No Everlasting Online Experiences Please

Ah, Summer. It's coming to an end. These scenes will probably be a lot less frequent.

To be fairly specific, this is me falling asleep during one of Metal Gear Solid 4's cutscenes. I usually only have time to play after 2 AM so I'm sleepy as hell, and the cutscenes and sneaking don't help much, but I'm loving it so far.

This was my first Summer in 4 years in which I wasn't either getting fucked up in some god forsaken place, working on some impossible music project, dating, in a relationship, or all of those together in some awkward mix that would barely leave me time for much else. So I figured I'd do something I haven't had the time to. Make a list.

There are some games missing from here and a few others that I probably won't play, but I WILL play the majority of these. IT IS MY CAUSE.

Now, even though I've only finished 5 of these so far - and 3 of them I had already finished years before, mind that (MGS1, 2 and 3) - (and I'm a few minutes away of finishing two others), I'm already getting kind of cool with it, because my play time lately has greatly surpassed what's normal to me, even though I've only been playing on average 1-2 hours a day, considering I haven't been playing every day either. 

As I mentioned before on my first post of this absurd blog, I've never been much the kind of guy who dedicates himself to one game. The only times when I did that were the times during which I played Habbo Hotel during 2004-2006 if I'm not mistaken (one day I'll write a post about that, I've had many funny stories to tell, not counting the 4chan habbo raids and all that), and Conquer Online, which was a fun free-to-play MMORPG that was a total ripoff of Diablo, which I played for about a year back when I started high school. I was pulled into it by the girl you'd least expect to spend more than 5 minutes straight in front of a computer so I was curious, and it was a pretty fun game.

After that though, I couldn't play jack shit on my PC until 2011, when I built my own, so I found myself with a massive library of games I wanted to play, and even until this day I sometimes am not quite sure where to start off. Even with this list I made.

The only online game I've consistently played was Team Fortress 2. The game is absurdly fun, and in my last months of playing I used to spend more time on item trade websites and ingame trade rooms, in attempts of making profits trading keys and hats and whatnot.

I've had many friends trying to pull me into MMO's and stuff like that (obviously mainly World of Warcraft), but I never really bought into it because the idea of having to pay a monthly fee to be able to play a game that I wouldn't ultimately play much because I'd be busy with my little creative things and my band, a very good idea. 

A person who's very close and dear to me really tried to get me to play League of Legends with her, just as recently as some months ago. Everyone in my engineering college plays LoL. Every. Fucking. One. I remember when I started college, I actually thought there'd be alot of people using Steam and playing the regular stuff. But not really, only the few close friends I had made there.

Deep down, I really wanted to play LoL with her, I know she really wanted to have something to play with me, and we did play Team Fortress 2 a couple times, but she had played WoW for some years, so a MOBA was more of her thing. I really wanted to avoid playing a MOBA because I have a weak wrist, and I always avoid using mouse/keyboard for games, save for FPS's (which I rarely play, mainly for this reason) and a few other exceptions, but 90% of my gaming is done with a controller.

But my main reason for not wanting to play, at least for the time being, is because of my massive pending library of games. I have over 120 games on Steam, and many of them I really won't ever play, but there's still so much stuff to play, I haven't even finished Half-Life 2 as of the time of this writing. Not even the first BioShock. Yep. 

There are just too many masterpieces I need to finish before tackling something of the magnitude of an MMO or a MOBA (in this last case, if I want to get competitive). 

Eh, part of me still feels like I owe an apology, because as a true gamer, I really should be able to open myself up to anything, especially with someone who you've been sharing gaming experiences for a while.

However, I simply didn't want to dedicate most of my gaming time to a game that would require me to be constantly playing to be improving my skils, gaining experience, money, items, blah blah whatever, in a game in which I'd ultimately never be amongst the best playing. At least in Team Fortress 2, I could pop in and out whenever I wanted to, I could play for 5 minutes if I wanted to, I wouldn't have to wait an hour for a match to end if it lasted for that long, just to have intense backlash for my awful playing at the end of the match. In TF2, everyone's just having fun. All the time. TF2 really surpassed Ratchet & Clank 3 in terms of online fun for me, it was a fantastic and memorable experience.

Are these bad reasons? Does this make me a bad person?

Random photo of stupidly huge game collection, for obvious illustration purposes.

Anyway, even though I haven't played that many games, I've finished more games than it's usual for my standards of... finishing games. And it feels great. It really does feel good. It's like connecting loose ends in my life. I wanted to play Metal Gear Solid 4 tonight, but I ended up playing two hours straight of Sacred Citadel with two buddies. It's a short game, and it has co-op, so fuck it, let's have some fun! And it was pretty fun. We're nearly half way through the game, and even though one part of me doesn't feel that much like picking it up again, the game is so short, that my dedication to finish those games makes me want to pick it up once again to get to the ending and achieve one more finale.

And as soon as my classes begin later this month, things will shift to what's usual. I'll be playing a couple of games in extremely long intervals (one of which is FFVII which I've been playing for over a year and I'm about 70% done with, because I play in bursts), and one will be wither Deus Ex: Human Revolution, or probably stuff I'll pick up on the PS3. But I'll be playing very sporadically, so it'll take me ages to beat them. And they'll probably only make around 20% of my extremely short gaming time.

The other 80% will probably be reserved to Borderlands 2 or sporadic online plays of co-op games, hopefully Dead Space 3 when I find someone to play with.

What I mean with all this though, is that I kind of feel like I've played enough, for now. Maybe I can hold off some months feeling good about my pending games, until I feel a need to finish a dozen of games again. Until then, I feel like I could tackle some online game for a while. Hell, maybe even League of Legends. I said one day I'd probably pick it up and play it for a considerable while, and one day I might just do that. I don't feel exactly ready yet, but I feel closer to being able to.

What I really feel closer to, is that after I finish Uncharted and MGS4, I'll really almost just stop playing games altogether. I've had my good run, I can hold it off for a few months now.

Until that time comes, I'll just go blast shit up and pick up endless loot and laugh like a jackass with my friends on Borderlands 2. Damn, I've forgotten the appeal of awesome loot drops for over half a decade. Sounds like a plan!

To be perfectly honest, this will sound absurd, but after I finish a few more games I think I'll reach the point where I'd actually be up to play something like WoW vanilla if I had enough friends crazy enough to play with. For now, I just want to remind myself why it feels so good to finish many single player games and many different storylines and experiences. This.

Sony ads are the best. <3