My current list of games that I want to finish, but have not, include:
Deathspank, Infamous, Red Dead Redemption, Just Cause 2, Fallout 3, Dragon Age: Origins and Modnation Racers.
A common theme with nearly all of these games is that they are either free-roam games or RPG's, my two favourite genres in some respect. I love them all equally and they are a lot of fun. But I ask myself: "Why do I keep going back to the likes of FIFA, Call of Duty and LittleBigPlanet!? Ugh, it's so frustrating. For example, I go to put Red Dead Redemption in the the disk tray, and I just.... freeze up or something. I don't know what it is, I just can't get motivated enough to go that extra inch and take a good multiplayer game out of the disk tray.
And I think that's part of the problem, multiplayer. Playing with my friends and chatting seems to be much more fun then chatting to NPC's in an RPG. But 10 years ago, I would play RPG's for hours upon hours at a time and never get bored. I saw someone mention on the internet that hype for games is more exciting for him, then when the game actually releases. That may also be another factor in my failure to finish games. And yet, I keep buying them. Solution? Maybe I need to limit myself on the media exposure for the games I am anticipating. That way I can appreciate the game for what it has, not what the reviewers say it hasn't got. I might have been happy that FFXIII was linear if I hadn't read much about it, but I'm not. It got drilled into my head that linearity for an RPG was bad, and so I thought that way.
Although trophies aren't as much of a problem for me now, they sure used to be. I looked at the trophy list before a game released. If I didn't get above 50% or get a platinum trophy it didn't feel complete. Now that may sound like I want to finish games because of the desire to attain all trophies, it was a massive problem. If I didn't get a regular flow of trophies during a game, I became bored quickly, and hence stopped playing the game. So I began to play short and linear games, ones that only lasted 7-8 hours. These gave me quick trophies and it was easy to finish (e.g. Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands). Now it leaves me in my current state of mind; I have tried to buy longer games to get more value out of them, but I just can't finish them or even play them, for more than 10 hours (a typical linear game length).
So now it leaves me in a bit of a pickle. I have decided to not buy any games until November, and I will be determined to finish all of those aforementioned games. I will also limit myself to hype and media exposure surrounding my eagerly anticipated games. Hopefully i can re-kindle my love for gaming by going retro, where we once appreciated games for what they were, and didn't try to pick out faults all the time. I hope anyone else in this position overcomes their problem.
What about you, have you ever been in this position, or have any advice for me or another person?
