Chris

Idle Weekend July 10, 2016: Roughing It

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Idle Weekend July 10, 2016:

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Roughing It
Rob returns from a major cross-country move with stories of his Zombi adventures, surviving the apocalypse on the mean, dead-infested streets of London from his new home on the west coast. Danielle recounts her own move last year, and the comfort that her little virtual buddies brought her in Animal Crossing. And both Weekenders are hooked on new TV series. It's back to the home routine for Idle Weekend!

Discussed: Zombi, ZombiU, Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Killing Time at Lightspeed, Quentin Tarantino, Alfred Hitchcock, Occupied, UnReal

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Time to get nerdy.

Rob & Danielle's discussion of playing what they have readily available instead of chasing the next new thing, or only playing those bona fide hit games, hits close to home.

Since March of last year I have had a system: play 2 games I already own for every one 1 game I buy. It has been a really great system. It has kept me away from gratuitous Humble Bundle purchases, restrained me during Steam sales, and most importantly, allowed me to discover and enjoy plenty of games I'd already owned.

What does it mean to play a game? It means I play for a minimum of 10 hours (it's completely unrealistic that I would beat every game I own) or beat the main campaign. Ten hours seems to be a good minimum for me to get a really meaningful impression of a game. Some games take a long time to get started, and I want to give them that time. Other games seem pretty cool after 2 hours and then really fizzle by ten. A surprising number are done before the 10 hour mark.

Some games in my backlog that I finally played and enjoyed thanks to my system:

Mark of the Ninja
Saints Row 4
FEAR 2
Darksiders 2
Sid Meier's Ace Patrol & Pacific Skies

And I could go on. Even the ones I haven't enjoyed as much have been largely worthwhile while they lasted. In total, I have ended up playing 62 games in the last year + 3 months, purchasing 30, so my backlog is 32 games less. I've beaten 2/3 of the games I've started. I average 15 hours per game, or 13 hours per game I've beaten. This means I do tend to finish shorter games more often (unsurprisingly), but I'm not necessarily quitting the ones I don't finish right at the 10 hour mark. (But of course the unbeaten played games were never going to average below 10 hours, by nature of the system.)

If you've made it this far, you might be wondering, if you cut down on humble bundles and steam sales, doesn't that mean you've reduced the likelihood that your backlog contains hidden gems? Yes, I think that's probably true. My purchasing habits under this system have become pickier. But then, I still have pretty varied taste, so it's not as if I'm exclusively buying big "safe" AAA releases at the expense of other games. (Some games I've bought and played since starting the system are Firewatch, Pitfall Planet, Transistor, Black Closet, Her Story, Invisible, Inc.--in addition to The Witcher 3 and Uncharted 4.)

The main difference is that I'm actually playing the games I get, so they don't have time to turn into backlog. On the whole, it's better, because it means I not only buy them but I talk about them, which could be worth another sale or two. Another positive: since I'm buying fewer games and being less tempted by Steam sales, I'm spending more on average on each game I buy. Unfortunately, I haven't been tracking this, but I think I'm going to start. 

The hardest part of this system is actually my Good Old Games account. I have bought many a game that people remember very fondly, that I feel I missed out on, only to install it and find it just very difficult to acclimate to. Disciplining myself to play those games is proving to be a challenge, as I find I spend the first couple hours just figuring out how I should have played, and then I have to restart.

 

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Hearing about UnREAL reminded me of my favorite sendup of reality shows, from Lifetime's evil opposites on Spike- "The Joe Schmo Show". It was mostly a scripted sendup of the usual reality show tropes with the exception that *one* of the cast really was an actual "contestant" who wasn't in on it- everyone else was an actor. So there was a lot of fourth-wall breakage and TV-show inside baseball from the actual actors which I always find entertaining.


The first season, in 2003, was a standard 'Big Brother'-type housemates show. The standouts were Kristen Wiig before she got big and the Schmo who turned out to be a really great guy. Second season was a Bachelor/ette dating show with two contestants- it was a lot of fun, for spoily reasons. Third season was less interesting- it was about competing to be an apprentice bounty hunter.

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I keep a copy of NetHack on a USB stick so there's always at least one PC game I can play if nothing else is available.

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I've moved a few times the past few years, just to different places in the same city, and each move tends to include a week or two without internet which usually means a week of two of deep diving into what I've downloaded in the past and actually playing them. Last year this game was ActRaiser, a game I dropped before even getting to the city building part, but fell in love with after my lack on internet connection made me give it more of a chance. The city building stuff is very surface level gameplay wise but I thought it was a really neat way to deliver the narrative. I loved it so much that I ended up walking to my college's campus to download a rom of spiritual successor Soul Blazer onto my phone to upload to my computer shortly after I finished. 

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