Wait, do I really need to play this?

Much has been said and written about the abundance of games being released today. I generally feel very positive about this new reality, since it means that more people are able to follow their passion and try their hand at game development. I'm sure it's very hard to get noticed and actually make a living out of it, but when people can follow their dreams, it makes me happy and tells me that I should probably follow mine. From the customer/gamer perspective, the immense number of games being released means more choice, and while it can be a hassle to navigate some storefronts to find what you want, the likelihood that there's a game, or twelve, that fit your tastes perfectly at any given moment has skyrocketed. Let's say I like Metroidvania games - and I do - there are probably dozens of such games available right now, many of which are good, even great.

The excellent Hollow Knight that I have yet to complete

While there are many positives to this new reality, the drawbacks are what I'll be focusing on today. I'm not going to delve into the impacts for the gaming industry, from the developers to the multiple storefronts opening up everywhere, subscription services and whatnot. I'm certainly aware of the implications on a grander scale, but I'm not an expert on the matter by any stretch of the imagination and attempting to analyze these subjects on a deeper level would be presumptuous. 

On a personal level, the vast quantity of games puts me in weird situations almost every time I boot up the PS4. I also own a Switch but I haven't had the same issues there since I only have 8 games and no real "choices" to make. On my PS4, I have approximately 100 games, and have access to about 140 more if I include the PS+ titles and games I have bought and deleted since - either because I finished them or didn't like them enough to keep playing.

Solid month

First, the PS+ titles. I certainly am happy to get two (sometimes more, depending on the PS3 and Vita titles) somewhat "free" games every month. Not all of them are games I'm actually interested in. And it happened quite a few times that I had already bought/played the game beforehand. Once in a while though, I get a game that really enjoy that I would have never even thought about. I did not finish them, but Dead Nation and Dragon Crown were such games. It was very fun, and I might have never have noticed it if not for PS+. Two other great titles that I did actually finish were Velocity 2X and Brother : A Tale of Two Sons. And to be fair, you do get the occasional AAA title like Metal Gear Solid V and Destiny 2 on the service. 

But looking at my list of trophies of the 200+ PS4 games, so many of them have either no trophies or just one or two. It clearly means I have simply tried them for a while, maybe 15, 30, 60 minutes before dropping off. When I look back at them, I wonder whether or not I would have stuck with them if I had actually paid for every single one of them, even just a couple of dollars. Does the fact that they were "free" actually cheapens their value? Instead of trying Styx : Master of Shadows for about 30 minutes before dropping off, I might have soldiered on and perhaps been hooked on it for the long haul. It's hard to say. Separating the product from the price you paid for it is not an easy task. There definitely have been instances where I have actually paid for a game - although 99% of the time I wait for some sale - and still dropped off rather quickly. For some reason I bought The Crew : Ultimate Edition in December for about 20$, thinking it could not be as bad as people made it out to be. I actually put some time in that game, more than I should have. It's just not very good. It's certainly fun to drive about from place to place for a while, but it gets old rather quickly. It was such a steep drop from Burnout Paradise : Remastered that I had "platinumed" in the previous weeks. Driving around in Paradise City is pure bliss. 

So I get into situations I don't really like, like yesterday evening, when both my wife and daughter went to sleep very early and I had a ton of time ahead of me. I couldn't decide whether to try some random PS+ game sleeping in my creatively named "PS+" folder on my console, or start a game I actually bought in the past few days. I thought about Mad Max, Batman (Telltale) and few others on there before deciding to start something I actually, really wanted to play and had actually paid for two days ago... Pyre, by Supergiant Games.

The art in that game is ridiculously good

I only played an hour and I'm already way more into it than I ever was trying the last dozen PS+ titles combined. The style is amazing, the music is fantastic. It's such a polished product. I had very high expectations because I loved both Bastion and Transistor and so far it's exceeding them. I'm glad I didn't watch any gameplay video or read much about it beforehand. I certainly heard my favorite podcasts mention it quite a few times when it came out, but that's about it. I can't wait to continue it.

I was already thinking about why I even bothered trying games I never "chose" to get before playing games I actually wanted to play. On the same note, I'm often thinking about stopping games I'm not enjoying anymore, whether that's a good thing or not. On one hand, free time is a finite resource and spending it on stuff I don't enjoy is immensely silly. On the other hand, I want to develop some sort of resiliency, and not abandon everything as soon as it's not immediately enjoyable. I go back and forth between both but I'm edging more and more towards the first mindset. After all, games are entertainment, and playing one instead of the other doesn't really matter in the grand scheme. This all sounds very obvious, but it feels good to decide to care about enjoying myself when playing games instead of forcing myself to try and/or like something.

