I was idly playing Assassins Creed: Brotherhood the other day - collecting flags, chests, feathers and whatever other non-plot-essential side quests they generously scatter through the game - when I realised the sequel Revelations is out fairly soon and maybe I should hurry up and complete the game instead of gathering pseudo-rosebuds. Not only that but Skyrim is going to be out in the same week and by all accounts that's going to be AMAZING and MASSIVE. Your average RPG will take me about 50 hours which I guess is about average; I'm hardly a completionist but I'm a sucker for a side-quest. Games can take a lot longer than that if it's open world with a lot of exploration though, like Skyrim. Fun as Brotherhood is I'm also rather tempted to just drop it and instead pick up the very well received Deus Ex: Human Revolution: I loved, loved, LOVED the cyberpunk original back in 2000, but I know if I do that I'll probably never finish Brotherhood. I just need a little more time.
One game at a time Dan. One at a time.
A gadfly-like attention span makes it difficult to play the same game more than once: my attempt to work through Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2 again to make "canon" savegames (for exporting into sequels) had to be completely shelved, it just drags too much when you know what's going to happen. The Witcher dragged too, this time because being poorly translated, so I never finished it. Which is really annoying because they fixed the dialogue and everything else in a subsequent uber-patch and the critically acclaimed sequel Assassins of Kings came out earlier this year. It sounds amazing but I just can't bring myself to play it with the prequel on a shelf unfinished. I've also given up on finishing the DLC for Fallout 3, but as soon as the last of the DLC and major mods are finished for Fallout New Vegas I want to get back into that as it's better written, more in keeping with the Fallout spirit and on top of the open world exploration there's also a lot of sniping, which I love. I'll find some sniping time.
I've not even really thought about the excellent Starcraft 2 or Portal 2, though I'm sure I'll get to them eventually. Probably next year when they'll be competing for attention with the likes of Mass Effect 3, Diablo 3 (both a guaranteed delight) and Star Wars: The Old Republic. The latter is an MMO which is a little risky, them being so addictiveness and whatnot, but I figure I'll just play it like it's a single player game. At the other end of the scale Civilization V has been really nice to casually dip into; it holds your attention while you play it but doesn't demand it while you're doing something else. Maybe that's an RTS thing? Empire: Total War did that to an extent but it was way too easy to dominate once you began to pull ahead and the premise of global conquest in a pseudo-historical game strikes me as really silly, so though it chafes not to get my money's worth I've had to ditch it entirely. I'd love to replace it with Shogun 2: Total War though as it's supposed to be tighter and less buggy and the idea of merely conquering all of Japan is much easier to swallow, but y'know... Time.
To think there used to be a years-long dearth of good RPGs for the PC! It's an embarrassment of riches now, and relatively unrestricted by budget or computer specs as I am the only thing I'm missing now to play them all is time.
Glad to see that PC Gaming seems to be having a revival, just a shame I'm too BIZ-AY. ...Time.