Gaming Baggage

I read an interesting article on IGN the other day about our dirty little gaming secrets. I mean we all have some sort of ‘Baggage’ and it would be difficult not to have some relating to our favourite pastimes.

Here I am talking about my gaming secrets, of which some have never been heard before, so feel privileged you’re reading this. These might relate to some of you too as I’m sure we all have a few games we’ve never played or stories about games that never really happened. Some of these secrets come with a level of deniability but in the age of online gaming it’s slowly becoming more and more difficult to hide the truth.

Firstly I must tell you one of my secrets that is probably one of my most shameful. It’s one of those subjects in gaming that always seems to come up in conversation and inevitably I lie (in part).

One of my favourite games series ever is Final Fantasy, mainly because I love a good Japanese RPG. I had completed the majority of them in full until I saw Final Fantasy XI and thought it was toss. I’ve never gone back to the series either which probably doesn’t make me a real fan at all. I cracked out Final Fantasy XIII but as soon as it let me explore at my own place I discarded it to the bottom of my collection forever. Maybe it was the fact that the game wasn’t holding my hand anymore but I didn’t want to grind and I’m not as hardcore as I use to be. Completing a complicated JRPG requires dedication and hours of game time – something I struggle to have.

In all honesty I’m probably not the right person to talk RPG’s with at all even if I do say it’s the genre I hold the most affection towards. I love Mass Effect, The Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age but none of these are Role-Playing Games in the sense I mean. A true role player can take on any adventure for its story and not for its action. Unfortunately action is the main reason I love these games – yes Origins did have a wonderfully crafted story but Skyrim’s was shit at best.

Actually all the RPG’s that are not action based are generally discarded shortly after I played them through. I guess I’m not a true RPG fan after all.

One of my other disappointing gaming moments came from the fact that I almost didn’t buy an Xbox 360 but had spent my time preparing to save my money for the inevitable release of the Playstation 3. I know, I know; sickening right?

What truly happened was that I completed a pre-order for the Playstation Portable device that was taking up a lot of headlines at the time. Feeling like this was the best use of my money before the next generation of Playstation was released excited me a lot and I can remember feeling like Christmas was coming sooner than usual. Anyway a few days following the official PSP release I popped into my local games retailer who told me that my fully paid pre-order slip had not been processed properly. To say I was angry was an understatement and to make things worse they told me that they could order one but it could be a couple of weeks due to demand. I was horrified and withdrew my order for a full refund straight away. The shop clerk apologised for the mistake and offered me another pre-order at a discount. In fact this offer was for an Xbox 360 at the same price I was paying for the PSP only I needed to pay a little more to ensure I got it on day one buy purchasing at least 2 other games.

Obviously I took up this offer and walked out with a day one pre-order for completely the other console I was after and with 5 games coming with it too. Let’s just say the night I got my console home and popped on Perfect Dark Zero was the day I stopped looking at Sony. That’s definitely saying something as I’d never play Perfect Dark Zero now due to how terrible it really was. Still great graphics can do that to you.

One of my other big gaming gripes is with Call of Duty… not just Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops but with the entire range of games. I would go as far as saying I hate them but in all honesty I don’t have a legitimate reason why.

This isn’t that easy to explain and I feel quite red-faced about the whole affair. I have been trying to hide this for a very long time but I’ve never really played them; at least not in full. Yes, I’ve seen them in action loads of times and they look beautiful but I like my FPS titles to have something different about them and that is where I find my first gripe.

Call of Duty looks like every other run around gunner and doesn’t feel all that polished either. Granted I have almost no Multiplayer time to stack this down to but it just seems like a fastest finger first kind of game. Maybe it’s my poor dexterity but I hated the multiplayer (at least the 1 hour I put into Modern Warfare 2).

The single player campaign sits poorly in my mind too as the over-the-top shenanigans only furthered my hatred. It’s not that Call of Duty is a bad game but I love the DICE based combat shooters much more; the vehicles, the weapons and the gameplay just seem far superior in every way – granted only in my opinion. Ok it’s not big and it’s not clever to hate a book by its cover but I do. I suck at it too which probably doesn’t help!

Another one of my big gaming failures is the fact that I have several games of various varieties sat packaged in their original plastic sleeve. The reason for this isn’t because I had anything against the games – I paid for them didn’t I – but is mainly down to increasing amount of good games being released at the same time.

It’s disappointing to buy a great game; especially one that you really want to play, only to find you get caught up in something else. It’s a realisation that I am truly having a few problems dealing with and several of you reading this will find yourselves in the same predicament I’m sure.

The scariest thing for me is that sitting here I can think of 6 Xbox 360 games currently in this state (Dead Space 2, Dragon Age: Awakening and Fallout New Vegas to name a few) each of which probably cost my on average £50.00. This doesn’t even take into account all the DS and PC games in the same condition. What an extortionate amount of money to pay for something you’ve never used… I may as well just give my money to some random person on the street instead.

Anyway one day I will get around to finishing them all in some form or other as its fast becoming an endless entertainment offering gathering dust. In fact I could pour hundreds of hours into all of these unopened games without scratching the surface of the content too much. If I don’t start playing these games now either than chances are they are going to multiply further.

And to finish I have saved probably my most personal gaming gripe and one that came a fair few years ago at the end of my N64 days. With all the press releases and next generation information floating around I came to the realisation that I needed to get rid of my games or start winding down my collection before it was too late.

I passed some of my games to friends, traded in others and generally tried to reduce the volume I had accumulated before they weren’t worth anything. I always wanted to be ahead of the curve in my teenage years and never had the fondness for classics like I do now. I played games, finished them and discarded them like yesterdays leftovers. One of these greats that I still miss to this day was WWF: NO Mercy.

In itself it is almost certainly the most complete wrestling game to date and still surpasses most of the newer iterations fairly easily. With backstage brawls, a clever character creation and a good story mode this was the WWF at i’s finest and had the longevity to produce hours upon hours of flawless entertainment.

That was until I traded it in for a mere £10.00 store credit. I mean come on what could you really pick up for £10.00 anywhere at that time let alone now?

Now to be perfectly clear although this is a great game it’s not the fact that I traded it in that I hate so much but what I traded it in for…. Shortly after putting WWF: No Mercy back in the shop I found an article confirmation that my game was worth £50.00 in cash easily and probably even more now.

In fact I actually went back to try and reclaim my game but it wasn’t there though, and is probably exactly what is deserved. The guy even said to me that ‘this will fly off the shelf’ so I should have known straight away.

So come on then - let it out; what's your secret gaming shame? Sound off in the comments.