Life sucks, when you are a kid you have all the time in the world but not all the games you want, when you’re an adult you have all the games you want but not enough time to play them. Sucks doesn’t? Back when I was 12 (not too long ago) I remember having finished all the games I owned at least 2 or 3 times, I didn’t own a lot games back then and whenever my mom was kind enough to rent me games I always tried to complete my games as fast as possible before having to return them.
Life was simple back then; there was no real video game media to tell you about all the upcoming games to look forward to, and there was no internet to provide us with all types of video game related stuff for us to drool over. Now with the internet you always hear about awesome games that are coming out and then I look at my backlog of games I want to play and feel overwhelmed. At points it feels like a huge pile of chores which you keep pushing back because you don’t have time for them, then it becomes the pink elephant in the room that just cannot be ignore. Everyday I wake up thinking “I have so much to do,” when in reality all my worries comes from the huge pile of games just waiting to be played.
As you can see by the picture above I own a lot of games so many in fact that it couldn’t all fit in one picture (I need to get some wide angle lenses), for you to have an idea of where I am at I would say I have finished 50% of the games in that picture. On top of that there are always games coming out that I want to play (or have to because of reviews) and just ends up getting piled up in my backlog. My backlog includes games that came out more than a decade ago, games which I always hear about from friends and co-workers, others which I find on the internet so on so forth. Here’s a small sample of the games in my list.
Bastion
Limbo
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Crysis
The Witcher 2
Muramasa: The Demon Blade
Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker
Metroid Prime 3
Fallout 3
Okami
Kingdom-Hearts
Max Payne 2
Half-Life 2
Final Fantasy VII
Gamers have it rough, we have it rougher than any other type of entertainment medium fan. Think about it, it takes about one hour to listen to an entire music album, it takes between 90 to 150 minutes to watch a movie, and depending on your reading level you can read an entire book in one day. Games however don’t have an exact amount of time it takes to complete them. Some games can take 9 hours to complete, others can take up to 100. And it all depends on your skill level and patience, since games are the most non-linear form of entertainment there is. In the time that it takes to complete one game, you can watch almost an entire season of a show, listen to a musician’s entire portfolio, watch 3 to 30 movies and read a book or two depending on the length.
But it gets worse; many games tend to lose their appeal with time, while some games are good forever others games may not be good anymore in a few years. So my time is running short to play few of these games, and unfortunately I may never get to experience some of these awesome games. I know I am not the only one who suffers of this problem, when talking to my associates they always tell me about all these games sitting on their shelves just waiting to be played (some of which are still shrink wrapped).
“This picture of Kratos is irrelevent to this article”
I always make plans on which games I am going to tackle first, and end up not playing anything because I end up playing something that has just been released instead, thus that huge pile of games that consumes 2/3 of space in my closet continues to hunt my dreams. This is the thing I love about summers, no games coming out means time to tackle the backlog. It honestly boggles my mind when someone actually says they have nothing to play, how can anyone have played all the games they want? Is it even physically possible? I’m not sure but the one thing that I am sure is…being a gamer is a tough job.
Written by Giovanni Costa. Copyright © 2010-2012 Rewind Replay Publications LLC, all rights reserved.
