2010 In Review (December 27, 2010)
Intro
I scoured through my collection and my Lovefilm (ie. netflix) rental queue to write a quick note for every game I purchased or rented or played in 2010. Within each category, they're in chronological order (for the 'rentals', though, I have them listed in order of when I received them, but not in order of when I bought them, as is the case with 7 rented games).Here 'tis.
*Note that XBLIG game West wasn't included. Try typing west in the search field and see how many pages you go through before giving up on finding the right one. As that's the case, I didn't include West in my analysis.
Categories
1 through 16 are games that I played through rental.
17 through 23 are games that I first played on rental, but ended up buying.
24 through 32 I bought on PS3.
33 through 43 for 360.
44 through 47 on PSP.
48 through 51 are PSN.
52 and 53 are Kinect games.
54 through 60 are XBL, excluding a game I bought called West (a few lists in, and it still hasn't popped up)
61 for the Wii.
Facts Upon Review
1) 24 of the 47 games I own I consider to not have played through in any significant way.
Some examples:
MvC2: I played what seemed like dozens of hours on the Dreamcast to unlock everything. I've played maybe 3 times, and I don't remember getting to Abyss when I shut off the machine.
UFC 2010: Went through championship mode as Kimbo Slice, played the first 6 matches and couldn't beat Lesnar for the title after a few tries, haven't touched since.
Rock Band 3: All I've done is imported my RB1 and RB2 tracks, and made a band. Haven't actually gotten to the game part yet. Though to be fair, this is more of a party game.
Except for two zones of Sonic and Knuckles and two playthroughs of Text Zedventure (which takes 5 minutes), I haven't even selected the XBLA/XBLIG games from the start up menu.
2) 7 out of the 23 games I rented I actually played through
Modern Warfare 2, Bayonetta, Saboteur, Bioshock 2, God of War 3, Halo ODST and Black Ops
3) 5 of the 7 games (of the 23) I rented I ended up buying, even though finished them when I rented them
Modern Warfare 2, Bayonetta, The Saboteur, Bioshock 2, Halo ODST
4) 2 of those 7 (of the 23) I bought, but I never bothered playing during the rental period and since I bought it; so didn't play them when I rented them, and didn't significantly play when I bought
Ratchet and Clank, UFC 2010
5) Of the 33 games that were bought, but were not DLC or a pack-in (ie. Kinect Adventures), 17 were some variant of a special/collector's edition
Modern Warfare 2 (probably counts as 2 as I bought the hardened edition, then bought the one with the statue when that became cheap) Bayonetta (art book and sountrack), UFC 2010 (though this is debatable; it was just exlusive to HMV), Bioshock 2 (the one that came with the record), Ratchet and Clank, FFXIII, Heavy Rain (HMV edition), Demon's Souls, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (wth the jack-in-the-box), Forza 3, Splinter Cell Conviction (with figure), Alan Wake, Halo ODST, Halo Reach (which should probably count twice, as I bought the console and the middle edition, without the monument), Enslaved, Vanquish (steelbook) and Kingdom Hearts: BBS
This doesn't include Mario 25th Anniversary (as it's just one standard pack) and my physically-similar-to-their-normal-edition-counterparts copies of Red Dead Redemption and NBA 2K11, which came with some DLC that was (supposed to be) emailed to me.
6) 7 of the 16 games I rented (and didn't end up buying) I played for 30 minutes or less
Red Faction, Tiger Woods, Resonance of Fate, Cross Edge, Alpha Protocol, South Africa 2010, Fight Night 4
7) Another 7 of those 16 games I rented (and didn't end up buying)I didn't even end up getting into the start screen. I may even have installed the game, even, but never bothered playing.
Broken Sword, Sakura Wars, Mario and Luigi 3, Yakuza 3, Metro 2033, Bad Company 2, Castlevania
8) Of the 27 games for the PS3 and Xbox 360 I bought this year (including rentals that became sales, but excluding donwloadable titles), there are 16 360 games and 11 PS3 games.
9) 5 games out of 61 are for Nintendo products (Broken Sword, Tiger Woods, Sakura Wars and Mario 25th Anniversary for Wii, Mario and Luigi 3 for DS). I bought 1 Nintendo product software this year (Mario 25th Anniversary)
10) 4 out 4 PSP games have Japanese RPGish elements to them.
I've also uploaded Vagrant Story to it, which I downloaded at the very end of 2009.
11) 14 out of 47 games that have (or seem to have) a distinguishable end point were actually finished, removing 14 games that don't really have an end:
God of War 3, Black Ops, Modern Warfare 2, Bayonetta, The Saboteur, Bioshock 2, Mass Effect 2, Splinter Cell Conviction, Alan Wake, Halo ODST, Halo Reach, Red Dead Redemption, Vanquish, Text Zedventure12) 10 of the 12 (of the 14 games that were finished, but not including the two rentals) were replayed to varying degrees.
I never touched Bioshock 2 and Alan Wake at all after finishing the story.
13) Mass Effect has been played through three times. I've played nearly 90 games in NBA 2K11 (10 Jordan Challenges, just over 20 games in first season with Jordan, which got corrupted, then nearing another 60 games with rookie Jordan).
These two games (along with Civ Rev and NBA 2K9 from a couple of years back) are essentially preventing me from starting new games.
14) The 14 games from the original 61 that I consider to not really have an end, for the record:
Tiger Woods, South Africa 2010, Fight Night 4, UFC 2010, KOF XII, SSF4, Rock Band 3, Forza 3, NBA 2K11, MVC2, Burnout Paradise, SF Alpha, Kinect Adventures, Dance Central15) 3 games bought, but sold off
UFC 2009, Battlefield Bad Company 1, Red Faction Guerilla (which holds the distinction of being rented, bought and sold off in the same year), all bought pre-owned in the fall.
16) 0 of the games are iPhone/iPod Touch games. I've only bought 3 games for it since I bought one in 2008, none this year.
17) 0 of the games are PC games. I had a netbook for about 11 and a half months of the year so I couldn't buy disc-based games, and since it's a netbook, I wasn't really into playing Starcraft II, Civ 5, Sims 3 and other such games on it, even if I could download them.
Conclusion
I initially thought using my Lovefilm queue to rent games was useless, consider I have a significant number of games that weren't just not finished, but sometimes not even started. However, for the 16 games of the 21 I rented that I didn't end up buying (excluding RF Guerilla, which was bought and sold), I probably still saved money by not buying games I wouldn't replay after finishing (God of War 3) or found out that some games I was looking forward to, I didn't like (Alpha Protocol, Yakuza 3).
I also don't finish a lot of games. A LOT. And these were just games that I played in 2010. I still have a backlog of Euro PS2 games that I bought from 2008 to 2009 (about 15 games that I lent to a friend, including Shadow of the Colossus, Digital Devil Saga 2, Rogue Galaxy and Way of the Samurai) that I bought when I moved here that I haven't touched. Also, I should probably start playing my downloadable titles.
I have absolutely no reason to buy a game in 2011. Mostly for the backlog, but also because I'm already spending 15 pounds a month for rentals (and films) and games are expensive when they come out, but somehow drop in price sporadically not soon after (see Fallout New Vegas, coming out at 40 pounds, now at half price 6 weeks later).
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