1417: Roll the Credits!

Nelson Mandela died today, apparently. He was 95. Rather than pretend to know anything in-depth about him, his life or his work, I’ll simply say I’m sorry to hear that he’s dead, and that for someone who spent his life fighting for peace to die at home surrounded by his family at the age of 95 is surely a fitting end to a complicated and eventful life.

Anyway, just thought I’d acknowledge that because it seemed significant, but I have literally nothing else to say on the matter so I’m certainly not going to devote an entire post to pontificating about a subject I know very little about. (Although it wouldn’t be the first time I had done that.)

Instead, I thought I’d burble on about something ultimately insignificant but which has been on my mind recently; a phenomenon I’m encountering with my entertainment choices at present. It’s analysis paralysis when it comes to what I “should” spend my free time enjoying.

I like to enjoy things in their entirety, you see, particularly when there’s a story involved, and to leave something half-finished and then pick it up again later is something I don’t like to do — more often than not because the actual “pick it up again later” part often doesn’t roll around for a considerable period of time, which usually means by the time I return to the thing in question, I want to start it from the beginning again. (I say “thing” rather than “game” because this phenomenon also applies to things like TV shows in many cases.)

At present, I have three “big games” on the go in my free time, plus a few things I have to review and a couple of smaller things. The smaller things are less of an issue; one of the review games is something I really want to play anyway, but I know that it’s going to eat into the three big games I have on the go that, in a couple of cases, I’ve been playing for months.

The three big games in question are Final Fantasy XIV, Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory and Virtue’s Last Reward. Of the three, I’ve been playing Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory the longest and kind of don’t want it to end because I’m in love with all the characters like the sad otaku I am. Final Fantasy XIV I have now finished the main story of, at least, so I can now enjoy that as a pure mechanics-focused game rather than a narrative experience, and Virtue’s Last Reward is on Vita so it’s a game I can play on the toilet and/or in bed.

Here’s the issue: free time rolls around, and I find myself wondering what I “should” play.

Should I try and beat Neptunia? Probably, but then that means it’ll end, which I don’t really want it to. Although when it does end, I’ll be able to start playing new stuff without guilt, which will be nice.

Should I play Final Fantasy XIV and work towards getting my awesome level 50 gear for my black mage? Possibly, but that’s reliant on other people and time-consuming, so probably best saved for late nights and/or the weekend.

Should I play Virtue’s Last Reward, a story-centric game that is more rewarding if you play through as much as possible as quickly as possible while it’s fresh in your mind? Probably.

Or should I get stuck into the games I have to review? This is, of course, the correct answer, but in doing this for previous games I’ve already stretched Neptunia in particular out over the course of way more months than I thought it was going to take. (To be fair, though, the games that pushed it aside temporarily, Time and Eternity and Tales of Xillia, were both lengthy games in their own right that I enjoyed a great deal, so it’s not exactly a loss there.)

My analysis paralysis over this also makes me feel a bit guilty about starting up more open-ended experiences such as strategy games or story-light action RPGs. It’s my own fault for developing completionist tendencies and wanting to enjoy things as fully as possible before moving on to something else — I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who juggle lots of games simultaneously and happily flit back and forth between them, and I can certainly do this with TV shows, so why not games?

Anyway, ultimately it’s hardly the worst problem in the world to have so I certainly can’t complain — and indeed I’m not complaining, merely observing — so if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go and play Virtue’s Last Reward in bed. Or maybe some Final Fantasy. Or maybe…