Getting married won’t stop me playing video games – Reader’s Feature

Cliff Notes – Getting married won’t stop me playing video games – Reader’s Feature

• The reader’s ambitious goal of playing 1,000 different games in a year has faced significant challenges, including moving house and wedding planning, resulting in a slow start and ongoing delays.
• Despite personal commitments, including a recent marriage proposal, the reader remains determined to continue the gaming challenge, indicating a potential for future catch-up.
• The reader’s gaming experiences vary widely, with mixed reviews on titles such as "Star Wars Jedi: Survivor" and "Skull and Bones," highlighting the unpredictability of game quality and player engagement.

Getting married won’t stop me playing video games – Reader’s Feature

Apparently Star Wars Jedi: Survivor didn’t go down very well (EA)

A reader reveals how his plan to play 1,000 different games in one year is going and why nothing, not even getting married, will stop it.

This is the follow-up to I played 1,000 different video games in 2024 to clear my backlog, which GameCentral showed in February. In 2024 I challenged myself to play a thousand different games before the end of the year. I made a poor start to my challenge though, playing just 32 games in January, against a target of 85.

So, to make any progress I had my work cut out. Also, I only have around an hour a day to play games. Some days there’s other things on and I don’t play anything at all. The amount of time I play each game varies enormously, with the longest being many hours and the shortest only minutes.

You might think my girlfriend would mind about my challenge, but she has her own challenge to read 50 books a year, all of which have to fit different categories. And she makes this target easily, as she has fewer hobbies than I do.

February was a good start on catching up though. Making a decision to sell off a load of PlayStation 4 and N64 games helped, and I managed 118 games – but was still 14 behind overall. But in March I was moving house, and with many boxes of games I needed to hire a storage unit to put them all in.

There was also a load of other stuff that should have been thrown out years ago to deal with. I was also trying to time things, so I didn’t need essential items after they had been packed up. With plenty of unpacking and ferrying stuff back and forth I had another bad month with 20 fewer games than my target. In April I recovered slightly, but still not enough to catch up.

The summer was busy with a holiday to Crete, football tournaments, drumming, a camping trip for a friend’s anniversary, new challenges with my business to sort out, several music festivals, trips to the doctor, and even meeting pair of capybaras. As we entered August, I realised I’d still been behind at the end of every month. I felt like a football team who looked to make the play-off places but have slid down the table and now have a relegation battle on their hands.

With less than a third of the year remaining, I wasn’t making enough progress. But then something else happened that made me take stock. Driving back from a local music festival the day, after my girlfriend’s birthday, I thought ‘I’m going to ask her to marry me’. And the next month I did.

I carefully planned a proposal where I hid her name and the words ‘Will You Marry Me’ into a quiz. And after going down on one knee with a tanzanite ring, she said yes. So the next thing on our agenda would be planning a wedding. Obviously, we would make that our priority. And it made me realise there are more important things to think about than a challenge.

So did I stop there? Did the wedding planning mean I would miss the target? Or would I make an unlikely catch up? Well, spoiler alert there will be a part three to this series of Reader’s Features.

Here are some of the games I played in the middle third of the year:

The Wolf Among Us: Episode 1 – Faith (Xbox One)

The genres of games I play varies over time. Driving games are my favourite, platformers were on top in the 16-bit era and made a comeback over the last decade. I played most of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games until I bought a new TV that didn’t like them and then pretty much stopped, although there were also only a few new releases. I do play more story-based games now, and Telltale games like this are usually entertaining. The premise of an ‘80s New York where fairytale characters live disguised amongst regular humans is great, and there’s plenty of twists too.

Dungeons 3 (Xbox One)

I dream that one day I will invent my own subgenre of game, which blends a story-based title with strategy gameplay. You would make choices rather than be scrambling around keeping all the plates spinning or fiddling with poorly-optimised console controls, that were designed for mouse and keyboard. Of course, that’s not going to happen, as I have no experience of programming. For Dungeons 3 though, the dialogue is amusing and the voiceovers are great.

Cameltry 2005 (PSP)

The name Cameltry might not mean much to most people, but the gameplay is easy to describe – it’s like the bonus levels from Sonic The Hedgehog on the Mega Drive (and Cameltry actually came out first). This enhanced version, on the Taito Legends Power-Up compilation, is great to play, although the lack of save ability on a game that’s great in short bursts is a misstep.

Flicky and Snail Maze (Xbox One)

One game not on my list, as I only got halfway through, was Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. I did find the slimmer running time and ability to skip dialogue made for a better experience than the standard releases. However, that didn’t stop me from spending loads of time on the bonus games, including Sega Racing Classic 2 (basically Daytona 2 without the licence) and these pair of Master System games. I also was able to give Maze Hunter 3D a go, as I had a pair of surprisingly effective plastic red/blue 3D glasses.

Inertial Drift (Xbox Series S)

Driving games are my favourite genre of all time and this one – which uses the right stick to drift – is insanely fast. It doesn’t take long to play through but is good fun while it does. It does clearly riff on the similarly named Initial D manga series though.

Hitman 2, Episode 2: Miami (Xbox One)

I’d be the first to admit that patience is not my strongest point when playing games, meaning I tend not to enjoy stealth titles. This one looks great and has a sense of scale that was missing from earlier titles. Some detections felt unfair though, when I’d still taken proper care.

Full Void (Evercade)

This title looked like a modern day Flashback or Another World, two games I enjoyed (especially the latter) but really need modernisation. It didn’t live up to expectation, with too many dull or frustrating sections cancelling out the good ones.

Night Driver (Atari 2600)

This is a conversion of a 1976 arcade game, which was one of the first driving games to be in three dimensions. Of course, that basically means you are driving on a black road against a black background, with just white dots to show the difference. Even though it’s running on even more basic hardware than the original it’s still surprisingly engaging, rather than just a curio.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (Xbox Series S)

Free play weekends are a great way to try more games under a year old. Sadly, I found this to be considerably worse than its predecessor.

Destroy All Humans: Clone Carnage (Xbox One)

I am determined not to let games slip through my fingers but how much effort I put into getting certain games running can rankle. This sparsely-populated free online shooter took ages to get a game, and when I finally did it wasn’t worth it. The game just turned out to be a generic shooter that lacked the individuality you would expect from a game where traditionally you play as the aliens.

Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora (Xbox Series S)

Another game that was tricky to play, but for strange reasons. After a fairly dull first hour of story scenes and a very slow escape from a huge building I saved to come back the next day. But the timer on the trial kept running while the console was switched off. So, I had to use a backup profile and play through the boring bit again. The main part of the game was much better and similar to Far Cry Primal.

Saints Row (Xbox 360)

Not even the recent-ish reboot but the original Xbox 360 game from 2006. At the time the main selling point was that the controls were better than GTA, which is less relevant now. It’s still more of an impressive achievement than something to put more than a few hours into though.

Nioh 2 (PlayStation 4)

Extra hard games rarely drag me back for one more go, as I think of all the other titles I’d miss out on to free up the time. This one just bored me.

Skull And Bones (Xbox Series S)

I went into full Jim Royale mode when I heard Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot claim that Skull & Bones was a ‘quadruple-A game’. It wasn’t worth my time, let alone £70. At least it was another free play weekend title.

By reader Jean-Paul Satire

Skull And Bones didn’t keep anyone interested for long (Ubisoft)

The reader’s features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

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