On playing more games and actually finishing them

Last week, when I wrote about my initiative to play more games, I started taking stock of games I could play when I didn't have the chance to rent. I thought my library was reasonably well-played through, with maybe one or two that I was only a few hours away from finishing. I came up with seven titles that I was not even halfway through, and four that I hadn't played for but a few hours.

This is a huge change from how I used to play games. From the time I got my Nintendo 64 at age nine, up until I graduated high school, I generally played all of my games to completion before I bought another one. Granted, I stopped 100%-ing my GameCube games the way I did Star Wars: Rogue Squadron or Super Mario 64, but I at least took the time to finish the critical path before moving on.

Now, I chew through new releases, playing them for a few hours, then putting them aside until later. "Later" being some indeterminate future, of course. Seriously, out of my shelf of Xbox 360 games, I've finished maybe—maybe—around 60% of them.

That's not including games I bought for other systems, either. My Super Nintendo has been poised and ready to play Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island and Final Fantasy II for months, and I made a big to-do out of buying The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the GameCube, only to shelve it after playing it for an hour and a half. And my poor Wii U, shunted to the side after playing it for like two hours =(

Worst of all are my digital purchases. Most of my Xbox Live purchases are made because the game is on sale; I bought Dark Void, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and Halo: Combat Evolved solely because they were five dollars. Hell, just yesterday I picked up Mark of the Ninja, Fez, and Super Meat Boy—all super stellar games that I won't have time to play, but couldn't help getting because they were all half off. This is must be what it's like during Steam Sales.

I've even started a small pile of games I've simply given up on. I hit a wall in Batman: Arkham Asylum sometime back in 2010, and I don't care enough to try to unstick myself, especially since I have Arkham City on PS3 (which I still need to beat, whoops!). I reached the final boss of Gears of War and gave up, and I figured I had gotten everything I needed to out of Final Fantasy XIII without playing its boss rush-style endgame. FIFA 10 has been kinda sitting there for about three years, but it's a soccer game, and you can't really beat those, right?

I realize I don't have time to play videogames the way I could in high school. I have several jobs, and I'm still trying my best to write as much as I can (a games writer must write, after all!). Still, there must be a way I can run games to at least a complete finish before moving on.

One reason why I halt a game partway through is because, frankly, I don't want it to end, and want to hold on to the experience. I'm sitting on a half-finished copy of LA Noire because I loved the hell out of the first parts, and I'm waiting for a magical circumstance when I can enjoy the back half just as much. Same goes for Halo 4: I don't want the ride to end, and I especially don't want to feel like I hurried through the campaign at the expense of ignoring everything. In my efforts to savor, my meals, I'm allowing them to cool and collect mold in the fridge.

There's also my psychosomatic idea that I don't have time to play videogames, which, frankly, is bull. Like I wrote before, I need to play videogames if I want to keep in this games-writing race, and abandoning ship before I can ingest the full experience won't do me any favors.

So how do I clear my backlog out and go? Bettering my time management skills would be a great place to start. Playing games in short bursts would give me slow, steady progress, even when I am in the middle of other games. For longer experiences like RPGs or adventure games, I can focus only on the critical path and leave any extraneous sidequests. Lastly, if I want to get really serious, I can set up a schedule for which nights I'll play what; keeping up in gaming is serious business, one that organizational skills can only help.

Fortunately for me, the next few weeks until the end of January are barren with new releases, giving me plenty of time to make headway in my backlog. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have more loot to collect in Darksiders II.