1733: Bumper Crop

It’s one of those times of year that there’s seemingly hundreds (well, all right, that’s an exaggeration) of great new games coming out, and relatively little time in which to play them all. That’s not stopping me picking up the ones I’m interested in, mind, as I feel it’s important to show your support to companies that are doing the right thing and releasing (or, in the case of most of the games I’m particularly interested in, localising) titles that other publishers might see as risky or too niche-interest to take a gamble on. (In actual fact, it’s clearly not all that much of a gamble at all; if it were, I’m sure companies like NIS America, Xseed and Aksys, who bring these games from Japan to the West at an impressive rate, would have folded long ago.)

Just off the top of my head, games that have been recently released (or that are imminent) and that I am either in the process of playing or am interested in playing soon-ish include Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1, Ar no Surge, Akiba’s Trip, Freedom Wars, Danganronpa 2, Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus, Tears to Tiara 2 and doubtless several others I’ve forgotten. And this isn’t even getting into the stuff that I’ve previously acquired and haven’t touched yet, which includes stuff like Drakengard 3, Monster Monpiece and the numerous non-Rorona games in the Atelier series. Nor does it cover the Pile of Shame I have that extends back to the PS2 era — largely acquired through spotting bargains and through taking full advantage of UK video game retailer Game’s misfortunes when it was struggling a while back.

I don’t mind though; I’m building up a library of things to enjoy that will last for literally years at this rate, since a significant number of these titles are fairly lengthy affairs, many of which also reward multiple playthroughs. It’s because of this huge stack of games that I don’t feel at all bad about not having jumped on board the “next-gen” (PS4 and Xbox One) bandwagon as yet, since 1) there’s nothing yet been released on either that I’m personally interested in playing (though a new Neptunia game is on the way to PS4, which will more than likely tip me over the edge) and 2) I like to finish my games — even if it takes a while.

I was talking about this latter point with a few people recently; the figures for people who actually beat games — now a lot easier to track in the age of achievements, which are essentially nothing more than metrics, after all — are depressingly low, and indeed, outside of very short games regarded as “must-play” experiences by popular opinion (things like Gone Home, The Stanley Parable and their ilk) it is, anecdotally speaking, quite rare for me to hear someone else talking about beating a game and what they thought of the ending. That doesn’t mean people don’t do it, of course, but with the pace of new releases these days I kind of feel like it’s probably getting rarer as people feel pressured to play the latest and greatest thing simply to keep up with their peers.

I prefer a more leisurely pace, myself; it may take me weeks or months to plough through a lengthy RPG, but I enjoy myself a lot more in the process. Since the only multiplayer title I play is Final Fantasy XIV, which is a “constant” rather than something more seasonal like the latest first-person shooter release, I don’t feel the pressure to be playing The Next Big Thing the moment it’s released — and no longer being a member of the games press means that I don’t have the responsibility to do so professionally either.

Consequently, I intend to spend the next few months playing the Ace Combat series — which I am now absolutely smitten with, incidentally — along with Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 and, as ever, Final Fantasy XIV. After that, who knows? I might move onto something new; I might decide it’s time to tackle some of the older games in my collection. I have that freedom to do so, and it’s nice.