Games That I Own and Need to Actually Play Sometime

In-between my constant bouts of playing too much of a select group of free-to-play games (mostly League of Legends, with a side of both Vindictus and Marvel Heroes) and over the course of my time as a graduate student, I have accumulated a small-but-sturdy collection of games that I: 1) have gotten on the cheap, 2) am generally interested in playing, and 3)feel some sort of sentimental attachment to. In an effort to make myself play some of this ever-growing stable of games, I have decided to make this list so that I can see just what exactly I am looking at, and share my general indecision with whoever decides to keep reading. Drum roll please:

List items

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  1. Final Fantasy XIII-2

  I have this game mainly because I mostly liked the demo and I decided that my price point for the buy would be $20. Unfortunately, when it came time to make said $20 purchase, I had just started a semester that I thought was going to be hard (it wasn't) and I pretty much lost my desire to sink the many long hours that I would otherwise want to when playing any Final Fantasy. On the flip side, I still really want to want to play the game someday (preferably soon, like, say, over the summer that has just started), largely because of my (possibly irrational at this point) attachment to Final Fantasy as a brand. Starting with the PSOne version of Tactics, Final Fantasy has always been my own personal ideal for what I would like the general, "mass-market" RPG to be. There is just something about the marriage of mostly-turn-based battle mechanics, generally-interesting casts of characters, and sublime world design that I fell-in-love-with instantly, and continue to love to this very day.

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  2. Jak and Daxter Collection

  Although I only played about half of the first one, all of the second one, and approximately none of the third one, the Jak and Daxter series, just like with Final Fantasy and RPGs, has always represented my ideal 3D Platformer. I got this one for Christmas last year (2012 for future people) and while I have at least played through all of Jak and Daxter, I still have yet to re-play Jak II or even touch Jak 3. I would really like to rectify said situation, but to do so I need to actually take the time, sit down, and actually play them. I am hopeful that this will happen soon.

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  3. The Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection

  I just need to come out and say it: while I've played through and loved Shadow of the Colossus twice on PS2, I have never and have never wanted to play ICO. I know, I'm a bad person. I bought this collection because once again the price was right ($20) and I greatly desire a better optimized version of SotC. In case it didn't come across clearly, I love SotC very, very much. As perhaps an added benefit, the game is also fairly short, something that makes my lack of playing this version of the game almost criminal. Also, as a bonus, I guess, sometime I can play through ICO, you know, should the mood strike me (but it probably won't, at least not until/if The Last Guardian comes out).

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  4. Darksiders II

  Out of thefive of the games on my list, this is the one that I bought purely from an economic/general interest level. I think that I got the game for about $15 at a Best Buy sale, and although I have only played about an hour of the first game I have always had a strong interest in the series. I really don't have much to say about this one. I bought, I know people who like it, I want to play it. 'Nuff said.

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  5. The Last Story

  Okay, time to get real. I love Lost Odyssey. It's seriously my second favorite current-gen game (behind only Demon's Souls). It also happens to be the best Final Fantasy game since X, and I wish more games like it existed. They don't, however, and so I come to The Last Story, the latest effort behind Lost Odyssey-and-Final Fantasy-sire Hironobu Sakaguchi and his company Mistwalker. Naturally, I bought The Last Story the second it came Stateside last August, and though I wished that it were a little more turn-based and a little-less MMO-y, I thought that it was a good deal of fun. Then, about half-way through, I stopped. My stopping concurred directly with the release of Guild Wars 2 the weekend before the semester started, and once I was done with GW2 a couple weeks later, the first weeks of the nothing that happens at the beginning of a semester stopped, and I got scared, just as I did when I bought XIII-2. Time went by, I bought new games, a new semester started and ended, and I played more LoL, Vindictus, and Marvel Heroes. Thus, I have never finished The Last Story, and I would really like to. You know, someday.