Late to the (hype) party

Despite (mostly) outdated stereotypes of the closet-geek, a lot of gamers have hectic lives. Between job, school, and family commitments, it can be hard to find time to sit down and play a video game these days, never-mind sink dozens or even hundreds of hours into one alone.

I’m a University student, and I commute to Glasgow everyday from home. The heavy workload prevents me from playing much of anything during term-time, and I have to be very selective about what I do play. But I do use the commute to my advantage; during less-congested journeys I can flip open my DS or PSP, and I’m almost always listening to a gaming news podcast otherwise. Even if I can’t keep up with my play-time, I always keep up with the latest announcements. And that’s half the problem for me.

With heavy-hitters like Bioshock, Mario Galaxy, and Call of Duty 4, it wasn’t uncommon to hear people proclaiming 2007 as the greatest year of gaming since 1998, and this meant hype-levels were through the roof; as a gamer, I wanted to get in on the latest games while everyone was discussing how awesome they were. It’s human nature! Instead, I grudgingly had to add those titles to the backlog, while others finished them and moved on to more great games.

But hang on a second. Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong.

one of the critically highest rated games of the last ten years, and I didn\'t play it until seven months after release

I finally played through Super Mario Galaxy in May of this year. I only beat the base game with 60 stars, but I loved every second. I knew it was supposed to be impressive – the true sequel to Super Mario 64 – but my preconceptions had been dulled somewhat with all the talk of Niko Bellic visiting his cousin in Liberty City, or Snake facing off against Liquid one more time. So although I missed out on talking the game over with fellow fans, any bias towards (or against!) the experience was partially lifted, and I ultimately enjoyed it more.

It’s the same for other games, too; recently, I was working through Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for the Nintendo GameCube – a title some three-years old – and it was a lot more enjoyable than I expected it to be, after some initial-release rumblings that it’s not as good as other games in the series.

So perhaps I need to worry less about which games I should play when, and more about just playing what is convenient and fun at the time. After all, my backlog of those higher-rated titles isn’t going anywhere.


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One response to “Late to the (hype) party”

  1. Tony avatar
    Tony

    I know what you mean about being a student – I avoided buying a PS2 until I finished my final year as I knew that I wouldn’t be able to avoid the temptation to play it.

    Damn, that makes me feel really old.

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