Anyone who has read our Deadline Gaming article in Issue 3 of The Vita Lounge magazine will know how seriously I take my deadlines. When the boss wants me to hit the lift of an embargo I damn well hit it. When an unexpected game suddenly comes in I drop everything and give it my all, but my eyes are always on my Pooped Puppies calendar. Even when I game purely for fun, I track release dates like a hungry drunk tracks a kebab, desperate to ram down the whole doner before the sun rises and a brand new game hits the shelves. You see, there are three things I hate more than anything in this sorry old world: tomatoes, snobbery, and starting one AAA game before completing another.
I take my role playing very seriously and the game doesn’t have to claim ‘RPG’ on the back of the box for me to go deep. While games like Dragon Age and Skyrim do make me go week at the knees, elbows and controller, I am just as enthralled by Tomb Raider, Kill Zone, inFamous and Wolfenstein. Regardless of official genre, I consider any game that has a long Story mode to be a Role Playing Game. Final Fantasy, Assassin’s Creed, Persona 4 Golden, Danganronpa, The Order 1886, Batman, Shadow of Mordor – they’re all the same because while I play the game I personally take on the role of the protagonist. I’m in the game. I am that character. I’m Edward Kenway climbing up the rigging of a frigate. I’m the protector of Gotham. I’m Hajime Hinata and my classmates are dropping dead all around me. I am William B. J. Blazkowicz and I will defeat those ungodly Nazi robots. Unfortunately I find it very hard to fight ungodly Nazi robots when I’m also in highschool and a pirate and a man in a black rubber suit with pointy ears. Stopping part way through a big game and beginning another is like suddenly switching personalities. One minute you’re a sarcastic young Seattle smartass using superpowers to shoot through the air and the next you’re a grumpy grieving father
dragging a reluctant teenager across a desolated America. Then you’re a smartarse again. Nope, can’t do it. I need to finish that character’s journey before I begin another. I need closure in the same way that I need to read the last page of a book before I crack the spine of the next one.
The sudden and last minute decision to platinum Steins; Gate before its release left me with a huge problem. There was no way I could finish The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in time for the release of Batman.
Of course The Witcher is a game you could potentially never finish. I’m still playing now and I don’t expect to stop until all future DLCs are exhausted and I’ve squeezed out every possible trophy. Mopping up sidequests is a wonderful way to spend many relaxed afternoons between game releases, however the main story in any big game is serious business. It’s like watching a film. It’s like being in a film. It’s an illusion of another life and I want to live it right through to its climax.
I dearly wanted to play The Witcher straight through before Batman hit, but with a game of that magnitude I knew it would not be possible. Even if I wasn’t platinuming Steins; Gate, reviewing other games and writing for Punk and Lizard, is it really possible to keep all friends, relatives and work out of the way for a hundred hours while ploughing through? No, probably not. Perhaps I could delay playing Batman? Yeah, maybe I could delay the final game in my all-time favourite series and cancel the week I took off work to play it? NO. Geralt of Rivia and Batman were going to clash and there was no power on this earth that could stop them. (Now’s there’s a question. Who would win in a fight, Geralt or Batman? Damn I think it would be close).
Am I alone in this? I feel as though it’s bad enough
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