Summer gaming is the best because it gives you time to catch up on the games you missed out on earlier in the year. This is thanks in part to the typical summer release lull that lasts from post-E3 to about when the yearly iteration of EA’s Madden franchise hits.
Too bad I’m not catching up on anything. Why? My backlog of games I’ve bought and saved to play for a rainy day is too large. Consider it hubris, or maybe this is how being an adult gamer goes, but I buy far more games than I ever complete.
What a terrible problem to have, right? I expect that statement to be read with eye-rolling discontent, and rightfully so. “Oh, I simply have too many video games to play, whatever will I do?”
What a jerk. Every day there are gamers out there with zero new games to play and here I am rolling around in a metaphorical pile of digital content, bemoaning my inability to get up and play one of them.
The online gaming webcomic Penny Arcade made a comic well over a decade ago in which a character stands in at an ice cream store, unable to make a choice when presented with a staggering number of flavors. “When given the ability to choose anything I tend to pick nothing,” he says, stricken with the crushing fear of too many choices.
That’s me every time I go to play something these days. I might as well be looking at Netflix, scrolling for forty minutes, then decided to go to bed instead. Perhaps this is the problem in our modern entertainment age — we have too many choices, and thus we fly too close to the sun like poor Icarus.
When I was a kid, my gaming options boiled down to either irritating a parent to the point of insanity to get a new game or playing the same handful of titles over and again. Considering I spent a lot of time grounded you can probably guess which option I tended to lean towards.
And so, I’d play Sonic The Hedgehog 2 for the billionth time. But, now? I think I own Sonic 2 on at least six different platforms and I don’t want to play it on any of them.
I blame game sales and the cult of personality that developed around Steam game sales. There was a period when a Steam sale was talked about in hushed, reverent tones, as if the gaming gods had discounted games themselves. After all, why buy a game new when you can wait five months then get it for 60 percent off?
That mentality has led many — myself included — to gorge themselves on games when sales do come, like a squirrel preparing for a harsh winter. My Steam library is a perfect example. Currently, over 500 games are sitting in my account and I’ve played maybe a fourth of those, at best.
But, that’s the thing. We rationalize it by saying that we’ll play those games “someday.” It’s like saying the sun will come out tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar. However, tomorrow never comes.
Boy, that makes Annie more depressing, huh?
This isn’t to say that I’ve completed abandoned my backlog of shame. In the past year, I’ve managed to make progress on The Witcher 3, Fallout 4, Spyro Reignited, and other games that I added to my library with the intent of playing them down the road. The problem with impossibly long games like the aforementioned Witcher 3 is that I’ll play a large chunk of it, only to stop then lose all momentum.
Then, later I’ll attempt to go back to the game, only to be like that meme where John Travolta in Pulp Fiction looks around, lost and confused. Where did this sword come from? Where am I? Did I even name this horse?
And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful house.”
What is a gamer to do? Honestly, there is no answer. I’ll eventually get to the likes of RAGE 2 and Team Sonic Racing, but it will probably happen thanks to the morbid curiosity of what I missed and not some false feeling of obligation. And honestly, that’s the right path: These games aren’t roadblocks that must be removed before I can keep driving. Instead, they are landmarks and pit stops along the path of life.
Sometimes you stop and take a good look around. Other times you scoff at the billboard, yell about how you’d never stop at such a place, and keep going. And that’s life. Sometimes you stop, sometimes you don’t, but you keep going, nonetheless.
That said, I’m never going to play RAGE 2. I don’t know who I’m kidding.
Contact Will Harrison at DoubleUHarrison@gmail.com or on Twitter @DoubleUHarrison.
First Published August 22, 2019, 2:02 a.m.
