To Kill a Mass Effecting 2 Bird

So I've been on a game buying binge lately. I bought Rage . . . and that's it. I'm a cheap date.

I have seriously had Mass Effect 2 and Call of Duty: MW 2 for almost a year without ever having played them once.

I guess as you get older, games become like books. You just want to have them and you can't explain why. Maybe it's because they look cool on your shelf. (and make other people feel intellectually inferior to you - honestly when I see people with tons of dictionaries and encyclopedias in their office I think "are you aware that all of that stuff is on this phone I am holding in my hand")

I did finally get to playing MW2 and I'll tell you, that is one cool game.

But this made me think about how many games there are out there that I will never be able to play. It seems like an injustice to the makers of them.

Did you know there are 32 million books in the library of congress - each person struggling to say something that other people will want to hear. Many of them have only been read by a few people - no more than a blog post on Gamasutra.

It is sad to me that alot of these are probably very good books that just get crushed by a huge mountain of other books. It is even more sad to me that alot of these books are just mediocre(or crap) - that someone took the time to write them and that effort to me seems wasted. But I guess writing is sometimes theurapeutic in and of itself. So I guess I shouldn't feel that bad for them.

So I decided to make a list of games - to figure out the ones that I will committ myself to buying and also to honor the ones that seem good but I will never be able to play(because of time constraints). (I hope you'll notice the irony of honoring overlooked games on a blog post that will go mainly overlooked)

So I read through these four pages on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_in_video_gaming

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_in_video_gaming

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_in_video_gaming

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_in_video_gaming

And then I picked out the ones that I would play if I was unemployed.(and still managed to retain sufficiente cashola)

Let me be clear - I would play all of them if I had all the time in the world (even Barbie as The Island Princess) But we have to prioritize. So that is what I did with this first list:

(I bolded the ones that I have already played through and "beaten")

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Assassin's Creed: Revelations

Batman: Arkham City

Minecraft

Need for Speed: The Run

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

L.A. Noire

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

The Lord of the Rings: War in the North

Battlefield 3

Rage Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Fable III

Brink

Portal 2

Crysis 2

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Total War: Shogun 2

Homefront

Dark Souls

Dead Space 2

Killzone 3

Dragon Age 2

Battlefield Bad Company 2: Vietnam

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

Fallout: New Vegas

Medal of Honor

Halo: Reach

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Crackdown

Crackdown 2

Red Dead Redemption

Alan Wake

Supreme Commander 2

God of War III

Final Fantasy XIII

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Napoleon: Total War

Heavy Rain

BioShock 2

Star Trek Online

Mass Effect 2

Left 4 Dead 2
Assassin's Creed II

  Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Dragon Age: Origins

Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony

Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City

Borderlands

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Demon's Souls

Halo 3: ODST Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Resident Evil 5

Wolfenstein(the new one)

Battlefield 1943

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood

The Sims 3

Braid

Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor

Killzone 2

Halo Wars

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned

Flower

Mirror's Edge

Grand Theft Auto IV Left 4 Dead Gears of War 2 Fallout 3 Fable II BioShock

Bully: Scholarship Edition

Dead Space Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Spore

Unreal Tournament 3

Battlefield: Bad Company

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Mass Effect Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Assassin's Creed Viking: Battle for Asgard Sins of a Solar Empire

Pirates of the Burning Sea

Halo 3

The Sims 2

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Crysis

Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts

World in Conflict

Medal of Honor: Airborne

Supreme Commander

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Eve Online The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion The Total War Series

Civilization Series

Company of Heroes Series

Everquest I and II

Rift

Conan - Hyborian

Dungeons and Dragons Online

So many others probably - I went through this list pretty quick.

End of list

Then I filtered the 74 that I havn't played to the ones that I will committ myself (in my current employed state) to buying and playing:

1) Battlefield 3

2) Star Wars: The Old Republic

3) Deus Ex: Human Revolution

4) Red Dead Redemption

5) The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

6) Brink

7) Crackdown

8) Mirror's Edge

9) L.A. Noire

10) Halo: Reach

11) Amnesia: The Dark Descent

12) Batman: Arkham Asylum

13) Spore

14) Assassin's Creed II

15) Portal 2

16) Crysis 2

And let me be clear again. I doubt I will make it through all of these. I am aiming high. Honestly I will probably only get through 5 of these in the next year. Especially with big ones like The Old Republic which as you know is an MMORPG. (and MMORPG's can be played for extended periods of time - I don't know if you were aware of this)

I even get stuck on really good small multiplayer games like Left for Dead 2.

This is the conclusion of my narcissistic discussion about how you should all sympathize with me for not having enough time to play videogames because I am too busy "working". (and by "working" I mean alt-tabbing in and out of writing this blog post on wordpad so that I can post it later when my boss isn't looking and IT isn't monitoring) Thanks for reading!