So many games, so little time…

This topic has been done to death hundreds of times perhaps, but after I just purchased Final Fantasy XII off of Amazon for the “low low” price of $20 (they’re now out of stock) I thought it required a post. I’m definitely interested in playing it, but somewhere in the back of my mind I sort of know that it’s unlikely I’ll ever complete it, or even play it for more than a few hours.

The fact is, I own a lot of games from the last few generations…

I haven’t counted, but I’d venture to say that most of them I didn’t get for full price. Instead, there are a select few games that I highly anticipate and that I’ll usually pay a full price for on day one, perhaps a few more that I’ll pay full price for either stupidly or because I have a feeling or some pre-existing relationship with the franchise (SSX, Ratchet and Clank, etc), and then several others that I end up getting either used or at a discount. In fact, I just brought 5 games back to EB for some trade-in credit (I know, a bad deal in general, but they were giving a 30% bonus) and I have a whole bag left of other games I no longer care about or didn’t get around to playing.

Not that any of this really matters. Really, the fact that I got many of my games cheaply, while better than paying full price, is just rationalizing the problem. A quick glance over at my library and I see several games that I never played, barely played, or failed to complete. To name a few:

Paper Mario 2 (Cube, never played)

Sly Cooper 1 and 3 (PS2, Never played)

Wave Race: Blue Storm (Cube, Never played)

Psychonauts (Xbox, Never Played)

Gun (Xbox, Never Played)

Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2, Never Played)

Jade Empire (Xbox, Played maybe once or twice)

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (Xbox, Played for a few hours a couple times)

Silent Hill 3 (PS2, probably played maybe 10-15% of the game)

Final Fantasy X (PS2, probably played about 5-10% of the game)

Half-Life 2 (PC, probably about 70% complete)

Guild Wars: Factions (PC, played maybe once 4-5 hours)

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. And what’s worse is that I think none of these, save maybe the first Sly Cooper, are in my “sell” pile… meaning, I hope to get to them at some point. What have I been playing recently? Unfortunately, none of those… The most solid block of my time recently went to playing through God of War (PS2) on God Mode (a game which I’d already played through once on “Normal”, but just had to play again in anticipation of God of War 2… luckily I had a brand new copy that I had bought awhile back, as it was one of my rare rentals the first time through). Aside from that, I’ve been bouncing around between Elebits (Wii), Okami (PS2), FEAR (PC), Lord of the Rings Online Beta (PC, more on this in another post), and every now and then a bit of Lumines Live (360), Gears of War (360), and Contra 3 (Wii VC). To top it all off, there are still games that I am considering getting in the next few weeks: Crackdown (360, looks like it could be a blast, and of course, includes the Halo 3 beta access), SSX Blur (Wii), and God of War 2 (PS2, a no-brainer).

I think the basic problem is that, despite all the crap that comes out every year, the average game is actually pretty decent. There are just dozens of games that come out every year that are probably worth playing and that get well-reviewed, but how many can we actually get to and, in addition, actually complete? In addition, once you get a game, a much better/more anticipated game comes out just a few weeks later (see Okami, then Gears of War, then the Wii).

It definitely seems like renting games would be a good way to alleviate this problem, but of course, it presents other inherent problems such as, what to do about really long games like Final Fantasy or Zelda? Zelda took me over a month to complete, even though most of my gaming time was dedicated to it. Of course, there’s also the “collector” aspect of several games. It may be awhile before I pop Zelda back into play, but if I couldn’t do that at some point down the road without really planning ahead (like a rental would sort of require me to do), I’m sure I’d be disappointed (even today, I still sometimes miss my NES and SNES that I had given away so stupidly years ago).

In any case, does anyone else play and purchase games like this? Should we be renting more games, or would that only compound the problem (by taking time away from the games that we actually really want to play)?