Never Played?

When it comes to computer games, there are titles I play regularly (e.g. Star Trek Online), there are titles I played through and enjoyed which have no replay value (e.g. Half-Life 2) and there are titles I started and gave up on (e.g. Duke Nukem Forever).  The part that makes my jaw drop though is the last part of my library, this part is the titles that I own but have never played.

It seems to me that this list of never played titles is growing longer and I do not understand why.

I’m uncertain if this is because Steam has its Summer/Winter sales or because you can help out charity whilst receiving multiple titles with initiatives like the Humble Bundle.  Maybe it’s simply because Steam lists every game I own in the one place.  Whatever the reason it just goes to show how much things have changed over the years.

When I was a kid and console gaming was the only platform open to me, there was no such thing as a never played game.  If I got a new game (birthday / christmas) then that game got played to death.  There were no exceptions, when I got Sonic 2 it got completed, when I got Golden Axe it got played for months (although I sucked at it) and I even remember spending hours playing Trivial Pursuit on the Master System (despite that stupid duck “hosting” it being annoying).

Maybe I just need to set myself a challenge to just play through the games that I have in my library but with Borderlands 2, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron and more all just around the corner it looks like my library will contain some “never played” titles for a long time to come.

Zombietastic

It’s funny, a few weeks ago I played Half-Life 2 through to the end for the first time, mostly because I was feeling unwell and had nothing better to do.  More recently, I’ve found myself playing a lot of Left4Dead the newer Zombie flick styled release from the same company, Valve.

It’s made me realise that, quite scarily, I don’t think that I’m a massive PC gamer anymore.  Now, for me this is freaky when I consider that I used to spend hour upon hour playing every day to the point that the wonderful people at AlienPants actually employed me to do things with gaming servers.

At first glance these look like conflicting statements, i.e. “a lot of Left4Dead” and “I don’t think that I’m a massive PC gamer anymore”, but hear me out.  Left4Dead has pretty much become the only title that I play on the PC.  There has been very little else on the PC lately that has enticed me into playing it for more than one or two goes.  When I consider that back in the day I played more varied Half-Life mods than I did full blown console titles, that is quite sad and a little scary.

I think I’ve almost completely regressed to being a console junkie.  Is that a good or a bad thing?!?