Most games bought go unfinished. Most people only seem to care about games within the first few months of their release. Most gamers have a pile of shame that grows with every hot new release, every humble indie bundle, every sale. Let’s try to do something about that.
Again.
It’s Shameless Gaming Month, the time of year where we make an effort to play the games that we just never got around to finishing. Life happens to the best of us. With so many great games released, it’s all too easy to put aside something you were excited about and eventually forget about it.
What counts as finishing a game? Simply being satisfied that you’re done with a game. For some people, that might mean a platinum trophy. For others, it could be breezing through the campaign on the lowest difficulty. If you’re happy that you’re done with a game, you’re done. This isn’t a competition, it’s a chance to play through the games you missed.
Normally, I approach this with some sort of plan. A list of games that I’d like to beat which inevitably changes as the month goes on and I realise that I don’t actually like all of those games enough to finish them. Then I grind out those games over some reasonably lengthy gaming sessions.
Most of that still seems reasonable. Except for the lengthy gaming sessions bit, I’ll give that a miss this time. Lately, I’ve been playing games in smaller chunks. My gaming habits have changed and now I much prefer to sit back and do something else after an hour or so of gaming. It’s also a good excuse to drink lots of tea.
That means that my choice of games this year are ones that I’m not going to want to spend long periods of time playing. This year, I hope to finish: Dark Souls, Hotline Miami, Luigi’s Mansion 2 and Arkham Horror.
The first three of those games are all games that I can easily play in more bite sized chunks. Dark Souls and Hotline Miami encourage taking breaks to avoid playing while frustrated at the many deaths that I will suffer and have suffered already in just the last two days. Luigi’s Mansion 2 – by design – is made of fairly short chapters perfect for playing on the train to work. I don’t catch the train or have a job right now but it still suits my needs.
Arkham Horror is the exception to this rule. It’s also not a video game but a board game. It also takes two to four hours to finish and has to be played in one session. Fortunately there’s no reason that I can’t play a board game as part of Shameless Gaming Month.
For those that don’t know, Arkham Horror is a co-operative board game where you and your friends try to stop Lovecraftian horrors from overrunning the town of Arkham. My first – and only – attempt to play this ended after thirty minutes of scattering tokens across the dining table and poring over the rules before giving up.
This time will be different. I’ll get some friends over and we’ll kick some Elder God backside. If they have backsides. We’ll kick in the general direction of where we think the backsides are and hope that unimaginable horrors don’t befall us because of it.
Somehow, I also managed to finish Proteus last night. Maybe. I herded several pixelated animals to a watery grave and then walked across the ocean into some weird light thing. I don’t know if that’s the end of Proteus but it’s my end.
Anyhow, that’s my plan for the month. Has anyone else come up with an idea of how they’d like to whittle away at their pile of shame this month?
Comments
38 responses to “Trjn’s Month Of Shameless Gaming: Week One”
Well, I had to abandon StarMade, our epic carriers got too large. When they got near each other, the game crawled to .5 of a frame lmao. It took nearly 30 minutes to get away from each other. (Running 8gb ram, 660 2gb card, 3.2ghz processor quad core ffs) but got it mostly done. Started Sanctum 2 with my son, we’re playing through it multiplayer, so we’ll hit that bigtime now.
I always meant to play the first Sanctum, because I thought it was a fairly neat concept, and never got around to it. Might have to pick up Sanctum 2 later, is the co-op worthwhile?
Oh yeeeah so much so. 1 is good but 2 just totally nails it. Just perfects it. Well worth it.
I could be up for helping out with Arkham Horror. 🙂
I think we’re planning our first attempt the Wednesday before PAX because a few of us are free that day. When that fails, I’m sure it’ll be worked into the normal board game rotation until we succeed.
I am like, 2.5-3 million points away from reaching Inheritor rank in Halo: Reach. I really want to get that done. I’ll still be up for playing the Reach or re-visiting it, but reaching top rank would be nice.
I going to try and finish a game from each genre, many of which I am already part of the way through.
I finished the puzzle game I had listed (Offspring fling) this afternoon so will be moving on to something else now. The two big ones I have are FPS: Bioshock and RPG: Mass effect 2. Both have been sitting there for months (years?) but I’ve never finished them off.
Also on the list are
God game: Tropico 4
RTS: DOW Retribution (1st campaign)
I also want to finish off an adventure game (probably Deponia) as well as 100% the achievements for a couple of games that are almost there.
A game of each genre? You might have to work in a few random indie titles that have half a dozen different genres, just to help get you get close.
Got to love the ambition though.
Probably not one from each genre but use the month to change the range of games I play. Puzzle games are done so now focus on something different. Then again I am probably over half way through a game in each genre anyway so it is finishing rather than playing the full game
Anyway have to go, I need to finish Online multiplayer shooter
Feel the same way @tigerion my plans are to play through.
FPS – Bioshock infinite
RPG – Deus ex human revolution
RTS – DOW (and it’s expansions)
TBS – Fallout tactics
With plenty more to be added as the month goes on.
Nice list
I never did manage to finish fallout tactics, but I don’t think I will be moving Xcom off the top of my TBS pile.
DOW and all expansions is very ambitious, good luck
My plan is to hit as many indie games as I can. Buying up on bundles is the easiest way to build up that pile of shame, but indie games often tend to be smaller and more intimate affairs too. I don’t have nearly as much time to game as i used to, but I managed to knock out Intrusion 2, Dear Esther and Proteus in a week, SO IM SURE YOU COULD TOO.
