Recently, a number of our posts here have focused, in ways directly or indirectly, on challenges associated with being adult gamers. As much as we might not like to admit it, as we grow older, our gaming habits change, sometimes by choice, often by necessity. Demanding jobs, growing families, and surmounting financial concerns all eat away at free time that we may have once had to devote to games. In my gaming life, the requirements of the real world have especially impacted one of my gaming habits in particular, that of playing through a single game with multiple characters and having each follow a distinct path.
Sometimes, I like to think about how things would be if I made different decisions. Like, if I had never decided to buy the PlayStation 2, my first venture outside my previously Nintendo-only domain, what games would I be playing now? What would my collection look like? I’m sure we all have times where there is a great game we didn’t plan on getting, but we ended up playing it because of what a friend said about it or because it caught our attention in the store during a search for a completely different game. And when this happens, I often think about how close I came to missing out on such a good game. And maybe we all do that, or maybe it’s just me. Because I think too much into things sometimes.
And when I get to thinking, I realize all manner of things. If I didn’t just happen to spot “Okami” and “Vexx” and decide to give them a try, I would have missed out on some fantastic games. And “Portal 2”, actually, was thanks to good things Cary and Hatm0nster said about it, or I would have never bought the game. (Thanks, guys.) Seriously, I saw it in the stores, and all I thought was, “That game sure has a weird cover”, and that was that. Then, I heard people talk about this game, looked it up one day, and there it was, a game I had seen before and just simply passed by. Small world. Or just, small video game section of the store. I dunno. But, it’s weird. Also, thanks to more good reviews on blogs I’ve read, I bought “Chrono Trigger” and “Chrono Cross”. Never heard of those games before, but now I own them, and I really look forward to playing them. Continue reading Great Games I Almost Missed→
