Bad Habits?

Due to the extremely boring and unfortunately timed task of moving house a few weeks ago, I’ve missed out on a lot of hours of gaming time and a couple of big releases. How can I justify purchasing HomeFront when there’s paint to be bought? How could I possibly explain buying Dragon Age 2 when I have to get a new stupid carpet?

For once, I have found myself unable to convince myself that kittens will die unless I buy the game I want that week and have forced myself to be more sensible. Probably because if I didn’t I would have nothing to sit on. Or cook on. Or wash my clothes with. Yes, cool things that I normally spend the money I have left over from bills have been replaced with going towards a washing machine, dryer and a sofa. I just bought a Dyson with the money I could have spent on a new console! Can you imagine how painful that is to do?

…although a Dyson robot would be well worth the money.

Some good seems to have come from me acting all grown up and budgeting, as mediocre as it all seems. Before, I seemed to have got into a pattern where I believed that if a new game was released, that I wanted, that I must have it on or within two days of its release date. I’m not sure when I started to think like this ( it possibly started with Resident Evil 4, when I traded 4 games and got it for a pound) but as cool as it is to buy a game on release day, and as awesome as it is at the moment you get home and turn on your console ready for some new game-related coolness, there are a couple of negatives that can occur, especially if, for example, there are three games that you are looking forward to released in the space of a month.

Logically thinking, there is no reason why I should buy all three games on release day. In order to start playing one, I would have to stop playing the other for a while. I suppose I could rush through one to complete it in time for the next game’s release, but considering I have about 2-3 average hours of game time a day, and without all the added extras like multiplayer & achievement whoring the campaigns can range from 5 to 40+ hours, rushing through a game just so that I can be ready for the next one would take the enjoyment of gaming away.

It is physically impossible to rush a Fallout game. Vault Boy dares you to try.

My preferred method of getting around this obstacle (more approriately named ‘lack of sense’) was to buy the first game, be madly into it until game number two came out, buy game number two, be madly into it until game number three came out, and so on. In extreme cases, some games I bought didn’t even get touched for months. These weren’t games I bought in a bargain bin, thinking ‘that looks good, I’ll get it because it’s cheap and I’ll get around to playing it’. These were full priced, brand new games that I had been looking forward to, but somehow got pushed into the sidelines when something I wanted even more came along. I didn’t touch Bioshock 2 for months, for some unknown reason. I stopped playing Dead Space as soon as Left 4 Dead came out and didn’t come back to it for a long time. I have only just started properly playing Red Dead Redemption and I only completed Mass Effect 2 a couple of months ago (although I did wrongly think it was crap for a long time). I guess the argument to this is that I had them if I wanted them and I did eventually get around to playing them. But my point is that I didn’t need them there and then, on release day. If I had paced myself and waited, I would have saved some money and got more value out of the games I already had.

Why the hell did I wait so long?

So although it’s really, really hard not to go out and buy one of the million games I want, I guess I can wait while I get through my back catalogue.


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3 responses to “Bad Habits?”

  1. Hardlydan avatar
    Hardlydan

    Keep the back catalogue for the quiet times and do yourself a favour. Get Portal 2 and put some cash aside for L. A. Norie and Brink!

  2. Joanne avatar
    Joanne

    Oh Portal 2… 🙁 As much as I’ve been putting my fingers in my ears and saying ‘lalala I can’t hear you Portal 2’ I feel it will be my next payday purchase.

  3. Mark P avatar

    Bah, forget Portal 2 – Dynasty Warriors 7 is where it’s at!

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