The Holiday Season has finally passed us and the huge glut of games being released now is down to a trickle. This is the perfect time for gamers to catch up on some older games that they’ve abandoned for newer or must-have games. I am no saint when it comes to this; I will buy a game if it’s on sale and tuck it away for a rainy day. It usually leaves me with a huge pile of shame. Well, during this nice post-Holiday drought, here are 5 games I plan to take on and beat.
5) Dragon Age: Inquisition
Dragon Age is a series that I’ve enjoyed from the start–the world they created and all the lovely characters to enlist, befriend, and seduce. It is a great series that Bioware needs to keep alive. Thankfully, there is no news of Dragon Age getting yearly releases. That would cause doom and gloom for me. Dragon Age: Inquisition is one of the oldest games on the list, but not one the oldest games I need to complete. It is one of the longer ones, though. I generally play “event” games much later than they’ve been released because I’ve beaten other, shorter games that come out at the same time. Call of Duty, Halo and the like are much shorter games; you can knock those out in ten hours or so. An “event” game takes over twenty hours to complete, which is why I keep them on hold unless they are insanely riveting. Dragon Age was, unfortunately, not riveting enough for me. I got stuck in the Hinterlands because of some overpowered enemies and pretty much gave up on the game. After several friends beat the game, they gushed about how amazing it was and how I need to complete it–and I will very soon. I want to get back into the world of dragons and elves, and play a real life Lord of the Rings RPG as written by Bioware. I also need to get this done before Dark Souls III comes out because From Software games seem to trump Bioware masterpieces.
4) Fallout 4
Just like every other gamer I patiently waited for Bethesda’s opus, Fallout 4, to be released in November; I even took a vacation so that I could immerse myself into the game that much more. Sadly, (if that’s a proper term) I got some Star Wars fever at that time and had Battlefront to play, as well. The fever won out, and instead of looking for my lost son in the Wasteland I was sniping Rebels and flying around as Boba Fett. Before The Force took over, though, I did put in about eighteen hours wandering the Wasteland, joining factions, and saving a lot of the useless people that survived. I did hit a bit of a snag during a Brotherhood mission where my Science skill wasn’t high enough and I couldn’t complete the mission. That put a damper on things, even though I had about ten more active quests, including the main story line. A galaxy far, far away kept calling, and now that I’m burned out a bit on that game, it is time to go back to the Wasteland and finally save Shaun.
3) Xenoblade Chronicles X
My Wii U backlog isn’t that large; I just never really have the urge to fire that console up for some reason. I thought that Xenoblade Chronicles X would be the game that got me to fall back in love with the Wii U, but I am yet to feel the draw. I even went through the work of moving some of my SNES downloads onto a flash drive so that I could download the data packs. The data packs are supposed to make the game run smoother and took up a whopping 15GB of space. Yet, here I am about two weeks after the download is complete with the game is ready to go, and I am yet to fire it up again to watch the beautiful opening cinematic and create my character. There may be a few things that could be stopping me from getting into the game: one is the fact I’ve never beaten any of its predecessors, and another is the fact that I know this is an extremely long game. I’ve been told it takes over twenty hours just to get a mech and that it takes over eighty hours to complete. This game is the poster child for “event” game, and I can’t imagine playing for seventy plus hours only to find out that I’ve not grinded enough or missed a key item. This will probably be my last Winter Lull game, and boy, will it be a doozey.
2) Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
Hideo Kojima’s final Metal Gear is definitely one of his best. I’ve logged about seventeen hours into this gorgeous game, and I know I’m nowhere near the end. I got stuck in a mission fighting the Man On Fire–no not Denzel–and I read somewhere that I can Fulton him to safety. As I was attempting to do so, my editor contacted me and let me know that Call of Duty: Black Ops III was on its way, so I decided to pack up Snake’s final story and get ready for some gun toting mayhem. I’ve yet to get back to Afghanistan with Snake and Quiet–and I really need to. Unfortunately, I know I’m going to have to quit the Man on Fire Fulton mission for myself and find a special upgrade for my Fulton before I do it. That should take some time, knowing how Kojima likes to make gamers run through hoops now and then. Either way, I can’t wait to see how this story on acid plays out. No rush, though, since it is the last one.
1) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
I’ve been wanting to get into the Witcher games ever since I heard they’re were prose novels. I, being the weird completionist that I am, had to find the books first and read them before I ever put one of the games in. I read most of the novels, then I started a save in Witcher 2 on my Xbox 360. I never got too far because other games distract me from Geralt’s world. My goal is to get through two as fast as I can so I have some basis for the story, then fall headlong into Geralt’s newest tale. I’ve heard that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is massive in scope; has an enormous amount of updates and new content from CD Projeckt Red; and plays much better and easier than its predecessors. The controls and difficulty of Witcher 2 have kept me from fully enjoying a series that, by its cover, looks like something I could really get into. I love traipsing around worlds that contain magic, monsters, unicorns you can have sex on, and so forth. I know that forty hours of Geralt’s life await me, and I cannot wait to dig into them in the coming winter months.
What say you faithful readers? Any “event” games on your list to play during the lull, or are you just polishing off you presents?