I played a lot of games this year, because as we all know, a lot of good games released this year – too many for anybody to play them all! That’s why when I say I played a game, I usually don’t mean that I finished that game. In fact, if I haven’t written a review for a game, I almost certainly have not finished it.
Baldur’s Gate 3, my game of the year, is lying stagnant and unfinished near the end of Act 2. I have three orbs inCocoon, and I don’t know how far that means I am.Like A Dragon Gaiden? I’m a couple of hours in.Spider-Man 2? Peter is still in his Black Suit. I’ve done maybe three regions inDredge. I’m nowhere near unlocking everything inDave the Diver. Don’t even ask me how far I’ve gotten inAlan Wake 2since Irestarted my game. For whatever reason, the only full-length campaign I’ve actually finished isDiablo 4, and it’s not nearly as narratively compelling as anything else I’ve mentioned – I just happened to have time to finish it that month because I wasn’t playing anything else.
My lack of commitment to a single game has nothing to do with the quality of those games, but more so with the fact that there were just too many options. I also have Attention Deficit Disorder, for what it’s worth, which means every shiny new game that dropped grabbed my attention away from whatever I was playing, no matter how much I was enjoying it. I stopped playing Baldur’s Gate 3 to playStarfield, which was a mistake because Starfield was inferior and I lost all my BG3 momentum for very little payoff.
Then I jumped between a bunch of indies, then to Alan Wake 2, then a bunch of other games in order to collate a GOTY list, and then I got a PS5 and I’ve been playing Spider-Man 2 ever since. I have finished almost nothing this year, andI bought more games that I didn’t get around to even trying because of end-of-year sales. It’s a disaster, and I feel bad about it, because all these games deserve to be appreciated in their entirety.
I’m still mad that somehowPhil Spencer has more gaming time than me.
Finally, the end of the year has brought some respite from the incessant bangers, and there aren’t any huge drops for the next month apart fromLike A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. I already know that game is going to consume my life until something newer and shinier comes around – the developersdidrecently confirm it’ll take about four days of non-stop playing and no sleeping to finish, which is likely how I’ll be engaging with this game.
While I’m still dedicated tomy project to finish Yakuza: Like A Dragon and Like A Dragon Gaiden before Infinite Wealth releases, I’m committing myself – genuinely, wholeheartedly, entirely without reservations – to seeing one game through to the end before I jump back into my Like A Dragon binge. I will be finishing Spider-Man 2 within the week, because it’s what I’m playing now, and once I’m done with Infinite Wealth, I’ll backtrack through all the year’s great games I never managed to finish. But God help me, if we get another year like 2023, I’m never going to be able to catch up.
