Back when I was but a kid I had free time. If only I had realized how precious that was. I remember saving up my lunch money, $1.10 a day, every day just so I could buy new computer games. Baldur's Gate 1 + Expansion and Final Fantasy 7 for the PC were the predominant ones. Now I'm a 26 year old married, happily at that, working his way through college. Every night I manage to squeeze out an hour or so of game time with a tiny bit more on the weekends. So what is the problem you might ask?

Steam and GOG.

Ever since I quite the WoW crack during the summer I have been enjoying myself on all these wonderful games that I have missed. Thanks to them I have a huge library of games and quite the backlog. I stare at my collection and think to myself that I really should beat some of these games before buying anymore (not that it stops me). So far I have beaten Trine, May Payne 1, and Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light.

I feel like a disgrace when I boot up Battlefield Bad Company 2 instead of Planescape: Torment. Somehow, and I don't even enjoy FPS that much although Borderlands is awesome, I have 100ish hours logged in BFBC2 and I haven't even gotten out of the tutorial/beginner dungeon in PS:T for pete's sake! I beat Baldur's Gate + Expansion back when it first came out and I KNOW that I will have untold amount of fun playing through that and BG2 again along with all the other infinity engine games I never got to play. But I also realize how big each game is and how many hours they all are and for some reason something inside of me just...stops. I'll load the game up and get to the menu screen and exit again.

GOG'ers, I'm begging you. Help me see the divine light again and get me back to the true path of RPG goodness.

In case you're wondering here are some of the RPGs I still need to play:
Fallout 1 / 2 / Tactics / 3 / New Vegas
Dragon Origins + Awakening
Baldur's Gate 1 / 2 / ToB + Expansions (Want to play from beginning again)
IceWind Dale 1 / 2
Arcanum
Planescape: Torment
Temple of Elemental Evil
Morrowind
Oblivion
Witcher 1 / 2
Neverwinter Nights 1 / 2
Lords of Magic + SE
Spellforce 1 / 2 + Expansions
Risen
Pools of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Draenor
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines
...Even more!!!

Stupid WoW sucked up too much of my life. In between working out (yeah I gained weight grrr), learning guitar, college, and married life I'm determined to play all the wonderful games I missed out on.

If you don't feel like playing games then don't. What's the point in forcing yourself. I did not play a single game for about 5-6 years or so. There are other things to do besides gaming :)

Do you have a console? If so my list for you changes.

Fuck you got your life back, you won't want to spend it all on games still, do some other stuff so you can value you're gaming time.

Okay, unpopular as this might be, you need shorter, bite sized experiences:
Fallout (can be finished in 12 hours or so if you play right through)
New Vegas (is long but you won't forget anything important if you put it down for two weeks)
Arcanum (but only if you start having fun after the first 2 hours)

Games you should definitely not play just now:
everything else on the list, except the ones included below

Games you should never play:
Pools of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Draenor (seriously, it's super shitty)

Might I suggest http://www.backloggery.com/ as a tool for getting motivated? It's a website where you can list all the games you'd like to beat, and it tracks stats and such for games you've completed. I really like it.

As for games, I always mix it up. If I just finished a major RPG, a la Planescape Torment, I play some nifty indie game or a FPS. Also, don't necessarily play games in order, or all at once in the case of a series. For example, don't look at Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 as all one thing. Concentrate on beating one campaign, play something else, play another, something else, play the sequel, etc.

I used to try to beat whole runs of series in a row, but it gets old fast. Keep mixing it up. Feel free to put a game on the backburner because you got a shiny new release. It's all for fun anyway, best to keep that in mind.

I definitely know the feeling, as it's exactly what I did two years ago when I stopped playing WoW and realized what I missed out on.

...and unpatched, will format your hard drive if you attempt to uninstall it. (I think I remember that correctly, don't quote me though.)

This is true, or a very successful internet troll that has lasted some time.

Now that is a serious bug.

Yeah, I actually was dumb enough to purchase this thing. Luckily, I found out about the bug before I'd attempted to remove it, so I made sure to patch before doing so. It was clunky even on high end systems back then...it was just a total mess of a game that was supposed to be the second coming of Gold Box standard D&D games. Instead, at least in my opinion, it killed any further attempts. In all honesty, if I remember correctly, SSI had either already collapsed, had been bought out or was on the rocks by then already, so people were looking for a replacement.

Games like had really failed to revitalize them, so they made a few other "me too" style games that didn't do well. Ruins was supposed to be their killer app that would put them head to head with a newly emerging Bioware, who were coming off the great Infinity Engine games. Long story short, by the time SSI could get the bugs fixed, the new Neverwinter Nights dropped and Ruins was never able to regain any leverage in the marketplace.

It was sad. SSI, at the time, was one of my favorite companies. I'd played the Gold Box games, all the Panzer Generals, Steel Panthers, the first Battlecry, Renegade, Spelljammer, Age of Rifles, Dark Sun, I could go on forever. It was a major nail in their collective coffins.

Haha.. Just play whatever you want to play. In my view, the great thing about backlogged games (especially the DRM-free ones from GOG) is that they'll still be there for you when you DO want to play them. Gaming is and should always be a form of entertainment, never an obligation.

I bought the collector's edition... yeah, fuck whichever studio did that to me (forget who now) what a horrible game.

thanks for the link! now i can anally organise my game playing as i have always wanted to do!

I recall this same story was told about a couple of other games as well, e.g. Myth 2 (Soulblighter), and possibly also some early version of Half-life. I never tested whether the stories were true. It could be the problem occurred only if you installed it to some other directory than the default directory, after which uninstallation would wipe out the whole parent directory.

Googling for it:

Myth 2:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/myth-ii-soulblighter/trivia

"The initial release of Myth II featured a bug which wiped out your harddrive when the game was uninstalled. A patch was released to correct it while the actual packages were recalled from store shelves."

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=74908&start=75

"The original CD v1.00 of Half-life had a buggy version of Sierra utlilities. Removing Sierra utilities before uninstalling Half-life deleted not just c:\games\half-life but also c:\games."

Just stop playing games for a little while then if youre not enjoying them. Periodically I dont play them for weeks and then I come back with renewed vigor when I get in a gaming slump. Games are just like anything else, if you play too much for too long you get burned out on it. If you try and make yourself play then you will end up enjoying it even less.

Besides, there is a whole lot more to do than play games so go do something else for awhile and come back to games in a couple weeks when you have that desire again.

Nailed it. This is exactly how I feel about it too.

I play games for fun and hence I try to mix it up and never play the same type of game twice in a row - so I will not play 2 RPGs or 2 FPS in a row but will try different games in different genres. Also don't play stuff because you feel you "have" to but do it because you want to - so if you enjoy Borderlands then play that. But try to stay away from something that sounds too familiar to stuff you have played recently so don't play BF3 if you have just played BC2. Play games that will give you that magical feeling back you had when you first played those games like BG1 you got for your lunchmoney when you were younger.

Still, you sound like a competitive gamer that like to play the same game for many hours at a time so I'm not sure my advice are of any help to you.