Despite this solid plan, I’m going to start the month by finishing Black Mesa (all the HL3 hype as got me itching again). We’ll just see how it goes from there.
Already knock Proteus off of the pile and I’m sure there are a handful of Humble Indie Bundle games that I’m going to play when I need a breather. It happens every time and makes the whole “I finished X games this month” sound so much more impressive.
Heeyyyy, I think I know the guy who wrote this article. Or maybe not. I don’t make assumptions.
Dark Souls, Hitman, Sonic Generations. These are games that I have played maybe once or twice. I owe myself to at least bump up the playcount to about 4-5 times before leaving them to settle once more amongst their similarly ignored brethren.
I knew that I forgot something. Hitman: Absolution. Going to try and finish that too. Any game with a giant, bald, angry white dude pretending to be a chef in chinatown with a funny hat has to be worth playing, right?
I’m doing Simpsons tapped out on my phone and 6 free to play pc MMOs at once. )-_
How do you actually pronounce “Trjn”?
Trojan believe it or not.
Shove a couple of vowels in there and hope it sounds right 🙂
Or Trojan if you’re after the less interesting approach.
Ah. I see.
Like Le-a is “Ledasha”.
http://i630.photobucket.com/albums/uu29/pnrdrmmr/Funny/ledasha.jpg
Yes, except I just decided not to have vowels instead of pronouncing a hyphen as dash.
The vowels don’t be present? Not quite as catchy.
And I was certain it was Lehyphena
Really? I thought it was Scandinavian, so the ‘j’ was pronounced like a ‘y’, as in “Tryn”.
We should get Serrels to have a second go at his polyphasic sleep schedule again. I can’t believe it’s already been a year…
I’ve already cycled my choice for #SGMonth two or three times.
Settled on Witcher 2 today, which I recently (re)bought for PC (I already have it on 360, but I’m not plugging that back in any time soon, so I grabbed it during GOG’s summer sale).
I also started replaying Half Life recently, so I think I’ll finish that off and keep replaying through to HL2Ep2.
I’m still looking to get to the endgame for XCOM. God that game can be unfair. But fun!
I recently got back into my GoG catalogue, and picked up System Shock 2 for a bargain – mostly for nostalgia. I must say though that a lot of that game doesnt really hold up very well in the light of modern games design.
On GoG, I’ve still got to try finish Arcanum, but I keep falling back and wanting to restart my character! man that game can be unfair. But fun!
Those are my main ones, when I get time around all life’s other commitments.
Arkham Horror is great, would love to get a few more sessions in of that myself.
The Witcher
XCOM
Splinter Cell Double Agnet
That’s the big three I’m after.
I’m off to an extremely shitty start. No matter what, I can’t seem to sleep properly, nor can I wake up properly. Either I end up lying in bed for hours unable to fall asleep, or I’ll wake up after only two or three hours and be unable to get back to sleep for ages. And then in the morning, I seem to either wake up at a stupidly early time of morning for no reason or (more likely) I’ll wake up two or three times only to instantly fall asleep again before I’m able to get up, with only the next one managing to stick and I’ll be getting up some time between 1 and 3 in the afternoon. Most of these leave me feeling so terrible I can’t concentrate on anything or make any kind of productivity with the rest of the day.
Don’t mean to sound negative, but the idea of shameless gaming month makes me feel like gaming is a chore. Games should be enjoyed no matter how long they take. I’m not an achievement whore and with the limited time we have these days I’m usually satisfied with just finishing the main campaign for games these days. There are so many good games out there that we should just take our time to enjoy them rather than rush through and finish them.
You can play one game this month or a dozen. There are so many great games out there that it’s a shame that so many of them end up on a shelf collecting dust. The whole point here is to try and find some enjoyment out of the games you own but would have otherwise not played, nothing more.
I’ve got Max Payne 3 (disc 2) in the tray ATM currently in a flashback in a church shooting guns
My current target, (which just happened to nicely coincide with Shameless Month) other than to finish Fire Emblem: Awakening, is to play through all the PS3 Atelier games (excluding Meruru which I’d already completed a while back). It’s a bit weird coming home from my job only to play a game that is about having a job as an alchemist and having to produce things by deadlines. It’s an incredibly fun series though.
I don’t think whatever you did in Proteus counts as “finished”.
I’d like to beat Donkey Kong Returns on the 3DS, but Persona 4: Golden is my main mission this month.
My plan right now is to get through: Enslaved Odyssey to the West, The Last of Us, Mass Effect Trilogy (something I’ve been holding off for a while), Persona 4 Golden and the Witcher 1 & 2. No doubt this list will change over the next couple of weeks. I finished the main game of Enslaved yesterday, but want to platinum – it’s amazing to see a game with a game with such a vivid colour palette as opposed to the brown filter.
Also having heaps of fun playing as Krieg in Borderlands 2; something very satisfying about running around with an axe and a bundle of dynamite.
Best bit.
Like @n0neoftheab0ve I’m also currently playing Max Payne 3 for Shameless Gaming Month.
It’s actually one of those games I can play and then suddenly it’s after midnight but there’s usually one section every so often where you just get overwhelmed and you have no pills to pop!
Great story, excellent atmosphere, does what Kane & Lynch tried to do with the video effects but actually puts an interesting third person shooter under the hood to back it up.
Since I last posted I’m now onto my third flashback – on a boat!