I've found most of my gaming time lately to be overwhelming. In the past month I have purchased 6 new games for my PC, thank you Direct 2 Drive sale! This influx in games and the ability to purchase them for cheap has been fantastic, but it has largely left me feeling overwhelmed. With my girlfriend up at college, I have a lot more time after work, but more often then not I find myself sitting at my PC or in front of my 360 trying to figure out what I feel like playing. You think this would be an easy decision, with so many choices, right? That's far from the truth. More often then not, I find myself unable to make an actual decisions so I end up watching TV or doing something else instead. It's an odd phenomenon considering I have more time then I've ever had to play, but I probably play less then I ever did. Oh life, why must you be so confusing?!
My most recent Direct2Drive purchases include
Company of Heroes and
World in Conflict. I've been itching from some RTS action lately and heard so many good things about
Company of Heroes, that I had to pick it up. Thus far, I've completed the tutorial in COH and that's as far as I've gotten. The tutorial actual took a decent amount of time and also got me excited to play. I've always enjoyed RTSs, but I've also always never been that great at them. I tend to avoid any online gameplay as I will most likely get my ass handed to me, so I tend to just stick to the SP campaigns to avoid embarrassment. It's been a relatively effective strategy that has still given me hours upon hours of amusement.
I also got some brief playing time in for
Battlefield: Bad Company. For no particular reason, I abandoned playing that game a while ago, even though I was so very close to the end. I've decided that I need to make a point to actually beat the game, since I tend to play through games and abandon them before completion. Getting back into playing it was...different. I had forgotten most of the controls and had left myself in a situation where I needed to relearn them rather quickly. I hope to get through this game before Christmas, but we shall see.
Finally, there's always the oldie, but the goodie and my normal staple:
World of Warcraft. I FINALLY got myself into Wrath of the Lich King content. I only purchased the expansion, oh, a year ago? It's kind of sad, but I've finally been able to venture to Northrend and check out all the new content. I leveled to 69, so I'm inching my way closer to 80. My goal is to reach 80 before the next expansion comes out, but I don't see that being too difficult considering we're probably a year away from it's release.
My final note for this update, is a question for fellow gamers. Do you ever find gaming to be "work?" I've noticed that lately it's felt that way to me. I have a hard time playing just to play. More often then not, my brain says "OMG YOU HAVE ALL THESE GAMES, YOU NEED TO BEAT ALL OF THEM!" I think that's what has been my major turn off towards playing lately or the feeling that has left me uncertain as to what I should be playing. I've invested so much money in the last 6 months or so into games and I have more games then I could ever imagine that I have yet to beat or have barely played at all. I feel the need to play and beat all of them as to somehow justify my spending money on them. If I'm not playing them, I'm wasting my money, right? I need to abandon this idea and these feelings and get my head back into the game and play because I want to play and play because it's fun, not because I need to beat or play something I paid money for. I'm not quite certain how to rid myself of this feeling, however, considering I full understand why I feel the way I do, yet those feelings remain. It's a strange predicament to be in, to have so many games and so much more time, but to have that desire to play somewhat missing. I need to get it back, I'm just not sure how.
