The Gamer's Eye of Judgement

 I own a lot of video games, and by a lot I'm talking over 300, spanning across all generations dating back to the early 80's of Atari and Intellivision. Throughout my life I've talked games with numerous people and during these conversations there's always talk about a big title that they've played and absolutely loved to death that I have not had the chance to buy or try out. I guarantee every single time I'm asked to play the awesome game I always have to bring them down with the excuse "I'd love to play it, but I'm busy with other games at the moment."

 My gaming style is not the most common amongst other gamers, but I like to play a game straight to the end as soon as I start playing it. On rare occasions I could do this with 2 games at a time, but a majority of my time is spent on one game. Of course that one game could take a few days to beat to a few months depending on what my schedule looks like, and how difficult the game itself is. Achievements are also another factor in this as well...I hate to say that I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to 100% a game's achievements, but there's always a few that I'm almost certain not to obtain and so I passively move on to the next game. However in most cases if I have a hunch that I can get a specific achievement, no matter how excruciatingly long of a grind it'll take to get me that achievement, I will spend as long as it takes to get it no matter what.

 A perfect example of this is the achievement to reach level 50 in multiplayer on Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. That one achievement took me a good month of grinding games to reach and it was worth the blood and sweat. As a result, I never want to play multiplayer to that extent again...however I regret reading ahead on the achievements for ACIV and finding yet another "level 55" multiplayer achievement. The good news though while reading the comments on the achievement, is that the leveling is not as bad as was in Brotherhood, and with the Wolfpack mode there's really no need to sit in a lobby waiting for other players to join. So in the end maybe this max level achievement won't be as terrible, but still a tiny bit of a grind.

 I know there's a lot of gamers that don't spend countless hours on every game they get their hands on. I know for sure there's at least a couple games that will be played for countless hours, while the rest are only played for a couple hours at a time. Yes, I do know and realize the games you play are absolutely amazing and I would love to play them. I do know I will be most likely playing them from start to finish one way or another, but I've got quite a line of other amazing games that are also on my waiting list to be played that I need to go through as well.

 I had one such discussion with a co-worker trying to get me to buy and play Skyrim. He did nothing but talk nearly everyday about his happenings with the game and what he's been doing and how I should seriously be playing the game because that's all there is to play and no other game matters except Skyrim. I told him the usual "I have other awesome games that I need to play too" and gave him a couple like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and the original Resident Evil trilogy (I've only really played part of the 2nd). He then turns and tells me that I need to play those too, and I just simply rolled my eyes at him since these were only a few of many I still needed to play on top of just Skyrim.

 There is good in some of today's games when it comes to not buying them day 1. A year or so down the line there'll most likely be a special edition of the game that includes all DLC that was released for the game all packed in one and for the same price (if not cheaper) than when it was initially released without any DLC. All in all, buying late is better with the much cheaper price and possible added content.

 Hopefully before I die I will have played all that needs to be played both old and new. With the rise of concern for the future in console gaming I hope to have just a LITTLE bit of a breather to catch up on some older games while I continue to potentially flood my Steam account with more games...