I Suck at Everything

So currently, if I'm honest, I'm juggling between university school work in the fields of biology, physics, and economy, supplying research drosophila with a barebone amount of life support, and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, Half Minute Heroes, Counter Strike: Source, and an astronomical amount of unfinished games which are all beckoning me from an afternoon of caffeine and MCAT workbooks like a field of Sirens to their helpless victims. And it's impossible to enjoy anything.

When my will withers into submission, I turn my attention to a quick game of Counter Strike, formulating self-justifying excuses to befuddle my mind's rationality. It starts with a mere admiration of the amount of work I've managed in such a short amount of time--hey look, I understood all of 1 page of my Physics textbook. Then this sense of accomplishment balloons into a sense of fatigue--man, all these numbers are swimming in my brain, I need a break to get all this math in order. Then the fatigue finds credence in my new-found ego--I deserve this break, that was a lot of work that I've done. Then this combination overcomes the sense of guilt--I mean, how bad is it really to take the 5 minutes for me to die in a round out of my studying time 4 hours before my final exams? 5 minutes later the rationality began to suffocate under under-accomplishment--I could've killed that guy, just 1 more chance. 1 more round later, the smugness turns into a rivalry--look at that guy, he thinks he's so good, killing me twice now, I'll show him in the next round! And before you know it, it's an hour before the final exam, and I've only understood 1 page.

Unsatisfied and uneducated, I take the test with the same efficiency as my ability to paint. The scantron becomes my canvas to make smiley faces or spell out PSWII60 with the multiple choice bubbles. And the cycle repeats for every writing assignment or even while playing other games.

It's impossible to have Sacred 2, Dreamfall: the Longest Journey, Mass Effect, and Ratchet and Clank: ToD sitting on the self all at the same time unfinished because it is impossible to finish any of them. Giving attention to any of these games will only remind me with the guilt of not finishing another game. And not finishing these games brings a nostalgic desire to get another oldie like "wouldn't it be great to play Psychonauts again?" or "I should try Secrets of Monkey Island, everyone says its good." Then the piling debt of unfinished games mountains into an insurmountable checklist, so the only recourse at this point is to put all these games in the backpedal and play some new games to keep up with the community with the reasoning being that if I play Modern Warfare 2 after I finish these games, which could be years from now, the servers would be shut down and I'd be left with the worst Call of Duty campaign coming out of Infinity Ward.

Inevitably, I'd get a new game, play it interchangeably with my older titles which entitles me the ability to participate in the casual Internet gaming banter which is more like a shouting match of "you're wrong because I'm right." However, the problem resonates that once I'm stockpiled to the brink with games to play that I can no longer enjoy them. After a couple of missions through Chinatown Wars, it's impossible to backtrack my mind to remember the progress in Mass Effect 2. And since the story bears almost the entirety of its enjoyment, it's impossible for me the enjoy Mass Effect 2 which leads me to the unimaginable question--is this onslaught of triple A titles diminishing the overall enjoyment of the games?

Well obviously not. How can a total sum of great games be bad? That's a ridiculous claim. Maybe I'm just terrible at games and that "real gamers" have the ability to recite campaigns from years past while achieving triple kills in Modern Warfare using only the knife. Regardless of my amateur-ness, what follows is that I am compelled to rely on the Internet to catch up on the backgrounds of what happened through free walkthroughs or some sort of Wikipedia equivalent. But having to READ a game is boring. If I wanted to read Gears of War, I would've, and I would've hated it. So you see the conundrum. If I were to continue with my games, I must resort to the most boring activity known to man. But if I were to disregard my games, then I run the risk of repeating history with the simultaneous releases of new great games.

Fortunately, I have a solution. As an industry, we must pace ourselves. I understand that publishers' ultimate goal is in their balance sheets, but honestly, screw Bobby Kotic, and let games be fun again. Instead of rushing development of some promising titles just to make the quarterly statement, let's take the time for each game to be completely polished down to an absolute satisfaction. The longer development period should result in better games that don't require first day patches and DLCs in three days after release, which satisfy the gamers, making us more willing to part with our money. And this pacing of releases would solve the drought periods when I'm forced to experience the natural phenomenon called "sunlight" which is something that causes skin cancer and blindness, in case you're a fellow gaming hermit like me who need a bit of clarification, and the most dreaded activity insisted by girls for when you have nothing better to do called "shopping" which is just a bottomless pit of meandering through the same shirts in different sprites that ultimately account for all of your savings for your next game fix.

However, nothing's going to happen. We're still going to be bombarded with great games that we can't enjoy. Capcom will still charge us money for parts of the game already on the disc. Bobby Kotic will still be the Dick Cheney equivalent of gaming friendly fire. And we'll all need to take up exercise for when the Natal-Fit game will require us to all run marathons in our living rooms, flailing our arms to mimic some sort of motion controlled Frisbee golf.