfs:hp and what a good choice I made it really gets your blood pumping and your heart rate up when you see you have only 1 more mile to come from third place to first when SMACK head on with a Sunday driver NITRO I need more f ing NITRO :) and with the new bad company 2 maps out should keep me busy until Vietnam pack comes out on the 22nd. after that it’s kz3 and battlefield 3 for me. Would like to give dead space a try not played on it before but I have heard nothing but good things about it. So may have to pop to blockbuster and give it a try.
skibadee
more is a good thing imo hate it in the summer when there is hardly any.
leon
Playing 3 games at the moment and just got Dead Nation and love that makes 4 time are hard :)