Juggling games

Today’s my first day back to work since the day before Thanksgiving. It was a ‘staycation’ for me: I just had PTO I had to use up. I played a LOT of games and wound up kind of getting caught up in too many. It was fine while on vacation but now that time is limited, I gotta figure out how to juggle everything.

I’ve been trying to do better about finishing games but I know if I let one of these languish for too long I’ll never get back to it.

So here’s what I’m playing:

Rise of the Tomb Raider. I picked this one up when it launched for the PS4 because if you played the first week, you’d get 100,000 credits. I don’t really know what credits are used for, but as I’ve said, I’m “Easy Mode” when it comes to marketing departments. So I played once, got the 100,000 credits (and I still have no idea what I do with them) then put the game away until the PS4 Pro came out, since everyone was saying how great the game looks on the Pro. Then when I got the Pro I wound up playing Infamous: Second Son and Infamous: First Light before getting around to Tomb Raider. Anyway now I’m playing it and really enjoying it. Great game so far (~40% done).

Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force. During the PSN Black Friday sale this was something like $12. I was feeling an itch for some old-school turn-based JRPG goodness so I snagged it. It’s oddly soothing so far. I do a lot of grinding which manifests as crunching through easy battles almost as fast as I can click the controller. Sometimes I almost fall asleep playing!! It’s also kind of offensive in that way that Japanese games can be when it comes to gender. Y’know, large breasted female characters not wearing much, female characters reacting positively to being treated badly, that kind of nonsense. Don’t judge me too harshly; I try my best not to be a sexist asshole in real life even if I play one in a JRPG now and then.

Final Fantasy XV. Pre-ordered this one because it came out at the start of my week off. I actually didn’t like it much at first but it’s growing on me. In my heart I’m almost treating this one like an MMO: a game I assume I’ll be playing for a long time. The only downside to this is that the story kind of gets lost when I spend so much time fishing or farming materials.

No Man’s Sky. I’m one of those people who was perfectly happy with No Man’s Sky when it came out. I pumped about 30 hours into it before drifting away in August. When Hello Games surprised us all with The Foundation Update last week I had to jump back in, and I got hooked again. I want to at least complete my base before drifting away again.

So I gotta figure out how to manage all these games. I think I’m going to say Monday night is Fairy Fencer night, and Thursday is No Man’s Sky night, and focus on Tomb Raider and FF XV the rest of the week until I get Tomb Raider finished.

Of course in addition to these are evergreen games like The Elder Scrolls Online, and Destiny has a holiday update coming in a week or so and I’ll want to check that out. Then there’s Stardew Valley launching on consoles about the same time as the Destiny holiday update, and Uncharted 4 Survival mode arrives this month and looks fun…

Oh yeah and I’m kind of hooked on mobile/Facebook game Star Trek: Timelines, too!

Maybe I need to just quit my job so I have more time for gaming! (I haven’t even mentioned my huge backlog…PSN has to stop having all these sales, they’re killing me!)