Let me set the stage for this article: the Street Fighter Championship is on the television and my buddies and I are watching it while we get through a shift at work. This leads to the conversation about how we should all quit and become professional gamers since it is much more lucrative than our current jobs. We pondered what games we would be able to play professionally against other players, and I really couldn’t find one other than Resident Evil Mercenaries—my buddies picked Dota and Overwatch. Now my buddies are part of the PC Master Race while I’ve only ever played on consoles. I don’t know if that affects my thoughts on gaming or has an effect on my thoughts about this subject. My buddies prefer to “Get Gud” at one particular game and enjoy it to their hearts’ content. I, on the other hand, would rather play as many games as possible to see all the talent that there is out there. I tried the one-game theology for a time, but it just never stuck with me.
For a time everyone I knew was playing Destiny, so I would rush home from work, fire up my PS4 and do all the Nightfall missions looking for Legendary drops and such. I even had the crappiest time trying to get through the Vault of Glass raid, something I’ve still not accomplished to this day. I’m thinking we did this for about six months or so; it was all about focusing on leveling up in Destiny so that we could school the DLC when it dropped. I enjoyed my time with the game, but as I played I could feel my stack of unloved games staring at me, wondering when they would get the chance to show me all their glory. Eventually Destiny was costing too much hard drive space and I had to let it go. In hindsight, I kind of regret throwing 6 months into a game—that year, I only completed about 14 games, which is the lowest ever since I’ve started tracking my annual game count. Dark Souls II and Bloodborne helped me lower my games-beaten rate as well, but at least those games could be completed and put away in time.
How some of my buddies play the same game over and over really vexes me. I have one buddy who specializes in fighting games. I personally would never want to play him in Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter; I’d be destroyed. I did play through the storyline of Mortal Kombat on my 360 and enjoyed it, but never did I think to become an expert. My buddy will go into the practice rounds and perfect moves with his main characters—a common activity for expert players that I didn’t know about until videos were on Facebook for it. I thought it was pretty cool, but I could never see myself doing that; I’m just not invested in a single game for THAT long. I even have to take breaks from huge games like Fallout 4 and Skyrim, and sure, I would eventually go back to them, but sometimes not for months. I just need variety in my gaming life; I can’t play only one.
Right now, as I think about it, I have a game belonging to a different genre in every system I own. The Uncharted Collection, LoZ: Twilight Princess, Prince of Persia HD, Battlefield: Hardline and Spiderman: Edge of Time grace my current and last gen consoles. They are different types of games, and all provide plenty of opportunities to save before jumping to a game on another system. I must be an extremely fickle individual since I have to play something different all the time. When I’m choosing games to put in to the consoles, I also give myself a rundown so I don’t only have platformers in each system; I try to have an RPG, a platformer, a shooter and so on. I’m pretty sure this is why I’ve never gotten a tattoo and just can’t seem to hold on to a relationship—I change my mind too quickly. I will always play different types of games to experience as much as gaming has to offer. I don’t want to be known only for my kills in Overwatch.