What I took away from E3

The title makes it seem like I actually went to Los Angeles and participated in the festivities. Sadly, nothing of the sort happened and I had to enjoy the experience via various video, livestreams and articles around the web to construct any sort of review/opinion on the matter.

First off, let's talk about the "new" hardware we've seen, the PS4. Let's just skip over the looks of the actual console, because while it does look good, a fine piece of design I'd say (I also liked the fact that they brought the mind behind the design on-stage. Nice touch), it hardly matters when you'll be putting a disc in and playing it. Anyway, the announcements that garnered the most applause from the audience were the "No Restriction on Used Games or on lending games whatsoever", the "No online verification needed to play", the "PS+ on all three PS3, PS4 and PSVita" and - the best part - the 399$ price tag. In that regard, Sony clearly knocked Microsoft out. Although rumors are circulating around the Internet about the fact that Sony's policy towards used games might not be as open as the conference led us to believe. But nothing has been confirmed yet, we'll see! Anyway, I was also excited at the number of indie developers Sony were getting along with, including Supergiant Games, of Bastion fame. The first-party exclusives (The Order : 1886 looks like an awesome steampunk game) in development also had me pretty pumped for the first year of this new console. Some multiplats were also showcased and looked quite appealing to me. Destiny looks and feels like a gigantic project undertaken by Bungie (read a good piece on it in EDGE lately) with amazing potential, while Ubi's Watch Dogs showed some spectacular depth in gameplay, a wildly interesting story setting (so far) and jaw-dropping graphics.

Overall, I was so happy during the conference I immediately pre-ordered the PS4 from two different places when it became available later that night.

I won't lie, I have a slight bias towards Sony's consoles. But to my defense, I went out of my way to try and defend Microsoft's position when talking to people. I'm not a big Microsoft fan, I work on a MacBook, my 360 is barely ever used at home and various stuff like that would make you think I hate Bill Gates' company. Which is not true. I try and be as objective as possible when arguing about consoles. I try not to fall in stupid, pointless arguments about the "better" choice and I will try to distantiate myself as much as possible from my subjective feelings when talking consoles.

Anyway, I haven't watched Microsoft's conference. I heard many negative things about it, except for the games which looked pretty impressive when I watched a few trailers. And when it's all said and done, for a gamer like me, Games should be and usually are the central focus of every discussion. If you have good games, your console will fare better. So that's why I went on and watched a few trailers, to get soaked in and better evaluate the console for the games it offers and not for some controversial marketing choices. Ryse : Son of Rome looks like promising take on a somewhat forgotten historical era (a least in video games) with visceral combat and tactical warfare, although I'm not sure how I feel about all the button prompts/QTEs... Games like The Witcher 3 and MGS V are no-brainer AAA titles. The only other one I saw was Titanfall, and I really liked what I saw there as well. It looks like a somewhat futuristic Battlefield with mechs and other neat concepts. So while everyone is shitting on the XBone for various reasons, they still had some very decent software to show for. And you can't go wrong with good games.

I haven't watched Nintendo's either, but I still took in a few trailers to see whether or not this console was worth it before the next Zelda game gets released. The trailer for Super Mario 3D World looked absolutely epic, everything you'd expect from a Mario game, like they've been doing at Nintendo for over two decades... just pure gold. Pretty much the same goes for Mario Kart 8, although I wish they had come up with a better name for it... I'm one of those who feels like "numbered" series are shooting themselves in the foot. Why? Not only you are saying to the audience you have no imagination, but you also make it seem like there was A LOT of games before it, which makes it seem like nothing more than a rehash of old ideas. Which is why, even if I'm far from being a Call of Duty fan, I appreciate their idea of not calling their games by the number since the first one. I know you'll find numbers like in MW3 or BOII, but at least we're not simply at CoD9 or something, which would make it even worse.

Anyway, back to Mario Kart 8, it seems to me like Nintendo could make 89 Mario Kart games and somehow still come up with new tracks, new concepts, new ideas. They're just THAT good. I'm not buying a Wii U for that game only, but holy crap it looks fun... The last thing I saw from Nintendo this week was The Legend of Zelda : Wind Waker HD. If I remember correctly, Wind Waker is in the top 10 of my favorite games of All-Time, amongst the legends of GoldenEye, Ocarina of Time, Resident Evil 4, Super Metroid and Bioshock. It tells you how much I loved this game. I think it's a great opportunity for the many who shunned the GameCube version for idiotic reasons like "It looks childish".

So I haven't been able to get through ALL the games yet, but I've seen enough to be excited about the next generation in gaming. Bring on the PS4!