Measuring the Queue

So gearing up for the holiday season and realizing all of the insanely good games that have been/will be coming out. My wallet is going to be hurting. Among the regular list of good games that I keep my eye open for a good deal, there are at least 2 PS3 and 2 PS2 games I want to buy this holiday season. (There's also a few PSN titles that looked good too) That's pretty expensive for such a limited time frame. Luckily there doesn't look to be too many coming out immediately after and I may get some gift certificates to help fray some of those costs. At the very least, this can be a test of willpower to see if I can hold out long enough to possibly pick up a used copy or even wait long enough for a price drop. My always constant fear is that the game will become rare and I won't be able to find it without paying a hefty price for it. (this is what happened to several PS1 games since I was late to the party)

This, stemmed with the fact that I am getting close to beating Heavenly Sword, got me thinking about my current backlog of games. I knew it was large, but wanted to see how bad it really was. My breakdown of completed games is as follows:
PS1 - 12/20 = 60%
PS2 - 35/55 = 64%
PS3 - 3/9 = 33%
I find this pretty bad. I have 20 games that need to played for the PS2 alone! And yet I want more. I find that my backlog grows for several reasons. The first would be exactly as mentioned above: I can't resist a good deal. If I find a good deal for a game, I'll buy it now and assume I'll play it later. This has gotten me into trouble, since I'm now eye high in games. Also, I tend to impulse buy on occasion. Recently, I went out and bought several NIS games since I knew most of them were good. Or how several years ago I bought 3 megaman games for PS1, which turned out mediocre at best. I also find that I get new system jitters. When I first got my PS2 and also with my PS3, I bought games which I probably wouldn't care for, or were of a little less quality. For example, my first purchase was Wild Arms 2 for my PS2. A mediocre PS1 game at best, but it was available right up the road from my house. I also bought several PS2 games including Summoner and Orphan, even though they weren't particularly good since I wanted PS2 games to see what the system was capable of. For the PS3, I bought a few games already, although this time around I feel I was just a tad smarter. I bought Enchanted Arms, Folklore, Assassin's Creed, and even Heavenly Sword, since I wanted some high-def gaming, although this time around, I tried to stick to games that were cheaper and I figured I would play. Lastly, my backlog keeps growing since I often suffer from a LIFO problem. Since the games I like keep me occupied for many many hours (darn you RPGs), I often will grow slightly tired of them. If I get a new game, before I finish the old one, I might skip to it and start playing. This seemed to always be bad at Christmas since I got several games, and wanted to play all of them at the same time, which always failed along with whatever game I was playing before Christmas.

But luckily I feel this is getting better. The PSN helps me a lot since I can get plenty of demos for all kinds of games. This will help me not purchase a game I will ultimately not like very much. (Although it can also be a detriment since I can try many more games, which I may end up liking) In addition, unlike the past 8 years or so, I now am done with school and should be able to game on a more regular basis. Before my gaming was extremely limited due to High School and 30-40 hours a week working and after that college in general, since my gaming all but halted as work picked up. Now I usually can get quite a few hours in a week, which is helping me complete games in a timely fashion so that I stay interested in the story longer, and am able to finish them. In the last 5 months or so, I was able to complete 8 games, 4 of which were pretty long RPGs. Hopefully the fact of having a steady income doesn't persuade me to make too many more purchases. I know I can't justify it. Now, I just wonder what I will play next.