I’ve had more time off than normal recently because of some medical issues, and am going to have a month or two off coming up after a big surgery. I have probably 70-80 games on Steam that I can sink some serious time into, plus a wishlist of 125+ games just waiting for the right price.
The problem is similar to a writer sitting down with a fresh stack of paper. I have trouble deciding what games to play. There’s just soo many of them! I have a 1tb hard drive and put about 40 or so Steam games on it. I usually try to pick 4-5 games in different categories like RPG, platformer, building/exploration, etc, and focus on those. But it’s difficult to focus sometimes with the sheer amount of games that I have and want to play. I stare at my games list in an agony of indecision. I don’t think this game is that great, but if I never put any time into it I’ll never get it off the list. I could go with this retro game, but I don’t know if i’m in the mood to fight 1980’s controls right now.
Are you also growing your library faster than you’re playing it? Of course you are, you’re on Steam. How do you handle your Steam backlog? Are you making progress, or are you also suffering from SBP?
About 9 months ago, I just gave up on any game that was than a year old at that time. Now, I’m much more selective on what I buy. I’d say I buy 1/6th to 1/8th the number of games I used to and it can still be somewhat hard to keep up. The other thing is I really try to take into account is the release dates for games I’m super excited about. For example, Stellaris comes out May 9th, so for the past couple of months I’ve avoided getting anything as I know Stellaris is going to make all of those go into the “not playing right now … I’ll come back to it. Really. Honest (no I won’t)” bin
I don’t, generally. What I tend to do is, like you, have different games for different moods (rpg, builder, etc…) but what I actually find is that it’s best if I have one game that I play… and then I keep playing that until I’m done with it (not necessarily completed) and try and avoid playing anything else. What actually happens is that, when I’ve just finished a big game, I’ll then bounce around a few games, putting a bit of time into each, until i settle on another one again that I’ll actually play.
Last night, I finished Half Life 2 again, which I’m feeling a little guilty about because it’s a game I’ve completed before and I could have been playing a game that I haven’t played yet dammit!
I’m making a bit of progress. I’ve finished a couple of games lately without buying more. Fortunately, I can dismiss a fair number of games that are in my library, because quite a few are things that just happened to be in a Humble Bundle with something I wanted. If I ever happen to feel like messing with them, they’re in there, but I don’t consider them part of my backlog.
I usually play a game to completion (whatever I decide that means for that particular game), then move on. I don’t have any difficulty picking the next game to play–my selections are pretty arbitrary. I’ve recently gone from the Pacifist ending of Undertale to Dishonored (though I did a “Clean Hands” run), and now I’m on Ori and the Blind Forest.
I’ve got a ton that I’ve never even touched, mostly due to bundles that contained one or two things I wanted. I’m sure that some of them are quite good. In fact, some of them I’ve heard glowing reviews for. But I’ve never gotten around to trying them.
I finished *Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning * today, finally. Only, what, four years since the company that made it crashed and burned in a spectacular fashion? So at least I’m not going to have to worry about sequels.
Oddly enough, the one I’m downloading out of my list now is one of the “Got this as part of a Humble Bundle” games–found out a while back about a Cthulhu game in development, turns out I picked up the company’s earlier “Testament of Sherlock Holmes” game in a Bundle somewhere. Figured I’ll give it a try to see if I like the gameplay style.
I beat Shadows of Mordor a couple months ago. I picked it up cheap on the winter sale and got the GOTY with a bunch of expansions. I got 100% on the main game.
Some of the games I have are still in early access, like Starbound. I started another playthrough recently, and they announced that there is going to be a huge update to 1.0 soon. I’d rather wait and play through from the beginning.
I just bought The Banner Saga. Well I had to it was 75% off :o
Ok I think I will try to focus on that, GTA V, and This War of Mine. Maybe some arcade games for quick plays.
I like to think that I’m not a gamer, but I am a collector. My hobby is not playing games, it’s just getting a really good deal on them.
But really, for the “big” games I pick just 1 or 2 of them, install them, and not install anything else until I’ve either finished one of them or I’ve otherwise determined I’m done with it.
I’ve got a couple of “staple” games installed like Don’t Starve that I can play any time for any length of time and know that I’m always going to come back to eventually.
I honestly can’t believe how shitty Steam’s library interface is, especially considering how easy it is to get multiple iterations of what’s essentially the same game. I have eight versions of Warhammer 40k and six versions of Civ IV. You can make categories that float to the top, sure, but what I really want the ability to do is make nested file structures inside the main library. I a single “Civilization IV” game that has all of its various children hidden away beneath it
And it was only, what, a year ago that they let you delete free-to-play games from your library list that you’d been stupid enough to install and try out?
Likewise and I’ve been doing so for 30 years. Still have the C64 even though two keys are missing, also have a 128 that my parents picked up at some point. Keep telling myself that the 128’s power switch will get replaced one of these days.
I’ll pick up a new game, play it for months, typically get bored before the ending (if there is an ending), switch to another game for months, get bored with that and switch to a third game until bored with that, move on to a fourth or go back to the first until bored again, etc.
Sometimes I’ll play a game long enough to get to the end (e.g.: Fallout III, Fallout: New Vegas) or at least the end of the lowest difficulty (e.g.: Diablo I & II) and start over with a new character. Other games I’ll get to the end and simply keep going for the hell of it (Just Cause 2).
I’ve just decided that even for games in my favored genre, turn-based RPGs, I’m just going to play in Easy mode. It’ll say “for inexperienced players” but I’ve come to think of it as for “players with a huge backlog of games and children who feel entitled to some parenting.” I’ve been going through Pillars of Eternity like that just lately. Because fuck it.
I got the Lego Star Wars sequence when those were cheap, but it looks like all the other games are pretty much the same. Collect studs to unlock things, run around figuring out how to jump places. Not a huge thrill, to tell the truth.
