jawafour wrote:I fell off the rails this year, picking up more games than I'd planned, and I want to take a new approach for 2019. I'm thinking about setting myself a few "limits" in terms of buying and playing; something along the lines of:
Buying> Limit of three new "AAA" games at launch
> Only buy "indie" games if I'm gonna play them right away
> Anything else can only be bought at a reduced price
Playing> Play stuff that I already have if I'm tempted by new games
> Learn how to play FF XIV and ESO... and stick with them!
The "AAA" limit is tough... if I want to get Animal Crossing at launch, that only leaves two spare slots
. I want to stick to my "playing" rules, too. Hopefully they will help me to focus.
Is anyone else thinking of changing their gaming approach for the new year?
Definitley! I also fell very much of the rails this year - probably my worst ever year for it...and I started so well too, barely buying anything up to March!
I counted up my total and I ended up buying 213 new games and 10 new systems (Xbox One X, Virtual Boy, Game Boy Light, Sega 32X, Atari 2600, Game Gear, PSP, Sega Mega CD, Neo Geo Mini and PSVR).
The bulk of it was retro stuff, same with the systems and a big part of that was bundles (For example buying an Atari 2600 and a Game Gear - both of which came bundle with over 20 games) and some of the modern releases a number were bulk buys on Humble Bundle, so it's far from 213 full price games but even then I don't really want to total up how much I've spent this year. All I know is that it's far too much!
I have made a few decent inroads into my backlog, for example I finally played through a few Assassin's Creed games having had them in my backlog for years, finishing off the entire Ezio trilogy. I also finally completed Mario Sunshine which I'd been stuck near the end for years. That said, my new purchases massively outweigh the dents I've made into my backlog although of course a lot of the Retro stuff has been bought to have a nostalgia blast on, not to play to completion. I think I'd have done better, after all I'd completed 22 games by July but we got a puppy at the end July and that has rather eaten into my gaming time until recently, totally worth it of course!
I've also made the mistake of buying a lot of new games on release, something which I haven't done since 2015 when I bought Fallout 4, MGSV and Star Wars: Battlefront and didn't really get my value for money's worth out of any of them.
In this case I've bought God of War, Spiderman and RDR 2 on PS4, I do like them all but I abandoned God of War due to an issue with the way it displays on my monitor that was really distracting (lots of blinking pixels) and I've not really had the time to sink my teeth into either Spiderman or RDR2 yet, but hopefully that will change over Christmas. Annoyingly, since then they've all come down in price (except RDR2) and it's safe to say I could have waited and got better value. Worst of all though was Starlink on Switch, which I bought on release and have played a few hours of but have since seen it drop from £70 down to £17. I like the game but that price drop is really jarring. The only ones I've really had value out of at release have been Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Smash Ultimate, both of which I've put upwards of 15 hours into and am continuing to play. Hopefully I've learnt my lesson this time of having some patience!
Change of approach in 2019 is hugely needed as not only is my backlog enormous but I also need to cut back on spending because I've really overdone it this year. Fortunately, most major releases that interest me in 2019 seem to be sequels to games that are in my backlog but that I've not yet played (Such as Last of Us 2, Kingdoms Heart III, Shenmue 3 and Metro Exodus) so it should be easier to resist them. I do really like the look of Days Gone on PS4 but I'll try to hold off that until the inevitable price drop. The main draws of the announced games this year are Animal Crossing and Luigi's Mansion 3 - both of which will be day one purchases for me, Pokemon is also likely to be although it will depend on the content.
My aim this year is to buy a maximum of 12 games in the whole year. That will work out as one per month but if 2 must-haves are coming out in the same month then I would get both that month and get none in another month. Luigi's Mansion 3, Animal Crossing and FIFA 20 are almost certainly going to be 3 of them which leaves me with 9 other possible purchases. Still not decided if I'm going to include retro purchases in that but as that has been my biggest source of new purchases this year it would probably be wise. Either that or limit myself to 12 current gen releases and 12 retro purchases...
Either way I actually need to cut back, actually work more into my backlog and enjoy what I've got!